How much protein can your body absorb in one meal based on science?

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How much protein can your body absorb in one meal based on science
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Nutrition is one of the most important things when building muscle and/or losing weight. For example, if you want to build muscle and you workout hard every day for a few hours but your nutrition plan is bad then you won’t see any desired results in building muscle. The same is with weight loss. That’s why it’s important to have a well-balanced nutrition plan if you want to achieve the desired results.

So, in this article we’ll find out what a part of how a well-balanced nutrition plan should look like. More specifically we’ll find out how much protein can your body absorb in one meal based on science and how much protein should your every meal contain.

What is protein?

Protein is a molecule that is made of long chains of amino acids. Protein is essential for our health and it has a lot of functions in our body such as building and repairing cells and tissues, etc.

How much protein can your body absorb in one meal based on science

Scientific research shows that on average our body can optimally absorb about 0.4 g/kg/meal [1]. It shouldn’t be considered as a universal limit beyond which protein intake will be wasted though.

For example, if your body weight is 80 kg and you need to eat 1.6 g/kg/day (1.6 x 80 = 128 g/day) of protein then you should eat 4 meals with 0.4 g/kg/each meal (0.4 x 80 = 32 g/meal).

Also, how much protein your body absorbs will depend on the quality of your protein sources [2].

Animal protein sources such as meat, fish and dairy have a consistently high protein quality, whereas the quality of plant protein sources is more variable. However, a plant-based diet has repeatedly shown to be associated with improved cardiovascular health outcomes and all-cause mortality [2].

Click here to read more about which diet is the healthiest based on science.

Summary

So, how much protein can your body absorb in one meal based on science? Well, it looks like scientific research shows that on average our body can absorb about 0.4 g/kg/meal. The amount of protein absorption will also depend on the protein source.

P.S. If you want to learn more about other vitamins, what are their recommended dosages based on science, get healthy meal plan examples, my top science-based recipes that can be cooked in less than 30 minutes each and find out how science-based nutrition can prevent and treat the most common diseases, improve your overall health and help you live longer then you can click here to learn more.

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