Whether your goal is to pack on pounds of muscle or drop pounds of excess fat, chicken is one of the very best foods you can eat. That sounds counterintuitive, sure, but it’s the truth: quality chicken is so high in protein and so low in fat that, if prepared properly and consumed in the right amounts, it really can do both. And the fact that chicken is delicious is simply icing on the cake. (Actually, let’s not talk about cake right now.)
The average three-ounce serving of chicken breast has about 24 grams of protein in it. The Dietary Reference Intake (or DRI - think about the nutrition labels on food) is around 56 grams of protein daily for the average man with the average lifestyle and 46 grams for the average woman. You do the math: a few moderate servings of chicken breast go a long way toward meeting your body’s daily protein needs! However keep in mind those figures vary based on your size, your activity levels, and your goals.
First lets talk about fitness: the more calories you burn, the more you can afford to consume. If you’re trying to build muscle, you need to consume protein, and ideally within a short period after your exercise has ended. How much protein you need to consume each day in order to build muscle is a hotly debated topic, but if you compare a range of answers from an array of fitness experts, you’ll see that the average recommendation is just less than one gram of protein per pound of body weight. So a 180 man trying to pack on muscle needs about 150 - 180 grams per day. So… chicken sandwich for lunch, roasted chicken for dinner.
Now let’s talk about weight loss: the more protein you consume, the less food you’ll tend to eat overall. That’s because dense, nutrient-rich protein makes you feel more full and satisfied more quickly than other types of food, like starches or fats. If you can add a few hundred calories worth of healthy chicken to your usual diet, you might successfully cut out hundreds more calories of other foods. Protein also has the added benefit of a higher “Thermic Effect,” which essentially means it takes more work for your body to burn it off. So not only can chicken help you eat less overall, it can help you burn more calories simply by digesting that meal!
Last, let’s talk about freshness: after all, we here at Zaycon Fresh are pretty proud of just how fresh our Chicken Breasts are when we deliver them to you. That’s because fresher chicken tastes better, but also because it’s more nutritious. Protein degradation begins as soon as a chicken is processed, but by cutting out middlemen like warehouses and grocery store shelves, the chicken breasts you get from Zaycon Fresh are only a handful of days old. That means more healthy protein whether you start cooking right away or you quickly freeze the meat for later enjoyment.
References:
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/242397548_Effect_of_storage_on_desmin_degradation_and_physico-chemical_properties_of_poultry_breast_meat
http://www.mensfitness.com/nutrition/what-to-eat/the-top-10-meat-proteins
http://www.menshealth.co.uk/food-nutrition/muscle-foods/the-worlds-best-protein-sources-313853
http://www.healthaliciousness.com/articles/foods-highest-in-protein.php
https://blog.myfitnesspal.com/5-reasons-why-protein-is-good-for-weight-loss/
http://www.builtlean.com/2012/12/24/protein-build-muscle/
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