#389 How Much Protein Per Meal, 25 vs 100 Grams of Protein, and More - Jorn Trommelen PhD

Jorn Trommelen (0:00)

The current guidelines suggest that you should have multiple meal moments throughout the day. Kind of the opposite started happening. You saw more and more research in intermittent fasting. Theoretically, from a protein distribution point of view, should be very suboptimal. But even under suboptimal conditions, you really didn't see a detrimental effect of protein distribution.

Siim Land (0:21)

Welcome to the Siim Land Podcast. Our guest today is Jorn Trommelen. Jorn is a PhD and assistant professor at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands.

Jorn and his colleagues published a very popular and interesting study about protein. They basically challenged the idea that you need to eat only 30 grams of protein in one sitting to build muscle. Jorn's study showed that even 100 grams of protein gets absorbed and utilized for protein synthesis. In this episode, we're going to talk about this study and also everything else related to protein metabolism, protein foods, and resistance training.

Jorn, welcome to the show.

Jorn Trommelen (0:54)

Thanks for having me.

Siim Land (0:55)

Yeah, I'm excited to have you on the podcast because you and your colleagues published a few months ago, like in the end of 2023, a pretty like groundbreaking or kind of remarkable study that refutes some of the previous findings in terms of protein synthesis and how many grams of protein you can ingest in one meal. So, yeah, I'm like pretty interested to talk with you about that study and everything else related to protein.

Jorn Trommelen (1:25)

Yeah, that was a fun one.

Siim Land (1:28)

Yeah, we can maybe start with that. So we can cover the main findings of that study and what are like some other, let's say, interesting nuances that we need to clarify. So like for people who don't or haven't heard about it before, then pretty much the study was done that you had 25 grams of protein ingested after workout versus 100 grams of protein.

And what you found was that the 100 grams of protein yielded a much longer and greater anabolic, not anabolic response, but like the protein synthesis stayed elevated for longer.

Jorn Trommelen (2:06)

Yeah, so that is the basic setup of the study and the basic finding. But I'll quickly cover why we did the study in the first place.

So, for example, in sports nutrition, the current guidelines suggest that you should have multiple meal moments throughout the day. So it's the concept of protein distribution. Ideally, you have like four, maybe even five moments where you consume about 25 grams of protein.

Because above that, it's thought that your efficiency, your use of the protein strongly declines and at some point even limits out, just has no additional value. At that point, you would oxidize, so burn all the amino acids in your protein. You simply cannot build it into your tissues anymore.

Now, I was skeptical of that for various reasons. One was when you look at long-term studies where people got different protein distribution patterns throughout the day, you don't really see a clear benefit from it. Now, that can be for various reasons. And for a long time, I thought once we have more of those studies, we can combine them in a meta-analysis, and then you'll see that protein distribution has a benefit. But kind of the opposite started happening. You saw more and more research in intermittent fasting slash time-restricted feeding, which should theoretically from a protein distribution point of view, should be very suboptimal. But even under those suboptimal conditions, you really didn't see a detrimental effect of protein distribution. So then I started becoming more and more skeptical of that concept of protein distribution. Then mostly a fun fact, like not necessarily convincing on its own. But in nature, you have several animals who consume huge protein meals. Best example is a snake who can consume 25 percent of its body weight, which for guys like us would be the equivalent of eating about 50 steaks, 20 kilogram of steak. So I like steak, but nowhere near that amount. But when a snake consumes such a big meal, you and some research has been done on this day, digest their meal for days and their protein synthesis stays elevated for days. So it's not completely out of the picture that maybe other species have the same principle. Because I had some practical experience, let's call it that. Or in the middle of the night, I once woke up at the pea, and I just felt that I was still digesting my food. I had a meat burp, and I was like, well, I had a barbecue eight hours ago.

I just feel I'm still digesting this food. So that made me critical of those studies, because those earlier studies, they just measured anabolism, muscle protein synthesis for like four, max six hours after a meal.