How Protein Reduces Cravings, Supports Muscle, And Promotes Health

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

The first meal of the day, whenever you have it, whether you're having it at 8:00 in the morning or 11:00 or noon, is the most important meal. That is the primary meal to get dietary protein correct.

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Week'S episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy. Hi, this is Lauren Feehan, one of the producers of the Doctor's Pharmacy podcast. Protein plays an essential role in our health, but many people are not consuming enough of it for healthy muscle metabolism, satiety and more. Whether you're a meat eater or vegetarian, it's vital to optimize your protein intake and diversify protein sources. In today's episode, we feature four conversations from the Doctor's Pharmacy on why protein is so important and how to get enough of it. Dr. Hyman speaks with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon on the amount of protein needed, with Dr. David Herbert who offers a different perspective for those who eat vegetarian or vegan diets, with Dr. Frank Lipman on.

Protein powders, and again with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon on why protein is so important in our diets.

Let's jump in.

There are certain amino acids that are found in higher concentrations in animal protein that are critical for activating muscle synthesis. In order to start the process of building muscle, you need to eat a certain amount, and I think what I've understood is about two and a half grams of leucine per meal to actually activate the switch to turn on muscle synthesis. If you don't eat that, it tends to turn into just a source of calories, which is a correct terrible, but it's not building muscle.

It's not building muscle.

Right.

That is accurate. So what you're talking about is something.

That'S- and by the way, what you're saying is in order to get that much leucine, you need to eat six cups of quinoa or four ounces of chicken.

Yes, three ounces of chicken. Yes, it's just not feasible if you are going to try to do it through a whole food based way in which you could do it. Could you do it through soy and other plant isolates? You can. I have concerns over plant isolates over a long period of time. Again, I have no- so what you're.

Saying, when you mean in English is if you're eating processed protein powders that come from pea and soy.

It doesn't exist in nature.

And they're jacked up often too.

Yeah, they just don't exist in nature. And over the long term, that concerns me. And again, I just want to say that I'm not against anyone who wants to be vegan or vegetarian. It's completely personal choice, but you can't say that it's healthier for you. And when we are talking about building muscle, the key amino acid really, as you had mentioned, mentioned earlier is leucine. And leucine is that branched chain amino acid that is high in things like whey protein and animal. So for every 30 grams or four, a little over four ounces of beef or something like that, you'll get 30 grams of leucine or chicken.

30 grams of protein.

30 grams of protein. Yes. Pardon me. 30 grams of protein. You'll get two and a half grams of leucine, which really works as a switch, especially midlife. When you're younger, you could get away with a little bit less protein, you know, but when you are older, I like to of a practical application of 30 grams of dietary protein, 30 grams meaning a little over four ounces, to get a robust leucine hit. So what happens with leucine?

Yeah.

So just to clarify a little bit, just before you jump into that, to clarify what you're saying is if you want to be vegan, you can do it, but you need to supplement the amino acids either as an amino acid supplement or with protein powders that are jacked up with extra branched chain amino acids, that you can't just do it with plants alone and eat the quantity of food that's gonna require you to, that it's gonna require you to do to actually build the muscle.

Is that accurate? It would be very difficult.

That is accurate. And it would be very difficult to-.

I can't eat six cups of quinoa. I mean, I don't know about you.

Yeah. And then if we translate that over.

To a younger person, I think- Or even two cups of beans, right? We do a real disservice to say younger individuals when we take away or say that animal-based products or unhealthy. I think that that, you know, when we think about the people that have lower appetites, like an older population, again, I'm a geriatrician by training, they're not eating a lot. So if we say, okay, you're not eating a lot, but I really want you to go vegan or vegetarian, but you really need to consume dietary protein to protect against sarcopenia, which is loss of muscle mass and function, and also to protect your skeletal muscle, I think.

We really run into problems. Yeah.

But.

So finish what you're saying about sort of the amount of protein and what that means.

The amount of protein. Really thinking about the overall protein content of your diet is important. Number one, if we were thinking about the hierarchy, how much are you getting in a 24-hour period? The next most important aspect of understanding dietary protein is really thinking about as a meal threshold. So protein as it relates to a meal threshold amount. And this was done.

Which means how much you need to eat at each meal.

Exactly. And this is- Just trying to speak.

English here, because I don't think it's- As smart as you. I.

Never listen to smart people, they know. I mean, you guys know, give me a break. How much protein you need per meal. And actually, this discovery was out of Don Layman's lab, where he discovered this amino acid, well, one of his graduate students, Tracy Anthony, really, they discovered that leucine was required in a meal amount, which is an amazing contribution to science. so what does that mean for the listener? That means in order to maintain healthy skeletal muscle, you do want to create a flux, you do want to be able to turn it over, you do want to be able to stimulate this complex within the muscle called mTOR. And mTOR is mechanistic target of rapamycin that is stimulated by insulin, it's stimulated by amino acids, it can be stimulated by exercise, and really leucine is the primary driver for stimulating mTOR and then subsequently assuming you have all the amino acids, you will be able to lay down new tissue, new protein, generate new proteins. Yeah.

So this is, you just sort of dipped into something that's really important, which is a couple things I want to get back to. One is how much protein do you need to eat per meal? Does it matter when you eat it? Can you eat all your daily protein requirements in one meal? Do you need to spread out through the day? And how does that work? So let's kind of tackle that. And then we're going to come back.

To mTOR because that just opens up.

A whole can of worms about aging and longevity. I want to hear what we land on with this because you and I have talked about this many times.

Yeah.

How you ingest dietary protein is really dependent on a couple of things. Number one, your goals. Number two, your age. And number three, your activity. Okay? When I think about dietary protein, and this is what I have seen in the literature, this is what I've seen from, again, my longtime mentor, we collaborate and put together these protocols, is the first meal of the day, whenever you have it, is the most important. Whether you're having it at 8:00 in the morning or 11:00 or noon, the first meal after an overnight fast, when you are in a catabolic, which means a breaking down state, is the most important meal. That is the primary meal to get dietary protein correct, no matter what your goals are. Again, this is my opinion, and this is what we've seen in some of the studies and our work together, Don's and mine work together, is that first meal of the day is most important. The reason is you're coming off of an overnight fast. Your skeletal muscle which again, skeletal muscle is the voluntary muscle control. Like, you know, are you jacked and tan, what your biceps are. That meal and hitting a minimum of 30 grams of protein, actually upward between 30 to 50 grams, which seems like a lot, but can be very valuable because not only do you optimize for muscle protein synthesis, because as Mark, as you had mentioned before, it either turns on or it doesn't. But really, you want to turn it on and you probably want to max out the system. And to max out the system, you want to push that leucine number threshold up a little bit higher. So between 30 and 50 grams, that first meal of the day is most valuable. And that's also the meal I tend to have a lower carbohydrate amount in because I really want to focus on dietary protein. Again, can you add carbohydrates? You can if you're training, if it's within your macronutrient range, you totally can.

So this totally explains why 93% of Americans are in poor metabolic health because the average breakfast in America is a disaster, right? French toast, pancakes, toast, cereal, muffins. I mean, the sugared coffees people have, I mean, I think people are using a ton of oat milk these days and people don't realize it.

It's called oat juice. I refuse to call almond milk, almond milk. It has to be almond juice. You have to call it almond juice.

And it's so high. I mean, some of them are better in terms of their carbohydrate load, but it's like you have an oat latte. You think, oh, I'm doing something healthy, but actually you're just taking a big load of sugar. And so I think that's a big disaster. We don't have typically high protein breakfast in America. You might have steak and eggs and bacon if you're a cowboy, but it's like pretty unusual to be eating that. and eggs have gotten a bad rap, so people think, oh, I should stay away from eggs.

This is another really good point that you bring up is that it's also so the dietary protein to stimulate muscle, but also the subsequent nutritive effects of the amino acids. Well, dietary protein also will decrease hunger. And there's been studies that will show that those individuals that have a higher protein breakfast are much less likely to crave later on in the day and/or go to the high satiety, highly palatable foods like you had mentioned for breakfast, like the French toast and the donuts later on in the 3:00 afternoon when everyone is going for it.

Right. So basically it helps regulate your appetite, it builds muscle, it prevents you laying down fat.

I mean, it helps with your metabolism just by the sheer fact of, you know, there's a thermogenic effect of protein. Yeah, we haven't talked about that. The thermogenic effect of protein really, and I've thought a lot about this because it's very variable in the literature, and I believe it's variable because when people are under consuming protein, they don't hit enough protein to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. When you hit enough protein to stimulate muscle protein synthesis, that's where you get that real thermic effect of food, where it actually takes energy.

Yeah, so this is a really important concept. So basically, some foods take more energy to metabolize.

And, or utilize, right?

And you, that's what I mean by metabolize. So utilize, in other words, you have to process protein and it actually uses more energy. I wrote about this in Ultra Metabolism, like almost 20 years ago.

And, I don't believe it's been that long, but yes. Yeah.

And that was so clear to me that if you eat protein, you actually get this thermic effect, which is kind of like a bonus. You can literally lose pounds and pounds and pounds simply by choosing more protein calories than carbohydrate calories.

And, you know, what's really interesting is that, and this is, Stephen Simpson's work, and that's the protein leverage hypothesis. And basically, what he reported that was reducing protein from 18 to 13% of the diet, which is not a huge, so you're talking just a few percentage increase from 18 to 13% that this can lead to a 10% increase in overall calorie consumption. The body will drive to eat dietary protein. There is a driver because we need it. We must, again, it's essential. Carbohydrates are not essential fat. There's some fatty acids that are essential, but protein is arguably the most important macronutrient for aging and longevity and muscle health.

Well, so just to kind of summarize, basically quality matters. You need to have either jacked up processed vegan protein powders to meet the needs particularly as you age with extra leucine, which has problems in of itself when you're eating our processed food and who knows what that's going to do to us. Two, you need to make sure you have plenty of protein in the morning after your overnight fast. Three, it's good to spread your protein out throughout the day. And four, we need more protein than we thought. We're probably like 1.2 to 2 grams per kilo. So for the average person, you say 30 to 50 grams, what is that? That's like three, four ounces of chicken, six ounces.

Yeah, so for one gram or one ounce, there's about seven grams of protein.

So if you bought a 50, you need like seven or whatever, right?

Yes, so seven, yes, so exactly. And this is where, again, you can use yogurt, you can use eggs, you can use whey protein. Can you use some plant-based sources? As long as you're having a higher quality protein, you can. But again, it's just making sure that you're meeting that amino acid threshold and it's just much easier to do with animal products. Could you do it from a whole food vegan diet? Probably just the amount of food that.

You would consume, it would require a lot of activity. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Mark. I've recently found a new drink that.

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Episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy. There's just a debate about protein in this community now. Because if you look at the vegan community, they say, well, you don't need that much protein. We're over proteined. And that plant protein is good enough and that you should really eat beans and grains and that's all you need. And there's others that are saying, no, you need more protein. Some scientists are now suggesting we need even more than we thought we need that we're getting in America and that especially as we age, it's more important and that we even need protein from animals because the vegetable protein isn't having the right balance of amino acids to actually synthesize protein. So can you help us through that debate? Sure, sure. 'Cause I think everybody's confused. Even I'm confused. Like, I'm like, you know, do I wanna eat, you know, 1.6 or 1.8.

Grams per kilo of protein or do I wanna have 0.8 or what do I wanna have? Okay, so let's go through that. So first of all, the first mistake ends up with what's called the NHANES survey of the US Department of Agriculture. So they'll look at the total protein per day that someone's taking in and they'll say, oh, it's perfectly adequate. Actually, it turns out to be sort of at the lower limit of adequacy, but it's the distribution that's terrible. People eat very little protein at breakfast, a little more at lunch, and a.

Huge amount at dinner, some of which is not metabolized. It's excreted, it's deaminated and excreted. So let me ask you before you join on to that. So is it true that you need like about 30 grams of protein per.

Meal in order to create protein synthesis? If you eat less than that, it's just run as calories. And if you eat more than that, you don't use it. yeah, the studies at McMaster University, we don't have a lot of data on this yet, but in 18 year old kids who exercise for 45 minutes, they take protein within 30 minutes to an hour after exercise, they need a minimum of 20 grams to get maximum protein synthesis. Then it's a flat plateau. So at 30, you're certainly safe. Larger amounts may help with satiety, but they don't increase the protein synthetic rate anymore. Now, what we haven't done is we haven't done football players. We haven't done people with huge amounts of protein. We haven't done little people who don't need as much protein. So in my view, the protein requirement is based on your body's lean body mass, which also determines how many calories you burn at rest. So if I know that a woman has 100 pounds of lean, she burns 1400 calories. Her husband with 150 pounds of lean burns 2100 calories. Put them both on the same diet. The husband loses weight and the wife does not. He turns to her and says, you know, honey, your problem is you don't have any willpower. And the real problem is she has less resting metabolism. And so it's really hard to lose weight when you're only burning a thousand calories. That's why exercise is so much more important for women who have a low metabolism. That 200 or 300 calories is huge percentage for that woman who's trying to lose weight. So the way the misimpression came up is that part of the adaptation to starvation is that when you lose protein in your body, you stop turning it over. So you'll notice a lot of vegans and vegetarians have reduced lean body mass. Yes, I've seen that. Look at the body type of Bill Clinton since he's become a vegetarian. So I think the thing about protein is I am a fan of plant.

Protein and you can combine plant proteins.

To make a complete protein, but you have to do it carefully.

What do you mean beans and grains?

Oh, there's beans and grains, nuts and nuts and grains as well. But you need a scientist somewhere in the mix to kind of come up with what is the proper complementarity. And there is a status that's used called PD-CAS. It's a digestibility index in humans, not in animals. So we all in medical school learned biological value.

Wait, I just want to stop you there. Yeah, go back. because you're talking about so many great things. I don't want to miss these points. You basically said something that was pretty provocative, which is vegans have lower body muscle mass. Often. And that is because they're eating grains and beans are getting protein, but not the right mix. Is it because they're not timing it right? Is it because they're not eating enough?

It may be their choices. We had a vegan lasagna the other.

Day for our Sunday conference.

Unfortunately.

A piece of white flour, white cheese.

A vegetable, and a couple of peppers. Now, that I wouldn't call a balance. balanced meal, okay? But it's definitely vegan. So that's what I'm saying. So people will have, you know, just pasta or just in their attempt to avoid these things. So I think we have to identify the plant-based proteins that are so important. And I know that soy is a four letter word to a lot of people, but it's got the best combination of amino acids of any plant protein. Now you could take quinoa and hemp and pea protein and sesame protein and mix them together in the right way to get a very good protein mix.

And they'll have enough leucine, which is that amino Correct. You need that mostly from meat that's in higher amounts in meat that's needed.

For building muscle, right? That's correct. But, you know, it's not deficient in it, it's a limiting ingredient. So you can build muscle on soy protein.

You know, if you look at- so do you have to add leucine to these plant proteins?

You can. Some people, you know, will fortify with methionine or other amino acids that are limiting. That can be done. Or you can mix another protein. You know, I'm not a big fan of industrial dairy farms, as you're not, but also whey protein, which was a side product of making cheese, has become all the rage among muscle builders because it's a hydrolysate and it's rapidly absorbed within 30 minutes into the body. So you can mix whey and soy together and get kind of the best of both worlds. But then you're eating animal protein. But then you're eating animal protein and not something I'm in favor of. So, you know, we have all these new technological things that are coming up and who knows, we may be able to come up with a way that.

We can improve the quality of soy protein. So you think vegans can actually have adequate muscle mass by combining the right protein proteins and getting muscles in this. But aren't they gonna have to eat like three cups of beans to get.

30 grams of protein? Well, you know, yeah, the calories may be higher. Rice and beans. Carbs. Yeah, the same amount of protein in a cup of rice and a cup of beans versus a cup of soy.

You'Re looking at 250 calories, maybe against 650. So there's a difference. The issue is, is, you know, when you do that, you're eating a lot of carbohydrates. Right. And so if you're insulin resistant and you're eating enough grains and beans to actually meet your protein requirements, you're getting also this byproduct of carbs. Even if they're whole, they still have a higher glycemic index than protein.

That's correct. And if you don't eat enough protein, you will eat the balance as carbohydrate and fat. So one of the problems with a low protein diet is it keeps you, you're more hungry. It's the old joke about going to the Chinese restaurant and being hungry to the Chinese American restaurant being hungry two hours later.

Right. Right.

So it's because high carb, high fat diet doesn't have the satiety effect of protein. So protein is the most satiating macronutrient. You thought it was fat? No, fat does have some satiation, but not for. Protein is far more satiating than fat. Fat in the lower intestine is actually a product from Unilever called Fabuloss, which is an oat emulsion that ends up in your lower intestine in the ileum and causes some fullness. If you take enough of it, you really get nauseated, but it doesn't it slowly moves out of the stomach, you know, when you have a high-fat meal.

I just remember from school, I learned that fat for satiety. That was like the message.

No, as a matter of fact, it's not. It's actually the hidden fat and hidden sugar and salt are the three problems I could identify in the American diet right now in many of the processed foods you're talking about that people don't.

Just don't know about. Okay, so we'll come back to the fat because I want to dig into that. Sure, sure, sure. But the protein issue is sort of trying to get to the bottom line here, which is do we need animal protein or not? And can vegetable protein be okay or is it too high glycemic?

And how do we determine that? No, no, I think vegetable protein is fine, but I think we need to have some products now like tofu that.

Will concentrate the protein compartment. Yeah, so tempeh and tofu are highly.

Protein, low carb foods. Exactly, great foods and a great choice. And I think you can build. Now remember, for building muscle, you've also got to exercise. So the protein doesn't do it by itself. Where the misimpression came from was in 1973, the late Vernon Young, who's a great Nutrition Authority, took some medical students to the cafeteria at MIT and fed them egg white. And he came up that they were in positive nitrogen balance at 0.8 grams per kilogram body weight. I see. Or actually 0.6. So everybody, at 0.8, everybody was in positive balance. At 0.6, they were zero balance. So now all the ministries of health around the world use 0.8 grams per kilogram body weight. That's right. That's where it came from, right? That's where it came from, 1973. So in 1989, they did endurance athletes. And guess what? It was 1.0. Then in 1992, they did weight lifters and it was 2.5 grams per kilogram body weight. Wow. Because body weight could have a different composition of fat versus muscle. The more muscle you have, the more protein you need. And that's where I came up with this idea of matching the body protein with the protein in the diet. Now, the opposite also happens. So if I put you on a zero protein diet, your body will start to conserve its protein mass and you'll end up with a smaller body mass, but a lower rate of turnover of protein. It's kind of a first order thing. It's like that flask of colored liquid that you learned about in chemistry. the amount of liquid determines the rate at which it flows out of the flask. So that's where the protein comes in. I'm a huge believer in protein, 30 grams per meal, three to four times a day, depending. And even if you're going to have after dinner eating, binge eating, and 25% of obese people have protein after dinner and obviously low fat protein or.

Think about it. If you're doing beans, that's eight cups. of beans or nine cups of beans a day.

I know, I know.

So, I mean, that's where I sort.

Of struggle with it.

Right, right. Whereas you can get, you know, four.

To six ounces of chicken or fish and that. Well, that's where I get into the soy protein. And I know we had a little bit of discussion about isolated soy protein, but let's find out what is the best, healthiest way to do that. But you've got to separate the protein compartment from the starches and the, because in ancient times, we worked so many hours in the fields. We needed those carbohydrates for But as you said, the USDA is six to eight servings of carbs on the bottom. I call it a prescription for obesity. In 1997, I put my own pyramid together at UCLA, and the public health people told me, oh, people are gonna starve on this 'cause there's nothing but fruits and vegetables at the bottom. And I said, Look, starvation is not our major problem in the United States today. It's overweight and obesity. So I think by putting in seven servings a day of colorful fruits and vegetables from seven different color groups, you get 500 calories per day. You get your protein, you know, so let's say it's 100 grams, that's 400 calories or you get 150 grams, 600 calories. So you have plenty of room here to add in some carbs and have flavorful food and cook beautiful food, but the basic building blocks just need to be there.

This is probably the most complicated issue as we get older. How much? Because I agree 100%. I do think we need to increase animal protein, but as you get older, you actually need to increase protein. So how do you increase plant proteins, if possible, without increasing too much carbohydrates because you want to still keep your carbohydrates down. So the way I get around it, I actually use, I have a protein shake and I use pea protein and I put collagen in. Because collagen actually has the amino acid profile, it doesn't have as much leucine and methionine, so it's less of a problem then, you know, I won't have as much steak. It's not that I don't have steak tonight. We're having steak. It's not that I don't have animal protein, but I have cut it back a bit and maybe eat a little bit more fish and a little bit. I have collagen a lot of the time. I have collagen almost every day. So I think that is a fine balance and it's not. There's no simple answer here. And I don't. I think it's a big problem not having enough protein as one gets older. but it also seems to be a problem of eating too much animal protein as well.

For sure.

That's fine.

And what's enough? We have these giant steaks and big hunks of meat, and what we really need is about 30 grams to stimulate muscle synthesis, which is about the size of your palm. Now, if you're Shaquille O'Neal, it's a bigger piece. If you're five years old, it's a smaller piece, right? So, you can use your own body as a sort of a measure of how much protein you need. But I think that's a very simple.

Right, and that's why your Pegan diet, I think, is brilliant. I love that question. I think that sums it up. Yeah, exactly.

And actually, it's funny you mentioned the Pegan diet because I created something called the Pegan Shake, which is essentially pea protein, pumpkin seed protein, and collagen, grass-fed collagen protein.

So, it's exactly what you're talking about. Right, and that's what I do. I think that's a way of getting.

Around it, to be quite honest. So, that's a way That's brilliant. Yeah, fantastic. What is protein anyway? Like we know fat, we know carbohydrates.

Protein is the black sheep of the macronutrient family.

Yeah. That is our reality. Right?

Everybody's talking about carbs and fat. Who's talking about protein? Protein. We've been talking about it for years. It is absolutely the black sheep. It is very emotional for people because.

It has a face.

Nobody argues that sugar, excess sugar, excess carbohydrates are bad. We thought that fat was bad and now we kind of have a new understanding and people are still kind of weighing in on protein. It is very much the black sheep. You asked me what it is. It is essential for the building blocks of everything. Skin, neurotransmitters, hormones. It is ultimately what life is made of. It is the baseline fundamental. and not only that, it can- and.

By the way, all your genes do, you have 20,000 genes, all they do is make protein. And they make protein out of the building blocks of protein that you eat.

Correct.

And.

Dietary protein is key to getting all of those amino acids. And anyone, you can open up a textbook and look at all the amino acids, they all have different things. I will point out that if you look at the label of any nutritional supplement, it will have a breakdown of carbohydrates, how much fiber, how much sugar, fat. It will have a breakdown of saturated fat, all the other fats, and then you get to protein. And it just has one little line, protein. But not all protein is created equal. You have animal protein and you have plant protein, all of which are made up of different amounts of amino acids, which affect your body differently.

Okay, well you just brought this up, so we're gonna go there. I was gonna get into a little bit later, but the issue is what kind of protein and how much protein. Because one, there is an argument that we are eating too much meat in the world, that it's causing climate change, that it's destroying natural habitats, destroying soils, depleting our water supplies.

We should talk about that.

Yeah, we're gonna talk about that.

Okay, good.

And that we should all be eating more plant protein and more rice and beans.

We tried that.

And you know what that was called? The Food Guide Pyramid.

Yeah. Well, we eat a lot of carbohydrates, but I don't know if we were.

Eating rice and beans.

But we weren't eating rice and beans. We were eating bread and potatoes and chips and, I mean, sugar and- okay.

But even if you swap it out, and the carbohydrate load is in excess, right? So when we look at what we really need, we probably need between 70 and 80 grams of carbohydrates and the body can make all of that from protein.

Yeah, right.

So let's just get back to this. So we do need protein and also the studies were interesting. Even the studies that show that maybe excess protein when you're younger makes you sick, it turns out even those studies show that when you're older you actually need more protein. You do. And I just was reading about athletes eating maybe between 1.6 to 2.4 grams of protein, which is a lot of protein per kilo. And so we're getting all these mixed messages. One, we should be eating less meat, eating more plant proteins, and/or two, we should be eating more protein as we age. So we're in this sort of incredible, conflicted, confusing environment around protein. So what should we be eating? How much should we be eating? And what type should we be eating?

Okay, this is a of no-tall order that we need to discuss.

This is a big, this is what people want to know.

Let's take one step back. The information overload comes from kind of the mouse with the microphone. So you have small groups of individuals that are making a lot of noise.

You mean the computer mouse?

You have extreme groups. So you have anti-animal groups, you have PETA, you have vegan groups, vegetarian groups that are just in one aspect making a lot of claims, putting a lot of money. I think PETA spent $15 million on advertising. then you have big cereal companies, Kellogg's, I think that was around a billion dollars in advertising. So you have these groups that are regulated by the FTC. And then on the other side, you have the egg council and the cattlemen and the farmers, or who are under the guise of the USDA. So you have these two kind of regulating bodies and two opposing groups, one which has much more money than the other. say, the dairy council or the egg council, that in and of itself skews the conversation. And that is something really important to be aware of.

We're getting a lot of propaganda, but.

Not a lot of science is what you're saying.

We are, you know, we have big pharma. We have these groups that are allowed to say certain things that maybe this will lower cholesterol, eat oats, it will lower cholesterol. It will have these certain health benefits. And then you've got egg, dairy, beef, who are not allowed to make any similar claims. We do have a lot of propaganda and bad science that is very agenda driven. And that creates an environment of confusion. Yeah, like the Atlanta Commission, which was.

Like, we should eat like three ounces of meat a week maybe, or...

So we know, so let's talk about the RDA. So the current RDA, which is...

It's the recommended dietary allowance.

And that was based on studies that we know were flawed, right? Those were based on nitrogen-based studies of 18-year-olds. that we wanted to, or the, they wanted to provide an amount which would stop disease per, you know, it's baseline for disease.

It's the minimum amount you need so you don't get sick. It's not how much you need to be healthy.

Correct. So we came up, or they came up with a number, not me, way before my time, unless my Botox is that good, but not having any lately. The RDA is 0.8 grams per kilogram, and that spans from anyone ages 18 and beyond. 18, 50, 60, 80. Okay? That is the minimum amount. There are, there is 30 years of data to support that the minimum amount is not adequate. We know that as you age, you need double the RDA. For body composition, you're looking at double the RDA.

You mean for building more muscle?

For anything in obesity, we know that the higher your diet is in protein, while calories are controlled, the more lean muscle mass you can maintain. And we spoke, when we started talking about this, we talked about why muscle was so important. And this obesity epidemic isn't quite an obesity epidemic. It is really an epidemic of poor muscle mass, low muscle mass, obesogenic sarcopenia, loss and destruction of tissue. We are largely domesticated. So what's happened is we have- Dr.

What do you mean we're largely domesticated?

Riding cars, we're not doing physical movement. We are eating in a way that is not supporting our current existence. And actually red meat consumption has gone down by 29% since 1975.

But chicken's gone up.

Chicken has gone up.

Dairy has gone down.

Yeah.

The concept that we are eating too much protein, the average American eats between 60 and 90 grams. Women are around maybe a little bit above 60 grams and men are around 90 grams.

So that's the average American.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. One of the best ways you can support this podcast is by leaving us a rating and review below. Until next time, thanks for tuning in.

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