Most Protein Advice for Older Adults Is Too Vague. Here’s What to Aim For
How much protein you need each day, how much a meal needs to count, and why breakfast and lunch often need the biggest rethink.
My mum was a reluctant eater at the best of times. She always had been. As she got older, meals got smaller, portions got pushed around the plate, and we’d joke about how light she was, how easy she was to pick up. We encouraged her to eat more, but it was a struggle.
Then the inevitable happened: a minor fall, a broken hip, and she didn’t recover.
In quiet moments, I feel I let her down. I should have been more persistent, more insistent.
Because frailty is a killer. It’s up there with heart attacks and cancer. And yet we don’t talk about muscle preservation as a life-extending strategy in the same way we talk about cutting back on saturated fats or ultra-processed foods.
That’s a mistake.
If you’re in midlife or beyond, here’s the question I want you to ask yourself today: are your meals giving your muscles sufficient protein to maintain themselves?
Because appetite often shrinks as we age, meals get lighter, and most of us treat that as if it’s just part of getting older. It is. But it’s also one reason strength, balance, independence, and ultimately survival can slip away faster than you’d like.
We’ve talked in previous issues about how we lose muscle as we age, and how strength exercise is essential to tell your body that your muscles are worth hanging on to. Today, we’re looking at the other half of that equation: protein. More specifically, why “getting some protein somewhere across the day” stops being good enough as you get older. Why protein becomes something you must actively manage, and what to do about it.
Muscle loss starts earlier than most people think
This isn’t a problem that suddenly arrives in your late seventies like an unwanted relative with a suitcase.
From about 50, we lose roughly 0.8% of our muscle bulk and 2-3% of our muscle strength each year. By 70, that adds up to around 16% less muscle bulk and about half the strength we had in midlife. On a broader timescale, the proportion of our body composed of muscle falls from roughly 48% in our twenties to about 25% in our seventies, mostly replaced by fat.
That’s right; at 70, we have half the muscle we used to have.
Doctors call this progressive muscle loss sarcopenia. It’s worth knowing the word, because you’ll see it everywhere once you start reading around ageing and protein. But the label matters less than what it does: it weakens you, makes you less steady, leaves your bones less protected, and makes falls much more dangerous.
About a quarter of people who fall and break a hip die within a year. That statistic alone should make muscle preservation feel a lot less like a fitness topic and a lot more like a survival topic.
Two terms worth knowing
Sarcopenia is the gradual, age-related loss of muscle mass and strength.
Anabolic resistance is one reason sarcopenia becomes harder to fight as we get older. Think of it this way: younger muscles are like eager listeners. A modest dose of protein, and they get the message. Time to repair. Time to build. Older muscles have become a bit deaf. You have to bang much harder on the door before they respond.
Anabolic resistance is the central practical problem in this whole issue.
Exercise still comes first
Before we go any further, let me re-state: resistance exercise is the most effective strategy for maintaining muscle mass as we age. So while getting enough protein matters enormously, sufficient strength exercise comes first. That’s why I wrote a whole issue on strength exercise last week.
Protein supports the signal that exercise sends. It doesn’t replace it.
That matters because I don’t want anyone coming away from this issue thinking they can protect their muscles with yoghurt and salmon while avoiding anything more strenuous than putting the bins out.
Muscles are metabolically expensive. Your body won’t keep them just because you’d quite like it to. You have to prove they’re needed.
Then, once you’re doing at least some strength-building work, protein becomes a much bigger deal than most people realise.
Older adults often eat less protein just as they need more
Here’s the nasty irony: as protein needs rise, appetite often falls.
And the data suggest many older adults aren’t even hitting the minimum. Between one-fifth and one-third of older adults fall short of recommended daily protein intake, and in one survey of adults in their seventies, even the top 20% of protein consumers averaged only about 1.1 g/kg body weight per day. That’s less than the recommended 1.2 g/kg per day.
So this isn’t a minority problem. It’s a broad, ordinary, common problem.
Meanwhile, in more than 2,400 middle-aged Americans aged 40-59, those eating less than 0.8g/kg body weight protein daily had lower skeletal muscle mass, with the association stronger in women than men. So the drift towards under-eating protein may start mattering before people think of themselves as old.
This helps explain why protein becomes a muscle-preservation issue, not a bodybuilding issue, once we move into later midlife and older age.
The older-muscle problem has three parts, not one
This is where people get muddled, so let me separate three distinct targets. They’re related, but they’re not the same thing.
1. Your daily protein target
This is how much protein you need across the whole day.
For older adults, a practical target is about 1.2g of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. That sounds abstract, so here’s what it means in real life:
If you weight 60kg / 132lb → 72g/day
70kg / 154lb → 84g/day
80kg / 176lb → 96g/day
That’s the daily total.
And that can be harder than it sounds if appetite is low or your meals are mostly built around grains, vegetables, and modest portions of protein.
2. Your per-meal protein target
This is how much protein a meal needs in order to really matter.
Trickle-feeding your muscles by grazing throughout the day doesn’t work. Your muscles need protein in several discrete bursts. The technical term we doctors use for this is ‘meals.’
In younger adults, around 20g of protein in a meal is often enough to maximally stimulate muscle protein synthesis. But in older adults, studies suggest the threshold is often closer to 40g of protein per meal. That’s the practical consequence of anabolic resistance. The dose that worked when you were younger may no longer do much for ageing muscle.
This is what I meant when I said you need to ‘knock much harder on the door’ for your muscles to hear.
This isn’t an exact law of nature. The age cut-off is fuzzy, body size matters, training matters, health status matters, and 40g may simply be the highest amount many studies have tested. But as a rule of thumb for adults in their mid-sixties and beyond, it is a very useful one.
And breakfast is where many people underdo it most badly.
A bowl of porridge. Toast and jam. Fruit and a coffee. Maybe a small yoghurt if you’re feeling virtuous. Perfectly pleasant. But from a muscle-preservation point of view, often not much use.
We’ll talk about protein timing in another issue, but if you’re in your mid-sixties or older, breakfast is arguably the most important meal of the day for muscle, because of the way our bodies break down muscle overnight. Breakfast should be substantial, it should contain serious protein (aim for 30-40g), and it should happen every day.
The next meal to prioritise is lunch. Again, you should aim to build this around 30-40g of protein.
In an ideal world, dinner is the lightest meal of the day, but it should still be built around protein.
3. The leucine threshold
This is the layer most readers won’t have heard of, but it explains a lot.
Leucine is one of the essential amino acids, but for muscle it does more than simply contribute building material. It acts as a trigger. It helps tell the body that this meal is worth responding to.
In younger adults, around 2g of leucine per meal seems enough to fully trigger muscle protein synthesis. In adults in their sixties and beyond, it may take closer to 3-4g per meal to get the same response.
So even if a meal contains a reasonable amount of protein overall, it may still underperform if it doesn’t contain enough leucine-rich protein.
That’s one reason meat, fish, eggs, dairy, and soy-rich meals tend to do better here. Plant foods can absolutely contribute, but often need much larger volumes.
Why “healthy” meals can still underperform
This is the part where the advice starts to sound much less easy.
To get 40g of protein in a meal, you may be looking at an entire chicken breast, a large portion of fish, a lot of cottage cheese, or a surprisingly bulky amount of tofu, legumes, or grains. An extra 20g of protein sounds trivial until you remember we’re talking about grams of pure protein, not grams of food.
And this is where plant-heavy eating becomes challenging.
I’m not vegan, but I eat mostly plant-based meals, along with dairy and fish. I’ve experimented with plant-only meals to hit the 40g target, and even with higher-protein foods like legumes and tofu, the sheer volume is overwhelming. And I’m not a 70-year-old with a limited appetite.
That matters because many older adults are trying to do exactly what we usually praise in nutrition circles: smaller, lighter, plant-forward meals. Fine in many contexts. But if those meals are too small or too dilute in protein, they may not be doing enough for ageing muscle.
Now add the leucine layer.
As the table shows, sometimes it can take a greater food volume to hit leucine targets than overall protein targets, especially for plant-based food.
A meal can look healthy on paper and still fall short. Plenty of fibre. Plenty of micronutrients. Lots of colour. And yet still not enough protein, or not enough leucine, to properly stimulate ageing muscle.
That’s why “just eat a bit more quinoa” or “add some nuts” often feels like advice written by somebody who has never talked to an older person with a small appetite.
You can look up the protein and leucine content of a huge list of foods on the USDA website.
Worth noting
Studies of anabolic resistance typically compare people in their twenties with those in the late sixties and seventies. Strangely, they never seem to look at people in between. That means it’s unclear when our muscles go deaf to protein signals. It certainly isn’t simply an unwanted 65th birthday present. It likely creeps up on us between our mid-fifties and mid-sixties.
Also, kidney disease changes the advice. High protein intake can worsen chronic kidney disease, which is often silent. Almost half of adults aged 70 and over may have chronic kidney disease, and around 90% don’t know it. So if you’re in this age bracket, or have diabetes or other kidney risk factors, it’s sensible to check with your doctor before pushing protein intake much higher.
What this means for your health
The issue here isn’t bodybuilding culture or the current absurd parade of high-protein puddings, cereals, and snack bars.
It’s whether your everyday meals are still giving ageing muscle enough of a reason to respond.
That means thinking about protein in three layers:
Daily total: did you eat enough across the day?
Per-meal protein: was each main meal big enough to count?
Leucine threshold: was that protein source strong enough to switch the signal on efficiently?
So the question to ask is no longer, “Did I eat some protein today?”
It’s: Did my main meals actually count?
Even if you’re not yet in the age bracket where this is your immediate problem, there’s a good chance that it affects someone you care about. Smaller meals, low appetite, and “just picking” at food often get waved away as ordinary ageing, but they’re part of the slow drift towards frailty.
If you have an older parent or relative in your orbit, don’t just think about what they should avoid. Think about whether they’re eating enough protein to stay strong, steady, and independent.
As always, your responses are anonymous, but they really help me tailor future content to what’s most helpful to you. Please take a moment to click a button.
HEALTH TWEAK OF THE WEEK
Frailty is common, and it’s far more serious than many of us think. It steals strength, steadiness, confidence, and independence, makes falls and fractures more likely, and in older age can mark the start of a sharp downward turn in health.
From our mid-50s onward, muscle maintenance needs to become something we manage on purpose, not something we assume will look after itself. That means regular strength exercises to give the body a reason to keep muscle, and, as we move into our sixties, paying much closer attention to how much protein we eat and how we distribute it across the day.
As we get older, it’s not enough to get “some protein somewhere” across the day. We need enough protein overall, but we also need to stop wasting meals on small amounts of protein that do very little for ageing muscle. This week, focus on two things: hitting a sensible daily total, and making sure breakfast and lunch contain enough protein to genuinely count.
Assuming you’re in your mid-sixties or older:
Hit your daily floor: Aim for about 1.2g/kg/day as a practical target in older adulthood. That works out to roughly 72g/day at 60kg (132lb), 84g/day at 70kg (154lb), and 96g/day at 80kg (176lb). You don’t need to micromanage every gram forever, but you do need to know whether your usual intake is quietly drifting too low.
Make breakfast and lunch do the heavy lifting: For the sake of your muscles, these are the two most important meals. Breakfast is usually the weakest protein meal, despite coming after an overnight fast, and lunch is a much better place than dinner to boost your protein intake. For most adults in their mid-sixties and beyond, a meal may need to contain about 30-40g of protein to give ageing muscle a strong enough signal. That doesn’t mean every meal has to hit 40g on the nose. It means toast with good intentions won’t cut it. Build these meals around proper protein anchors such as poultry, Greek yoghurt, cottage cheese, fish, tofu, tempeh, or mixed meals that combine several protein sources.
Check the leucine strength of the meal: Meat, fish, eggs, dairy, and soy foods tend to reach the 3-4g leucine zone much more efficiently than grains, beans, nuts, and seeds alone. If your meals are mostly plant-based, or your appetite is poor, this is where things often fall apart. Sometimes a protein supplement is simply the most practical way to top up breakfast or lunch so the meal actually does the job. We’ll look at that in more detail in a future issue.
One safety guardrail: don’t increase protein blindly if chronic kidney disease may be in the picture. Talk to your doctor first if you’re in your seventies or have diabetes, high blood pressure or known kidney disease.
But for most readers, the immediate upgrade is simple: stop letting breakfast be an afterthought, stop saving the day’s main protein effort for dinner, and start building earlier meals that give your muscles a reason to stay.
And if this isn’t your issue yet, think about the older people in your life. Frailty often starts quietly, and helping someone eat enough protein may be one of the simplest ways to help them stay independent for longer.
🎧 Prefer to listen while making a breakfast that your muscles will thank you for?
🎙️ This week’s One Health Tweak a Week podcast is about ageing muscle, protein thresholds, and why “some protein somewhere” stops being enough as we get older.
You’ll hear:
Why frailty is not a harmless part of ageing, and why muscle preservation deserves to be taken as seriously as other long-term health risks
The difference between your daily protein target, your per-meal protein target, and why leucine helps explain why some meals underperform
Why breakfast and lunch are the meals to focus on if you want to stay strong, steady, and independent for longer
A practical way to check whether your meals are actually doing enough - without turning food into maths homework
👉 Good company for a walk, a commute, or while looking at your breakfast and wondering whether it’s genuinely helping your future self.
(Episodes are free for now. Paid subscribers support the deeper research - and unlock practical tools to help you turn the science into meals and habits that work in real life.)
🧭 Before you go
💬 Did this make you look differently at your breakfast or lunch? I’d love to hear whether you think you’re underdoing protein, and what one change you’re planning to make this week.
📤 Know someone who eats lightly, skips breakfast, or is getting older and steadily smaller without quite realising the risk? Forward this to them. Frailty starts quietly.
👥 Paid corner - Want help working out whether your meals are actually clearing the protein targets we talked about here? Drop me a message in our private chat, and I’ll help you make sense of your intake in the context of your age, health, and goals.
Until next Saturday - don’t leave your muscles guessing whether they’re still needed.
– Ben
In case you missed them:
Like most people in their 70's the smaller appetite I have now is a major challenge to getting 40g of protein and 3+g of leucine per meal. I'm not vegan or vegetarian but I do prefer to eat a wide variety of plant foods for health reasons which makes it doubly difficult. Fortunately, I find a simple solution is to use pea protein powder daily as a "supplement" that I blend into shakes, yogurt, hummus, guacamole, etc because just 50 grams (just under 2 ounces) of pea protein powder contains about 40g of protein and 3 to 4 g of Leucine. It's also low in cost if you buy it in bulk (5 kg / 11 lbs) like I do.
Unlike soy foods and animal proteins, pea protein is not a complete protein. It's low in the essential (sulfur) amino acids methionine and cysteine so to make it a complete protein I use pea protein powder along with raw sunflower seeds I grind into powder in our coffee grinder. Sunflower seeds happen to be rich in those two amino acids that pea protein is low in so it's a great combination.
Both pea protein powder and sunflower seed powder are quite neutral in flavor so they work well when combined with other foods because they don't alter the flavor. Since both are dry powders you'll need to add some liquid, like water, milk, a plant based 'milk' etc to get the texture you like.
Other plant foods high in the essential amino acids methionine and cysteine are brown rice, hemp seeds, oats, sesame seeds and Brazil nuts (but one Brazil nut a day should be your limit or you may get too much selenium in your diet).
As the old saying goes, "Where there is a will, there is a way" to achieve our protein and leucine daily goals and to enjoy the process/meals. And thanks to Dr. Ben it's easier to do that and to be active too so that our muscles don't gradually waste away.
I have been increasing my protein intake, especially starting with breakfast, but I knew nothing about the leucine connection.