RPM Facebook Live: Protein Building a better future.

I am very, very well, lads.

We are Raw Pet Medics and we're talking about protein. This is Brendan, this is Conor, and next week we're going to have the A-Team as an introduction. Okay, that's what we were kind of discussing just then, so apologies, that wasn't the best professional intro in the world.

Yeah, but not the A-Team because that's copyright. It might be the R-Team with a very similar sounding name. Anyway, this is something we need to pass by the lawyer, so if anybody has any any law degrees out there, please get in touch with the lads.

Our team, it's a bunch of pirates.

Brilliant. So, uh, listen, Brendan, how was your week? How's the, how's the dig?

Oh, the dig. Yes, the dig. So we now have a, you know, it's got so stressful my wife has left me. Um, it's disappeared for a week anyway, at least. Um, hopefully not permanently. Next time, got to visit her cousin who's staying up in Northumberland, so I am home alone watching the destruction of the back garden at the moment. But no, looking forward to the end results. And yeah, it's an interesting time, only slightly stressful, but yeah, interesting times clinically with stuff going on with withdrawal of foods and What's the lowdown on this, on this recall, lads? So we've had a group of cases reported from the RVC and a couple of other clinics that are something called pancytopenia. Okay, and it's seen— so pancytopenia is basically a reduction in the circulating cells. Okay, so it will manifest itself generally because the red cell counts also go down, so you'll get clotting disorders and things like that. But generally it's an across-the-board sort of bone marrow suppression type effect seems to be coming around. They're obviously seeing it in multi-cat households, so this is a cat food issue right now for this particular issue, and so they have withdrawn 3 foods which are made by one particular production company, and that has been highlighted just because it's in a multi-cat household, it's either going to be infectious or it's going to be something that all of those cats are, you know, subjected to. So environmental or nutritional.

Have they got any idea what it is, whether it's a toxin or excess of a vitamin like the previous vitamin D?

That's still up for debate, I think. You know, they're still investigating it. You know, there are reports out there that are saying, well, it's because that additive to the kibble food— because these are, you know, we're all waiting for them to try and blame the raw, and somebody did pop their head above the parapet and said, oh, it must be because you're feeding them raw. But we know that this is all kibble food, and they are thinking, is it one of the supplements that they're adding in rather than anything else? There is a lot of murmurings around toxins and stuff as well.

It would have to be something specific to cats because they both make cat and dog food in the same shed. They use the same ingredients. Meat meal goes into both. The additives, the preservatives, the vitamin and mineral mixes. Okay, yeah, they're probably coming from the same supplier, so it does eliminate a lot of the ingredients because it's just so much share between the two products. It's something that's unique for cats. I'm stumped.

What?

Yeah, well, I was— I was— I've looked through all sorts of things because, you know, we've talked about tularemia in the past, you know, and which is related to one of the Mycobacterium sort of diseases and stuff. And yeah, and it is, you know, I wondered whether you've got something like that going on, but you know, who knows. At the moment it's up for grabs. It's alarming, but you know, we're waiting to see what that is. But it is really for you guys out there that are watching today, it is all about kibble foods, and we're hoping most of you guys are on fresh, okay? Yeah, and let's see where we're at from there.

And to stir the pot a little bit on this idea, guys, just a tiny bit on this recall, that we shouldn't forget. And if we do a Heart Noise, which I'm sure we will at some stage, we will be talking about DCM, uh, which is something that most people have heard of now at this stage, even if they're not sure what it is exactly. But you know, that was a fiasco over in the States that roped in very high up levels of the government and all sorts, and nothing ever came. But it's just another issue that disappeared. And what it turns out, it was definitely a repression of the grain-free industry. Now this particular company making this product over here in the UK, I haven't a clue guys, I just like stirring shit, this is a grain-free pet food company, so we're not absolutely positive what's going on. Everything's very new and the Facebook page that's dedicated to this thing is spinning up in numbers and it's like, well, there's definitely not that many cats affected that you know of and yet there's a huge amount of concern because these things really do travel fast on social media. But you know, the company's done a recall lightning fast, which was pretty unbelievable. And so that was good. But, you know, you don't know much more than that, so I can't help but be a little bit skeptical, which is healthy, and go, I'll wait till the final thing comes out, because I can't think what's unique about cat food.

Well, it's certainly alarming because we've got, you know, clients coming in, say they've seen people queuing at the customer service desks in the couple of stores which are involved, you know, in trying to bring that food back and, you know, sort things out. So it is, you know, it is something that's important. If you've got friends, you know, just say, look, you need to stop feeding feeding that, you need to get onto fresh, obviously. But then you need to stop feeding that and take it back to the store.

What about aflatoxin, boys? Are cats more sensitive to aflatoxin? Aflatoxin is one of the most toxic things on the planet. Yeah, but maybe cats have got a greater, you know, so if you had a 10 parts per million when it should only be 1 part per million, but dogs it takes 20 to to have a negative effect, but cats, anything over 8, I'm thinking maybe there's some kind of sweet tooth.

That's why the toxin sort of story is out there still being looked at, because, you know, if there is something that's, that's going to cause those sort of problems, we know cats are really sensitive to all sorts of things, you know, even lily pollen and stuff like that, you know. It's, you know, their livers are particularly sensitive to, to a salt, so, you know, it's really strange, isn't it? You've got this this wonderful predator that's out there hunting, and you'd think that, you know, they'd hardened themselves up over the millennia to cope with a few toxic bits coming from their prey.

But this is toxic grain, this isn't something that they would pick up off the ground. They would eat this in a heartbeat. There's loads of studies, Nick, on aflatoxin, and there's not a single one documenting cats that I have here. But you have got maybe 4 or 5 major studies. '98, load of dogs. '98 again, loads of dogs. 2006, loads of dogs. Sometime after, a load of dogs. From aflatoxin, which is the rotten grain that— because wheat does not be treated the same way in humans, we store them in silos, but wheat for pets can be left outside in the rain. And so this, the stories of people spraying these piles of grain with all sorts of fungicides, and phosphine gas was one of them. I mean, it's such a poison. This guy just spray it with green phosphine gas, the grain coming in would be green to kill the fungus on it. So that's where the aflatoxin was coming from. Don't know much about cats on that.

Okay, that's something to look forward to, I think. Okay, cool. So Conor, anything interesting in your world?

Nothing interesting. I went away for a couple of nights there to a hotel, which is very nice. First experience of somebody taking your kid away for a few hours and you're watching her playing with other kids and stuff, and you know, you're a bit nervous initially, and then like you take out your book and you start enjoying yourself and you go, this is very nice. So look, it was great. Yeah, it's very nice. That was for 2 nights. So yeah, lovely. That was it. Nothing else to report, you know, just I feel like I'm so busy. What about you, Nick? Anything?

Cool, cool. No, really busy, really happy. I'm going to bore you with another book. I wasn't even planning to do this, but this is what my current obsession is, and it is food. The Gospel of the Eels. Oh yeah, yeah.

What's that about, Nick?

And it's, it's, it's strangely enough, Conor, it's about eels.

Okay, fair enough.

I kid you not. And it talks about the— as in the West, as in the sort of East End jellied eels. And well, it talks about where do they come from, where do they go, what do we know about them. And then he talks about his childhood, about going eel fishing. How do you fish for an eel, guys? Yeah, yeah, now I know. I know you don't. So there you go, buy the book, it's brilliant. It's a bit of science, a bit of folklore, a bit of historical storytelling. It goes back to Archimedes. Yeah, I think it goes back to him. And yeah, just a nice, really nice little book.

Just, I would say they're an excellent source of protein if I was to ram in the subject of the night. Actually, thanks to everybody on patreon.com. As always, you'll find us at rawpetmedics.com. We do actually talk about certain subjects each night, so that's where we kind of get our recommendations from. We're going to be due a poll soon because we've done the 3 topics, I think, guys.

We're doing hearts next.

We're doing hearts next. Oh, very good. We'll talk about the DCM nonsense next week. I'm definitely doing that. Okay, so let's talk a bit about protein, guys, the subject of the night. I have a feeling that this is going to be quite a broad one. I wonder whether it'll end in a two-parter, but if I could start as a general introduction for people that are watching, I think a lot of people are kind of a bit confused and at the same time a bit almost like over-stressing about some things and that you're so worried. Amino acids and things have made their way to the front of labels and it's quite confusing, you know, we're no longer eating fat, we're eating omegas, and we talk about omega-3s and 6s, but they don't know there's just a huge array of others. And so I wanted to bring it back a little bit just to show you how little we know a bit about protein. And starting off, I don't need to beat this drum again about low— the new low protein norm in dogs, because if anybody wants to go back and have a look at the carbohydrate videos that we did, the two of them, you can see how desperately poor the science is for dry food manufacturers, why they use high carbohydrate diets. There's not a jot of evidence that would back that stance up at all. It's just, you prove we're wrong. And it's very similar with protein, but it's just even worse. The dearth of information on low protein diets is staggering. So protein is really important in everybody, but you have to assume in dogs, because dogs— it comes from the Greek or Latin, comes from the Greek word proteus, which is of prime importance. So it's really, really important protein. They knew it always. And dogs eat an awful lot of it, even compared to us. We at least eat plants, which brings with a lot of carbohydrates and whatnot. Dogs eat animals, other animals, and a little bit of plant material. You know, that's another debate. So they eat a very high protein diet because most animals in the wild are lean for a lot of the year. Sometimes they're a bit fattier, but they eat a lot of protein and a little bit of fat. That's their diet. So you would think that these animals are brilliant with protein and probably needing a lot of it. So, you know, if you were to look at this, one of these massive books behind, Small Animal Clinical Nutrition, before 2010, okay, over your shoulder, Conor, you know, there's that little thing in the way. I must move that. So Small Animal Clinical Nutrition, before 2010, that's the book that was written by Colgate-Palmolive and is given to vets in college and told this is everything you need to know about Small Animal Clinical Nutrition, and very few really care that it's, that it's, you know, published by Hill's Pet Food. So it doesn't mention raw dog food in the 1,300 pages. Huge, huge book, actually very interesting in parts. But when you go to the protein bit and go, this should be important now, this is going to be very interesting, they use 2 studies to defend their use of 18% protein in dogs. Like, you have like a rabbit with the water sucked out of them is largely protein, 60-70% protein, 10% fat, and a bit of ash and stuff. Okay, so he's lots of protein and a bit of fat. Suddenly dogs are being recommended to eat 18% protein, which is the minimum you're allowed to feed a dog and call it complete food, not the optimum. So any dry food using 18% protein is the legal, in inverted commas, minimum you're allowed to offer a dog. So before 2010, there was two studies used to defend this stance of any value. One was by Ramsdals and Ferguson, who, you know, have come up with some gems in the past. They did a study using beef and soy-based dry food. It was nearly irrelevant. It was from the early '80s. And the second study was by Torres in the early 2000s, and he used 6 dogs over 6 days— 6 dogs fed 6 diets for a year. And on that basis, this 18% protein thing got a tick mark and said, this seems like a good thing to do. Like, so for such an outrageous move from 70% protein down to 18%, it's an extraordinary move which requires extraordinary evidence. And we have two— that's before 2010. In 2010, they just did away with that. That was getting too complicated for people. So in this 1,300-page book, in the, in the 5th edition, um, they start talking about the absolute minimum dietary protein requirement of dogs. So it's gone from being a minimum to the absolute minimum. Why are these books so obsessed with minimum protein? You know, where is optimum gone? They go on to talk about the 18%. Now it's 8% dry matter protein. Dogs can actually exist on 8% dry matter protein, and it doesn't matter what the rest of it is. It doesn't matter if the rest of it is sugar or Skittles, it's fine as long as 8% protein is in there.

And with that 8% protein, Conor, does that all have to be animal protein? No, no, it's like, uh, 50%—

so no definition on how much animal protein needs to be in pet food. Yeah, yeah. So if you don't use— you're allowed to use 3 to 4% meat meal, and if you say with beef or with chicken, you have to say 3 or 4%. But other than that, you know, if you don't like— you just wouldn't like beef or chicken, you'd make vegetarian dry food. And so AFCO kind of— they had this one study in defense of that anyway, this 8% dry matter thing, and it was just another nonsense for over 50 years. I think some of the studies were to defend it. Anyway, the point is there's bovine protein being used in dry food, but I think more interesting is the fact that nobody ever asks what the protein is, you know what I mean? People see a picture of a beef or a cow or a chicken on the front, and like, we kind of know that's not in our chicken nuggets. Okay, even though they do say these 100% breast meat in some chicken looks, you kind of know when you eat a frankfurter, I'm eating bum here, you know, I'm not eating, I'm not eating thigh muscle or whatever. So you kind of need to start asking the questions because if I told you what some of the ingredients were in dry food, I mean, they're included in the meat, okay, check this out, you are allowed to include hair, dehydrated, this is in the States, hair, dehydrated food waste, dehydrated garbage, dehydrated rumen contents, dried poultry waste, dried swine waste not containing less than 20% protein, 35% crude fiber, wood shavings, and everything else. So this stuff is permitted in dose in the meat meal that's been made for dry food. So people are not asking the right questions, because if I was to show you, you know, engine oil for my fat and carbohydrate, it was the fillings of a pigsty, and the protein was an old boot, this was the dry food I was selling, you'd ask some questions and go, well, Jesus, I don't spend any money on that. And we go, well, now you're asking questions. Because a blog post I did last week, I was holding bone meal in my hand in the garden center. The guy was— my plants were going yellow, they were starving apparently. I didn't know whether— I thought it was a summer coat that they had, but because they always went yellow in summer, because these are bay trees, and so the hedge always went yellow. I just never thought— it always went green again in wintertime. So, uh, he goes, no, your plant's starving, it needs some bone meal, would be great. And I'm looking at the bone meal going, this isn't very vegetarian.

And then I had a eureka moment.

I posted this during the week, so apologies if everybody has seen this already. I got to thinking, this is bone meal, and bone meal is white, you know, ash. And I look at it and I go, bone meal, bone meal has to be the same thing as meat and bone meal that farmers spread on their land, which I've seen because my uncle's a farmer. And they call it— while gardeners call it bone meal because it looks exactly like dried bones, farmers call it meat and bone meal because it comes from a rendering plant. And I start thinking, oh my God, this is what meat meal is. Because unless dry food companies are buying a different rendered meat product, which they absolutely aren't, they don't have their own rendering plants. These plants are colossal. They make one product, they stew up the waste, and you buy the gray gloop from underneath, which is the sunken bones. It stews up waste from the meat, from the meat industry, which is largely bones. They don't make money throwing meat muscle to the rendering plants. So I'm standing there going, oh my God, bone meal is meat and bone meal that farmers use, and feed back to cows still in the EU. Okay, we take out the brains and spines, don't we? They're still there.

We do, we do, we do. BSE, yeah, yeah, you're still—

BSE, that's all banned now. You're not allowed to feed, you're not allowed to feed animals back to animals.

You're not allowed to bolster your animal. Are you not allowed? I was always— I Googled it and I got, I got led astray then. You're not allowed to bolster your kind of your, your grain forages for winter-fed animals with, with meat meal.

No, it's for swine and any TSE risk animals.

You're not allowed to put them back in anymore, even though they've taken the brain and spine out of the kind of rendering process. That's interesting. That's heartening to hear.

And that's good because they used to use it as protein bolstering for their feeds.

Although in, in 2010, when the Michael Pollan book was out, he was saying that they do— they were feeding swine and cattle meal to cattle in the States. With completely different regulations.

That's the thing, we're broadcasting around the world and different countries have different legislation. Yeah, following BSE in the UK, they took the stance that you cannot feed these animals to animals.

Yeah, and it's really the same with pets as well. When people get wired to the fact that, you know, pets, cats and dogs, can go for rendering in the States— they can't go for rendering here, they must go for cremation. But in the States, there's plenty of rendering companies that take cats and dogs. So staggering amounts. In '93, the New York Times had a 7 to 9 million cats and dogs went for rendering. And renderers sell meat meal, and they sell meat meal to pet food companies. And so Tikson has traced this, that like, you know, they've confirmed the dry food companies, they're buying the meat meal back. They're not DNA testing this stuff. Sodium pentobarbital, which is the stuff used to euthanize pets, is the second most common cause of dry food recall in the US after salmonella. You know, that's staggering. Imagine that. I mean, anyway, um, so the— I couldn't believe that like bone meal was meat and bone meal and now it's meat meal, uh, to pet food companies. But there's bugger all meat in it because, you know, slaughterhouses and whatnot are experts at taking every bit of flesh off. And by the time you buy mince from a cow if they're practically paring it off the fat. Okay, so what they send into the rendering plants doesn't have meat left in it. Your job is to take the meat off the carcass. So meat meal is actually bone meal, which I'm staggered with. And now they don't even have to say meat meal. Now they call it dried meat or dehydrated meat. And yet I'm looking at it going, this is dried bone. There's no meat on this, you know. So that was an absolute— I ended up using seaweed, by the way, if anybody's wondering. I have tons of them.

You couldn't put your hand in anything else.

I can't say it's working, the bloody things always go yellow. I'm right, it's just a yellow coat that this particular plant has. So like last of all, I just wanted to say to cat owners, the taurine thing is kind of interesting, right? We stress madly about taurine, it's the one amino acid that comes up when people start talking, except for tryptophan might help my dog calm down, like which has only been shown in the dogs fed desperately low protein dry food. Every other analysis of that, it doesn't work at all. You can't kind of ram this stuff across the brain barrier to the— so anyway, there's all sorts of stuff. And so the taurine thing is interesting because in the '70s, what we're talking about next week, DCM, it's a heart issue, and it's really a taurine-related issue for the most part. And in the '70s, they stopped including taurine in pet food, which essentially meant they probably stopped including meat altogether in the '70s in pet food. And this is where AFCO came from. As much as we love to slag them off, I do, AFCO came about really because the powers that be in the States, the NRC and a couple of others, stepped in and said, we've got to get pet food off the floor, guys, because tens of thousands of cats were going blind and dying and all sorts of issues from this lack of taurine. And it was the start of pet food recalls, it was the start of issues being flagged and recorded and stuff. It all came from this lack of taurine. And still today, people think, oh, my dog doesn't have enough, or my cat doesn't have enough taurine. Is there enough taurine in this raw food? But taurine is the Latin that comes from, from the bull, you know, and it comes because we know ox and beef is a brilliant source of this amino acid. But I just wanted to finish with the fact that while we worried about that taurine issue, that was an ultra-processed pet food. We use so little of everything that if you add in anything, it'll be good for the animal. Raw goes the opposite way and gives so much protein to the dog, a normal amount, and because we vary it, the need to understand like how you're going to use amino acids to increase the health of your pet, it's nearly not— it's nearly, nearly kind of a falsehood, you know what I mean? It's just this real kind of way we've broken it down when there is not going to be an amino acid shortage in your pet if you cycle through your proteins. It's one of the reasons why you should increase variation all the time, because you can't just feed one animal all the time and expect to get his protein needs because it's going to have certain amounts. You're going to get lots of tryptophan from turkey, you might get bugger all from, you know, fish or whatever other animal. So that's why I would say if you're asking my advice on protein, I'd say I wouldn't overthink this amino acid business. You're certainly not going to test an animal because it's so expensive to get down to the amino acid level.

So you just got to cycle through it and like we do our own diets, like as if certain amino acids And you talk about why if you're feeding meats, you're not really looking at, oh my God, there's that— we need to prop this particular amino acid up with this particular meat because they are found throughout those meat sources.

Yeah.

Or because really we talk then about certain plants seem to be deficient in certain essential amino acids. We, we therefore are concerned more on, on that, because obviously as an animal, if you're an animal and you're made up of, uh, you know, proteins, you're going to have all of those essential amino acids within you. So if you're a predator, you're going to collect those from that source as long as you haven't corrupted it with a load of processing. Yes, which is one issue, which is why they add taurine back to these processed foods.

Yeah, absolutely.

I don't get it wrong. Um, So what plants would you be particularly— because we speak to lots of vegetarians come on and ask why can't we give certain vegetable proteins to our pets, you know, what ones would you say are alarming with deficiencies? Do you have a requisite for that or do you just—

I don't, but I went for a very quick Google as you're speaking there and I went for the very first one, taurine, because they knew thousands of years ago probably, but they knew that, you know, taurine comes from eating meat, from eating red meat, and particularly eating beef. And I was looking for a vegetable source of taurine, they said there's no vegetable source of taurine, it's only from animal foods and dairy. And it's kind of like, I'm pretty sure a huge lot of the essential amino acids, I think there's 7 or something of the 13 or 14 that they know of, that they consider, you know, 7 of them are essential to the dog, they have to get them, and they're all found in meat. And I bet you if I went through them all, I'd imagine plants would be very low in a lot of them, you know. I can't imagine the precursors of taurine, which is methionine and cysteine, I can't imagine there's a whole lot of that in plants either. So yeah, you're spot on there. That would be something that they would add in and hope that their conical flask taurine is as good as real taurine, which I'm sure Muniz is going to talk about.

Yeah, I would say that I have not come— there's lots of diets out there that claim to be vegetarian for cats, and I go But actually, taurine can only come from a meat source. I've not actually come across a non-meat source of taurine, so I'm pretty sure that therefore, in order to get that, you are not really feeding a vegetarian diet.

However, we don't endorse feeding cats definitely a vegetarian diet, and I would go as far as a dog shouldn't be fed a vegetarian diet. If you want a vegetarian pet, get a rabbit, get a goat. I'm really serious about that.

And there's lots of other proteins in that we don't talk— we don't talk about creatine, spermine, like there's just so many -ines that people crack up on when they're going to the gym, you know, and it's just like, how much creatine does your dog need? It's like, I don't know, it's not in it though, it's not in pet food. We don't add it in, they don't add spermine in, they don't add glucosamine chondroitin. That's a benefit for older dogs. It's like All these are really crucial bits that come from eating meat on the bone. So meat's not just protein, it's not just essential amino acids, it's a sink of everything that that animal was eating. All the bioactive compounds that your animal is not finding out and about is found in the bits and pieces of the animal you're eating. So this idea of carbohydrates, protein, fat, even amino acids, omegas, it goes way deeper than that. It's a spider web of nutrients we can't even pronounce, and, uh, you know, it just gets too complex. So why bother going looking much under the hood, you know, very round, good quality meat and get the benefits of everything that's in the meat. It's a— I mean, even blood alone has all these opioid-like substances that calm carnivores down and we don't even talk about blood. It's just like, you know, it's so complex protein. Anyway, that's all I have to say. It's very complex. Don't bother thinking about it.

Also, if we're talking about protein, which I don't think we should be talking about protein, we should be talking about meat. Yeah, that's actually the food. Otherwise we're scientizing, we're nutritionizing. This stuff that we put in our faces. Yeah, I think we should be talking about meat and I think we should be talking about grass-fed meat for this, for the welfare of the animal from which it comes, but also the nutrition involved in a grass— in grass-fed lamb and grass-fed pig and grass-fed cow is completely different. You're getting omega-3s that you think you only ever get from fish and flax. You're getting vitamin C that you'd only think you'd only get from oranges, but you're going to get that in that grass-fed product. It is completely different. It looks like it's more expensive, but actually the only, the only reason the cheap stuff is cheap is because the petrol is subsidized and yeah, it's subsidized and everything else. It's actually the cheapest meat on the planet.

And this is where I come in. I know we talked a few weeks back about the Animal Diet Formulator, and quite a few people commented, wow, that's a really expensive bit of kit. Um, and I made a comment earlier with regards to that, that, you know, it's great in theory if you are super worried about somebody coming after you and you're making a diet for huge numbers of people and you— but it is still based on the issues that you've got with AFCO and FEDIAF. It also doesn't differentiate pasture from intensively reared farmed meats. It doesn't look—

it doesn't—

it does on some of them. If some of it, it says, well, certainly a lot of them don't.

And I was even talking to the guys from Animal Diet Formulator, and they actually turned around to me and said they don't believe there's enough difference in their eyes on their measures for putting differences in between pasteurized and across the, across the—

no way, truly not.

Because they don't necessarily go into all of the micronutrients in each element for the balance.

What have they looked at to be able to make that statement? I think we need to—

I think, yeah, well, this is it. They talked about chicken, and we were doing a whole conference on this later in the year with the RFBS, you know, to formulate or not to formulate, you know, the— and we are going to explore this, but there is so much difference coming about, you know, measuring nutrients to calorific values and whether that's a true thing to do or not, you know, looking at differences on absorption. But I think there's such importance in recognizing that something that's processed is not the same as something that's fresh. Something that is pasture-reared, as you've just rightly said, in my mind, is not the same as something that's been reared in a tiny cage in a barn. And then the other bit is that, you know, we know facts down, protein X is not the same as protein Y. Hair and coat keratin is a type of protein, okay? But boy, if you just feed that to your dog, you will see the poop factor go up tenfold because they just don't digest it. It acts like fiber for those carnivores, yeah, and it just bulks out their feces. So if you're wondering, my dog's feces is, you know, they're packed with protein but they are pooping like a trooper, Okay, it is probably that actually the protein source isn't actually that digestible. I mean, let's face it, you stick them onto a chicken and egg, you know, recovery diet, and all of a sudden the amount of feces they pass zooms down to very little. And the same concerns me with this insect interest that's going on. I can understand if it's the grubs, you know, there's a totally different, you know, digestion and what's in those grubs ready to be utilized. But when it comes to chitinous outer coats of crickets and things like that, I can imagine, yeah, that's full of protein, but how digestible is that? You know, is it just going to bulk out? And I've certainly heard that actually it does give quite voluminous fecal matter when they go on to these insect diets.

So that's the Royal Canin An-an-allergic, I can never say it, it, but it's their most, most unallergic of their diet. And they say on the headline it contains feather meal. Yeah, that's where they get all the protein from. It's so sad.

So there's a source of protein, but it's feathers.

He said, the head man said, Levi said the source of the protein isn't important. It's like, I beg to differ, man. That's just— somebody just put up there, I think it was, was it Rutherford? Emma just said Seaweed, good old seaweed contains taurine. I never knew that. Red seaweed only. Red seaweed contains taurine, it's quite high content of it. I can't believe that. Nice factoid, Emma. And then somebody else said there, I talked to an Indian vet and the cats are fed purely on vegan diets and they said that those cats were thriving. I say, well, like they said those cats were thriving, what we're lacking is a study of, you know, the longevity of these animals and the health of them. Because I always compare it to, well, my mate's better than me at football, I keep saying to him, and he smokes What's that tell you about smoking? It tells you nothing. The test is 11 smokers against 11 nonsmokers, and you watch the smokers lose in the second half. That's what those studies are like. We don't have these—

talk about second half, the football's on.

Yes, don't talk about that. So, so yeah. So, Nick, what—

well, guys, yeah, I was— where does protein come from? How do we make it? I think that that's really, really important. So Let me just take you through a little bit of that. I've got 3 little nuggets that I'd love to share with you. Number 1 is how's it made? Because many years ago I studied this and I've been fascinated by it ever since.

So that's number 1.

Number 2 is what does the body use protein for? Yeah, is it just for nutrition or is it just for your hair or what is it? Let's have a look at that. And the 3rd thing, I want to demonstrate what happens when you have you or your dog has permanently raised blood glucose levels? What happens with all that glucose floating around in your system? And I'll give you a little story about that. But so first of all, let's think about, if we may, let's think about a zip, a good metal zip, okay? And we twist either end so that we produce a helix, okay? That is my model of a DNA, okay? It comes from your chromosomes, which comes from your mum and dad. Thank you very much, mum and dad. And they come together, and that's why they splice together. Okay. How do you get from DNA to protein in your blood, albumin in your blood, for example? Okay, this is how it works. I'm just going to go through it. I'm going to use lots of pictures. And I think it's really fascinating. If you want to go make a coffee, now's the time to do it. Metal, metal zip. Okay, that's the real deal. And what you do is in the middle of that zip, it's impossible to do in the real world. But let's pretend we can undo it so that, so that half the teeth are there, and then half the teeth are there. Okay, just in the middle, we zipped up either, either end. Okay, so this is the DNA, it's really happy, it gets unzipped. And then what happens is mRNA, messenger RNA comes along, and it's like a fork. And it's like a plastic, a pretty cheap, and kind of throwaway. So it's disposable RNA, and it matches onto your proper, proper RNA, okay, and forms a match of that bit which, which has been opened up, because that's opened up, has got your genes for albumin for your blood, okay. So you've now got an exact copy of a, just of a run of the gene which makes albumin. Fantastic. Where do you go from there? So that then floats out of the nucleus. We're in the nucleus here, by the way. That floats out of the nucleus into the cytoplasm— wonderful word— and finds its way to a ribosome, which is basically a factory, a sub-factory of the nucleus. And the mRNA then just gets laid down, and it becomes the template, just as the metal zip in the nucleus was the template. Okay, that zip gets zipped back up and put away for another day. In the ribosome, you've got this, this, this temporary RNA. And what happens is there's a wonderful molecule in the cytoplasm called transfer RNA, which grabs amino acids one by one and links them down 3 base pairs at a time. Don't worry about the detail. It links them 3 base pairs at a time so that the one amino acid links onto another amino acid, links onto another amino acid, links onto another until you have a chain of amino acids, which if it's short, you call a peptide. And if it's a bit longer, you call it a polypeptide. And if it's long, long and proper long, and that's kind of maybe a few hundred to a few thousand amino acids, it's called a protein. And that's how you make protein. It's basically like a string of pearls. We're changing our metaphors now. So now we've made our protein. Okay. And it's like a string of pearls, and each pearl has a different magnetic charge. Now, look out, lads, I know you're going to say magnets don't get— pearls don't get magnetized, but bear with me. These are magnetic pearls. They've all got a difference. Yeah. So all the alanines have a certain, certain magnetism, and all the histidines have got another different magnetism. So when you allow it to come together, it folds in one certain way, so it creates one certain shape. So when you transcribe albumin from the nucleus, it will, and this is the amazing thing about it, with incredible reproduce, like 99% reliability, always produce this one complex molecule called albumin. And and that is then transported out of the, out of the cell that it was made in, into the, into the blood where it thickens the blood. Happy days. Everybody's happy. Do you think that's amazing?

It is amazing that that's amazing. Because a process like that, when you think about it, came from one cell. For all those cells to come together to build your own stuff when you need a 3D printer style. I mean, it's nuts. It's like, oh, you need a bit more, you know, of this particular proteins. They're nonessential amino acids. Essential amino acids you can't even make yourself, you have to ingest them. Is that so? I assume that they are nonessential amino acids, Nick. That's how you make— they're the proteins you can make yourself.

They are the proteins that you can make. Yes.

It's amazing that the body can just fix itself. We need more. Get making it, lads. And you get it from the building blocks.

So histidine, histidine, for example, is, is, is an essential, which means you can't make it. That's as simple as that. Therefore, you've got to eat it. And there's quite a good argument for, yeah, for omnivory.

And yeah, so that is, it is, unless of course you're carnivore and then you're eating somebody else's meat that's already got it in.

It's already got it in. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So they're more clever than you. So how do you, how do you use protein? Where do you use protein in the body? So it's used for antibodies, for example, you know, these kind of stick-shaped things, they, or multiples thereof, they are made of They're made of protein. So no protein, no antibodies. No antibodies, you're dead in hours because you're not going to be able to defend yourself. You also use it for enzymes. So if you give omega-3 to a chemist and you give them about a week and about a million dollar grant, they will make you a couple of grams of DHA or EPA. However, the body using these proteins can stick that together for no charge, more or less at all. And they'll do it 1,000 times over to make, to make grams and grams and grams and grams in, in minutes.

If you give it the building blocks, they—

yeah, you give them building blocks and they will— and the body will make it. So the enzymes are amazing. No enzymes, no EPA, no DHA, you disappear in a puff of inflammation. Also messengers. All, more or less all your hormones are proteins. Yes, for example, thyroid protein. Yeah, if that goes too high, you get really jumpy. And if it goes too low, you kind of get a bit sluggish or a bit aggressive or, you know, what have you. So really important stuff. Structural components, your hair, your muscle, they are muscle protein. I'll just say for a second, your muscle protein Can you see that? Yeah, works when you contract. So when you contract your muscle, there's two proteins, like they crawl along each other like this, and that is a— not much of a muscle, but you know what I mean. It contracts up. That's how you get contraction.

And also, you fall down each other, like, sort of understanding that bone is not just some mineral dead material. It is a protein matrix.

Which is very mineralized, which comes back to your, your point, Conor, about the, about the bone meal. I mean, because you could make it just out of bone and there would still be quite a high protein content.

Yeah, it's half protein or so, isn't it?

You know, yeah, it would be. Okay, so then it's transport as well. We talk about LDL transport and cholesterol. My final point, just in the last thing, is I just want to talk about, I just want to talk about protein. Okay, and what, and what have you presented that in that way? Yeah, that's not what you said half an hour ago. And what happens, right, what happens when you, when you have a persistently raised glucose level in your blood, right? This is what happens. These, can you see that?

Does that make sense?

It sounds like you're scattering things on the floor, Nick.

Yeah, hundreds of thousands. Okay, so basically your proteins are just getting clogged up with the glucose, and that's called glycolysis, but you can call it getting clogged up with anything. Imagine sticking your hands in honey and then walking into the kitchen to try and make a meal. That's called getting clogged up, and that's what happens when you have that.

Glycation, isn't it?

This is glycation, that's right. And when you've got loads of it, you'll also get what they call—

don't take those home for the kids—

advanced glycation end products. Can you see the ends are glycated?

Yeah.

When they talk about AGEs, that's what you need to bear in mind, advanced glycation end products. So this is glycation that happens all the time. And when you really go to town, you get advanced glycation end product. I thought it would stick a bit more actually.

And we, and we talk about that as one of the age indicators, don't we, Nick? Which is not, not just age as in AGE, but also age as in how old we feel, because it's about how well we function, how well those proteins function. So there's the telomere ends of our DNA, which, you know, if that shortens, that's another aging sign. And then there's the things like the glycation products that you're talking about that can happen both on cell surfaces, enzymes, all sorts of factors, which also means that those don't work as efficiently. And we call that an aging. And it's one of the things that nutritionists often will, you know, they'll test you for to get your glycation age, okay, rather than your, you know, how does that compare to your true age? And I think it's really interesting to see how that's been put out there now as a new way of looking at your health rather than just being—

Look, all the value are all over that, aren't they? Yeah, that's the, that's the thing they're trying to use to— that's their secret weapon to live over 150, isn't that? That's the dream of all these guys, but they're looking at ages and all kind of stuff. Yeah, it's very interesting. All the guys, although Elon Musk loves a bit of us, he loves that. Yeah, all that, all this— what's the name of the group of people that They all swear they're going to live over 150.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. So apparently it's very doable as long as you slow down this. They say it's just aging is just a disease. That's their thing. So, yeah, I never looked into it. I can't— I don't have anything to add here. But wow.

Yeah.

You know what?

If you live 150 years and you have to, you know, not get angry, not like getting angry or not get— not have fun or not take any risks. Trampolining would be out. And, you know, uh, uh, not, not, you know, um, having fun, having a little beer every now and again, you know, those kind of things. Do you really want to live to 100, 100 years?

Not the years in your life, isn't it?

Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Um, we haven't really— I mean, we've just— there's so much other things. So I wanted to talk about male eye reactions and stuff as well.

Yeah, well, I was going to come into digestion. We'll have to do protein 2, because it's all about digestion and the different proteins.

There's an interesting— people are wondering about, um, the— on certainly on my page there, they were saying, you know, the effects of cooking on your meat. Can animals live on cooked meat diets? And I'd love to be able to tell you there was any studies on that. There isn't, you know. Well, we have different types of cooked products, but we don't have kind of a well-made, gently cooked diet, because the secret about cooking is low and slow and avoiding the high temperatures where meat goes antigenic and it can cause you trouble for so it's how you cook that meat, uh, would be interesting, and the things that are lost when you cook, and how you cook the bits and pieces, and using the water that cooked in, all sorts of stuff. So maybe there is another episode in this, guys, where we talk about, uh, that kind of thing. And there is times you can use amino acids and stuff, there is supplements and stuff I'm sure that work, but I'd like to talk about the tryptophan delusion a bit. And I'm sure we'll think of a million other things in these questions that we're not—

yeah, because we've also— we've not even touched on microbiome. Oh God, no, I did touch on it because I've just said it. So, you know, there's stuff about microbiome. There's also, uh, somebody did ask the question about how do we avoid that. So what dried foods avoid that Maillard reaction? Because there are some out there, um, that do the air dried at 40 degrees and less.

Yeah.

Um, so, you know, why, why would we consider those, and would we consider those versus that raw in certain situations.

The problem with all the low temperature cooking ultra-processed foods is that they have to have a bacterial kill step. So if you're taking meat from the meat industry and everybody on the inside knows, if you've ever been a manufacturer, that your meat is not coming in with zero baddies on it, simple as that. It's not unless it comes from the mirror space station. It's not. It doesn't. You don't blow zero. In fact, if your meat comes in with zero and I've tested a few foods that have zero life you should have more questions than, that's not to be celebrated. It's like, how does this have no life on it? That's worrying. So I've asked a couple of the higher-end, one of them in the US, we're very disappointed. I won't name them, but I might name them next week. And a couple of the cold-press guys here who say they don't cook over 70. And I say, okay, so it's either chemicals or heat. How did you kill the bacteria in your product? And there's a couple of dodgy answers. And I said, chemicals or heat, which one was it? Oh, well, we do use a drying step, but we don't call it cooking. That's like, yeah, you see, there you go. If your drying step is over 100 degrees, that's the sort of cooking we wanted to avoid when we bought your cold-pressed pet food. So unless there's a cold-pressed pet food manufacturer out there that can correct me on that one, and I really hope there is, so you're left with guys that are drying meat using air and dehydrators, which is absolutely brilliant, fantastic to them. But that is very difficult because the meat going into that machine has to be zero bacteria, zero pathogenic bacteria. Which is a very, very big ask. It's doable because some companies are doing it, but it's extremely difficult. So I hope that's kind of— there's more time can be spent on that answer, guys, I'm sure.

Well, we're going to do that following, but next week we promised hearts.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

So we're going to talk about hearts. Okay. We're going to talk about which all— we'll revisit some of the stuff about what goes wrong, how nutrition can affect that and what things you can add in heart disease. So that's all next week. So guys, we look forward to seeing you then. We're going to then look at probably the week after, depending on who's around, because holiday season's coming. And obviously we keep getting reminded in the comments list about are we not watching the football. So depends which match is on as to whether we're actually going to be presented, but I'm sure protein too will be certainly highlighted in the pipeline. Yeah, yeah, brilliant. Fantastic.

Thanks everyone again on patreon.com for—

thanks to everybody.

Yeah, that keeps us all going. And, uh, so yeah, guys, that was really good. And, uh, we'll do a poll then next week on the next 3 topics that we're going to be covering. Um, so we've got a long list and we can pitch them to you and you can just pick 3, and whoever gets the most votes, that's, that's the way we do it. So we will see you at this time next week, guys. Keep your questions coming. Any questions you need answered, send them to Patreon and we'll get to them as soon as we can. Okay, guys.

Thank you, guys.

Thanks, guys. All the