Does my meal clear the line?

What your result means and what to do next

• It clears your line. That meal is done. Build your other usual meals, since breakfast and lunch are the ones that most often come up short.
• It's under your line. Add one lean food rather than more of everything: a cup of nonfat Greek yogurt (15 g), half a cup of 1% cottage cheese (14 g), 3 oz of canned tuna (17 g) or half a cup of firm tofu (22 g).
• It's far over your line. Nothing is wasted, since a big meal keeps muscle building going for longer. Leave it, and look at the meals that run short instead.

Then check the whole day against your daily range.

Why a line for each meal

Your muscle answers each meal on its own. Past a certain amount, one meal stops raising muscle building much in the hours after it. In pooled lab studies that point came at about 0.24 g per kg of body weight in men around 22, and 0.40 in men around 71. Per kg of lean mass the older figure is 0.60.

The line uses 0.4 at every age. It's the older men's average, and it's also the safe upper estimate for young adults (Moore's 0.25 plus two standard deviations), so nothing has to be guessed for the years in between. A 2018 review gives the same 0.4 across at least four meals.

18 g

Around 22Three eggs, 19 g, does the job

30 g

Around 71A Greek yogurt, two eggs and toast, 32 g

Bigger meals aren't wasted

The idea that the body can only use 30 g at a time came from short muscle-building studies, not from absorption. In a 2023 trial, 36 young men drank 0, 25 or 100 g of milk protein after a full-body workout. The 100 g kept muscle building going for more than 12 hours, longer and stronger than 25 g.

Why breakfast

American adults eat about 15 g of protein at breakfast and about 32 g at dinner. In the one longer trial of an even spread, in adults aged 65 to 80, spreading protein evenly built no more muscle than eating most of it at dinner. So breakfast isn't a schedule that builds muscle by itself. It's the meal where the missing grams are easiest to add.