There's nothing quite like good news - and you'll love every second of this!
For a long time I've been defending higher protein diets as being perfectly safe for your kidneys. Research continues to show that in subjects with healthy kidneys there are no issues.
And this latest study tells us the same thing, but let's get to the heart details first!
Protein Intake And Heart Health
This study set out to "evaluate trends of protein source on markers of cardiometabolic disease risk and kidney function in US adults" (1).
We know that higher-protein diets are associated with decreased adiposity and greater HDL cholesterol than lower protein diets (2), but the key question was here: can that be attributed to one particular source - plant, dairy or animal?
To try and find an explanation the researchers estimated total nondairy animal, dairy, and plant protein intake with the use of 24-h recall data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from the years between 2007-2010.
"Associations between source-specific protein intake and health outcomes were determined with the use of models that adjusted for sex, race and ethnicity, age, physical activity, poverty-to-income ratio, individual intake (grams per kilogram) for each of the other 2 protein sources, body mass index (BMI) (except for weight-related variables), and macronutrient (carbohydrate, fiber, and total and saturated fat) intake."
So what did they find?
Roughly 80 grams per day of protein was consumed by the subjects, and in the form of:
Animal: 37.4 ± 0.5 grams per day,
Plant: 24.7 ± 0.3 grams per day,
Dairy: 13.4 ± 0.3 grams per day.
In the end, the researchers concluded:
"Diets higher in plant and animal protein, independent of other dietary factors, are associated with cardiometabolic benefits, particularly improved central adiposity, with no apparent impairment of kidney function."
So what was found is that plant and animal protein (in these particular subjects) had a positive impact on heart health, and caused no problems for their kidneys.
Now again, this is NOT cause and effect, and is obserational research. But still there's no question the correlation is strong, despite nothing here being 100%.
But the standout finding here is that protein may actually be superior for heart health - and that's something to get excited about!
"Stay Fit, Stay Flexed!"
References
(1) Berryman CE, Agarwal S, Lieberman HR, Fulgoni VL 3rd, Pasiakos SM. Diets higher in animal and plant protein are associated with lower adiposity and do not impair kidney function in US adults. Am J Clin Nutr. 2016 Jul 27. pii: ajcn133819. [Epub ahead of print]
(2) Pasiakos SM, Lieberman HR, Fulgoni VL 3rd.J Nutr. 2015 Mar; 145(3):605-14. Epub 2015 Jan 21.
Author
Dayne Hudson