Pros & Cons Of Liquid Protein

Taking liquid protein or adding protein shakes and drinks to your diet may not seem necessary unless you want to build enormous muscles, but there are actually a number of significant health benefits you can get from such supplements. If you're considering adding them to your regular diet, it's useful to learn more about the potential pros and cons before you buy.

Health Benefits

Increasing the protein in your diet can be healthy if you don't get enough of the nutrient through what you normally eat. Lean and low-fat sources of protein in particular are beneficial for building and repairing bone and muscle tissue. Additionally, bumping up your protein intake can help give you more energy and promote faster recover from surgery or illness.

Weight Loss

High protein products also have the special quality of encouraging satiation. Satiation is a feeling of fullness or satisfaction that can help you eat fewer calories and reduce cravings. Thus, adding liquid protein to your diet may enable you to cut calories and steadily lose weight. "Trials continue to show comparable, if not superior, effects of high-protein diets on weight loss, preservation of lean body mass, and improvement in cardiovascular risk factors," write the authors of a 2008 paper that appeared in the journal "Current Opinion in Endocrinology, Diabetes and Obesity."

Claims

You may have seen liquid protein supplements in drugstores that profess outrageous health or weight loss claims on their labels. While such declarations can sound appealing, there's no guarantee that the products will produce results as advertised. The FDA classifies protein shakes and related commercial products as "dietary supplements," which means they are not subject to the same strict health regulations as real foods. As a consequence, they may make claims that have not been verified by credible scientific research.

Risks

If you already meet daily protein requirements through your diet, it can be harmful to take in additional protein through liquid supplements. Healthy adults should get 50 g to 175 g of protein per day, but some supplements can provide 50 g or more in a single serving. According to Mayo Clinic dietitian Katherine Zeratsky, regularly getting an excess of protein can damage your liver or kidneys and raise the risks of diverticulitis, cancer or heart disease.

Considerations

It's also important to take a look at the nutritional information and ingredient list of supplements before you begin using them. As a 2007 article published in the "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition" stated, most high-protein meal replacement drinks have a principal ingredient of sugar and are simply fortified with vitamins and minerals rather than getting them from natural sources. Before taking any liquid protein, get the OK from your doctor or a registered dietitian.