Q: Can I eat too much protein?
A: No. Unless you’re on dialysis “eating too much protein” should be lower on your list of fears than being bitten by a robot shark while using the toilet. (That’s the plot of Sharknado 7.)
What’s Too Much Protein?
It also depends on what you mean by “too much protein?”
If you mean “can you eat so much protein that it causes some sort of health problem,” then the answer is “no.” We have data on humans consuming 370 grams per day for a year with no changes in blood calcium, kidney or liver function. 370 is a lot! You can find a lot of people online claiming that “high protein diets will kill your kidneys,” but claims aren’t evidence. In this case the claims are clickbait.
Most of the “research” used to make the claim about “high protein = bad” will be using a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ), and usually conflate protein and red meat. Meaning the headline says “high protein diets cause [insert bad thing],” but the data was based on how much red meat the people (allegedly) ate. The problems are many: (1) Correlation is not causation. (2) Red meat is not a good source of protein. Red meat is delicious because it is a primarily a source of fat. (3) FFQ’s are BS.
FFQ’s are BS
Food frequency questionnaires (FFQ) is a questionnaire where you are expected to accurately remember how much milk (average ounces per day) you have consumed over the past 6-12 months. How many servings of watermelon you have consumed over the past 6-12 months, and all sorts of other “data” that nobody remembers that well.
In college, one of our labs was administering an FFQ and comparing that to a diet log that we had people keep for a week. It went how you would expect – they were miles apart because when you tell people to record their food they do a decent job, but when you ask people to remember their past 6-12 months they’re just guessing.
After we did this lab, I made the mistake of questioning the validity of the FFQ, by asking, “why do we expect people to remember how many oranges they ate this year?” The professor and TA labeled me as “anti-science” and “unprofessional.” So, the FFQ seems to be important in some secular dogmas, it’s still just expensive (tax payer funded) guessing.
Too Many Calories?
If you mean “can you eat so much protein that your calories are too high,” the answer is “yes.” There is an upper limit on what your body will make good use of. Exceeding this usually means eating too many calories, and excess calories get stored as fat.
With that said, there are no lean protein sources that people want to overeat – plain chicken breasts and fat-free Greek yogurt are OK, but nobody is going to go to town on them. If you batter and deep fry the chicken breast, then it gets easy to overeat, but it’s also no longer lean.
Lastly, if you had to pick between overeating protein or fat, then overeating protein would be a better idea. There is no limit on how much dietary fat (fat you eat) that your body can store as body fat (fat you can pinch). Whereas converting protein into body fat is a very expensive (costs many calories) process that yields very small amounts of fat.
Bottom Line and How Much Protein Do You Need?
One of the best fitness hacks is to spend less time reading about health and fitness online. Getting sucked into the clickbait rabbit hole consumes time that could’ve been spent exercising, walking, or anything else (and everything else would add more value to your life). Being motionlessly glued to our phones is how the average American step count has plummeted to 3-4,000 per day. Burrowing down the clickbait rabbit hole also fills you with useless anxiety, while robbing you of the opportunity (time) to exorcise that anxiety with exercise.
Here’s a guide to how much protein do you really need, and 20 ways to get 20+ grams of protein for <200 calories.