What are your thoughts on this study? It concluded that strength athletes have a health risk for consuming too much protein.
“Despite the fact that short-term high protein diet could be necessary in several pathological conditions (malnutrition, sarcopenia, etc.), it is evident that “too much of a good thing” in diet could be useless or even harmful for healthy individuals [1, 29]. Many adults or even adolescents (especially athletes or body builders) self-prescribe protein supplements and overlook the risks of using them, mainly due to misguided beliefs in their performance-enhancing abilities [30]. Individuals who follow these diets are therefore at risk [31]. Extra protein is not used efficiently by the body and may impose a metabolic burden on the bones, kidneys, and liver. Moreover, high-protein/high-meat diets may also be associated with increased risk for coronary heart disease due to intakes of saturated fat and cholesterol or even cancer [31]. Guidelines for diet should adhere closely to what has been clinically proved, and by this standard there is currently no basis to recommend high protein/high meat intake above the recommended dietary allowance for healthy adults [32–35]. Further investigation with large randomized controlled studies could provide more definitive evidence.”
This is not a study, but rather a review article. I think that there is a laundry list of issues here that the reader should identify when considering, “How does this paper change my current thinking on a topic, if at all?”
It’s 6 years old and numerous articles on this very topic have come out since then.
It’s published in a relatively low impact journal with a single author and does not represent any organization who could, collectively, review all the available literature and then, collectively, weigh in on the topic.
The first sentence of the conclusion is supposed to be supported by references 1 and 29, neither of which show that protein supplementation is harmful or useless.
The leaps to suggesting “risk” - including cancers, cardiovascular disease, etc. are strawman arguments not supported by current evidence under controlled conditions.
I could continue, but I really don’t think this review article offers additional insight on the question raised and is using outdated information to make too many logical leaps for my tastes.
It’s not so much that the review is wrong, but rather the interpretation does not seem to mesh with the current state of the evidence and so it doesn’t really change the way I think about things until additional evidence supporting this view point comes out.