“The average American eats twice the protein he needs,” says Art Mollen, D.O., medical director of the Southwest Health Institute in Phoenix and author of The Anti-Aging Diet. An excess of protein can make you feel heavy, sluggish and, over time, physically feeble. Dr. Mollen and others say we’d be better off eating more like the rural Chinese, whose grain-and-vegetable diet is extremely low in animal protein and whose death rate from colon cancer is about 2.5 times lower than ours.
For optimal health, eat 1 gram of protein for every 3 pounds of body weight per day, suggests Dr. Mollen. That’s about 50 grams for a 150-pound man. A small portion of sirloin steak trimmed of fat contains about 35 grams, so limit yourself to one protein-based meal per day. “If you have a hamburger for lunch, that’s fine, but have cereal or fruit for breakfast and pasta for dinner,” says Dr. Mollen.