Diet and Exercise Myth #23: Nuts are a good source of protein

“Eating nuts for protein is like drinking martinis for olives”

I wish I could properly attribute that quote, but I don’t know who said it. I love it because it perfectly sums up my position on this subject, with a shot of humour thrown in. If it’s you I’m quoting, please let me know

The quote elegantly highlights this fact: knowing the mathematical percentage of a food that is protein is not particularly useful information in isolation.

Let me break that down:

If you’re trying to gain muscle while losing body fat, your best strategy is to maximise protein intake within the constraints of a caloric budget.

In this scenario, eating nuts for their protein content wouldn’t make any sense at all.

The reason for this is that nuts are very high in fat, which is the most calorie dense nutrient on the planet. The fat in nuts is healthy fat, but the quantity of nuts you would need to eat in order to get an appreciable amount of protein, would be completely outweighed by their super high caloric content.

More useful metrics for anybody in that situation would be:

1. The number of grams of protein in a standard serving of a particular food; expressed as a percentage of:
2. The total number of calories in that standard serving.

As a food category, nuts would fail woefully on both those metrics (as it should do). On the other hand, fish, chicken and turkey breast would score very well indeed.

Eating fish, chicken and turkey (as examples) would align very well with the goals of somebody who is looking to gain muscle while losing body fat. Those foods would leave you with plenty of calories still available in your daily budget so that you never need to go hungry, while also providing adequate amounts of protein to meet your body composition goals.