She put two things on my desk: a Starbucks cup with the new protein cold foam she had queued ten minutes for, and a tub of vanilla protein powder she had bought online. "Doc, my son says I need 150 grams of protein a day. Is that right? I'm 58 and I weigh 60 kilos." She is a retired teacher, fit, walks every morning at the Botanic Gardens. Her son lifts weights and follows three longevity podcasters. Somewhere between the gym bro internet and the family WhatsApp chat, "eat more protein" had become "eat enormous amounts of protein, and feel guilty if you don't."
She is at the front edge of a wave. This month, Starbucks rolled out its protein cold foam across the Asia Pacific region, including Singapore, from 11 June (1). A grande can now carry up to 36 grams of protein, and the foam alone adds about 15. TikTok has been pushing "proffee", protein powder stirred into iced coffee, for two years. Supermarket shelves that used to hold one or two whey tubs now hold a wall of them. The protein craze has fully arrived.
So here is the question worth answering, and it is more personal than the influencers make it sound: if you are a reasonably healthy adult in Singapore, how much protein do you actually need, is more genuinely better, and is the protein latte doing anything for you that your lunch isn't? Let me walk through what the evidence actually shows.
The Number You Were Taught Is a Floor, Not a Target
The figure most people half-remember is 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. In Singapore, the Health Promotion Board uses that same 0.8 g/kg for adults aged 18 to 49 (2). For my 60 kg patient, that is 48 grams a day. It sounds reassuringly small, and it is the source of a lot of confusion.
That number was never designed to be optimal. It is the amount estimated to prevent deficiency in almost all healthy people, derived largely from nitrogen-balance studies. Think of it as the level that stops you developing a problem, not the level that helps you thrive. Using the RDA as your protein goal is a bit like treating the minimum passing mark as your target grade. You won't fail, but you are leaving something on the table.
For muscle, appetite control and healthy ageing, a growing body of work points higher. In a widely cited 2016 review in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, Phillips, Chevalier and Leidy argued that intakes in the range of roughly 1.2 to 1.6 g/kg/day of good-quality protein are a more sensible target for most adults wanting to optimise health, body composition and satiety (3). For my patient at 60 kg, that is about 72 to 96 grams a day. Useful, achievable, and a long way short of her son's 150.
The Singapore Problem Is Too Little, Not Too Much
Here is the irony of the protein craze. While the internet worries about whether 150 grams is enough, the real public-health gap in Singapore runs the other way, especially for older adults. The Health Promotion Board recommends that adults aged 50 and above aim higher, around 1.2 g/kg/day, precisely because ageing muscle responds less efficiently to protein (2, 8). Yet the National Nutrition Survey found that roughly one in two older Singaporeans does not even meet that target (2).
This matters more here than almost anywhere. Singapore became a "super-aged" society in 2026, with more than one in five residents aged 65 or older. The Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia, whose consensus criteria are written specifically for Asian body types, flags muscle loss as a major driver of frailty, falls and loss of independence in exactly this population (4). The people most likely to be under-eating protein are the ones who can least afford to lose muscle. So the honest framing is not "everyone is overdoing protein". It is "the young and the gym-going may be overdoing it, while many older adults are quietly falling short".
Does More and More Protein Keep Helping? The Meta-Analysis That Found the Ceiling
If some protein is good, is more always better? For building muscle, the answer is a clear no, and we have a good map of where the returns flatten out.
In 2018, Robert Morton and Stuart Phillips at McMaster University, with an international team, published a meta-analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine that pooled 49 randomised controlled trials with 1,863 participants doing resistance training (5). They asked a precise question: as people eat more protein, how much extra muscle do they build? The answer was that protein supplementation did meaningfully increase strength and lean mass during training, but the benefit for lean mass stopped climbing once total intake reached about 1.62 g/kg/day. Beyond that point, the extra protein produced no further gains in fat-free mass. It is worth being honest about the uncertainty here: the breakpoint had a wide confidence interval (roughly 1.0 to 2.2 g/kg), and some researchers reanalysing the data in 2025 argue that dedicated lifters chasing maximum size may benefit from the upper end of that range. For the average person, though, the signal is clear enough.
That 1.62 g/kg figure is worth holding onto, because it reframes the whole conversation. For a 60 kg person, the muscle-building ceiling in that analysis sits around 97 grams a day. For an 80 kg person, around 130 grams. Eating well beyond it isn't dangerous for a healthy person, but for most people it isn't buying much more muscle either. A lot of it is expensive urine. Most longevity-influencer protein targets sit comfortably above the level where the human muscle-building machinery has already maxed out.
The Part the Powder Tubs Get Right: Timing and Distribution
There is one place where the protein crowd has genuinely useful science on their side, and it is about distribution rather than total. As we age, muscle becomes less sensitive to protein, a phenomenon called anabolic resistance. An older person needs a bigger single dose of protein to switch on muscle-building than a younger person does.
The cleanest demonstration of this comes from Daniel Moore, Stuart Phillips and colleagues, published in the Journals of Gerontology (6). They pooled lab data measuring muscle protein synthesis after meals containing 0 to 40 grams of high-quality protein, in younger men (around 22) and older men (around 71). Younger men maxed out their muscle-building response at about 0.24 g/kg of protein in a single meal. Older men needed roughly 0.40 g/kg in one sitting to get the same effect. For a 60 kg older adult, that works out to around 24 grams of protein at a meal, not spread thinly across the day, but concentrated enough to cross the threshold.
This is why a breakfast of plain kopi and two slices of kaya toast (maybe 6 to 8 grams of protein) is a missed opportunity for an older adult, while the same person's chicken rice lunch easily clears the bar. The practical upshot, supported by HPB's own seniors' guidance, is to aim for a decent protein anchor at each main meal rather than loading it all at dinner (2). Two eggs, a palm-sized piece of fish, a block of tofu, a bowl of yong tau foo with the right picks, a serving of edamame or dhal: these are not exotic. They are already on the hawker menu.
The Kidney Myth, and the Real Exception
"Won't all that protein wreck my kidneys?" is the single most common worry I hear, and for most readers the answer is reassuring. In 2018, Devries, Phillips and colleagues published a systematic review and meta-analysis in The Journal of Nutrition pooling 28 randomised controlled trials with 1,358 participants (7). Comparing higher-protein diets (1.5 g/kg or more) against normal or lower intakes, they found no meaningful difference in the change in kidney function, measured by glomerular filtration rate, in adults with healthy kidneys. A protein-rich meal does raise filtration rate briefly, but that is the kidney doing its job, much as your heart rate rises when you climb stairs. It is not damage.
Now the important exception, and this is the part the meme accounts skip. That reassurance applies to people whose kidneys are healthy to begin with. If you already have chronic kidney disease, a high-protein diet is a different conversation entirely, and protein intake in that setting should be set by your own doctor or a renal dietitian, not by a podcast. Chronic kidney disease is common and often silent, particularly in people with diabetes or long-standing high blood pressure, both of which are widespread in Singapore. The same caution applies to anyone with a single kidney or a past kidney transplant. If you are not sure where your kidneys stand, a simple blood and urine test ordered by your doctor will tell you before you make any big dietary change.
So Is the Protein Latte Actually Doing Anything?
Back to the cup on my desk. A protein cold foam adding 15 grams, or a protein latte landing near 30, is not a gimmick in the way "boosts immunity" is a gimmick. Protein is protein, and if it nudges someone who chronically under-eats it closer to their target, that is a real, if modest, win, especially for an older adult who struggles to chew large amounts of meat.
But two caveats keep it honest. First, total daily protein and per-meal distribution are what matter, not the delivery vehicle. If you already hit your target through normal meals, a protein latte is simply a more expensive coffee. Second, watch what rides along with it. A flavoured protein latte can carry meaningful added sugar and calories, and the longevity case for protein does not extend to the syrup. A boiled egg, a handful of edamame, a glass of unsweetened soya milk or a small tub of plain yoghurt delivers similar protein with none of the sugar and a fraction of the price. The drink is a convenience, not a health intervention, and it is worth seeing it as such.
The Honest Read
Protein is genuinely important, and the cultural shift towards taking it seriously is, on balance, a good thing. But the craze has overshot the science in one direction and ignored it in another. For most healthy adults, a target somewhere in the region of 1.2 to 1.6 g/kg/day covers the benefits, and the muscle-building returns flatten out around 1.6 g/kg even in people who lift (3, 5). Loading well beyond that, the way some influencer targets suggest, is not harmful for a healthy person but is not buying extra muscle either. Meanwhile, the quieter and more important story in Singapore is the older adult who isn't getting enough, and for whom getting a solid protein dose at each meal is one of the most useful, least glamorous things they can do for their independence (2, 4, 6).
The headline number is less important than three boring habits: spread your protein across meals rather than cramming it into one, pair it with resistance exercise so the protein has something to build, and choose mostly whole-food sources. A protein latte can sit on top of that. It cannot replace it.
What My Patient Went Home With
I did the sum with her. At 60 kg and 58 years old, a sensible target was somewhere around 72 to 90 grams a day, not her son's 150. We mapped it onto her actual week: two eggs at breakfast instead of toast alone, fish or tofu at lunch, a palm of meat or a bowl of dhal at dinner, and a glass of soya milk if she felt short. That got her comfortably to target without a single scoop of powder. Because she has well-controlled high blood pressure, I also suggested we check her kidney function at her next review, simply so any future dietary changes start from a known baseline. Not because protein is dangerous for her, but because good decisions start with knowing your own numbers.
She looked at the protein tub, then at the latte, and laughed. "So I queued ten minutes for a coffee, not a cure." More or less, I told her. Enjoy the coffee. Build the meals. The coffee was never the point.
If you are thinking about significantly increasing your protein intake, especially if you have any kidney concern, diabetes, high blood pressure, are pregnant, or take medications that affect your kidneys, talk it through with your own doctor first. They know your history, your medications and your test results, and can tell you what is appropriate for you specifically rather than for an audience.