The Protein Code

You probably know you need to eat protein, but what is protein? Many foods contain protein but the best sources are beef, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy products, nuts, seeds, and lentils. Protein builds up, maintains, and replaces the tissues in your body. Your muscles, your organs, and your immune system are made up mostly of protein.


The body break down the protein in food into basic units, called amino acids. The amino acids then can be reused to make the proteins your body needs to maintain muscles, bones, blood, and body organs.
These amino acids can join together to make thousands of different proteins. Scientists have found many different amino acids in protein, but 22 of them are very important to human health.

Of those 22 amino acids, your body can make 13 of them without you ever thinking about it. Your body can't make the other nine amino acids, but you can get them by eating protein-rich foods.
The good news is that you don't have to eat all the essential amino acids in every meal. As long as you have a variety of protein sources throughout the day, your body will grab what it needs from each meal.

You can figure out how much protein you need if you know how much you weigh. Adults, for instance, need about 60 grams per day. To figure out your protein needs, multiply your weight in pounds times 0.5 or you can just take your weight and divide by 2. For instance, a 70-pound (or 32-kilogram) kid should have about 35 grams of protein every day. If you only know your weight in kilograms, you need about 1 gram of protein each day for every kilogram you weigh. If you are strength training and want to put on muscle mass you need to increase your protein intake to roughly 2 grams of protein for every kilogram you weight or in some cases even more.

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