For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Health Issues page and our Appetite For a Change page.

With the popularity of “high-protein” diets, you might be tempted to believe you simply can’t overeat protein. But the truth is that consuming excessive protein can actually be quite detrimental to your health.

Eating more protein than your body needs can interfere with your health and fitness goals in a number of ways, including weight gain, extra body fat, stress on your kidneys,1 dehydration, and leaching of important bone minerals.

Granted, your body
needs protein. Protein and its array of amino acids are the primary building blocks for your muscles, bones, and many hormones. You cannot live without it.

As you age, and during pregnancy, consuming sufficient amounts of high-quality protein is especially important, as your ability to process protein declines with age, raising your protein requirements.

This is especially true for aging males. Protein helps preserve lean muscle that is typically lost with age. High quality proteins from pasture raised animals are more easily used by your body than those from plants.2

That said, there is an upper limit to how much protein your body can actually use. On average, Americans consume anywhere from three to five times more protein than they need for optimal health, along with far too many carbohydrates and not enough healthy fats.

Meat consumption has risen dramatically in the US over the past century. Making matters worse, a large amount of this excess meat is typically poor quality, originating in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), where the animals are mistreated and fed an unnatural diet of genetically engineered grains instead of fresh grass.

Your goal should be a diet with enough-but not too much-high-quality protein from a variety of plant and animal sources.