10 Ways to Eat Your Daily Protein

10 Ways to Eat Your Daily Protein
One of the big myths about protein is that you have to work hard to get enough in your diet, filling your plate with chicken breasts or eggs at every meal. The truth, however, is that it's actually quite simple to eat your daily dose of protein. If you're eating a balanced diet, you're almost certainly getting enough protein. What does enough actually look like? We rounded up 10 days' worth of food, with each including a breakfast, lunch, and dinner that easily meet, and usually exceed, the recommended daily serving of protein. How Much Protein Do You Really Need? According to the USDA Dietary Guidelines, someone who consumes 2,000 calories a day should be eating about 50 grams of protein a day. This number is a very rough average — the USDA states that women need a little less (46 grams) and men need a little more (56 grams), and it goes up or down depending on the calories you consume in a day. Your level of activity, age, and a number of other factors, like pregnancy or illness, can also shift that number up or down, but 50 grams is a good average to discuss during this conversation. The average 2,000 calorie diet = 50 grams of protein How much is 50 grams? To put this in perspective, a six-ounce piece of salmon (which is often the serving size for one person in many recipes, including ours) has about 44 grams of protein in it. If you ate that for dinner and had even just one egg at some point in the day — maybe boiled as a snack, or fried on toast for breakfast — you'd be at 50 grams, as one egg had six grams of protein in it. So the reality is, if you're eating a well-balanced diet, you're probably getting your fill of protein, and perhaps eating a good amount more than your daily requirement, without even trying. A Note on Serving Sizes It's important to note that the recommended serving sizes, jointly determined by the USDA and the FDA, aren't necessarily how we all eat in real time. A good example is that salmon fillet I previously mentioned. A serving size of meat or fish is three ounces — take a look at the palm of your hand and that's roughly the equivalent size. Not only do most recipes rarely have you cooking that size serving, but also if you pick up a bag of frozen salmon fillets at the grocery store, the fillets are probably going to be double that size. These images below aren't meant to depict a day's worth of calories. We used these recommended serving sizes simply as reference when calculating what a daily serving of protein looks like to keep things consistent, but it's important to take these serving sizes as suggestions and then adjust accordingly based on what you know to be the amount of food that's good for you, your lifestyle, and your energy needs. A Daily Serving of Protein: 10 Ways Breakfast: 1/2 cup Greek yogurt with 1/2 cup blackberries and 1 ounce almonds Lunch: A salad of 2 cups arugula, 1/2 cup chickpeas, and 1/4 cup crumbled feta Dinner: 1 chicken thigh with 1/2 cup brown rice and 1/2 cup roasted broccoli TOTAL = 66 grams of protein Breakfast: 1 cup rolled oatmeal and 1 small banana Lunch: Turkey and cheese sandwich (using 3 slices deli turkey and 1 slice deli cheese) on whole-wheat bread Dinner: 1 (3-ounce) salmon fillet with 1/2 cup roasted potatoes and 1/2 cup sautéed spinach TOTAL = 57 grams of protein Breakfast: 1 slice whole-wheat toast with 2 tablespoons of peanut butter Lunch: 1 cup lentil salad and 1 string cheese Dinner: 1 cup spaghetti with 1/2 cup tomato sauce and 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan TOTAL = 52 grams of protein Breakfast: 2 scrambled eggs with 1 slice whole-wheat toast Lunch: Peanut butter (2 tablespoons) and jelly (2 tablespoons) sandwich on whole-wheat bread Dinner: A salad of 2 cups arugula, 3 ounces skirt steak, and 1/2 cup halved cherry tomatoes TOTAL = 56 grams of protein Breakfast: 1 cup Cheerios with 1/2 cup 2% milk Lunch: 1 baked potato filled with 1/2 cup black beans and 2 tablespoons salsa, along with 1 string cheese Dinner: 1 cup spaghetti with 3 ounces shrimp TOTAL = 55 grams of protein Breakfast: 1/2 cup Greek yogurt with sliced banana and a drizzle of honey Lunch: Peanut butter (2 tablespoons) and jelly (2 tablespoons) sandwich on whole-wheat bread Dinner: A salad of 2 cups arugula with a 3-ounce salmon fillet and 1/4 cup crumbled feta TOTAL = 55 grams of protein Breakfast: 1 slice whole-wheat toast with 1/2 an avocado, sliced, and 1 fried egg Lunch: 1 cup chickpea salad and 1 ounce roasted almonds Dinner: A salad of 2 cups arugula with 3 ounces chicken breast and 1/2 cup sliced cucumbers TOTAL = 54 grams of protein Breakfast: 1 smoothie made with 1/2 cup of Greek yogurt and 1/2 cup of fruit Lunch: 1 tuna sandwich (using 1/2 can of tuna) on whole-wheat bread Dinner: 3 ounces skirt steak with 1/2 cup brown rice and 1/2 cup sautéed spinach TOTAL = 57 grams of protein Breakfast: 1 cup Cheerios with 1/2 cup 2% milk Lunch: Turkey and cheese sandwich (using 3 slices deli turkey and 1 slice deli cheese) on whole-wheat bread Dinner: 2 cups lentil soup with 1 cup arugula salad and 1 whole-wheat dinner roll TOTAL = 53 grams of protein Breakfast: 1 hard-boiled egg with 2 slices of bacon and 1 slice whole-wheat toast Lunch: 1 cup pasta tossed with pesto and 1/2 cup chickpeas Dinner: 3 ounces shrimp and 1/2 cup broccoli over 1/2 cup brown rice TOTAL = 53 grams of protein Who I Am (and Why I'm Writing to You) As a food editor who is also a Registered Dietitian, I know the confusion of our fractured landscape of diet information. But if you strip away the study-of-the-day and fad diets, there is solid information we can all learn about basic nutritional building blocks. We're offering these unsexy yet useful tools to empower cooks to make decisions that suit them with solid, science-driven resources. This especially applies to protein, the first topic in our new Nutrition 101 series. We want to give you the tools for confident eating and a more wholesome diet — something we can all get behind. Original article and pictures take http://www.thekitchn.com/10-ways-to-eat-your-daily-protein-243494?utm_source=pinterest&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=managed&crlt.pid=camp.KucoSyJuvvEk site