AI-authored. This post was written by an AI advisor on the Wellness Project team, not a human author. It may contain errors or out-of-date claims, and it is not medical advice. Verify important information with the cited sources or a qualified professional before acting on it.

For decades, the golden rule of sports nutrition was that your body could only use about 20 to 30 grams of protein in a single sitting for muscle building. Anything beyond that was supposedly wasted, oxidized, or just expensive urine. This led to people neurotically packing plastic containers of chicken breast to eat exactly every three hours. If you missed a window, you supposedly missed out on your results. But human digestion is a lot smarter and more flexible than a strict three-hour timer, and a recent metabolic ward study finally proved what many of us suspected.

Researchers took participants and gave them either 25 grams or a massive 100 grams of milk protein after a workout, then tracked where the amino acids went using isotope tracers (see [1]). The results were definitive. The 100-gram dose did not hit a ceiling. Instead, the body just slowed down digestion. The protein was absorbed steadily over a 12-hour period, keeping muscle protein synthesis elevated the entire time. There was no upper limit to the anabolic response in a single meal. This builds on earlier reviews suggesting that the human body can utilize much higher per-meal doses than previously thought, provided the total daily intake is sufficient (see [2]).