It is often assumed that in mid to high income countries all adults exceed their daily requirement for protein. However, when dietary quality is accounted for this is not always the case. Recent developments in the accurate assessment of dietary protein quality will be reviewed and applied to data on population based dietary protein intakes.
Paul Moughan was appointed to the foundation chair in monogastric biology at Massey University in 1993 and from 1997-2003 was Foundation Head, Institute of Food, Nutrition and Human Health, Massey University. From 2003 until 2017 he was Foundation Co-Director of the Riddet Institute, hosted by Massey University. He currently holds the positions of Distinguished Professor at Massey University and Riddet Institute Fellow Laureate. He has published in excess of 500 scientific works. In 1995 he was awarded Doctor of Science and in 1997 was awarded a Personal Chair at Massey University and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England. In 2011 he was appointed Chair of the FAO Expert Consultation to review recommendations on the characterisation of dietary protein quality in humans, and has been a frequent contributor to FAO and WHO expert committees. He has received numerous awards, including the New Zealand Prime Minister’s Science Prize in 2012. In 2014 he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Guelph, Canada and in 2018 the Wageningen University Medal of Honour. In 2015 he was appointed to the Global Food and Nutrition Security Project, Leopoldina, Germany, under the auspices of the international partnership of science academies (IAP). He was invited (2021) to author a regional IAP policy briefing for the UN Food Systems Summit.