Good Sources of Protein

Protein is used to repair tissue cells within the body and is an essential as part of a healthy balanced diet. You should eat some protein at every meal serve.

Protein is made up from Amino Acids. There are 20 amino acids in all, 9 of which are essential to our diet. The remaining 11 are manufactured within our liver, so are non-essential from dietary intake.

A complete protein is food source that includes all 9 essential amino acids. These are mainly from animal products with the exception of Soy.

Meat
Poultry
Fish
Dairy Eggs
Soy

Incomplete proteins are food sources that contain most of the 9 essential amino acids but usually fall short on one or two of them. These are mainly plant sources and include;

Grains
Cereals
Beans
Nuts
Seeds
Vegetables

It is possible to get the full compliment of amino acids by pairing up two or more of the incomplete food sources. For example baked beans on wholemeal toast would give the full compliment of essential amino acids. It's not essential to have both food sources at the same meal serve, as long as they are eaten within the same 24 hours.

How much protein do you need.

Daily protein intake depends upon two things. Your activity levels and your body weight. The average sedentary adult should be eating 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. For example an adult weighing 80Kgs should be consuming 64 grams of protein per day.

This changes depending upon activity levels, so athletes and sports people should be consuming more due to the fact exercise damages body tissue, so additional protein is essential on top of the daily requirements to repair tissue damage.
The maximum amount of protein to be consumed in one day should be no more than 2 grams per kilogram of body weight.