The history of protein guidelines is a story of institutional convenience overriding biological reality.

It started deeply flawed (1970sâ"1980s)

1. Global standards were built on short-term nitrogen balance studies. They assumed that if a subject stopped excreting nitrogen, their body was stable. In reality, at low protein intakes (0.57 g/kg), the human body enters a survival shutdown. It ceases skin cell renewal, down-regulates muscle synthesis, and wastes lean tissue to make do with insufficient protein.

Then they Ignored the warnings (1980sâ"2000s)

2. Dr. Nevin Scrimshaw ran long-term studies proving that men fed these "safe" baselines suffered progressive lean tissue loss and elevated liver enzymes. The committees knew this, but ignored the data. Acknowledging it meant admitting that their mathematical framework for the Estimated Average Requirement (EAR) was fundamentally broken.

The sketchy committees (2003â"2005)

3. When updating these guidelines, committees settled on a median baseline of **0.66 g/kg**. They openly acknowledged in the fine print that this "apparent equilibrium" did not mean optimal health. However, raising the baseline would have triggered global chaos: international aid food supplies would instantly become legally inadequate, and national agricultural budgets would skyrocket. They applied a generic +25% buffer to reach the famous **0.8 g/kg** RDA to mask an insufficient baseline.

4. The truth comes out (2007â"Present)

4. In 2007, researchers using advanced isotopic tracers bypassed the old nitrogen math entirely. They proved that the true baseline requirement is **0.93 g/kg** and the actual safe intake is **1.2 g/kg**. The official guidelines remain an open secretâ"a bureaucratic fiction frozen in place to protect policy, not human health.

With 1.2 g/kg you see that most Americans are below the true requirement. With a mean of 0.98 g/kg it makes sense why so many Americans need to eat more meat.

There is a typo:

The average should have been
Average: 0.98 g / kg / day between both sexes.

1.07 g / kg / day for men.
0.89 g/kg / day for women.

Average: 0.98 g / kg / day

Otherwise the same arguments stand.

Phillips, Chevalier, & Leidy (2016): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... Fulgoni (2008): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... (Note: Abstract text overview is indexed under PMC5347101)

The average amount of protein eaten:

1.07 g / kg / day for men.
0.89 g/kg / day for women.

Average: 0.89 g / kg / day

The Scientific Case for a Higher RDA
The traditional protein Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) of 0.8 g/kg/day is increasingly viewed by nutritional scientists as an outdated metric. The core evidence for raising this baseline includes:
Flawed Methodology: The 0.8 g/kg standard was built on nitrogen balance studies, which only measure the absolute minimum amount of protein required to prevent lean tissue wasting and clinical deficiency.
Modern Metabolic Tracing: Utilizing the Indicator Amino Acid Oxidation (IAAO) method—which tracks breath markers to find when the body's amino acid pathways are genuinely saturated—studies show that metabolic requirements for healthy, sedentary young adults plateau closer to 1.2 g/kg/day.
Functional Outcomes: Massive clinical reviews show that a range of 1.2 to 1.6 g/kg/day is required to optimize actual health outcomes, including triggering satiety hormones, managing weight, and preserving skeletal muscle mass.
Consumption Patterns vs. the Optimal Range
When evaluated against how people actually eat, the current 0.8 g/kg/day guideline creates a false sense of dietary adequacy.
[Deficiency Minimum] 0.8 g/kg/day (Current RDA)

[Actual Intake] 0.89 g/kg/day (Average American Consumption)

[Optimal Function] 1.2 – 1.6 g/kg/day (Modern Scientific Consensus)

Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) shows that the average American adult consumes roughly 0.89 g/kg/day. Because this number clears the official 0.8 g/kg baseline, public health dashboards register the population as "adequate" in protein intake.
However, because 0.89 g/kg/day sits completely below the 1.2 to 1.6 g/kg/day optimal range, the typical consumption pattern leaves the majority of Americans in a functional deficit—meeting the bare survival minimum while missing the threshold needed for metabolic health and muscle preservation.

In addition men have more proportional muscle mass and higher metabolisms.

A back of the envelope calculation:

1. Variables (Percentage Beyond Average)
        Metabolism Advantage: +3.75% (Multiplier: 1.0375)
        Lean Mass Advantage: +8.75% (Multiplier: 1.0875)

2. Compounding the Advantages
      1.0375 × 1.0875 = 1.12828125 (+12.83% Total Scaling Factor)

3. Applying the Scaling Factor to Baselines
        At a Survival Baseline (0.8 g/kg average):
          0.80 g/kg × 1.1283 = 0.9026 g/kg (Minimum for Men)

        At an Optimal Baseline (1.3 g/kg average):
          1.30 g/kg × 1.1283 = 1.467 g/kg (Optimal for Men)

This supports the contention that broadly speaking we need more not less protein ergo meat. Especially men.

Here are your requested sources.

1. Houston DK et al. “Low Dietary Protein Intakes and Associated Functional Limitations in an Aging Population.”
   Cross-sectional analysis linking lower protein intake in older adults with more functional limitations and poorer strength.
2. Hess JM et al. “Low Protein Intakes and Poor Diet Quality Associate with Functional Limitations among US Adults.”
   US adults with lower protein intake had poorer diet quality and more self-reported functional limitations.
3. Phillips SM et al. “Protein Requirements and Recommendations for Older People: A Review.”
   Review arguing that older adults likely need more protein than the standard RDA to preserve muscle and function.
4. Low protein intake, physical activity, and physical function in European and North American community-dwelling older adults: a pooled analysis of four longitudinal aging cohorts
   Higher protein intake was associated with slower physical function decline and lower likelihood of mobility limitation in older adults.
5. Low Protein Intake Is Associated with Frailty in Older Adults
   Meta-analysis finding that higher protein intake was inversely associated with frailty in older adults.
6. Low Protein Intake Is Associated with the Risk of Functional Impairment in Older Adults in an Age- and Gender-Specific Manner: A SHARE-Based Study
   Large observational study reporting age- and sex-specific links between low protein intake and later functional impairment.
7. Low protein intake, physical activity, and physical function in European and North American community-dwelling older adults: a pooled analysis of four longitudinal aging cohorts
   Pooled longitudinal cohorts showing higher protein intake was associated with slower physical function decline in older adults.
8. Poor Dietary Protein Intake in Elderly Population with Sarcopenia ...
   Study describing low protein intake as common in older adults with sarcopenia and related muscle-health concerns.
9. Impact of increased protein intake in older adults: a 12-week double ...
   Intervention study examining whether increasing protein intake improves outcomes in older adults over a short follow-up period.

Not only is mental health ignored but meat per se is good for you. Most people lack enough protein. It's processed carbs that are the problem.

Replacing meat with carbs often drops total LDL weight, which bureaucrats count as a wim. However, excess carbohydrates force the liver to produce triglycerides, transforming your cholesterol into an army of **small, dense LDL particles**. This lowers your test score but increases actual arterial plaque risk, making your cardiovascular environment far more dangerous.

**The Institutional Hypocrisy**
"People lack discipline for veggies, so cut meat" $\rightarrow$ Expect people to resist cheap carbs $\rightarrow$ People binge on Pringles $\rightarrow$ Obesity explodes. Officials mandate a restriction based on behavioral failure, then build their entire alternative policy on the delusion of behavioral perfection. It is a deadly contradiction.

---

**The Institutional Hypocrisy**
"People lack discipline for veggies, so cut meat" -> Expect people to resist cheap carbs -> People binge on Pringles -> Obesity explodes. Officials mandate a restriction based on behavioral failure, then build their entire alternative policy on the delusion of behavioral perfection. It is a deadly contradiction.

**The Real-World Solution**
Accept that people lack self-control -> Encourage burgers and fries over pure starches -> Heavy protein and fat trigger actual fullness -> Eating stops sooner. Leveraging the heavy satiety of fast-food meat creates a caloric ceiling, forcing a lower overall weight and preventing the worst metabolic disaster.

**The Ideal Scenario**
Eat unprocessed, lean animal proteins alongside high volumes of fresh fruits and vegetables to maximize nutrient density and perfectly maintain a healthy BMI.

As a long time editor I've seen how the bias works. It's frustrating because I remember when, broadly speaking, it was neutral. It starts at the top where the Wikimedia Foundation funds left wing groups and does not fund right wing groups. It runs fundraisers but people don't realize that it is swimming in money and diverting it to Art +Feminism, Black Lunch Table and Whose Knowledge.

These organizations publicly admit that they aim is to edit Wikipedia pages with leftist ideologies. Art + Feminism has an instructional guide showing how to create Wikipedia content about transgender and LGBTQ+ individuals.

Wikipedia has removed conservative news organizations as acceptable sources for news articles. The problem with that act of censorship, is that to construct a neutral article you frequently need balancing sources to achieve neutrality. Often there are facts that only a right or a left wing source will say. Given that mainstream new organizations are left wing, certain facts become impossible to source on the site.

You won't find the same treatment for conservative leaning people as you would for progressives. Often a few dog whistle words are added prominently by editors to a conservative's profile to signal that they are outside of Wikipedia's own Overton Window. And they will not uncommonly coordinate privately off-site, despite that being a violation of Wikipedia's rules.

Ironically, I remember completely different times before 2012 when I got into an edit war with conservatives that didn't want inconvenient facts mentioned about an anti-immigration organization. I spent significant time expanding a stub-like article into something comprehensive, only to be viscously attacked.

Now it's the other way round. It's progressives doing the attacking and edit warring. I was drawn to Wikipedia in part because of it's neutral point of view but it's now a progressive point of view hidden behind a few figleaf phrases here and there to deceive a superficial reader.

A bunch of billionaires who shouldn't have had copyright a day later than 14 years are whining that they can't have even more intellectual property stuffed into copyright.

AI is not copying your songs. They're learning from them to make something different. Humans do this every time they create something new and are influenced by what came before.

We need to reduce copyright back to 7 years where it's economically justified to encourage innovation. And allow low income creators the chance to renew for up to another 7 years later. Waiting a century before copyright expires is simply mad.

Copyright is being abused and it's no longer about encouraging innovation. If concentrates wealth and is a key driver of inequality. It has been extended and extended. It went from a reasonable 7 years to 14 years renewable to 28, then life of the author plus 50 to life plus 70 years.

It was extended to buildings which is completely ridiculous. They industry tried but failed to extend it to clothing. There is absolutely no reason why an AI shouldn't read a work because it doesn't compete by selling a copy of the original work.

Copyright holders have no limit to their greed. (I don't want to debate a straw man of an AI reproducing an entire text verbatim. Yes, it happened briefly but that does not happen anymore.)

AI cannot replace human human touch or smell. Human touch is inversely correlated to anxiety, depression and stress.

Human touch calms us and slows down our heartbeat. It lowers blood pressure and cortisol. It triggers the release of oxytocin, (the hormone known for promoting emotional bonding to others.)

Humans are constantly smelling themselves and other people. A study in 2020 revealed that people subconsciously smell members of the same sex more often than those of different sex.

Researchers have found evidence that the explosion in teenage depression is linked to insufficient human interaction because its replaced by digital interaction.

AI friends sounds like the stuff of a dystopian sci-fi movie.

If taxpayers already paid for the research, they shouldn't have to pay twice. Making the research publicly available is an excellent idea.

Federal spending after WW2 went from about 14% of gdp then to about 23% of GDP now. State spending went from about 6% then to 6% now. So we're taxing and spending a lot more now.

In terms of spending on higher education, states reduced spending from 0.45% of GDP to about 0.3% now.

A lot of that was because Medicaid costs went up and the Federal government forces costs sharing with states on that.

High marginal rates actually hurts revenue and GDP. Some states have high combined marginal rates of 1.45% + 0.9% + 13.3% + 37% = 52.65%. (California). It's close to the point where economic growth is harmed.

And without GDP there's nowhere to pay for all the goodies we all want.

The US doesn't have much of a way for engineers to come here unless they're from India and willing to work as an indentured servant via the corrupt H1B system.

It would be a dream to just give green cards to any background checked STEM graduate of a top 100 world university with a gpa above the median, and who can speak English to the same degree as someone who has majored in a foreign language in the US.

As to China, they graduate lots of engineers. Most can't find jobs. So it's great for Corporate China but terrible for everyone else.

They introduce bike lanes to create more car congestion so people won't drive. (Few people actually use them.)

They ban cars from neighborhoods to limit travel. Then because there's no alternative they can charge high prices to take a train. Planes are being banned in Europe for shorter distances - less than 500 km. So you can't even fly. It's a perfect way to control a population. It's a form of subtle authoritarianism. You are a prisoner in your urban area surrounded by constant propaganda of how wonderful things are.

They won't build homes as population rises due to immigration so people are gradually impoverished paying ever higher rents.

Freedom of speech is limited a small amount each year or two. Everything the elites don't like is deemed "hate speech" or problematic. The system is enforced by large digital companies acting quietly on governments' requests. And prison terms as a backup.

Economic growth stops. Innovation is allowed only to further monitor and repress

Welcome to 21st century European feudalism. And the want to spread it too!

Persistent cheating should result in expulsion.

And reading the comments below, I now realize the average age of many of the commenters. I never realized that so many were still in highschool (judging from their defensiveness about cheating together with their choice of language).

They are so biased and think that pretending to know about something when you don't is not the problem. The problem is everyone else.

Well it's not. And sadly so many people don't even pretend to care about personal integrity.

I will give one defence for using AI. Grades matter. If you don't plan on doing further schooling, then they don't matter very much. But they do matter a lot for grad school.

So if want to get ahead, you feel desperate. And if everyone else is getting an artificial (see the pun? lol) advantage, then by not using AI, you unfairly fall behind.

Having said all of that, if you cheat enough, you'll hardly learn anything, and if you actually need one day to do some statistics or explain what something means, you're going to regret it.

If you must cheat, at least feel some inner shame.

I was on a train. A guy brought a boombox on it and intentionally cracked up the volume playing obnoxiously loud music. He also made a point of screaming at the lady accompanying him. I was powerless. They guy was super aggressive and was looking for a fight. I'm assuming everyone here would be in favor of fining them too.