The number
Roughly 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. For a 70kg woman that is about 85 to 110 grams.
The official recommended allowance is 0.8g per kg, and it is routinely mistaken for a target. It is not. It is a floor, set to prevent deficiency in the average adult, and it was never designed to describe the intake that best preserves lean mass in a woman whose oestrogen is falling and whose muscle is already under pressure.
Protein requirements rise rather than fall with age, because the muscle-building response to any given amount of protein becomes blunted. Older adults need more of it to produce the same signal.
Distribution
Total matters. Distribution matters nearly as much. Muscle protein synthesis appears to need a threshold of around 25 to 30 grams in a single meal to be triggered properly, and most women eat almost nothing at breakfast, a little at lunch, and the great majority at dinner.
Fixing breakfast alone frequently closes most of the gap. Going from five grams to thirty at one meal, every day, is thirty per cent of the target recovered before you have changed anything else.
A day in an American kitchen
- Breakfast. Three eggs, a slice of wholegrain toast. About 25 grams.
- Lunch. A tin of tuna or a chicken breast through a salad. About 30 grams.
- Afternoon. Greek yoghurt. About 15 grams.
- Dinner. A palm-sized piece of fish or meat with vegetables. About 30 grams.
One hundred grams, no powder required.
A day in a Caribbean kitchen
This is where most nutrition writing quietly gives up, or treats the food as a problem to be corrected. It is not. The protein is already there, the ratio is usually what needs adjusting.
- Breakfast. Ackee and saltfish, or callaloo with two eggs. About 25 to 30 grams. A smaller portion of the fried dumpling alongside, not none.
- Lunch. Stewed peas with a decent quantity of red peas, or brown stew chicken. About 30 grams if the peas or the chicken are the centre of the plate rather than the garnish.
- Afternoon. Peanuts, or yoghurt where the shop stocks it. About 10 to 15 grams.
- Dinner. Escovitch or steamed fish, snapper or parrot. About 30 grams.
The usual gap is that rice, ground provisions and dumpling take two thirds of the plate and the fish takes a quarter. Reversing that ratio does almost all of the work, without removing a single item.
Calcium and vitamin D
Calcium is best taken from food. Around 1,000 to 1,200mg a day after menopause, which dairy, tinned fish with the bones in, and dark green vegetables reach without much difficulty. Supplementing calcium beyond what food provides has a weaker evidence base than most people assume, and high-dose calcium supplements have been associated with cardiovascular concerns in some analyses.
Vitamin D is the one worth testing. Deficiency is genuinely common, particularly in women with darker skin living at higher latitudes, where synthesis is slower. It is a cheap blood test and it converts guesswork into a dose. More is not better, and very high doses have been associated with worse rather than better outcomes.
What to ignore
Collagen powders marketed for bone, alkaline diets, anything described as balancing your hormones, and detox teas. None of these have the evidence their marketing implies, and one of them is a laxative sold as progress.