What’s Protein, Why Do We Need It, And How Do You Get More?

Gianina
Schwanecke, for Country
Life

Distinguished professor Paul Moughan from The
Riddet Institute is an expert in all things protein
related.

The Riddet Institute is a Centre of Research
Excellence (CoRE) focusing on fundamental and advanced food
research. It’s hosted by Massey University on the Palmerston
North campus.

Dr Moughan answers some questions from
the Country Life team.

What is
protein?

Protein is a very important component for
the human body. It’s central to body function and therefore
to nutrition.

We get proteins from the foods we eat –
we don’t need protein itself but rather the amino acids that
are the building blocks of protein. When we eat protein, it
gets broken down to amino acids and it is those that are
absorbed.

There are nine essential amino acids. Some
foods can supply all nine of those amino acids readily,
while others might be deficient in one of those essential
amino acids.

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How much protein
do we need? Is there such a thing as too much
protein?

The amount of protein we need depends on a
persons age and weight. The average adult needs about 0.8
grams of protein per kilogram of body weight – so a person
who weighs 80kg needs about 65g of protein per
day.

Again though it comes back to the quality of the
protein and the amino acids you can get from it. From a
lesser quality protein you might need more to get the same
benefit. We also need more protein as we age – about 1.5g
compared to 0.8g.

Generally there’s no such thing as
too much protein for most people.

Are all protein
sources equal? What should people keep in mind at the
supermarket?

There are major differences between
proteins.

Consumer information is pretty poor. Looking
at the protein content on a product’s label is a good
starting point but it doesn’t speak to the quality of the
protein.

As a general rule, animal-based proteins – so
milk, dairy- based proteins, egg, meat, fish – are all very
high quality. They have all the amino acids you need and
they’re highly digestible and highly available.
Soyabean-based foods like tofu and tempeh are also high
quality.

Peas and beans tend to be high in protein but
the quality is not always high. A lot of the vegetable-based
proteins are less good quality so you would need to consume
more of them. Pea and potato-based proteins can be good for
vegan or vegetarian diets though.

In the past it
didn’t matter too much because we generally consumed
mixtures of proteins. Now there’s a movement worldwide to go
away from animal-based proteins more towards vegetable-based
proteins and as we do that we need to be more careful. There
have been studies of vegan and vegetarian diest which have
found people were not meeting their total protein
requirements in terms of quality.

Protein quality is
going to become more of an issue. When we look at future
world food needs, because the world population is growing,
it’s also ageing, protein is going to become a major
consideration.

I personally think it shouldn’t be
vegetable or animal. It needs to be vegetable and animal. It
may be very appropriate to move towards more vegetable-based
foods but I think people who completely exclude animal-based
foods may well be entering into the territory of nutritional
inadequacy and problems with their diet. It’s all about
balance.

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