A nutritious and balanced diet includes a combination of fats, carbohydrates and proteins. But most people — and food companies — focus on boosting only that third macronutrient. And scientists say this protein fixation is unnecessary — and probably overkill.
Protein is "key to keeping the body functioning properly," but "people are likely eating too much of it," Karen Feldscher said at the Harvard School of Public Health. The World Health Organization recommends that most people eat 0.01 ounces of protein per pound of body weight daily, yet federal data shows that Americans "are eating, on average, 2.9 ounces of protein per day." That is "at least 20% beyond recommendations," said the BBC's Science Focus.
Experts say there's no data to suggest our bodies can use more than 0.008 ounces of protein per pound of body weight at a single meal, which "for most of us, would equate to a large chicken breast," said The Washington Post. The excess protein will be "mostly stored as fat or transformed into urea, which is excreted through the kidneys."
Even people on a "vegetarian or vegan diet" probably "don't need to worry" about whether they are getting enough protein, Nancy Geib, a registered dietitian at the Cleveland Clinic's Center for Diabetes and Nutrition, said to Vox. Plant-based proteins don't contain all the amino acids we need, but "consuming a combination of different plant-based protein sources, such as beans and grain, will provide a balanced protein profile," Enette Larson-Meyer, the director of the Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism Laboratory at Virginia Tech, told the Post. | 
