RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Protein is an essential nutrient, but can you have too much of a good thing?
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Protein-rich products – from cereal to crisps to coffee – are all over supermarket shelves, but mounting evidence in non-human animals suggests that restricting our intake could slow ageing and extend lifespan. So, does that mean eating too much protein is harmful?
“We have this impression that dietary protein is sort of a universally good thing,” says Dudley Lamming at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But according to the latest review of the evidence, “increasing dietary protein, beyond what’s needed, for sedentary individuals or animals leads to metabolic problems and can lead to shorter lifespan as well”, he says.
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But others point out that nutritional studies in animals like mice and rats don’t readily translate to people, and a high protein intake has been linked to benefits in humans.
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Lamming and his colleagues sifted through more than 300 studies, mostly in sedentary rodents, that explored how restricting protein intake to the minimum required to prevent deficiency affects ageing and lifespan.
In these studies, rodents generally either ate the equivalent of the minimum protein requirement recommended by US guidelines – 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight – or about double that. The latter is similar to the intake recently recommended by US dietary guidelines for optimal health , 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.
In one study, rats that ate around the minimum protein intake lived nearly 120 days, or more than 50 per cent longer, than those that ate about double that.
This may be because protein restriction increases levels of the hormone FGF21, says Lamming. In rodents, this acts on the brain, fat tissue and the liver to improve blood sugar levels and reduce the number of senescent cells. These cells, which accumulate with age, have stopped dividing and cause chronic inflammation.
Restricting protein intake has also been shown to dampen the activity of a protein called mTORC1 in mice. mTORC1 ordinarily stimulates cell growth, but reducing its activity boosts cellular repair. “It essentially switches cells from a proliferative state, where they’re growing and engaging a lot of metabolism, to one where they’re dividing more slowly, if at all, and focusing on repair,” says Lamming. Studies suggest this cuts the risk of age-related conditions and extends lifespan in mice, he says.
All this suggest that the recent trend to up our protein intake is probably fine among people who exercise regularly, because they may need more protein to repair muscle damage, but eating more than is needed could cause harm in sedentary individuals, says Lamming.
But Donald Layman at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign points out that rodents vary hugely from people when it comes to protein metabolism. For instance, mTORC1 is activated by feeding, and while people tend to a have a few big meals a day, rodents graze more regularly. Protein restriction may therefore affect mTORC1 pathways differently between the different species, he says. We are also more exposed to factors that accelerate ageing, like infections and extreme heat, than lab animals, says Layman.
What’s more, the review does not include most of the studies in people that suggest that upping our protein intake beyond the minimum cuts our risk of frailty , he says.
Dudley says no studies were intentionally omitted. “We were focused on protein restriction, not the many studies looking at higher levels of protein intake,” he says. Beyond building muscle and preventing frailty, there’s mixed evidence on whether a higher protein intake helps with ageing, says Dudley.
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For instance, one study linked this to a reduced risk of age-related muscle loss, or sarcopenia, among older twins in the UK . But the rates of sarcopenia were so low that the findings are unreliable, says Elizabeth Williams at the University of Sheffield, UK.
Still, some studies showed that restricting intake of certain amino acids – such as isoleucine and valine, which are highest in meat, fish and dairy – in mice has a similar effect to limiting overall protein intake, says Philip Atherton at Nottingham University, UK.
Atherton says he is planning a study to investigate whether drugs that deplete specific amino acids in people improve outcomes like blood sugar control, with results expected in the next few years.
Journal Reference:
Cell Press Blue
DOI: 10.1016/j.cpblue.2026.100079
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