The Peter Attia Drive
#368 ‒ The protein debate: optimal intake, limitations of the RDA, whether high-protein intake is harmful, and how to think about processed foods | David Allison, Ph.D.
13 Oct 2025
View the Show Notes Page for This Episode Become a Member to Receive Exclusive Content Sign Up to Receive Peter’s Weekly Newsletter David Allison is a world-renowned scientist and award-winning scientific writer who has spent more than two decades at the forefront of obesity research. In this episode, David joins for his third appearance on The Drive to bring clarity to one of the most contentious topics in modern nutrition—protein. He explores the historical pattern of demonizing macronutrients, the origins and limitations of the RDA for protein, and what the evidence really says about higher protein intake, muscle protein synthesis, and whether concerns about harm are supported by actual data. He also discusses the challenges of conducting rigorous nutrition studies, including the limits of epidemiology and crossover designs, as well as conflicts of interest in nutrition science and why transparency around data, methods, and logic matter more than funding sources. The episode closes with a discussion on processed and ultra-processed foods, the public health challenges of tackling obesity, and whether future solutions may depend more on drugs like GLP-1 agonists or broader societal changes. This is part one of a two-part deep dive on protein, setting the stage for next week’s conversation with Rhonda Patrick. We discuss: The cyclical pattern of demonizing different macronutrients in nutrition and why protein has recently become the latest target of controversy [3:15]; The origin and limits of the protein RDA: from survival thresholds to modern optimization [6:30]; Trust vs. trustworthiness: why data, methods, and logic matter more than motives in science [13:30]; The challenges of nutrition science: methodological limits, emotional bias, and the path to honest progress [17:15]; Why the protein RDA is largely inadequate for most people, and the lack of human evidence that high protein intake is harmful [30:30]; Understanding the dose-response curve for muscle protein synthesis as protein intake increases [45:15]; Why nutrition trials are chronically underpowered due to weak economic incentives, and how this skews evidence quality and perceptions of conflict [48:15]; The limitations and biases of nutrition epidemiology, and the potential role of AI-assisted review to improve it [56:15]; The lack of compelling evidence of harm with higher protein intake, and why we should shift away from assuming danger [1:04:15]; Pragmatic targets for protein intake [1:09:30]; Defining processed and ultra-processed foods and whether they are inherently harmful [1:16:15]; The search for a guiding principle of what’s healthy to eat: simple heuristics vs. judging foods by their molecular composition [1:25:00]; Why conventional public health interventions for obesity have largely failed [1:38:15]; Two ideas from David for addressing the metabolic health problem in society [1:42:30]; The potential of GLP-1 agonists to play a large role in public health [1:46:30]; and More. Connect With Peter on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey, everyone. Welcome to The Drive Podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia.
Chapter 2: What historical patterns exist in the demonization of macronutrients?
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Chapter 3: What are the origins and limitations of the protein RDA?
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If you want to learn more about the benefits of our premium membership, head over to peteratiamd.com forward slash subscribe. My guest this week is David Allison.
David, returning for his third conversation on The Drive, is a world-renowned scientist and award-winning scientific writer who has been at the forefront of obesity research for the last 20 years and is currently the director of the Children's Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine.
I wanted to have David on because protein has become one of the most contentious and confusing topics in nutrition today. What was once a fairly straightforward subject has now turned into a debate full of conflicting claims, dogma, unnecessary controversy, and a whole lot of name calling.
Chapter 4: How do trust and trustworthiness impact nutrition science?
David brings both a deep understanding of the science and a clear-eyed perspective on how to separate evidence from opinion. This is part one of a two-part deep dive on protein, and next week I'll be joined by Rhonda Patrick for part two, after which we'll put this protein discussion to rest once and for all.
In this episode, we discuss the historical cycle of demonizing macronutrients and why protein has recently become the focus, the origins and limitations for the RDA for protein, and what the evidence suggests about optimal intake for health, longevity, and performance.
Conflicts of interest in nutrition science and why transparency around data, methods, and logic matter much more than funding sources.
Chapter 5: What challenges do researchers face in nutrition studies?
The challenges of conducting high-quality nutrition studies, including the debate over crossover designs, the limits of epidemiology, and the underfunding of rigorous trials compared to pharmaceutical trials. What the evidence really says about higher protein intake, muscle protein synthesis, and whether concerns about harm are supported by actual data.
how to think about processed and ultra-processed foods, including definitions, heuristics, and the question of whether they're inherently harmful or simply a convenient villain. And finally, the difficulty of tackling obesity through public health, the limits of current approaches, and whether future solutions may rely more on drugs like GLP-1 agonists or broader societal changes.
So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with David Allison. Hey, David, thanks for coming back. This was probably the shortest trip you've made here, right? You've got a new home?
Yeah, I got a great new gig at the Children's Nutrition Research Center in Houston, Texas, and Baylor College of Medicine in Texas Children's Hospital. I'm having a great time.
So it was just a nice, easy car ride over here. Very well. Well, we're going to actually start by talking about something that, believe it or not, I don't want to talk about because I'm kind of sick and tired of talking about it.
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Chapter 6: Is there evidence that high protein intake is harmful?
And I'm going to apologize in advance to all the listeners, because if they've been listening at all, they're probably sick and tired of hearing about this. But unfortunately, this is a topic that has gone from being what I would consider a pretty straightforward to somewhat contentious.
And I'm going to do my best to refrain from speculating on the reasons why it's become contentious, although I have many views on that and many views on the people who choose to make it contentious, which I'll also refrain from. But let's just try to dive into the arguments around the macronutrient that is more in the crosshairs than any other today, which is protein.
And that's kind of interesting when you consider the arc of your career. It was certainly easy to understand how people demonized fat and then they demonized carbs. And here we are today, coming full circle, we're demonizing protein. Where do you place that in the arc of the historical lens of nutrition?
It shows many things, but at some level, it's almost perfectly predictable, which is we all eat. We eat every day. Eating is part of our sustenance, but it's part of culture, family, certainly part of economics, identity, social class, religion, and so on. And so it's fun to talk about. And there's lots of motivations. motivations people recognize and motivations they may not recognize.
Chapter 7: What is the dose-response relationship for muscle protein synthesis?
And that leads always to this attention on it. That attention drives a big economic engine of food sales. So there's lots of interest in this and lots of stakes in this, if you'll pardon the pun. So people shift and it's not even just the macronutrients. This week it's seed oils and next week it's phytoestrogens and soybean feminizing youth.
And it's one thing after another where people look for the villains and the heroes and the angels and the demons in food. Only three macronutrients, so they keep looping around. Protein has become in the last few years almost a fever pitch. of enthusiasm and excitement from one part of the community and it's driving sales and it's driving behavior and some people like me are having fun with it.
And then I think there's always that group that sees other people having fun or making money and heaven forbid doing something that might be seen as the easy way out. or the contrived or constructed way out as opposed to the so-called natural way out of doing something, and then that upsets them, that offends them.
Chapter 8: How does nutrition epidemiology influence public perception?
You're not being prudent. You're not taking the natural course. You're not taking the old-fashioned course. You're having too much fun. You're trying too hard to achieve big things. We don't like that, so we're going to try to poo-poo it or shut it down or minimize it, and I think that's where things are.
So presumably at some point this will no longer be relevant and no one will talk about it and we'll move back to fats being the bad thing. Although I guess we're kind of there with seed oils to your point. But let's talk a little bit about protein. So a lot of the consternation stems, I think, from a debate around the RDA and the recommendation of 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight.
Do you want to tell folks a little bit about where that came from? Where does this ubiquitous recommendation that we consume protein 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. So again, just to put that in perspective, I weigh 180 pounds. So that is probably 82 kilos. So I should be eating about 60 to 65 grams of protein according to the RDA. It's the middle of the day.
I've had 60 grams of protein today, so I could basically stop eating protein for the rest of the day now, right? Yeah, some people would say that.
Now, others, I don't know if I would go so far as to say at the other extreme, but a more active proponent of the importance of not only greater amounts of protein, but particular types and distributions and so on would be somebody like Don Lehman.
And he might say, I hope I'm not inappropriately putting words in his mouth, but I think he might say, Peter, you actually need to be eating protein at least three or four times a day. Yeah, because that 60 was in one sitting. Right. And at each of those sittings, you probably want to hit about 30.
I emphasize that word about, it's not like there's some mathematical proof that there's some hard threshold and certainly not for you who is 20% bigger than me that your hard threshold would be the same as my hard threshold, but in the neighborhood of 30.
Right off the bat, if you follow that advice, you'd need to be having double that amount of protein and you'd have to have it distributed differently. And if you have it distributed the way you currently did, it'd be more than double. So I think there are a lot of people who would disagree with that. The history is people at some point recognized that we needed protein to live.
The key indicator of that was nitrogen. And people looked at nitrogen balance. How much did you take in? How much did you excrete? And they found that people could achieve nitrogen balance, or at least sort of ordinary normal people of the time, at about that level.
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