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  #1   ^
Old Sat, Nov-17-18, 06:50
Demi's Avatar
Demi Demi is offline
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Default Why we’re all eating too much protein

Another anti-meat article


Quote:
From The Times
London, UK
17 November, 2018

Why we’re all eating too much protein

It is added to everything from yoghurt to bread with the promise that it aids weight loss and builds muscle. Has our protein obsession gone too far?


Protein is beloved by the perfect people of Instagram. For the shiny regulars on social media who post updates on their daily diets, it’s the wonder-nutrient that is hailed for its ability to curb cravings and accelerate the effects of a workout by maintaining muscles and “shredding” fat. It’s no surprise that the rest of us have bought into the message that protein is what is needed to help us to achieve our diet and fitness goals.

In a report produced by a US-based research company that tracks food-culture trends, it was revealed that 60 per cent of consumers are actively trying to increase their protein intake and that it is considered by many to be a key component in weight loss and diet.

Cue a race by manufacturers to add it to the most unlikely products. Scan the aisles of a supermarket and you will find protein added to everything from yoghurt, coconut water and iced coffee to smoothies, noodles and chocolate spread. A burgeoning and bizarre trend is the emergence of high-protein versions of high-carb foods such as Weetabix, Snickers and Nature Valley bars, as well as bagels, bread and Ryvita.

Fifteen years ago the Atkins diet popularised the idea that ditching carbs and upping our protein content was the key to staying slim. By 2003 about three million people in the UK were increasing their protein intake Atkins-style. Since then, fashionable eating plans, from Dukan to South Peach and Paleo, have enthusiastically promoted protein consumption.

It’s a trend that won’t go away, but is the attention warranted? Protein is known to be the most satiating of all macronutrients. It helps to assuage hunger pangs and to lower calorie intake, but only to a point. “Its reputation has escalated from popular diet fads and people think it will help to tackle weight problems and the obesity crisis,” says Helen Bond, a spokeswoman for the British Dietetic Association. “We see protein as this miracle ingredient that can be added to food and keep us slim and healthy, but it is an absolute myth.”

It’s not that protein isn’t important, because it is. Bond says that it’s essential to body tissues, required for growth and for the healthy maintenance of muscles and bones. Government guidelines suggest that we need 0.75g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight daily, or about 45g a day for an adult woman and 55.5g for a man. To give an idea of what this looks like, there are about 32g in a serving of tofu or a cod fillet, 10.6g in a small Greek yoghurt and 40g in a small can of tuna.

Studies have shown that protein can help the body to cope with the demands of strenuous workouts. Intense physical activity causes microscopic tears in muscles that are repaired by protein, creating more muscle mass in the process, and it’s accepted by scientists that avid exercisers need more. “People who do a lot of strength training need a little more — between 1.2g to 1.7g per kilogram of their body weight daily — to support their muscle mass,” Bond says. “And endurance athletes should aim for 1.2g to 1.4g per kilogram of their weight to cope with the demands of training.”

But most of us, whether pushing the boundaries of physical endeavour or not, get more than enough from ordinary food and have little difficulty in meeting the recommended daily intake. According to the latest statistics from the government’s National Diet and Nutrition Survey, the average daily protein intake is about 87.4g for men and 66.6g for women, well above what we need. The same goes for younger people. For example, protein-obsessed teenage boys, who need only 55.2g to fuel rapid growth, pack in 72.5g a day. Even teenage girls consume significantly more than the dietary recommendation of 45g, with an average daily intake of 57.9g. Our risk of developing a deficiency is tiny, says the nutrition therapist Ian Marber, who adds: “It’s far easier than you think to get enough without supplementation in unnecessary ways.”

Bond adds: “It used to be thought that it was more difficult to get the right balance of amino acids and protein from plant foods. But even on a vegan diet there is ample opportunity to pack in the required amount from beans, pulses, nuts and whole grains.”

Supplementing foods with protein because they don’t naturally contain huge amounts is a contentious area. “Different types of protein are being added to different foods and in differing amounts,” Bond says. “Science hasn’t yet proven which type of protein is most effective at promoting satiety and it could be that some types have little effect.” In some cases, she says, all you are getting when protein is added is extra calories.

There is some evidence that we may need proportionately more protein in our diet from our forties onwards to help to offset sarcopenia, the decline in muscle mass that occurs naturally as we age. But there’s a caveat: it applies only if we increase the amount of resistance exercise that we are doing, meaning that more push-ups, more burpees and more weights need to be added to the equation.

This was shown in a review paper published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine this year in which researchers from McMaster University in Canada looked at results from 49 previous studies to find out if eating higher amounts of protein during periods of weight training produced bigger and stronger muscles in adults.

Their data showed, unsurprisingly, that everyone who trained on weights got stronger, but that adding more protein did have an effect, although it was a relatively small one compared with their control groups. They were also keen to stress that eating a lot more protein was not better. They calculated that for people who lift weights, the tipping point for daily protein intake is about 1.6g per kilogram of body weight each day. That’s 100g of protein a day for someone who weighs 10st. If you ate two eggs for breakfast (12g of protein), a cheese sandwich on two rounds of wholemeal bread (23g) for lunch and a small fillet steak (52g) with a chick pea and quinoa salad (14.6g) for dinner, you would get enough to support any extra gym activity. Consuming more than that — by nibbling on a protein-infused chocolate bar or a post-workout whey shake — produced no additional muscle gain.

“What’s absolutely crucial for people to understand is that eating more protein won’t make you more lean and toned,” Bond says. “There must be a component of load-bearing exercise for that to happen. And if you consume more than the body and muscles need, it will be excreted and the extra calories laid down as fat.”

Concerns that overloading on protein can put strain on the kidneys are, Marber says, overplayed. “Unless you have existing kidney problems, most people are perfectly adept at dealing with even relatively high amounts of protein,” he says.

However, research is suggesting that diets too high in protein can have an adverse effect on our microbiota, with potentially damaging consequences. “Consuming a lot of protein from meat sources seems to wreak the most damage on our gut flora,” Bond says. “And there have been links to high-protein intake and colon cancer as well as type 2 diabetes.”
In August, research published in the Lancet warned that low-carb/high-protein diets were as problematic as high-carb diets in raising the risk of premature death. According to a team from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, a moderate amount of carbohydrates was best for a lengthy lifespan and that people who got their protein from plant-based foods had a lower mortality risk than those who ate a lot of meat, butter and cheese.

Where you get your protein matters, and, Bond says, the priority should be sources such as beans, pulses, nuts and seeds, with some dairy, lean meat and fish if you eat it. Protein-added foods we can do without. They are invariably more expensive and, Bond says, “they are providing something you absolutely don’t need more of to stay fit and well”.



https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/...otein-h7396bczl
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  #2   ^
Old Sat, Nov-17-18, 10:37
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teaser teaser is offline
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Quote:
It’s a trend that won’t go away, but is the attention warranted? Protein is known to be the most satiating of all macronutrients. It helps to assuage hunger pangs and to lower calorie intake, but only to a point. “Its reputation has escalated from popular diet fads and people think it will help to tackle weight problems and the obesity crisis,” says Helen Bond, a spokeswoman for the British Dietetic Association. “We see protein as this miracle ingredient that can be added to food and keep us slim and healthy, but it is an absolute myth.”


She's sort of right--it's not this magic ingredient that you can add to a snickers bar and make everything all right. Works pretty good instead of a snickers bar.

Added to yogurt? Leave out added sugars, and you might have a reasonable snack.

Also, "excreted and the extra calories laid down as body fat?" Maybe he means catabolyzed? Bodybuilders sometimes talk like if you eat more than X grams of protein a day, you won't be able to digest it all. But very little protein gets "excreted."

The most efficient way to lay down more body fat from eating excess protein would be to use the calories produced from the protein to run the metabolism, sparing oxidation of dietary fat and carbohydrate. People talk sometimes like you'd have to produce glucose from the protein, and then fat from the glucose. That's a fairly expensive process. Glucose from protein has a price tag of roughly 20 percent, fat from glucose is supposed to be around 28 percent. Um, .8 times .72, that leaves 57.6 percent of calories making its way into fat if it goes by that route... of course it's silly, because once the amino acids were used to produce glucose, you'd then have to do more or less the opposite with glycolysis to get the "calories" back out of the glucose and into the fat. It makes way more sense to just go more directly from the pyruvate produced from the amino acids into the fat synthesis process.
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  #3   ^
Old Sat, Nov-17-18, 12:07
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Ms Arielle Ms Arielle is offline
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The greek yogurts are beefed up with milk protein. My concern is that this is not a balance of all the amino acids-- rather it is lop sided. So to get enough of every one, the total protein is more than needed and a waste. My mom used to mix peanut butter with dried milk-- kind of a tasty play doh!

Last edited by Ms Arielle : Sat, Nov-17-18 at 12:26.
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  #4   ^
Old Sat, Nov-17-18, 12:24
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teaser teaser is offline
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My sister does that with whey protein and peanut butter.
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  #5   ^
Old Sat, Nov-17-18, 16:42
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Calianna Calianna is online now
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ms Arielle
The greek yogurts are beefed up with milk protein. My concern is that this is not a balance of all the amino acids-- rather it is lop sided. So to get enough of every one, the total protein is more than needed and a waste. My mom used to mix peanut butter with dried milk-- kind of a tasty play doh!

I stopped buying Cabot greek yogurt when I finally read the ingredients on the label, and realized they were mostly just adding extra protein to regular yogurt it to make it thicker, rather than straining off the whey to produce a thickened product.


As far as I can tell (from the ingredients and nutrition stats), the plain greek yogurt I buy at Aldi's is just strained yogurt. The only real problem with it is that it's made from non-fat milk with cream added. Why on earth remove all the fat to make nonfat milk, then add the cream back into it?







One thing about increasing protein consumption - from what I've read , as you age, it becomes more difficult to absorb dietary protein, so some of it is wasted, which is one of the reasons older people have such a difficult time maintaining muscle mass. So in order for older people to maintain as much muscle mass as possible, it's necessary to combine increased protein consumption with continued exercise. I can't remember exactly where I read this, but I think it was a discussion about a vet putting older dogs on higher protein diets, and finding out they did much better than on the typical low protein chow for older dogs, and that tactic was tried with older people too, with good results.
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  #6   ^
Old Sat, Nov-17-18, 18:05
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Ms Arielle Ms Arielle is offline
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I just learned that increasing omega 3 for older people also increases their mucle mass.

Seems like separating all the milk parts makes for fun formulations to test best consummer prefered product.
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  #7   ^
Old Sun, Nov-18-18, 12:44
M Levac M Levac is offline
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Quote:
“What’s absolutely crucial for people to understand is that eating more protein won’t make you more lean and toned,” Bond says. “There must be a component of load-bearing exercise for that to happen. And if you consume more than the body and muscles need, it will be excreted and the extra calories laid down as fat.”

Not a single word in there is true. A child's muscles (and everything else in fact) grow with exactly zero load. An adult's muscles shrink from protein deficiency, not from load deficiency. Hormones and enzymes rule growth. The famous Belgian Blue grows immense muscles just from a single enzyme.

Load certainly stimulates growth, but only up to what's allowed by hormones and enzymes. On the other hand, certain hormones and enzymes respond to load stimulus, yet growth is still ruled by those hormones and enzymes.

Dietary protein has only one place to go - protein synthesis. This is due primarily to the insulin stimulus, which dictates where what we eat goes. Accordingly, dietary protein especially excess protein causes growth. Protein is recycled continuously, I think it's called turnover. Besides growth, there's tons of stuff that requires protein, new protein to work properly, cuz it breaks down, ya. So, growth is one thing, turnover gets quicker with excess protein, things work better.
Quote:
Where you get your protein matters, and, Bond says, the priority should be sources such as beans, pulses, nuts and seeds, with some dairy, lean meat and fish if you eat it. Protein-added foods we can do without. They are invariably more expensive and, Bond says, “they are providing something you absolutely don’t need more of to stay fit and well”.

I call ideological bias. Plant protein is encased in fiber, which we can't digest, so we can't get that protein - zero benefit. Whatever the reason for this particular recommendation does not reflect the facts. If not the facts, then the ideals, ya.

After reading that crap, I feel a little bit vegan. But then, I know better.
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  #8   ^
Old Sun, Nov-18-18, 13:01
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teaser teaser is offline
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A child doesn't have zero load. That's not the same as "zero programmed resistance training."

Yes I know, I'm probably reading things too literally again.
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  #9   ^
Old Sun, Nov-18-18, 14:46
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Ms Arielle Ms Arielle is offline
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In livestock we feed protein for body weight and add on more for growth.

We can access proteins and carbohydrates in plant material. How much depends on a couple factors: the age of the plant in its development and the processing.

We can not use tiny seeds very well via chewing so we grind these: chia, flax, corn, etc.

Many plants we eat young, when the lignans are not very developed. Think spinach, kale, and other leafy types.

We dont eat corn stalks, but cattle and horses can. Better results if it is ensiled first. But even the feed value of corn stalks, and hay is determined by the age and amount of lignans. First cut hay is very stemmy compared to second cut. My sheep love the second cut and hate the first cut. My horses love the second cut and pick away at the first cut. Humans cant eat either.

We eat the tender plants or young plants, before they are woody. OTherwise they need to be processed in some way. Perhaps crushed and steeped. Perhaps ground ( think bark of the cinnamon). Whatever size the particles are, the processing makes more nutrients available but we still cannot digest lignans, aka fiber.

( ruminants have a vast microbiome load that works on cellulose, very little uses lignans.)
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  #10   ^
Old Sun, Nov-18-18, 17:39
M Levac M Levac is offline
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Quote:
the priority should be sources such as beans, pulses, nuts and seeds

Black beans contain 9g of protein per 100g. But it's contained within fiber so less than that, if at all, is available to us. All other pulses and beans and such contain about the same % protein, also contained within fiber.

Nuts are 100% indigestible, they go straight through, we can see them intact.

Seeds are indigestible as is, that's why we process them. Corn is famous for going through intact. At most, some of its sugar is released or made available during cooking, we can taste that. Wheat is famous for its toxic gluten, a protein incidentally.

I could go through a lengthy list here, but the bulk of stuff we get from all that is starch and indigestible fiber, not protein, especially not fat in any significant quantity. In other words, none of it is LC friendly.

For the protein supplements, if it comes from soy for example, it must be extensively processed at the industrial scale using at least some chemical agent. Doing a quick search, I found that soy protein isolates was used solely for industrial purposes, before the 50's. This translates to "not for human consumption". The same industrial processes are used, albeit with sanitary precautions, to produce soy protein isolates for human consumption as a food. Ya so they used to make dirty soy glue, now they make clean soy glue, and we eat the soy glue.

If I'm not mistaken, the least processed (yet within the processed category) protein source is dried meat, i.e. jerky. We can digest that fully and access all of the protein therein, which consists a very high proportion of the mass (90%+), never mind the extensive nutrition profile otherwise.

So, however that guy figured out the "priority for sources of protein", I'm 100% sure he's an idjit. I simply cannot find a single compelling argument in anything he said.
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  #11   ^
Old Mon, Nov-19-18, 13:35
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wyatt wyatt is offline
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Muscle growth as a child is primarily hormone driven.

Muscle growth as an adult is protein driven or protein and tension driven.

Pick your poison, beans or meat.

If I'm feeling depressed or needy, I will entertain myself with refried beans or bean soup if I'm out somewhere for lunch. Otherwise meat does me good.
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  #12   ^
Old Mon, Nov-19-18, 14:16
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teaser teaser is offline
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I'd say primarily hormone driven, child or adult. The difference in effects of resistance exercise between child and adult are hormone driven....

Maybe protein limited rather than protein driven? You can take somebody eating lowish protein, add exercise, and it results in a more positive nitrogen balance, as long as things aren't overdone. Adding protein might make the nitrogen balance more positive still--but might be ineffective without the exercise.

I guess everything depends on what you call the baseline. I'd agree some fruitarian eating 20 grams of protein a day probably has their muscle mass limited by protein rather than exercise or even hormone status, but get into what most of us here probably consider lowish--the standard recommendations--and already resistance exercise might be the more important intervention, versus upping protein further.

This sort of reminds me of the calcium thing. We've got calcium recommendations over a gram, supposed to protect people from osteoporosis, meanwhile we've got people eating a third of that in a lot of places, without osteoporosis being a problem. In that case as well--exercise is a big deal.

A plug for vitamin D probably fits in here somewhere as well.
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Old Mon, Nov-19-18, 15:25
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Ms Arielle Ms Arielle is offline
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And vitamin K2 affects calcium uptake. And Ca : Potassium must be in balance, usually 2;1
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Old Sun, Nov-25-18, 12:23
dan_rose dan_rose is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by M Levac
An adult's muscles shrink from protein deficiency, not from load deficiency.


Do you think astronauts are suffering from a lack of protein rather than weightlessness then?
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  #15   ^
Old Sun, Nov-25-18, 13:22
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teaser teaser is offline
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Weightlessness sucks.
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