new Vox article says protein is making us sick what what's up guys it's Friday so you know what time it is time for what the fitness and this week we don't have a video we have an article from Vox that says you're probably eating a lot more protein than you need Americans are oddly obsessed with protein they eat around twice as much of it as the federal government recommends 60% of us adults are trying to get even more of it into their diets this Obsession could be making us sick excessive protein consumption especially from cholesterol rich animal-based foods is correlated with increased risk of cancer and heart disease this doesn't just affect those following high protein keto paleo or low carb diets which combined as more than one in five Americans it's a problem for most Americans especially men one small informal study in the UK even found that some men who want to reduce their me consumption are embarrassed to order vegetarian meals alongside their male friends excessive protein consumption is Al wrecking the planet with meat and dairy production accounting for upwards of 1th of greenhouse gas emissions so this is an example of where you give part of the picture and you can paint whatever picture that you want first of all in order to understand the dietary and protein recommendations you have to understand how they were developed if we look at fats and carbohydrate recommendations it's kind of what can we get away with you look at protein recommendations it's what is the minimum that is needed to maintain nitrogen balance most of the nutritional recommendations for humans and a lot of really good nutritional science programs popped up out of agricultural science programs and my program at University of Illinois is no different the nutritional Sciences division is part of the aces or the agricultural College these are all wrapped up so when you look at if you're feeding an animal to try and get the maximum yield your most expensive macronutrient is protein in agriculture the question that is asked is what is the absolute minimum amount of protein we need to get the maximum yield for this animal and they really approached nutritional science recommendations for humans in a similar way so they did what's called nitrogen balance studies originally which is basically you're looking at how much nitrogen you eat which nitrogen we talk about is just axy for protein intake because protein is the only nitrogen containing macronutrient there is it's where we get our dietary nitrogen from the nitrogen is either going to be maintained in the body and used for synthesis of body proteins or you have to excrete it and most of that excretion comes through the urine you do lose some in your stool a very small amount and you lose some in your sweat so nitrogen balance studies are literally looking at how much protein you eat and you can basically take the amount of protein you eat in grams divide it by 6.25 and that will basically give you how much nitrogen you're getting in they're looking at how much nitrogen goes in and then they measure your urine your stool and your sweat losses of nitrogen and they look at at what point are people excreting at least the same amount of nitrogen as they took in so that's what's called nitrogen balance then they kind of add a couple standard deviations above that for safety and they put that as the the kind of the protein requirements so if we look at you know current protein requirements they're 8 G per kilogram of body weight that's what's needed for 95% of the population to maintain nitrogen balance now actually we did Cover a study on here a few months ago people following a vegan diet actually showed that the dietary protein recommendations were not sufficient to maintain nitrogen balance on a vegan diet or on a plant-based diet so probably need a little bit more on a vegan diet or plant-based diet while Vox is right that our protein intake has gone up it hasn't gone up disproportionately compared to the amount of calories we're consuming people aren't just slamming down chicken breasts and steak they're eating a lot more food overall so when we look at protein as a percentage of calories protein really hasn't gone up in the American diet but as an absolute number it has why are we focusing on protein if we look at the human randomized control trials the human randomized control trials where people follow higher protein diets and we equate calories between high protein diets and low protein diets or normal protein diets we see a myriad of benefits including better betterly Mass retention better satiety in many cases a little bit of better thermic effect of food more percentage of weight loss from body fat compared to lean mass some improvements in insulin sensitivity in some cases and so I don't really understand I mean I understand this attack on protein and they kind of alluded to it at the end which this is Vox from my understanding is a very kind of progressive leftwing publication and more of those folks tend to be on the side of we should eat less meat because of the effect on the planet I can only address it from the nutritional side but this fear-mongering around protein because we're trying to get people to save the planet eat less protein okay make that your argument but don't do like with the data making protein appear to be unhealthy and they'll say oh people who eat more animal-based sources of protein tend to have higher risk of cancer and heart disease yeah that's true because they eat a lot of processed foods overall they're not eating fish and chicken and lean beef and lean pork like that there's no cohort looking at that and again we look at these studies in the human randomized control trials where people are following other healthy lifestyle behaviors and even eating up to four grams per kilogram of protein per day over a year we see no negative health effects if you want to make the argument that you should limit protein because of the effects of animal production on greenhouse gases then just make that argument or if it's an ethical argument around animals just make that argument don't fear Monger this stuff and I think a lot of vegans will use this kind of Maki aelian logic of who cares if we give misinformation or information that's not completely accurate of the full picture because as long as people eat less animals then then it's good so we're getting the outcome we want doesn't matter how we get there what I'll tell you is misinformation always has uh unintended negative Downstream consequences I know what the comments are going to be can you build as much muscle have the same body composition can you do all that stuff on a vegan diet sure you've got to eat more total protein you probably got to have to supplement with an isolated source of vegan protein because not only are the sources of vegan protein lower quality in terms of amino acids but in terms of amino acid composition but they also are less bioavailable because the intact source of protein is bound up in the fibrous material of plants whereas if you're using something like a a isolated source of plant protein in the form of a powder that's going to be very bioavailable so again it can be done plenty of people do it it just takes a little bit extra planning and uh mindfulness this article from Vox in my opinion is a very obvious hit piece on protein and the motivation is very obvious to me and if you just show somebody part of a picture you can show them the part of the picture that you want them to see if you don't give the full picture then they really can't make an informed decision so I would ask that Vox do better but they're not alone right-wing news outlets do the exact same thing carnivores low carb people on the opposite nutritional you know into the Spectrum do the same thing they cherry pick they try to construct a narrative around things and so what I'll say is like you know modern mainstream would have you believe well can't eat protein cuz it stimulates intor and that's going to give you cancer and heart disease can't eat dietary fat because that impedes flow media dilation and that's going to give you heart disease you can't eat carbohydrates cuz they raise insulin and that's going to give you you know insulin resistance and you can't eat fiber because fiber is just toilet paper in the words of uh Paul saladino it's going to mess up your gut and plants have toxins in them so is it any wonder that Eating Disorders are at an all-time high that food anxieties at an all-time high and people are not even bothering to try because they're so frustrated at all the misinformation out there well they don't know it's misinformation but they feel like they can't eat anything and when you make somebody feel like nothing they can do is going to work guess what they do whatever the they want so if we could just have some reasonable rational non Zealot nonb conversations about nutrition that would be great if you need help with your nutrition don't know where to start and you you want to know like what can I do where do I start with like the big rocks like I talk about check out carbon diet coach my nutritional coaching app not only does it give you nutritional recommendations it actually adjusts them based on how your body responds and based on your goal and individual metabolism so for less than 10 bucks a month it's a great value you can get in the app store or in the Google Play Store make sure you download And subscribe today and I'll catch you next week