How Much Protein Do You Actually Need? A Nigerian’s Guide
Ask how much protein you need and the internet answers with American food examples, gym-bro arithmetic, or a shrug. Here is the honest version, in figures — with Nigerian food on the plate.
The baseline number
The widely used baseline for healthy adults is 0.8g of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. A 70kg adult needs about 56g. A 60kg adult, about 48g. The FAO’s population-level recommended minimum works out around 53.8g per person per day.
But the baseline is exactly that — the floor, not the target. It is the amount that prevents deficiency in a sedentary adult, not the amount that serves an active life. Current nutrition research generally supports higher intakes for large parts of the population:
If you train — gym, football, running — the evidence supports roughly 1.2–2.0g per kg, because muscle repair is protein synthesis. A 75kg gym-goer lands between 90g and 150g per day.
If you are over 50, requirements rise, not fall. Ageing bodies become less efficient at using protein, and higher intake helps protect against the gradual muscle loss that steals strength and independence. Around 1.0–1.2g per kg is a common recommendation.
If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, needs increase meaningfully — and this is one place we hand over entirely: let your doctor or midwife set the number.
Now put that number next to a Nigerian plate
This is where the guide gets uncomfortable, because our everyday meals are built to fill, not to build. Rough protein figures for common portions: a serving of jollof or fried rice alone, perhaps 4–6g. A wrap of eba or fufu with vegetable soup, a few grams unless the soup is generous with fish or meat. Bread and tea breakfast: 6–8g. A boiled egg: 6g. A modest piece of chicken or fish: 15–25g.
Track an ordinary day honestly — bread and tea, rice at lunch, swallow at night with one piece of protein — and many adults arrive somewhere between 35g and 50g. Below the floor, nowhere near the target. Nigeria’s average intake of 45.4g per day is not an abstraction; it is this exact plate, repeated nationally. And it is why fatigue, slow recovery, and constant hunger between meals feel so normal here.
Most Nigerians are not under-eating. They are under-building — full plates, empty of the one nutrient the body constructs itself from.
Closing your gap — food first, always
The nutritionist’s answer starts with food, not powder. Cheap, available Nigerian protein exists: eggs, beans and moi moi, akara, groundnuts, kuli kuli, sardines, panla. Two eggs at breakfast and a proper portion of beans at lunch move your day by 20g or more before any supplement enters the conversation.
Where a supplement earns its place is the gap that remains — the busy days, the training days, the appetite that will not stretch to another plate of beans. One 50g scoop of AMAA delivers 25.4g of complete protein — soybean-anchored, all nine essential amino acids, lab-verified — plus 7.3g of fibre and the minerals the seeds carry. For a 70kg adult, that single scoop covers close to half the daily baseline in one glass.
The arithmetic of an ordinary improved day: eggs at breakfast (12g), beans at lunch (15g), dinner with fish (20g), one AMAA scoop (25.4g). Over 70g — from the floor to the target, with Nigerian food doing most of the work and one scoop closing what remains.
The short version
Find your weight in kg. Multiply by 0.8 for your floor, by 1.2–1.6 if you are active or over 50. Count an honest day of your usual plate. The difference is your gap — and now you know exactly what it is and the cheapest ways to close it.
The standing notes: AMAA contains almond and groundnut — account for nut allergies. Protein needs for children, pregnancy, kidney conditions, and other medical situations are individual: a healthcare professional should set those numbers, not a blog post.
— The AMAA Team 🌱
Made in Lagos. Built for Nigeria.