Protein and Digestion

One of the reasons why biasing our diets towards higher protein intake works for well for weight loss is that protein is the most difficult of the 3 macronutrient to digest.

If we look at the energy cost to digest each macronutrient, we’d see that:

  • About 3% of the energy in fat goes towards digestion
  • It’s around 7% for carbohydrate
  • And with protein, closer to 23%!

In other words, you “waste” a lot of the energy in protein in the digestive process (or inefficiently metabolize it in more scientific terms).

When it comes to weight loss, being inefficient is definitely the way to go!

Sometimes, this difficulty in digesting protein rears its ugly head and we experience some digestive distress. For some reason, this effect seems particularly pronounced with protein powders.

But fear not, today we have Dylan explaining what to look for in your protein powder if that’s the case.