If you’re even the slightest bit interested in health and fitness, been to a gym, picked up a fitness magazine or even been to a supermarket recently it’s very likely you’ve had the word ‘Protein’ thrown at you 1000 times, but what is it exactly? Protein is essentially the building block of your body, it’s what makes up muscle, bones, enzymes, hormones, hair, skin, nails, teeth you name it chances are it’s made up of proteins. We are not short of sources of it either, you can get a good amount of protein from all meats, eggs, fish, nuts, more famously whey protein supplements and so on. We are always been told that higher protein diets are the way to go for health and optimal body composition but just with proteins immense fame and attention comes with it some unwanted bad press, misinterpreted ideas and down right lies.

The biggest one Iam faced with in my job is, “is too much protein bad for my kidneys?”. Now this myth mainly comes from people with actual renal dysfunction or failure who are told by medical professionals to lower their protein intake, and rightly so. However if you have normal functioning kidneys there is no danger whatsoever of you eating a high protein diet, it wont cause kidney failure and it wont cause kidney stones. The problem with this myth is that there are so many reliable sources that still continue to preach it despite ALL the research coming back saying it simply isn’t true. BBC documentaries, major newspapers, doctors and dieticians are in the majority still telling people that too much protein is bad for them and damage their kidneys so you would be forgiven for believing this nonsense because it’s everywhere and coming from so called credible sources!

We actually now know that by putting someone on a high protein diet to lose weight, renal function improving is a benefit from losing excess weight, so in this case the high protein has actually IMPROVED someones kidney health as shown recently by Tay et al. (2015). To back that up, Martin et al (2005) showed that even in people that are generally at higher risk for kidney disease (based on hypertension, obesity etc) there was “no reports of protein induced diminutions in renal function”.

So the reason Iwrote this was to put you at ease, so you don’t feel bad whilst tucking into your steak or salmon tonight that eating the very thing that your body is fundamentally made of, isn’t inadvertently killing you like some people would have you believe. Hopefully I’ve restored protein’s bulletproof reputation!