The central theme is that not all protein is created equal; protein quality, determined by amino acid profile and digestibility, significantly impacts muscle growth and retention, and a substantial portion of daily protein intake should come from high-quality sources.
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If you've done the thing with like apps
like My Fitness Pal, for example, you
log all your food for the day, it's
going to count the protein from your
Subway sandwich wheat bread, as well as
the protein from the tomatoes and the
onions in there, as well as the protein
from the chicken and the cheese and all
these other foods where you're like,
"Okay, I know that bread has protein in
it, but isn't it better to get protein
from like meats and milk products and
eggs? Don't those like grow muscle
better? Am I really eating a gram per
pound of the right kind of protein? How
much of this protein actually works to
get me a good
shot? Hey folks, Dr. Mike here for RP
Strength and today's video is going to
be about protein quality. We know
roughly how much protein folks need in
order to get their most lean and most
jacked and most healthy and all that
stuff. We'll talk about that in a
minute. But there's another question
we're going to try to answer in the
context of that discussion. It is what
kind of protein should that be? And are
you getting the right kind of protein to
make it so that you get all the good
results? Are you getting some of the
wrong kinds of protein such that you're
eating enough? Sure. But it's poor
quality protein and then you're not
getting the results that you should be.
Let's dive in. So, first thing is how
much protein do you need? And for
maximizing your chances of the best
muscle growth outcomes and retaining
muscle, we at RP seem to think about a
gram per pound per day is good. So if
you weigh 150
lbs, then you need something like 150
gram of protein per day. Now that's a
little bit more than most literature
reviews say is a good idea to take. And
some of them, if you read the literature
reviews on protein, all the studies
combined, in a certain slant, you could
actually conclude that you need
substantially less than a gram per pound
to get all the good stuff that you need.
In most cases, maybe even as low as 7 g
per pound. So, this is one of these
situations where if you weigh 150 lbs,
it could be quite true to say that even
110 to 120 gram of protein per day is
absolutely sufficient. On the other
hand, a pretty decent body of new
literature has come out and literature
examining people who are training a ton
and specifically people in fat loss
diets. This literature shows that maybe
a little bit more than a gram per pound
is a good idea in some cases, 1.3 or
1.25 g per pound per day. So that for
someone who is 150 lbs then maybe for
them even 175 grams of protein per day a
little more than that is going to check
those boxes. For us we really like the
gram per pound per day but with nuance.
So our best recommendation RP is as
follows. Aim for roughly a gram per
pound per day of protein. Again if you
weigh 150 lbs 150 gram and with less or
more depending on some circumstances to
use two extremes. If you're lifting
weights only a few times a week, you're
doing lots of other activities, you're
maintaining your body weight and
muscularity, you're not currently trying
to improve, but you don't want to reduce
it, and you're eating a maintenance diet
where you're not losing weight, you can
eat definitely on the low end, if you
weigh at 150, 120 grams of protein is
going to be almost certainly good enough
to keep all that muscle, keep you
healthy, keep you fit, keep you
functioning, it's going to be great. On
the high end though, if you're training
a ton, like five or six times a week, an
hour and a half at a time, very high
volume hypertrophy training for the
whole body, and you're also potentially
in a caloric deficit, so you're trying
to lose some fat, and you're really
pushing to the extremes, then yeah,
maybe something like 1.25 or 1.3 grams
per pound is a good insurance policy to
make sure that if anything is wrong with
your diet, it's not you not getting
enough protein. And that's kind of one
of the big things for this video is to
put a little bit of a buffer. If you eat
a few too many grams of protein, worst
case, they just get burned up for fuel.
They're not toxic, not bad for your
kidneys. Worst case on the other hand is
if you undereat protein, you just don't
gain as much muscle or you lose more
muscle than you're supposed to. So
that's no bueno. So we have kind of
those two extremes. A gram per pound is
just almost never going to steer you
wrong. But a gram per pound of what?
Because if you've done the thing with
like apps like My Fitness Pal, for
example, you log all your food for the
day and you're like, "Oh my god, like
I'm eating like 300 gram of protein and
I only ate 200 lb. This is incredible."
But when you look at the foods it's
taking the protein from, it's foods like
rice. It's food like beans, like whole
grain bread, like regular white bread,
and all these other foods where you're
like, "Okay, I know that bread has
protein in it, but like something I
think called like protein quality, and
isn't it better to get protein from like
meats and milk products and eggs? Don't
those like grow muscle better?" And then
the question is like, well, how many of
those do I have to get? And am I really
eating a gram per pound of the right
kind of protein, or am I off by one way
or another? Should I be eating more? Or
am I eating more than enough? Let's dig
into that. So the first question we have
to answer is what protein quality is.
And there are a few ways to go about
this. All of them are very good. All of
them have slight downsides and upsides.
My preferred way to this day is to use the
the
PDC AAS, the protein digestibility
corrected amino acid score. What that
basically does is it approaches protein
quality from two perspectives. One is
protein is composed of amino acids and
amino acids are the building blocks of
protein. And when your body builds
proteins, it doesn't do it from whole
proteins that you eat. It breaks those
down into amino acids. And then when it
builds your own proteins, it needs a
decent amount of each amino acid in
order to build something. Let's give an
example. If you have a house and you
take it apart and you keep all the
copper wiring, you keep all the glass,
you keep the steel, you keep the
microcircuitry, you keep the wood, and
you take it apart in such a meticulous
way that you have everything roughly
like as it's supposed to be, almost
clean and untouched. what can you make
from that house? If I told you that you
have to make another house or something
like it, you kind of have all the
components. But if I told you you have
to make like um a a a server farm, like
a a very small room that is able to
house like computer servers, you'd be
like, "Okay, well, we just don't have
enough electric wiring because like a
house typically isn't wired like a
server room. So, we're missing a
component. Even though we have the same
amount of house stuff, we don't have
enough of the specific components we
need. And honestly, we have like way too
much wood. And so for protein quality,
if you have a similar distribution of
amino acids that the human body makes
its stuff out of, which isn't super
complex or exotic, it's really
straightforward, you're good to go. Then
you can take the protein that has those,
break them down into individual amino
acids, and feed those amino acids into
all the body processes that build
proteins from there. But if you have
another situation where you have a a
bunch of some types of amino acids and
almost none or very little of a couple
of types even when you go try to build
your house so to speak you run out of
electric wiring and you can't do the
job. So some kinds of protein even
though there's lots of amino acids
there's not enough of the right types
and I was going to say too many of some
types too many is not a problem because
you can just use them for energy. It's
just the fact that you don't have enough
of certain types. So part one of protein
quality is to be like do we have the
kind of distribution of amino acids that
we typically see in the human body. It's
not a zero or one answer. It's between
zero and one various gradations of like
this protein has kind of so many wacky
amino acids we don't need a ton of and
so few of the ones we really need that
like it's just really bad source of
protein and eating even almost infinite
amounts of it still doesn't get get you
to build all the protein structure and
the muscle that you need all the way to
like damn dude this protein source is
almost perfect and has enough amino
acids in enough ratios to where the
human body is just like using almost all
that protein for the kind of stuff we
want like repairing cell structures and
making you jacked which is definitely
the most important thing of what we
want. So that's part one of quality is
amino acid distribution. Part two is the
degree to which it gets digested and
absorbed. There's some pretty good
protein sources that the way they come
packaged in the foods that they exist
in. Um they just go almost through the
digestive tract mostly and just get
pooped out the other way. And then even
though they're pretty good and your body
could use them, their digestion and
absorption is such crap that like you
actually don't get almost all of what
you eat or some fraction of it goes down
the drain. And so if you think you're
eating 50 g of protein in a meal, but it
has like let's say 10 g of that is such
poor quality protein it basically
doesn't count. Now you're really eating
40 and let's say only half of it in some
strange way digests and absorbs.
Functionally, your body receives only 20
gram of high quality muscle building
protein from a 50 g protein meal. So, if
you multiply that meal out by five, you
say you're eating 250 grams of protein,
but really you're eating 100 grams and
less than like 100 grams of protein for
someone who weighs 200 lb. That's just
not enough by almost any cataloging to
try to get really good muscle. It's good
enough for health, but nothing outside
of that. And then, you know, if you're
eating 250 grams of protein, that's
great. 200 is great. Even 150 works, but
100 is not enough. So, in such an
extreme illustration, which can happen
if you do some wacky stuff, we'll talk
about in a bit, then you're not getting
enough of the amino acids you need and
you're not getting enough of the
proteins digested and absorbed. And
thus, in the scoring system for the
PDCAS, you are going to score very very
low. So, the scoring system combines
amino acid profile and how much of these
amino acids you're digesting and
absorbing and actually utilizing into
one score. And that score at the bottom
end is zero and at the top end is one.
It's the same as scale roughly. So
divide 100% by 100 and you get this
scale. So the way I like to imagine it
is like percentages. You don't have to
do that. 0 and one is totally fine. A
score of zero means that let's say we
have like um a handful of protein snacks
and we've designed them to have a a
PDCAS score of zero. You eat it and we
measure all the stuff in your blood and
your muscles to see how much protein was
delivered and it turns out it was none.
like literally none. That sucks. And uh
that is like the worst possible case.
And even if some of the amino acids got
in, it's like insanely high levels of
one amino acid or two and the other ones
are just missing. So your body's like,
"I can't build anything out of this."
It's like you're like, "Hey, all right,
build me a house." And the builder's
like, "Great." The whole team's there.
Construction workers like, "What we
got?" They're like, "We have a pile of
sand." And you're like,
"Okay, we can't build much out of that."
Okay, fine. Get rid of the sand. No, no,
I'll add. You get sand plus a shitload
of wood. All the wood you can use. Like,
okay, so we're not building a log cabin.
We're building a modern home. So, we
need like steel. We need like glass. We
need all kinds of different ceramic
mixtures and everything. Where's that?
Like, we just just didn't buy it. Okay.
So, functionally, you might have like
enough wood to build a house and even
more than you need, but you're not
getting the right stuff. So, that's a
score of zero. A score of one means from
everything that you eat, you a protein
snack designed with a PDCA SF of one, if
it's 20 grams of protein you just ate,
that is 20 gram of protein or damn close
to it that is in your bloodstream. It
goes to your muscles and it does all the
good things that we want. Full send.
It's exactly what you get. And we call
scores of closer to one high quality.
And we call scores significantly below
one lower quality. Typically high
quality is 0.9 and above. It's a very
similar to the grading system in most
schools where like an A or an A minus is
90% and above. Scott, what was an A
minus in your schools growing up?
Percentage wise. Yeah. 92.
92.
Noing way. 92 is an A, right? I think it
was. I think I think 94 and up was an A
and 90 to 94 was a A minus. That makes
sense. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.
Sound right? Yes. And also it depends on
if you have A+es. I actually like the
plus system a lot. So my is 90 to
92.99999 is an A minus. 93 to like 96 or
depending on how you like to do it, 97 or
or
96.99 is an A. And then either 96 or 97
plus to 100 is an A+. But in any case, I
do remember different school districts.
It was separate. It was like all over
the place. Yes, totally, totally,
totally. So, at the end of the day, it's
kind of like in grading where like if
you want to be a quote straight A
student, uh let's say A starts at 90,
like you don't do the plus minus system.
Anything above an A is really good and
is so interchangeable. It just doesn't
really make sense to overindex on the
specifics. Anything above 0.9 is awesome
and we're we're there for it. It's
called high quality. And low lower
quality is actually anything under 0.9.
Now, the lower you go, the worse, but
anything under 0.9 is we're going to try
to see if we can get some higher quality
stuff in there. And to that extent,
there are a few other concerns. One, a
high PDCAS score is good, but another
thing you want is enough leucine.
Leucine is a specific kind of amino acid
that if you have a little bit of, muscle
growth doesn't get triggered a ton, but
if you have enough of, muscle growth
gets triggered. If you have more than
enough, nothing magical happens. It's
kind of like leucine seems to be one of
your muscle's best detectors for like if
we have enough leucine we're getting
growth started. If we don't, even if we
have lots of other amino acids, we might
not grow as much. And so we're also
looking for high lucine sources which
are almost always integrated in the PDCA
score. So real quick, let's go through a
couple of sample foods and look up what
their scores are. And there are various
technical reasons why they have these
scores. I'm going to spare you guys, but
if you want to look this up, you just
ask Chad GPT and it'll tell you all
about it. So gelatin which is a hydrayed
form of collagen protein. So they have
roughly the same
score has a score of
0.08. So like if we did percentages zero
was the worst 100 was the best it has an
8%. So like when something has collagen
protein in it and it's the majority of
the protein is collagen it is the one of
the lowest quality protein source. So,
if you you happen to be Caucasian, no
offense Caucasians, all jokes, love and
respect, and you go to super expensive
grocery stores in your LA neighborhood
to buy a collagen protein shake cuz like
fitness influencer girl on TV told you
like, "Oh my god, that collagen like
supports your bones and it builds your
mouths." It turns out collagen is like a
dog protein. Sorry, it just is on
literal technical grounds. And even
though the gelatin is really fun to eat
and you can bounce it off walls, not a
high quality protein source. So, gelatin
very low point uh 08. Actually, you know
what? I'm just going to go on percents.
Nutritionists that are formally trained,
my apologies. Easier heristic for us to
use here to teach. So remember the PCA
score actually 100 uh is this divided by
100, but we'll go on percents because
it's easy. 100% great protein, 0% shitty
protein. 8% for gelatin. Wheat protein
such as gluten has a 25%. Part of that
is because it's just not very easy to
digest and it's also incomplete. It
doesn't have all the amino acids.
47% for rice, 54% for corn, 57% for
oats, 58% for lentils. So lentils are
often described as high protein, and
they are, but there's just not enough
methane, one of the amino acids, and so
they're not just going to get you jacked
by themselves, kidney beans are 60,
chickpeas are 65, peanut butter is 70.
Remember, 70 still too low. Like it's
like trying to say you're a really good
student and saying, "I get straight
70s." M not a
thing. Soy protein isolate 0.9. Boom.
So, is soy protein okay? And will it get
you jacked?
Absolutely. It's a complete protein and
it's awesome. A very rare complete plant
protein is quinoa. And quinoa, which I
used to think uh was kona, and I just
assumed that was a black woman's name.
Is that cool to say? Uh it's a 0.92 or
uh 92% which is really really good. So,
quinoa, um, as they say
colloquially, tofu is a 93. So, here's
the thing. Everything I see from this
list, from soy protein as a 90 to uh
quinoa at a 92 and on, is officially a
high quality protein source that you can
eat tons of in your diet and get amazing
results. And you don't need to worry
about adjusting for anything. Fish, for
example, salmon has a 95, chicken breast
a 95, beef a 96, pork a 97. the other
white meat, casein protein powder and
eggs both have a 100 that eggs are
actually the gold standard and what the
PDCAS score was derived from. Later they
tested whey and whey isolate whey hydrop
protein and a derivative of whey called
BLG has a
1.04 raw score or 104%.
whey is actually more anabolic, grows
more muscle by teeny teeny tiny
fractions. Nothing to take home, but
just kind of cool to know than even the
reference standard egg that they base
this off of. So that's all the protein
scores just have kind of lay of the land
of what's going on. And we see that most
plant sources are just not up to
standard. Just a few of them are, which
is why a lot of people say stick to
animal sources for your protein unless
it's the plant sources that work. So,
the next question and the big question
of our chat today is what fraction of
our daily protein because here's the
thing. When you do your tabulation in
any of the nutritional tracking apps,
they're usually just going to use raw
scores on how many grams of protein you
have for any food. And so, if you go
into My Fitness Pal, it's a going to
count the protein from your Subway
sandwich wheat bread, as well as the
protein from the tomatoes and the onions
in there, as well as the protein from
the chicken and the cheese. And you got
to be like, how much of this protein
actually works to get me a good shot?
And for optimal muscle growth and muscle
retention, it seems like getting about
75% of your daily protein from high
quality sources, 0.9 PDCA or above, 90%
or above, is a really good best
practice. Any more than that's not
really required or has a huge benefit.
Any less than that and you'll marginally
pay the cost of not getting as jacked.
And the rest 25% or so can come from low
quality protein sources, no problem. So
if you are counting the Subway bread in
with your protein, as long as your
diet's not like 50% bread protein and
the rest regular protein, you're golden.
As long as your diet is like 75% of your
protein that you eat comes mostly from
the meat and then the cheese and only
25% or less comes from the bread and
other stuff, then you're good to go.
That's a big deal. Now, that doesn't
mean you need to only eat animal
proteins. You can mix rice and beans
together. They form a complimentary
source cuz rice has a a bunch of uh
certain kinds of amino acids and some
deficits in others. Beans have the
opposite where they clip together and
then actually make a complete protein
source that's of decent quality. You can
do that. There's tons of great vegan
sources, but high quality protein
sources should be the core. However, you
can eat low quality ones and even count
them in as long as they're just not
roughly more than like a quarter of your protein
protein
intake. That's a big deal. I have to say
a few other things though before we
close out that are very important. Your
body does treat protein on a daily
situation. So, if you undereat protein
earlier in the day, you overeat it
later. there is some compensatory
adjustment. However, it treats it much
more fine-tuned meal by meal by meal.
So, what I would tell you is in most
cases, it's a really good idea for you
to treat every meal as an opportunity to
get that 75 to 25 or better ratio of
high quality to lowquality proteins,
which to me I can actually distill for
you guys into a really super simple
practical recommendation.
If you're doing full send, real good
effort at trying to get jacked and get
lean and all that stuff, being the
handsome and look like Scott the video
guy, then what you want to do is make
sure pretty much every single one of
your meals, you know, of the three to
five times a day that you eat roughly
evenly spaced. You want to make sure
that every single one of those meals
pretty much is built around a core of
high quality protein. So, whenever I'm
making a meal or whenever I watch
someone, I watch people all the time.
Sometimes they don't know about it.
Sometimes I'm in a non-mark van across
the street with a telescope in the
window. Would that work, Scott? Is that
how light works? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure.
Oh, yeah. I like see like one of their
skin cells like as big as this. And that
and that's what really gets me going.
Like, you know, my huge fetish is
violating people's privacy with them not
knowing it. And if I can see a whole
skin cell of yours, my god. I mean,
that's Jesus. That's that's so intimate.
You don't even know it looks like that.
I got to a level of privacy better than
you could do in your own home. In any
case, the hell am I saying? I watch how
people make meals in cafeterias and blah
blah blah what they order. I watch how I
do it. And what I'm looking for to just
green check mark ability to say this is
a good meal for muscle growth is I start
building every meal around a core of
high quality protein. It can be a high
quality vegan product. It can be a soy
protein shake. It can be a giant ass
bowl of quinoa that has enough protein
in it and some cheese and some for
other stuff. But usually it's going to
be milk, egg, or meatbased products of
some kind. Chicken, breast, fish, all
that stuff, beef, eggs, egg whites, egg
protein powder, milk, cheese, whey
protein powder, casein protein powder.
That's going to form the core of my
meal. And from that protein, I want to
get damn close to my daily total. Let's
say I've calculated that I have five
meals a day. Just as an example, I need
200 grams of
protein. And I am calculating that like,
okay, that's 40 grams per meal. So that
every meal needs about 40 grams of
protein. What I like to do is make sure
that when I'm ordering at Subway or
Chipotle or making a meal at home that I
take my protein that I have and that
core of high quality protein, good
animal products, good vegan products is
like 35 grams at least. And if I can get
to 35 grams of like protein from chicken
breast, and the other five grams are
like the the wheat bread that it's on
and some of the sauce has some protein
in it, hey, listen, I'm good to go. But
if I only have like bread and potato
chips as a meal or I have like a little
teeny Scott, you ever get like a
sandwich somewhere and there's like one
slice of turkey and you're like, who the
is this for? How are you insulting me
with this Is this for a child?
Is it are we in poverty times? And so,
yes, it might have some meat in it, but
10 grams of high quality protein in a
meal that needs 40, it doesn't kind of
matter what else is in it, it's not
going to be enough. So, the easiest,
most simple way you can just not have to
worry about protein quality ever again,
is that every time you reach for a
muscle building meal, your meal starts
with a core of milk or eggs or soy or
quinoa or a high quality vegan blend or
chicken or steak or fish or something was
was
goddamn protein in it that's high
quality. And no, peanut butter does not
count as that. Scott, you ever seen them
women's magazines and videos for
females? Ladies, no offense. The three
and a half of you that watch this
channel, no offense. Um, it's like it's
just a classic like almost like kit at
this point reused thing of like a super
healthy looking young woman with a very
excellent skinincare routine dipping a
perfectly cut green crisp apple slice
into an adorable little cup of peanut
butter and then the text is like peanut
butter can boost your protein intake and
it's good to have as a snack. How many
times have you seen that Yeah.
Infinity. Yeah. They put the butters in
there big for protein, dude. And the
thing is is that yes, peanut butter has
protein, but it's very low quality
protein. It does not come anywhere close
to our 90% cutoff. So, it's it's kind of
like when your teacher when you're
running to class and you're late, your
teacher's a crazy nazy person and they
close and lock the door at the very this
guy. You ever had teachers like that?
That close lock the door and like anyone
who doesn't get in on time just Yeah.
thing. That's kind of how protein
quality works here in our little
understanding. So peanut butter like
just gets the door slammed in its face
because it's at point it's at 70 and not
at 90 or above and then it just doesn't
really meaningfully contribute to
protein unless you start combining with
other stuff. Then the other stuff has to
be high quality and protein from peanut
butter doesn't even get digested all
that well and the whole thing down the
line. So that's important to remember
because not all proteins are created
equal. And so if that girl instead of
having like this beautiful plate of
apples, which have almost no protein in
them whatsoever, and peanut butter,
which is not the kind of protein we want
for the most part, and also mostly fat
and not protein, if she was just to take
that meal, change nothing about it, and
put a big old glass of skim milk or 2%
or even whole milk next to that mouth,
then now we rolling. Now we have a
protein core. So the protein core for
every meal is the best possible thing
that I can tell you and is the biggest
TLDDR of all time. So, for those of you
who are preient and psychic, you scroll
to just this part of the video and need
nothing else. Now, if you're trying to
put all this together in a big diet plan
and it's all painful because what the
hell is dieting so complicated, the RP
Diet Coach app exists. I help make it
myself and it's just a super
straightforward app that keeps track of
all of your meals. You can tell it your
goals. It'll make a meal plan for you.
You can enter any food that you want in
it. It can even give you suggestions.
And all of a sudden, boom, it's got a
diet coach in your pocket. It updates
all the time. It reminds you about
meals. It keeps you on track for fat
loss, for maintenance, or muscle gain.
That's also linked in the description.
Give it some thought. In any case, I've
been ranting for enough. Go out there
and get a goddamn protein core whole
food meal and make yourself more jacked.
And if you see someone around you at a
restaurant not ordering it, make sure to
snub at them. Oh my word. How are you
ever going to grow any muscle with that?
Your butlers must be furious with you.
Grab your gold purse and your gold chain
and saunter out. And I'll see you guys
next time. [Music]
[Music]
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