Dr. Luc (Luke) van Loon

10% to 15% energy comes from protein.

So if you're physically active, you automatically already consume 1.5, 1.6, 1.7 grams of protein.

Do the math.

Think about Tour de France cyclists.

They're not big guys.

they actually expend about 25 megajoules of energy on a daily basis in the Tour de France.

If only 10% of that comes from protein, they already consume well above two.

It's not what they need, but people are too worried about the total amount of protein.

They're already getting enough protein if they stay in energy balance.

It becomes more important when you actually can't eat a lot of food.

Then the puzzle becomes more difficult.

What we typically see when people try to lose weight, for example, so if they are on a hypercaloric diet, is that they lose...

If they eat less and they try to maintain their absolute amount of protein, the decline in muscle mass is less.

So maintenance of your absolute daily protein intake is more important.

And that's exactly what relates what I said before.

Your body adapts to a certain amount of protein.

And if you suddenly reduce the protein intake, that might go at the expense of muscle.

So also when people go into the hospital and they're not exercising, they're eating less also because of pain and stuff like that.

We try to optimize or maintain at least the total amount of protein that they were consuming before they went into the hospital.

That will attenuate or at least attenuate a little bit the muscle loss that they have.