Paleo Diet and Paleolithic Diet Questions & Answers

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On the perfect health diet website the Jaminets suggest 200 calories of daily protein, but I cannot tell if they are calculating protein and fat calories separately in meats and eggs or just the total calories of protein type food. If one were to eat 2 eggs and 4 oz. of salmon that would be over 200 calories!!! Surely this is not what they are suggesting is it?? In their book they say they eat 1/2# meat daily and up to 3 eggs. If you enter your food in a tracker that separates the nutrients in each food you can get your protein + fat + carbohydrates. Is this what they are meaning we do? Has anyone ever seen a sample daily diet implementing their guidelines?

edited May 25 2011 at 15:55

Kamal♦
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asked May 25 2011 at 15:33

nancy64
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David Moss · Answer 1 · 2011-05-25 16:00:50Z UTC

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They are definitely talking about protein calories and not foods that are mostly protein, but including fat or carbohydrate calories. In other words, they mean 50g of protein (1g = 4 calories). That's roughly 300g of ground beef.

answered May 25 2011 at 16:00

David Moss
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thanks David. Am I understanding this correctly? An ounce of ground beef pan fried is about 86 total calories..8 oz. (their recommendation for the day) would be 688 calories. So they don't mean for you to have just 200-400 total calories of ground beef for the day's protein. You do separate out the fat. This is still confusing me after Paul's answer. – nancy64 May 25 2011 at 17:43

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nancy64: Download CRON-O-Meter program. Link - cron-o-meter.en.softonic.com/download Enter different foods to see what their protein/carb/fat content is. As for your example. 100g of ground beef has 17g of protein and 17g of fat. 100 g of ground beef has, 68 (17*4) calories of protein and 153 (17*9) calories of fat. 100g of ground beef has 221 (153+68) calories. – Ikco May 26 2011 at 8:05

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Yes Nancy you do separate out the fat. Are you familiar with working out a carb count? It's exactly the same: you work out the grams of carbs in brocolli/potato etc, not the grams of brocolli/potato in total. 200-600 protein calories means 50-150g protein. Do not worry at all about the total calories in the food, or the total weight of the food. The fact that the meat contains more/less fat changes its weight and calories, but not the protein, so just aim for 50-150g protein per day! The difference between 100g of very fatty (30%) ground beef and 100g of very lean (5%) ground beef is... – David Moss May 26 2011 at 9:55

... only 26g versus 29g of protein, so you really don't need to worry about those differences in meats from a protein perspective, 100g of meat will be more or less the same amount of protein, even if the calories contained in it vary wildly. – David Moss May 26 2011 at 9:57

Thanks so much David for getting specific for me. I use a software program that breaks down the grams of fat, protein, carb, etc. as well as percentages of total eaten and I stay between 55-90 grams protein a day. This is much easier to understand than the directive to eat 1/2-1 lb. protein a day. – nancy64 May 26 2011 at 11:33

Paul Jaminet · Answer 2 · 2011-05-25 16:13:05Z UTC

Hi Nancy,

Our healthy protein range is 200 to 600 calories per day. So 200 calories would be a low protein diet and this is healthy only if the diet includes at least 400 carb calories per day, because any carb deficiency has to be made up with protein.

Low protein dieting can be beneficial for certain health conditions, especially bacterial and viral infections. It has associations with longevity. However it is not optimal for strength, wound healing, and some other health conditions. Everyone has to find their own personal optimum.

I would say that 1/2 to 1 lb meat per day is a good guideline. Most meats have about 500 calories protein per pound, so this would be 250 to 500 protein calories, squarely in our recommended range.

Best, Paul

Is the amount of protein correct for Perfect Health Diet?

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