Protein is great. Our bodies are largely made of protein, and if you lift weights, I bet you already know that eating enough protein is important for building muscle. But what if you just want to be healthy in general? What if you don’t even care that much about being healthy, but want to avoid overeating? Protein is important for you too.

A new study has put the spotlight on a lack of protein as a potential driver of overeating. Its findings supply more support to an existing concept called the “protein leverage hypothesis.” This is the idea that we will eat until we get enough protein, and so if our diet is made of low-protein foods, we may end up eating a lot of food, and thus a lot of calories, just to get our fill of protein. Sometimes people call this “protein hunger.”

Why protein is important

Our bodies don’t just need protein to build new muscle tissue. We also need protein to heal and repair damage. Our bodies continually break tissues down and rebuild them, and we need protein for that task as well. Protein is also the building material for enzymes, which do everything from digesting food to detoxifying chemicals in our livers to helping our blood clot. Many hormones are made of protein; the receptors that receive hormonal messages are made of protein as well.

So we need a steady influx of protein just to keep our body functioning. And if we exercise—which is important for a healthy body—we need protein to support that as well. Without enough protein, we can actually lose muscle mass over time. Loss of muscle is one of the perils of aging, but we can reverse it with strength training and, yes, sufficient protein.

And if the protein leverage hypothesis is correct, we also need protein to keep us from overeating.

Put all that together, and it’s worth making sure to get enough protein in your diet. At an absolute minimum, we need 0.36 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day (so, 72 grams for a 200-pound person). We’ve run the numbers for various body sizes and activity levels here.

“Healthy” foods are often low in protein

If you’ve heard the average American eats “too much” protein, stay with me a minute. It’s true that, on average, we eat more than the minimum requirement of 0.36 grams per pound. But the minimum requirement is low; it’s meant to be the amount that will keep you from being protein-deficient. Athletes will eat more, up to a full 1 gram per pound of body weight. Most of us should be somewhere between those numbers, especially if we’re active. And protein isn’t something where “too much” is harmful, so it’s good to err on the side of getting more than the recommendation rather than less.

So what happens when we decide we want to eat healthy? Chances are, if you’re on a diet, some of the things you’ll cut out are good sources of protein: burgers, cheese, fatty red meat, processed meats like hot dogs and deli meat.

Maybe you’ll swap the burgers for chicken breast, which should be fine from a protein standpoint—but then you’re also eating smaller portions. A Big Mac has 26 grams of protein in those two little patties; this chicken-based American Heart Association certified Lean Cuisine meal only has 14 grams. If you’re going for plant-based meals instead, those tend to be even lower in protein. A salad with dressing usually has no protein unless you’re adding something like chicken, cheese, or nuts—and there usually isn’t much protein in a sprinkling of cheese or nuts.

The amount of protein you need when you’re eating in a calorie deficit is actually the same, or arguably more, than when you’re not trying to lose weight. It’s fine if you don’t want to eat a Big Mac, but a proper low-calorie replacement for that meal would be something that still gives you 26 grams of protein, but with fewer calories from fats and carbs.

Which foods are high in protein?

To help you navigate this issue, let’s talk about which foods are high in protein, and which look like they should be, but aren’t.

Foods that are high in protein without being high in calories include:

• Chicken breasts and thighs
• Ground beef, especially leaner mixes like 90/10
• Greek yogurt or Skyr
• Whey powder and other protein powders
• Fish (depending on how fatty it is)
• Tofu and tempeh
• Beans and lentils, although they come with a sizable helping of carbs—depending on the type of bean and the way it’s prepared, these could easily be on either of our two lists.

Foods that may not be as high in protein as you think they are:

• Eggs have 6 grams of protein each; it adds up, sure, but an egg is not a protein bomb.
• Foods that have the word “protein” on their label are usually still pretty low in protein. A protein muffin may have more protein than a regular muffin, but neither is actually that high in protein.
• Quinoa has more complete proteins than other foods in its category, but it’s not high in protein by itself. Quinoa has more protein than rice but about the same amount as pasta or wheat bread.
• Peanut butter has more protein than, say, actual butter. But the thin smear you spread on toast will only add a few grams to your daily total.

These are all still good foods to eat, but don’t mistake a two-egg omelet for a meal that gets you ahead of your protein requirement for the day. The 12 grams of protein in that omelet are far less than the 27 grams in a smallish chicken breast.

Especially if you’re trying to eat healthy, it’s worth looking up the nutrition information for a typical day’s meals and seeing how your protein intake adds up. And if you need ideas, we have a collection of cheap, easy, high-protein meals here.

Cate Collings, MD

The historic White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health was an invigorating experience full of innovative ideas and ambitious goals to end hunger in America by 2030. The White House unveiled a strategy and an impressive $8 billion in public-private commitments to help millions of people with food insecurity and diet-related chronic diseases.

Much hard work remains to translate these ideas and proposals into actions that Strengthen the health of individuals and families. But health professionals, primary care physicians in particular, may be wondering what this coordinated focus on nutrition will mean for their practices and how they can ensure that their patients experience the greatest benefits.

One recurring conference theme was the need to more effectively screen for food insecurity in medical encounters. Important food assistance programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, Children (WIC), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and even school lunch programs were initially focused primarily on eliminating sheer calorie deficit. While some of these programs have implemented nutrition standards, there remains room for improvement to the nutritional content of the food that these programs provide to better supply the nourishment humans need to help prevent and treat chronic disease. In other words, as a practicing provider, begin to discern differences between food insecurity and nutritional insecurity. Your patient may be experiencing one, neither, or both of these conditions.

As a board-certified lifestyle medicine physician, I see this White House conference as an extremely promising sign that much-needed policy and regulatory changes are coming that will expand access to nutritional counseling and food as medicine. Some federal legislation has already been proposed that represents a first step. The Medical Nutrition Equity Act and the Medical Nutrition Therapy Act, for example, would significantly expand coverage of medical nutrition therapy services.

Expanded access to medically tailored meals or food packages and produce prescriptions, particularly in communities with high rates of diet-related disease, was also a subject of conference discussion.

Changes won't happen overnight, but there are several ways that physicians can prepare to thrive in a health system that encourages and rewards the restoration of health through nutrition and food as medicine.

Seek Nutrition Education

Writing a prescription for a medically tailored meal without understanding the science behind it is no better than a cardiologist prescribing a medication without understanding the drug's properties or benefits. Food as medicine is best prescribed by a clinician knowledgeable about nutrition and chronic disease. But few physicians receive sufficient nutrition education in medical school. We now face an opportunity for physicians to marry food-as-medicine prescriptions with fundamental knowledge of the "what and why" of those prescriptions.

In partnership with the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) made a $22 million in-kind commitment to provide 5.5 hours of complimentary CME coursework to 100,000 physicians and other medical professionals treating patients in areas with a high prevalence of diet-related disease. It's easy to take advantage of this opportunity by registering here for the Lifestyle Medicine and Food as Medicine Essentials education bundle.

Inventory Your Community's Resources

Become familiar with nonprofit or private organizations that may already be helping to meet hunger and nutrition needs in your community. The Teaching Kitchen Collaborative has an interactive map of teaching kitchens and medically tailored meal and produce prescription programs. The American Academy of Family Physicians has a good Neighborhood Navigator tool to identify resources by zip code.

Startup companies that deliver medically tailored meals to patients' homes are growing in number and attracting investor attention. By identifying and connecting with these organizations, physicians can form partnerships that synergize healthcare and nutritious food sources in the community. Saint Luke's Health System's REACHN (Resilience, Education, Activity, Community, Health, Nutrition) Program is an example of a dynamic community partnership. As you prescribe lifestyle modification and connect your patients to relevant resources, emphasize to them that a lifestyle medicine prescription delivers only positive side effects, focused on eradicating the root cause of disease with the goal of health restoration.

Locate Registered Dietitians in Your Area

As more diagnoses become eligible for nutritional counseling, physicians will have increasing opportunities to collaborate with registered dietitians to whom you refer patients. It is vital that perspectives on nutrition interventions are aligned between the referring physician and the receiving dietitian. Know the style and methods of dietitians in your region so that recommendations are united and can be reinforced by members of the care team.

To promote effective collaboration, physicians and dietitians may want to participate in nutrition-related CE/CME activities together, share relevant journal articles, and review patient resources and group class topics. A good first step is for physicians to encourage dietitians to register for the free ACLM Lifestyle Medicine and Food as Medicine Essentials education bundle.

Be an Instrument of Change

If you are passionate about nutrition, work within your health system to influence change. Highlight the national priorities around food as medicine as represented at the White House conference. Encourage the replication of successful, scalable nutrition and food-as-medicine delivery models, and educate fellow clinicians on the resources that already are available. Promote partnerships with organizations in the business of providing and delivering medically tailored meals, and organize activities that raise awareness in the community. Join the growing Health Systems Council, a collaborative learning community of almost 80 health systems that are integrating lifestyle medicine, and be on the lookout for opportunities to support advocacy efforts related to nutrition policy.

Clinicians who lead the integration of nutrition programming now will demonstrate their value as the US health system evolves into one that finally, at long last, recognizes the outsized role of poor nutrition in chronic disease.

The wife of an Australian engineer jailed in Iraq has threatened to start a hunger strike outside the Iraqi embassy in London, unless the Baghdad authorities act to release him.

Robert Pether and his Egyptian colleague Khaled Zhagoul are currently serving five-year terms in Al-Muthanna jail in Baghdad, after a contract they were working on to build a new headquarters for the Central Bank of Iraq turned sour. The men were arrested in April 2021 after travelling to Baghdad to meet with the governor of the Central Bank.

A hard-hitting report (pdf) by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, issued in March, said the men were being arbitrarily detained and called on the government to release them immediately.

However, there has been no positive movement on the case for months and Robert’s wife Desree said she is very concerned about his health.

“Robert and Khaled have sat there for almost 20 months trying to work out how to prove their innocence,” she said. “They weren’t ever allowed to present any evidence to prove they were innocent. They are pawns in a game of chess. They’re collateral damage.”

A succession of additional charges have been levelled at the two men since their arrest, with the authorities now seeking $50 million from them – up from an initial fine of $12 million. What is frustrating for the men and their families is they are not even clear about what the money is for.

“It’s fluid. It keeps changing,” says Desree. “Even with the $12 million from their court case last year we’ve never received an official explanation of what it is for. We vaguely know what it is for, but we don’t know completely.”

The two men applied for a retrial about ten weeks ago but that application was recently turned down.

Desree held a protest outside the Iraqi embassy in London on November 22, in an effort to raise awareness of the case and to try and put pressure on the Iraqi authorities to resolve the situation. She says she is prepared to go further.

“It can’t keep going on. It’s getting worse and worse. Robert and Khaled see it as a life sentence. They’re absolutely rock bottom,” she said, speaking in London the day after her protest.

She has since gone back to Ireland, where she now lives with their three children, but plans to return soon.

“I said to the embassy: I need to see improvement in the next two weeks. Things have gone downhill. If anyone can’t see it’s a hostage situation then they’re either complicit or just as corrupt as the people that are doing this. I said this has to stop. The impunity has to stop.

“And if that doesn’t change in the next two weeks I’m coming back and I’m going to sit out the front and do a hunger strike. I can’t sit by and watch him be slowly murdered and do nothing.”

Desree Pether is hoping the accurate change in government in Baghdad may help to resolve the situation. Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani took office on October 28 and she has called on Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to press his counterpart to resolve the situation.

“There’s a new prime minister in Iraq and it would be really awesome if Albanese would make a call to congratulate him and perhaps mention the fact that he spoke to the previous prime minister 16-17 weeks ago and nothing has improved and in fact it’s gotten worse,” she said.

The UN Working Group report issued in March set out a deeply troubling account of the ordeal that Pether and Zhagoul have endured, with claims of torture and mistreatment, an unfair trial, lack of access to legal counsel and a failure by the authorities to respond adequately to serious medical issues.

The UN report judged the two men were initially held in “a situation of de facto enforced disappearance” and that the Iraqi state had violated several articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The report said the arrest and detention of the two men was arbitrary, as were the violations of their right to a fair trial and due process. The report concluded by calling on the Iraqi government to “immediately and unconditionally release” the two men.

The Iraqi government has not yet given a formal response to the Working Group report.

Neither the Iraqi embassy in London nor Pether and Zhagoul’s employer CME Consulting responded to requests for comments for this article.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — With Ukraine scrambling to keep communication lines open during the war, an army of engineers from the country’s phone companies has mobilized to help the public and policymakers stay in touch during repeated Russian missile and drone strikes.

The engineers, who typically go unseen and unsung in peacetime, often work around the clock to maintain or restore phone service, sometimes braving minefields to do so. After Russian strikes took out the electricity that cellphone towers usually run on, they revved up generators to keep the towers on.

By all appearances, there seems to be very little trust left between Elon Musk and Twitter’s remaining employees, particularly Twitter engineers. After Musk publicly fired a Twitter engineer by tweet yesterday, it’s now being reported that more than a dozen employees have been terminated for either posting critically about Musk’s leadership or simply supporting other people who posted critically.

Workers told The Verge that under Musk, Twitter has transformed into an “openly hostile” environment. And Musk—who already told employees that he would be relying on his paranoia to push through this difficult time—has possibly become so paranoid about Twitter engineers messing with Twitter code, he’s taken the drastic step of freezing them out from altering it. This happened during an “emergency meeting” held at 1:45 am on Monday, and Musk has provided no other explanation for the code freeze, The Verge reported.

Meanwhile, Musk has started turning to Twitter as a platform to publicly discuss his concerns and questions about how Twitter functions—rather than discussing privately with Twitter engineers. This appears to be the breaking point that one Twitter employee told The Verge felt so “degrading” to Twitter staff, leading multiple Twitter engineers to correct Musk’s ignorant tweets publicly.

Most visibly, Twitter engineer Eric Frohnhoefer became the first Twitter employee that Musk fired by tweet when he responded to Musk’s incorrect tweet explaining why Twitter was slow on Android.

“I have spent ~6yrs working on Twitter for Android and can say this is wrong,” Frohnhoefer said in a now-deleted tweet.

Musk then had an exchange with Frohnhoefer that many felt could’ve best been had as an internal Twitter discussion. Instead, Frohnhoefer took the opportunity to chat with his boss publicly and responded professionally, sharing with Musk what he thinks would help Strengthen Twitter for Android services. And though Musk later seemed to agree with some of Frohnhoefer’s suggestions, posting that he'd be implementing some of the solutions, the engineer was fired that day, with no official notice—except a tweet from Musk saying, “he’s fired.” When another Twitter employee shared this Musk tweet on the company Slack, Frohnhoefer still had access to see it, and he reportedly responded by saying, “News to me.”

Frohnhoefer wasn’t the only Twitter engineer who seemed to have reached his limit of patience with Musk’s leadership style. Another engineer who worked at Twitter for a decade, Ben Leib, told Bloomberg that he was fired on Sunday after also responding to the same Musk tweet. The tone of Leib's tweet reflects what The Verge reported is a growing solidarity between Twitter’s frustrated remaining staff against the hostility of Musk’s management style.

“As the former tech lead for timelines infrastructure at Twitter, I can confidently say this man has no idea wtf he's talking about,” Leib tweeted.

Ars could not immediately reach Frohnhoefer or Leib for comment.

Elon Musk emailed Twitter staff on Friday asking that any employees who write software code report to the 10th floor of Twitter’s office in San Francisco at 2 p.m., according to an email reviewed by Reuters.

The billionaire said in a follow-up email, “I would appreciate it if you could fly to SF to be present in person,” adding that he would be at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters until midnight and would return Saturday morning.

Musk ordered employees to email him a summary of what their software code has “achieved” in the past six months, “along with up to 10 screenshots of the most salient lines of code.”

“There will be short, technical interviews that allow me to better understand the Twitter tech stack,” Musk wrote in the earlier memo.

He said he would try to speak with remote employees by video. Musk also said that only people who cannot physically get to the company’s headquarters or have a family emergency would be excused.

Hundreds of Twitter employees were estimated to have decided to quit the beleaguered social media company following a Thursday deadline from Musk that staffers sign up for “long hours at high intensity,” or leave.

In his first email to Twitter employees this month, Musk said, “We are also changing Twitter policy such that remote work is no longer allowed, unless you have a specific exception.”

He added, “Managers will send the exceptions lists to me for review an approval.”

KYIV, Ukraine -- With Ukraine scrambling to keep communication lines open during the war, an army of engineers from the country’s phone companies has mobilized to help the public and policymakers stay in touch during repeated Russian missile and drone strikes.

The engineers, who typically go unseen and unsung in peacetime, often work around the clock to maintain or restore phone service, sometimes braving minefields to do so. After Russian strikes took out the electricity that cellphone towers usually run on, they revved up generators to keep the towers on.

“I know our guys — my colleagues — are very exhausted, but they’re motivated by the fact that we are doing an important thing,” Yuriy Dugnist, an engineer with Ukrainian telecommunications company Kyivstar, said after crunching through a half-foot (15 centimeters) of fresh snow to reach a fenced-in mobile phone tower on the western fringe of Kyiv, the capital.

Dugrist and his co-workers offered a glimpse of their new daily routines, which involve using an app on their own phones to monitor which of the scores of phone towers in the capital area were receiving electricity, either during breaks from the controlled blackouts being used to conserve energy or from the generators that kick in to provide backup power.

One entry ominously read, in English, “Low Fuel.”

Stopping off at a service station before their rounds, the team members filled up eight 20-liter (5.3 gallon) jerrycans with diesel fuel for a vast tank under a generator that relays power up a 50-meter (160-foot) cell tower in a suburban village that has had no electricity for days.

It's one of many Ukrainian towns that have had intermittent power, or none at all, in the wake of multiple rounds of devastating Russian strikes in accurate weeks targeting the country's infrastructure — power plants in particular.

Kyivstar is the largest of Ukraine's three main mobile phone companies, with some 26 million customers — or the equivalent of about two-thirds of the country's population before Russia's Feb. 24 invasion drove millions of people abroad, even if many have since returned.

The diesel generators were installed at the foot of the cell phone towers since long before the invasion, but they were rarely needed. Many Western countries have offered up similar generators and transformers to help Ukraine keep electricity running as well as possible after Russia’s blitz.

After emergency blackouts prompted by a round of Russian strikes on Nov. 23, Kyivstar deployed 15 teams of engineers simultaneously and called in “all our reserves” to troubleshoot the 2,500 mobile stations in their service area, Dugrist said.

He recalled rushing to the site of a destroyed cell tower when Russian forces pulled out of Irpin, a suburb northwest of Kyiv, earlier this year and getting there before Ukrainian minesweepers had arrived to supply the all-clear signal.

The strain the war is putting on Ukraine's mobile phone networks has reportedly driven up prices for satellite phone alternatives like Elon Musk’s Starlink system, which Ukraine’s military has used during the conflict, now in its 10th month.

After widespread infrastructure strikes last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy convened top officials to discuss the restoration work and supplies needed to safeguard the country's energy and communication systems.

“Special attention is paid to the communication system,” he said, adding that no matter what the Russia has in mind, "we must maintain communication."

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Follow AP's coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine — With Ukraine scrambling to keep communication lines open during the war, an army of engineers from the country’s phone companies has mobilized to help the public and policymakers stay in touch during repeated Russian missile and drone strikes.

The engineers, who typically go unseen and unsung in peacetime, often work around the clock to maintain or restore phone service, sometimes braving minefields to do so. After Russian strikes took out the electricity that cellphone towers usually run on, they revved up generators to keep the towers on.

“I know our guys — my colleagues — are very exhausted, but they’re motivated by the fact that we are doing an important thing,” Yuriy Dugnist, an engineer with Ukrainian telecommunications company Kyivstar, said after crunching through a half-foot of fresh snow to reach a fenced-in mobile phone tower on the western fringe of Kyiv, the capital.

Dugrist and his co-workers offered a glimpse of their new daily routines, which involve using an app on their own phones to monitor which of the scores of phone towers in the capital area were receiving electricity, either during breaks from the controlled blackouts being used to conserve energy or from the generators that kick in to provide backup power.

Stopping off at a service station before their rounds, the team members filled up eight 20-liter (5.3 gallon) jerrycans with diesel fuel for a vast tank under a generator that relays power up a 60-foot cell tower in a suburban village that has had no electricity for days.

It’s one of many Ukrainian towns that have had intermittent power, or none at all, in the wake of multiple rounds of devastating Russian strikes in accurate weeks targeting the country’s infrastructure — power plants in particular.

Kyivstar is the largest of Ukraine’s three main mobile phone companies, with some 26 million customers — or the equivalent of about two-thirds of the country’s population before Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion drove millions of people abroad, even if many have since returned.

The diesel generators were installed at the foot of the cell phone towers since long before the invasion, but they were rarely needed. Many Western countries have offered up similar generators and transformers to help Ukraine keep electricity running as well as possible after Russia’s blitz.

After emergency blackouts prompted by a round of Russian strikes on Nov. 23, Kyivstar deployed 15 teams of engineers simultaneously and called in “all our reserves” to troubleshoot the 2,500 mobile stations in their service area, Dugrist said.

He recalled rushing to the site of a destroyed cell tower when Russian forces pulled out of Irpin, a suburb northwest of Kyiv, earlier this year and getting there before Ukrainian minesweepers had arrived to supply the all-clear signal.

The strain the war is putting on Ukraine’s mobile phone networks has reportedly driven up prices for satellite phone alternatives like Elon Musk’s Starlink system, which Ukraine’s military has used during the conflict, now in its 10th month.

fter widespread infrastructure strikes last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky convened top officials to discuss the restoration work and supplies needed to safeguard the country’s energy and communication systems.

“Special attention is paid to the communication system,” he said, adding that no matter what the Russia has in mind, “we must maintain communication.”