In short
Better Offline Podcast Episode Summary
Episode Title
The Internet Is The World's Worst Pharmacy
Hosts
Ed Zitron, Paris Martineau, Ashwin Rodriguez
Description
In this episode, Ed Zitron converses with Paris Martineau from Consumer Reports and freelance writer Ashwin Rodriguez. They delve into the contamination of protein powders with heavy metals, the quest for medical advice online, and the largely unregulated supplement industry.
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Key Points Discussed
- Heavy Metals in Protein Powders
- Study Findings:
- Paris Martineau shares findings from a Consumer Reports investigation involving 23 protein powders, revealing that 69% contained lead levels exceeding safe daily intake.
- Plant-based protein powders exhibited significantly higher lead levels compared to whey or beef-based proteins, with some showing nine times the lead concentration.
- Source of Contamination:
- Lead enters plants through contaminated soil, which gets concentrated during protein extraction processes.
- Understanding Lead and Health Risks
- Lead's Biological Behavior:
- Lead accumulates in the body and can remain in the bones for years, causing long-term health issues.
- Chronic Exposure:
- Regular consumers of protein powders may face chronic low-level lead exposure, leading to potential health risks over time.
- Regulation of Supplements
- FDA's Role:
- The FDA lacks stringent regulations for dietary supplements, classifying them as food rather than drugs since the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act.
- Manufacturers self-regulate, determining their own safety limits without comprehensive oversight.
- Consumer Awareness:
- Paris emphasizes the need for consumers to be informed about what is in their supplements and the importance of transparency in labeling.
- The Internet as a Source for Medical Advice
- Consumer Behavior:
- People often turn to the internet for medical advice due to skepticism towards traditional healthcare systems or a lack of access.
- Community and Control:
- Online communities offer support for those seeking health solutions outside conventional medicine, but can also promote unverified products.
- Critiques of the Fitness and Supplement Industry
- Marketing Tactics:
- The conversation discusses how the health and fitness industry often promotes excessive protein consumption and oversells the benefits of supplements.
- Rituals and Faith in Supplements:
- Consumers may develop a ritualistic relationship with supplements, believing they are necessary for health, despite limited scientific backing.
- The Importance of Lifestyle Factors
- Nutrition and Exercise:
- The hosts argue that consistent, healthy lifestyle choices (like balanced nutrition and regular exercise) are more beneficial than reliance on supplements.
- The Role of Professional Guidance:
- There’s a discussion on the need for accessible, quality health advice from professionals to counteract the misinformation circulating online.
- Conclusion and Call to Action
- Consumer Responsibility:
- The episode concludes with a reminder for listeners to critically evaluate the supplements they consume and prioritize informed decision-making about health.
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Additional Resources
- Paris Martineau's Work:
- Links to her profiles and articles on protein contamination.
- Ashwin Rodriguez's Articles:
- Insights on supplement regulation and safety standards.
- Discussion Platforms:
- Encouragement to visit Reddit and Discord for community discussions related to the episode.
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Key Takeaways
- Consumers need to be vigilant about the safety and regulation of protein powders and supplements.
- Online resources can provide support but should be approached with skepticism.
- Healthy lifestyle choices continue to be the most effective means of maintaining health, over supplement reliance.
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This episode of Better Offline sheds light on the often murky world of dietary supplements and protein products, advocating for consumer awareness and healthier lifestyle practices over reliance on potentially harmful products.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This is an iHeart Podcast.
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1:55Get started today.
2:02Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host, Ed Zitron.
2:14Better Offline. Now, the other day, someone suggested I shouldn't do ASMR-style voices, and I'm still not sure what that means, but does it mean I shouldn't be this close and being like, you're in the bathtub? Either way, I'm never listening to a single bit of feedback I've ever received, but today I'm in studio in New York goddamn city, and I'm joined by the incredible freelance writer Ashwin Rodriguez. How you doing, Ashwin? Good. Thanks for having me. And Paris Martineau of Consumer Reports. Hello. Should I do mouth noises too? Yeah, they love them. But you had a huge story, Paris, in the last week or so.
2:50It was like a week or two. Yeah, like a week or two. Time's a bit of a blur, honestly. So it was a story around 23 protein powders, ready-to-drink shakes from Prophecy Brands. And you found that heavy metal contamination was common. How common exactly? Yeah, very common, actually. Like more than two-thirds of them. Actually, this will be really important for you and your listeners, 69 % of them. had 69 % of them had levels of lead in one serving that are more than what our food safety experts say is safe to take in a day. Jesus Christ. And the more you kind of dig into the specifics, I feel like the more concerning it gets.
3:30Some of the most contaminated powders we found were plant-based ones and overwhelmingly plant-based powders instead of, you know, versus like whey or dairy-based products like whey or beef-based. They had just higher levels of lead. Why is the lead getting in? I mean, the lead is getting in from a lot of different ways, but probably the most common is like the soil that plants are grown in. So basically like plants, when they're grown, they suck up all the nutrients around them. But if those nutrients are also contaminants like lead from either industrial pollution or just lead being in the natural environment, it gets in there.
4:08And who would have guessed the process of making protein powder, which is called protein concentrate or protein isolate from stuff like plants, involves concentrating and isolating things in it. And if lead's one of those things to begin with, it might get more concentrated. And all these like popular brands, all these small brands? These are popular brands. We basically worked with a market analytics team and trend reporters to figure out what are some of the best-selling protein supplements, what are the most popular brands, most popular flavors. And we kind of did a general kind of sweep of the market and tested those.
4:42And to be clear, we didn't just test a one-off scoop of each. We had – I mean this was like an experiment designed by our laboratory scientists. Over a period of months, they went out and bought different samples of each product, tested multiple lots. and then analyzed all the results. Lead plain. Lovely. Yeah. So is – and so it was – but it's more in plant protein ones. Yeah. So plant protein powders overwhelmingly – like they had about nine like lead levels that were nine times as much as dairy-based ones and twice as much as beef-based ones. How the fuck are people not dying? Well, that's the thing.
5:21The thing about lead is it's not like a – to be very clear, this is not like a – you need to panic if you're eating these. you're going to get lead poisoning. That's kind of what I was getting at. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a lead, if you ask like the FDA or the World Health Organization, the UN or anything, there's like no known safe level of lead. It's bad for you, but it's not like immediately you're going to die bad in these sort of quantities. These are low but concerning levels and they're concerning because the kind of fucked up thing about lead, I didn't really think about lead that much until I started reporting on this, obviously.
5:55But the fucked up thing about lead is that it like kind of lingers in your body. So one of the ways people test for lead is like blood lead level test. But that doesn't even give you a really full picture. That just shows you how much lead is in your blood. But the thing about lead is your body – this is a gross oversimplification. Your body kind of thinks of it like calcium because they kind of look similar. So it's like om-nom-nom and puts it in your bones or in your teeth. And so it hangs out in there for like the blood in your – the lead in your blood kind of can come in and out of your body relatively quickly.
6:31The lead in your bones can stay there for a period of like years or decades. And then during periods where your bones – because your bones are always kind of repairing themselves. And when that happens, then the lead leaches out and it goes bad for you. So the real issue with these products in particular is Consumer Reports has done a lot of like heavy metal testing and stuff. Right, right. But we've like tested things like chocolate or tuna or like things like that. But with protein powder, people who like protein powders take them every day. All the time. Or sometimes multiple times a day for periods of years.
7:05And that's kind of like a perfect storm to give yourself like low level chronic exposure to lead in a way that could in like years or decades like have measurable health effects. And there's no regulation or testing that should have stopped this. Is there a thing that this breaks? I mean, we kind of have an FDA. We kind of have an FDA. This has been one of the most interesting things about this. So last time I was on your podcast, I was a tech reporter, the information. And I've been like focusing on like tech companies doing bad shit for like years. When I switched to Consumer Reports this summer, I'm mostly focusing on food safety, still doing some tech.
7:41But it's been fascinating for me to dive into things like the FDA and realize like the FDA historically has always come under criticism like every government agency for whether or not it's doing the best with the F part of FDA food or drugs. within that purview is dietary supplements, which due to some chicanery in the 90s are regulated kind of totally different in a way that basically boils down to the FDA is like, well, we can't really do anything until it comes to market. And then when it comes to market, maybe we'll scrutinize it. And you just did, Ashwin, a big piece about supplements, right?
8:17And you kind of remarked upon this to me a few times in the past. Yeah. So my story in the Times was about how supplements to this point that I saw in the Consumer Reports story about protein is in the 1994 D. Shea Act. Yes. Which was? It basically, it classified all dietary supplements to be regulated as food and not drugs. And dietary supplements is like such a broad umbrella where, you know, it makes sense to me that protein is considered a food, you know, like a whey protein or whatever. But then there's also things that people are taking for purported like drug-like effects like ashwagandha or, you know, what they call gas station heroin is a dietary supplement.
9:05Boner pills, dietary supplement also. What, horny goat weed? Is that it? No, there's a different, I believe it's kratom and something else. But this is the stuff that some people were using to wean themselves off of opiates and then other people who weren't on opiates were taking it. To wean themselves onto opiates. It's really great that that classifies as something the FDA is like, meh. Yeah. I've always been fascinated that the gas station is at the cutting edge of pharmaceuticals for some reason. I mean, yeah, and it's just – Robert Evans would love this. It's so interesting to me because these supplement manufacturers aren't required to prove their products are safe before they go to market.
9:44They aren't required to prove that their products are effective. And they're supposed to comply with good manufacturing processes. But, for instance, one stat that really stood out to me while reporting this is the FDA says there's 12 ,000 registered dietary supplement manufacturers. Last year, they inspected 600 of them. And 510 of those inspections were domestic manufacturers. There's only 90 that were inspected abroad. And I suspect that's where a lot of the manufacturing of these products actually occurs. Is there like a bleed over effect where they say, oh, yeah, designed in America, but manufactured in the global south?
10:21I mean, there's lots of misleading labeling issues, not necessarily where it's manufactured, but more so what they're allowed to say they can, these things can do. It's like structure of function claims where you can be like, because we know protein is healthy for you or, you know, this compound is known to be involved in like whatever biological process they can say supports immune function. Or designed to help with brain health and all these things where it's like mechanistically it might work, but this thing has not been proven to have the effect that people think it does. so like that is a broader a larger problem than being like this has been designed in the u.s but it's actually right and then the way that they aren't regulating these things for any possible like positive benefit it's the same issue with negative where it's like unless there's either a class action lawsuit or someone proactively finding the people who are experiencing negative side effects those aren't being reported in the same way that a pharmaceutical drug is required they're required to which is crazy because amazon is full of the fucking things because i i lifted these and that's been a bad month for it i guess but i tried various supplements and nothing changed anything like i was straight up just like i'll try that and nothing just completely and i just i would write down how i felt in the morning and it was the same like i fairly good attachment to the body but you can go on like the freak andrew huberman's reddit if you want to see just like here's all the things that andrew and it's like 47 different pills yeah and how do you even who has the time is my question like how do you that's like a level of rich person brain i can't understand once you get into like the hundreds or like multiple dozens of supplements i'm like i can't even regularly manage to take two pills a day i think it's like it's Pseudo, sometimes it's like pseudo, you feel like you're doing something scientific because there's a bunch of companies now where you can go.
12:27And even if you want to do it by yourself, you go to, you know, Quest Labs or one of these startups and get a blood test. And most of them will offer a doctor's evaluation of those numbers. But you can look and be like, okay, my iron is low. This was something that happened. And a doctor relayed this story to me that they had with a patient where the patient was taking an iron supplement because they were low on iron and a naturopath that they were seeing recommended that. And that makes sense. If you're low on iron, take iron. But what they didn't do is try and figure out why they were low on iron.
13:03And when the patient came to see this cardiologist, the cardiologist was concerned that they might have a reason for low iron, thought it might be internal bleeding, refers them to a GI doc. The GI doc did a colonoscopy and they had stage four colon cancer. So it's one of these things where it's like, if you don't understand the pathology as to why you might have a deficiency, even with like the quote unquote boring things, like, you know, I don't think people think iron supplements are sexy or like calcium or vitamin D. No, but they think like quick shortcuts to health are sexy. Yeah. And this is something, I mean, I just found fascinating researching for the protein story is just like, I spoke to a food historian at length and I'm sad I couldn't make it more into the article because obviously I had to focus on the other stuff, but she had like spent months researching how basically protein mania has been just a huge thing over the last two decades at the very least.
14:02But it's because people attach like a health halo to certain words. I think supplements are definitely one of those categories where people just assume they're an unalloyed good because it's like medicine but not medicine. And then they don't ever think of the fact that these companies – I mean one of the most interesting details about like the supplement like regulation or lack thereof in comparison to other drugs is that supplement manufacturers are supposed to make sure their products aren't harmful. But basically they get to determine what counts as harmful and set their own limits for that.
14:39So there's no saying, hey, you can't have this much amount of lead in your supplement. Give me an example of a limit they'd set. So for heavy metal contamination, for instance, the government might say, hey, you probably shouldn't have contaminants like heavy metal or foreign metals and contaminants in your product. But they don't say, hey, you shouldn't have X amount of lead in there. The companies themselves get to decide how much of a contaminant is harmful and they get to do their own testing to make sure their products meet those self-imposed limits. This just feels like it's going to kill someone.
15:13I'm sure someone has already had a situation where they over supplemented. Well, no, this was a real issue back in the day. Yeah. And I mean, I think what's fascinating slash scary about it is because of the way this is reported, you, I think, get a very underreported figure of when someone comes to the hospital and they triangulate that it was due to supplementation because there can be issues where whatever you're taking, even if it isn't contaminated, can interact with a prescription drug you're taking or another supplement that you're taking. and the doctors I spoke to said that it's not always clear what is causing the issue because it could be in one of the active ingredients in a supplement.
15:56It could be something that's a contaminant in a supplement and like broadly speaking liver damage is a huge issue in supplements broadly just because when you ingest something part of the liver's job is you know filtering that out whether there's lead or whatever in it even if it's exactly what you're supposed to be taking, it's taxing on the liver. So like what I found kind of scary in the literature is that even when they know that liver damage was caused by supplements, the reason why is not always clear. It could be because the dosage, like what it says on the label very often is very different than the concentration of, you know, what's in the actual pill or powder.
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20:33And it's just like, okay. But I mean, then you can go even further. It's like, yeah, for that person, the concentration was different. Let's say it's like 200 % more. That person, the next pill they took from that same bottle could be like 50 % less or 300 % more. It's really difficult. And it also, it baffles me because I feel like a lot of people who turn towards supplements do so because they perhaps are skeptical about the medical establishment or pharmaceutical companies. So instead, they're turning to a less regulated industry with fewer checks and no one seemingly checking, or I guess on the same level of checking to make sure the products are what they say they are.
21:15And I will say I have some sympathy to that. don't worry I'm not going that direction talking to when I used to be really overweight it was like 350 pounds as a kid crazy fact and when I go to doctors they pretty much go yeah you're fat and be like yeah mate I know I'm told this every day at school 17 times a day I'm well aware but any ideas like you should eat less I'm like sick and then maybe 10-15 years later put on a bit of weight not quite as much basically the same you tried some walking it's like okay but nutritionally I can put you in touch with a nutritionist like it's like the base level knowledge isn't well knowledge or advice isn't there and then booking especially in america getting a doctor's appointment costs money costs time you wait an hour to get in like you have all of these things that are in the way and then there are full of communities full of people who will talk to you about supplements all day and be like yeah change my life i can tell you which of these 19 pills i take an hour have changed my life i feel really good and i have a way of referencing that it's the same way that people get radicalized it's it gives them a sense of control over something that feels uncontrollable.
22:18And the reason I looked at the Huberman Lab stuff is not because I listen, but because there's a ranking of podcasts on Reddit. And you're, I assume every, I assume right now you have a window open just refreshing that to see if we're going out. I stopped doing that weeks ago. But it's, you can look, and you can see it is like a cult style thing where it's like, let's look at your stank. I think you may, as you may, but it's like the pill stank, and it's just... I'm sorry, stank? Stank, stank. Oh, okay, I was like, the pill stank is what you get when you kind of There's a supplement for that. I was going to say it.
22:49And since I started like posting my workouts a few years ago, I get the most insane advertisements on Instagram. These new like, oh, yeah, brain power, like mind brain power. Every fitness influencer I've ever followed that unfollowed has always had like, there's this really great one called like the blind lifter. He's just this guy who's blind and lifts insane amounts. And his wife's like a very like normal looking woman and like really nice guy. And they'll be like, yes, my favorite supplement. It's like brain fuse. It's bright green. It's like, what the fuck? How do you know that this helps you?
23:18Do you feel smarter? I think like going back to, you know, some people feel alienated or they don't feel like doctors are listening. I heard that from doctors themselves where it's like, you know, depending on where you practice as a physician, you might have about 15 minutes to see each patient. Yeah. So like you're trying to figure out the relevant symptoms, what you can do. Maybe it's a procedure, maybe it's a medication. But like doctors themselves are telling me that either, you know, you don't get enough time to talk about lifestyle, proven lifestyle interventions you can make, talk about exercise, talk about nutrition and all of these things.
23:56It's more like just putting fires out so people don't feel like they have any space to talk to their doctor about things they could try, whether it's with exercise or whatever. So then you can find these people who will give you the time of day to walk through their spiel and their pitch. And then at that point is where poor decisions can be made because just someone makes you feel seen and heard doesn't mean you should take their bathtub pills that they made. Exactly. Exactly. Or like, oh, go get magnesium pills and pick in a random one. There's like 70 options on Amazon. And to your point, Paris, it's like, how do you know pill to pill how much magnesium is in it?
24:33Do you have no consistency to it? I think there's two different kinds of people here, though. Like, there's some people who are resorting to supplements because they haven't found something that works for them in the traditional system, either because they haven't been diagnosed properly or they haven't had access to an expert or whatever. And those are people who are very desperate to, who will admit like I am lowering my threshold for evidence because I've tried everything else. And if there's a chance, but on the Huberman side of things and like the stack where it becomes ritualized, like I do this every day, I do this every day.
25:10I think that's more like the wealthy or well-to-do, like worried well is what they're called, where it's like, I have everything else dialed in. It's the optimizers. I eat eight ounces of chicken breasts and X, Y, and Z, and I make sure I get enough sleep because I'm tracking it and I have a bed that works as long as AWS is up and all of these things. And then the supplement is really like the icing on the cake is usually the term that they call it where it's like, if you have everything else dialed in, this might help. and you know if it works for you and if you're able to find things that are pure and like there's so many ifs like then maybe but there haven't been studies to show like we have like 4 000 guys like you and we've run this as a test and a point that i think is missed sometimes is if something works there's a mechanism so like there's a trade-off somewhere and i think actually um dr Cohen, who's an over in the middle.
26:10I was going to say, I could tell Dr. Peter Cohen. I think he was referred to as now the supplement king because it's the opposite of that. He's like the chief supplement like skeptic. He's a great researcher and doctor who we both spoke to for articles that has been kind of tracking this same issue that we've been talking about, but for decades. Yeah. And he was like, he's like, I'm not fully against supplements as a concept. But all of these issues we brought up where it's like, you know, before you even run one of these end of one studies on yourself, if you decide to, you can't guarantee that what you're testing yourself with is what it says on the label.
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26:51And then asides from that, he was like, I think the main ones that he called out as being if his patients are using them, it's like, we need to have a conversation about stopping. This is actually a question I had. stuff for weight loss, stuff for exercise, stuff for male sexual enhancement, which is another gas station genre. Oh, yeah. So I want to admit, I take testosterone. I'm on weekly zyastat, prescribing my doctor. Before I went and got that, I really looked into all of these weird testosterone things online. You were doing the gas station boner pills? No, no, no. No, because it was a weird thing where I was like, I recognize this is a hormone, and I've known enough woman in my life that like, I know hormones do more.
27:33You can't just like hormone up one day and it'll be fine. But it's interesting because when you go and look online, the amount of cons related to testosterone, just the word testosterone, there's a whole supplement thing of like testosterone enhancer. And it's just like based on no science. And then there are websites you can go to where it's like, we'll speak to a doctor and then you'll send us blood and then we'll send you testosterone in the mail and you'll inject yourself in the butt, I think. I love to send someone blood and receive an injection. No, there was a whole common, Viome, I think, where you said like poop and poop.
28:06Oh, and then they, yes. And then they, it was a couple that started this poop testing startup and now they're both on the lam from, I believe, fraud charges. So that's why they didn't get back to me. I sent them a lot of poop. Yeah. Some mine, some others. But it's just interesting how there's this whole predatory supplement, testosterone protein powder thing online there's a hundred different companies that are all doing weird shit i get i get targeted for the the um high protein foods now yes that was a are any of those full of lead i don't know we didn't test god damn it um but i'm fascinated by them and it's all i was thinking about when i was reporting this out i just put because every store has like a protein boosted pasta protein croissant protein puff i've eaten a lot of them as well but then you look in the back and it's like what's one of the first ingredients like a whey protein yeah it just has lead it's like a whey protein concentrate or like a pea protein the plant ones i'm staying the fuck away from those ones are really fun though because you go and look it's like yeah i need 20 grams of protein and only 200 calories for the cookie and the cookie is the size of a dime it's like an it's the insanity of these things as well and it feels the internet is just this in like this kind of abuse mechanism for it because there's the ton actually i will say there's a ton of really good reddit threads where they're just like no it's bullshit no it's bullshit which is awesome but the amount of hoi polloi around like yeah this supplement changed my life and then another guy i hate this it gave me diarrhea and it's like okay i've been really fascinated one of um the responses i've gotten my article from some of the people who takes the supplements that are the most lead is being like well it's not that much lead it's actually fine in comparison i was like why are we stumping for lead guys but second like to your point earlier i think just one of the things about this story that i find the most valuable is just people need to know like should people should be able to figure out what is in their product and make an informed decision about whether or not they want that if you like read yeah that um huel uh one serving of Huell's Black Edition has like 6.3 micrograms of lead in it.
30:18And you're like, I'm into that. Good for you. Like, make your own decisions. I've tried their food like that. And what's great is they call it food product, which is what you really want from the thing you're eating. And it also tastes and looks like prison food. It's I love food. Back in the day, it was a Soylent girly during a really deeply depressed. Oh, yeah. No, I've had I've had some depressing. Yeah. But there was like a time where Soylent was just selling like a neutral rectangle of basically food product. Yes, just slop. It was slop, but in a square shape. A slop brick? Yeah, it was a slop brick.
30:53Just stuff. Yeah. I mean, that was giving me some sort of mental poisoning at the very least. There really is. Just based on vibes. I do think, you kind of said something, Ashwin, it's like there is a faith-based thing to it. It's a ritual. It's like, I know when I've been in the throes, I'm going to be very vulnerable, the throes of like depression around weight loss and working out and such the shit i would eat and like the small amounts of food or like the weird insulting products i'd eat and you go online and other people doing it too is like yeah i i am the penitent man i shall pass like in indiana jones and i i suffer like you do and everyone's kind of suffering together and at the time i was like oh this is great other people i'm like we all are very unhappy and it's but the amount of but it's forming a community around being unhappy and that's addictive it's the predatory nature it's the it's radicalization by in a different form and weirdly enough i haven't seen it around the fitness things like all the fight camp people i've talked to are just like kind of crazy like we just enjoy punching the bag i mean but there is like such a cult around protein maximization like protein maxing yeah that i i mean well actually tell me a little bit about this it's well people overwhelmingly think you need more protein than you actually do like i was definitely one of these people before i started like researching this story i thought i was like similarly in my pits of depression like uh and micromanaging the food i ate i was like oh i'm woefully protein deficient i need to be making sure i'm having like seven chicken breasts a day or something crazy like that because that'll be great with my working out ashland was actually really helpful on this for me keep going sorry and it's just like for the average person you're probably getting more than enough protein through your food and unless you fall into some specific categories or have like a specific type of like workout need that you have like you don't need to be having way over the recommended daily allowance of protein which is 0.8 grams per kilogram body weight thank you i'm glad you know this i was actually going to ask but ashwin you you've been quite transformative with my weight loss because you're the one who mostly advocated for doing less weird shit just like try and get like work on consistency yeah and eating enough protein yeah who would have guessed doing doing things regularly is useful i feel like because i i definitely fall into the index maybe over indexing for protein but in like i think part of the reason that it's having a moment slash sustained moment is that when people like if you're trying to have a rubric for, you know, how to assemble a plate.
33:25And, you know, the largest things are protein and veg. Like those are the most filling things, right, with fiber and how satiating protein is. And it's like, if you do that, there's not many other rules that you have to kind of abide by without getting into like, you know, you otherwise you can get kind of a little bit disordered depending on how you think about this stuff. But then I think what became an issue is that there's research and, you know an emphasis on protein and then it's like okay we need to put protein in water we need to put it in chips we need to put it was protein beer like we need to we need to calm down folks i like the protein chips it's fine listen the protein chips taste significantly better than you'd expect yes that's but that's always with proteins though it's like it's better than you'd expect it seems like it's a we're just whoever is trying to solve like a much bigger problem with just a consumption yeah and i think there was like some interesting research i came upon which is like people if they looked at like two identical like cereal brands that one had the word protein on it and one uh didn't they'd be like oh the protein one is healthier and then if you actually looked at the ingredients in the back the protein one was like less healthy it's the new low fat uh it is the new low fat but it's been like it's the first of these diet trends that we've had uh go on for a long time without ever having the bubble pop on it like there's no people being like oh protein is bad for you and i don't think like that's i'm protein isn't bad for you it's totally fine to have but you don't need to be obsessed with it it doesn't need to be the end all we both say this is people who have obsessed over yes yes i think it's like the old the old trope was you know how in you know like women's fitness magazines they'd be like i'm worried about lifting weights because as soon as I pick up a dumbbell, I'm going to be like, you know, jacked bodybuilder.
35:14And I'm worried about that. That's something that happens to people. Yeah. And I think now. And that is categorically untrue, just to be clear. Yeah. No, it's completely false. If only it was that easy. It's like, you know, you trip and fall. And if you pick up something by accident. I don't know about you guys. Every time I accidentally touch a weight, I just get ripped. Just like a Rob Lee feel. I can't even like wear sleeved shirts. Yeah. Just they pop out. But I think it's the same thing now where, you know, I've been like this. I've had friends like this where it's like they go to the gym twice and they're like, I don't think I'm getting enough protein.
35:43They're like, why? You're like, I just, I don't feel like I'm getting the results. And you're like, how long have you been doing whatever? And then they're like, two days. They're like, okay. You're trying to solve a much bigger problem with a consumption solution. Yeah. And I think it's all taking advantage of a really shitty sad thing, which is, yeah, if you're putting on weight, you might be eating too much food. If you're not putting on muscle, maybe you're not doing enough consistently. Yeah. Yeah, maybe if you're not feeling healthy, are you doing things that are healthy? It's like a really easy shortcut to feeling better about your choices.
36:16You're like, oh, it's not bad that I'm having a pop tart. It's a protein pop tart. I'm not changing my life in any way, but my life will change somehow. And it's not my fault. It's not changing. It's something else. Yeah, it's not bad that I had a whole bowl of pasta tonight because it's protein pasta. The protein pop tarts are pretty good. I do feel like we're in the golden age of low-calorie, high-protein things. I love it. But at the same time, it's like, yeah, you can just eat as much food as you used to in protein. And you're just going to plateau. Yeah. And it sucks. And it sucks a lot because, I don't know, this all gets back to the core internet thing of everyone wants the easy choices.
36:54It's like the radicalization of young men. Oh, it's because one won't speak to you. Maybe you're rude. Maybe you don't bring much to the conversation. Maybe you've got bad vibes. Maybe you have bad breath. Like, maybe you have a bad something. Maybe all that protein you're eating is making you stank. Yeah, protein farts are real. No, they really are. It's really bad.
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40:53My stack needs to be higher. No, really, the stack stuff is crazy. Well, that's actually, to that point, like I've spoken to like health influencers who have, and ones who I consider like pretty responsible. And they're like, we're trying to make boring things sexy, whether it's like, because otherwise you can't have a health podcast that comes out twice a week with just established stuff. Because it would be like, hey, did you get enough sleep? How much have you exercised this week? How is your mental health? And how is your nutrition? And that would be it. You know, like, but they can be like, oh, there's a promising new rat study done on one, two rats, one of them exploded, but the other, you know, looks pretty good.
41:34So long as you don't explode, you'll be so hot. Only two out of the seven rats exploded. And they had bad vibes. And the others were jacked. Yeah. No, this is the problem. Whenever I spoke to fitness or performance experts in the research field of protein and muscle, I was like, oh, well, what's the best advice for you? And he's like, nobody wants to hear it, but just eat whole foods, make healthy choices, take care of your body. Everyone falls asleep if you say that. My big secret is that I sleep seven and a half to eight hours a night. I mandate this. and it's like doing that changed my life more than any pill i've taken in my goddamn life other than like maybe my methylphenidate for my adhd it's insane how much that helped but the problem is is once you once you've got into the routine of sleep it's great making yourself get into a routine of sleeping that much is actually very difficult nightmarish and you need like i sleep with like the blackout thing oh like i'm just imagining you in a coffin no i really a lot like it's super cold oh like i like have like the full blackout eye mask i take a i take like melatonin and trazodone sometimes if i'm having trouble sleeping i i sleep like a baby and it's great but it's like to your point ashman it's like yeah that would really help i don't know how the fuck a parent does that like i don't know how like someone with like three kids would possibly ever fucking do that someone who works nights someone who works nights someone who just has a stressful job that comes up in their mind when they close their eyes someone who's housing insecure yeah exactly like any number of things could change or just anyone with a decent amount of stress in their life it's difficult and even like the i feel like some of these fitness influencers or the fitness communities there is a degree of pressure there's not really much empathy at all like actually i've definitely messaged you with just like i feel like shit about my it's most of the time you just say you're doing all right like it could be maybe you got knocked off your routine and i think that the grisly fact of all this is yeah it's routine consistency actually having good advice like i took me years to find someone who could actually tell me a routine that would work i was lifting and literally hurting myself for years because everything i read was like you need to do the big three core lifts you fucking moron you can't bend you can't you can't bend your weight like i'm like a buck 65 buck 70 right bucks yeah buck 70 maybe and i can't bench my body beam but just like on one core lift i can't and it's like squat 300 though and it's it's fucking strange because there's so much literature that says that's bad even the bmi which is by like a by like health insurance not health insurance uh i thought bmi is by like an anthropologist no it's by some corporate uh figure perhaps life insurance no no that's steps steps for the one that i'm sorry anyone who talks about steps that was a japanese life insurance company It was like a Japanese health insurance company I'm pretty sure the BMI I'm going to look this up live on the show I was about to say you have the technology here Yeah there we go Who invented this?
44:40Adolphe Quetelet a Belgian astronomer Said that word flawlessly Mathematician Devised the basis of the BMI Between 1830 and 1850 Hey that's when they really knew their stuff That's when they really knew science for example It's just fucking stupid and there's so much bad like the steps thing is the thing that frustrates me as well because you can do so many steps without anything happening like i've fallen into this trap myself and i feel i hope that it's clear anyone listening to this this is not a shame thing this is a thing that i have done many he's like oh i got 10 000 steps that means shit like it's like what is that based on like the japanese pedometer yeah yeah that's exactly it's like the insurance company and it's It sucks because that was the earliest version of this supplement fitness kind of scam thing.
45:28Well, I feel like, you know, 10 ,000 steps was, you know, the kind of like the prototype for a bunch of things we've seen since where all of these devices have come up with some kind of proprietary metric where it's like, you know, you got a million Google points for, you know, your activity. The one I'm seeing so much now is like your body's age, your biological age. ages 18 or something like that and it's like sir you are a 39 year old man just feel good about yourself but you have boy blood you've got boy blood i should also be clear by the way if you're doing steps moving is important it's good if you're trying doing any of these things if you're walking great makes you happy and uh you're an adult with free will live your truth but i have an aura ring and i do have an eight sleep mattress it did it break no during the i was and i'm a i'm a baby i need like cold cold like i have it in like minus 10 i'm i am like an actual creature but it's i have stats from my ring i have stats from my bed i've got this thing called somny that does like tax electrical things it's great really helps and like my rem sleep is up and i think i feel it's just but like i don't really have any frame of reference for any of this does knowing how much i sleep is useful because it's like yeah if i have less than eight i don't feel is good but it's like all i have data for years years and years years and years i could not tell you a single fucking thing about my fitness other than i feel and look better than i have like i can't tell you shit but there's this guilt factor about it as well with like strava loves to inform me like oh you move things down your numbers are low it's like thank you strava what am i meant to do with this oh i forgot to work out that's what happened i need guilt trips yeah i i think like It takes a lot of discipline and perspective to not go nuts from having all this information in front of you.
47:20I remember when I got one of the first Fitbits, and it very quickly became like an obsessive thing that I had to stop using, where it's like, oh, I could get to a nice round number if I go for another run. It's like the MyFitnessPal trap. Yeah, that was when I, once I signed up for a gym and they had to, like, as part of the package, you could get a session with a personal trainer. And I got this guy who's like, oh, you got to start tracking what you eat. And I use like use my fitness palette. I tried it for a day. I was like, this is going to drive me insane and give me a new type of eating disorder that I don't want.
48:00and you know it's just one of those things where you know some people are able to do that and make it part of their lifestyle and other people it drives them fucking nuts i do think we need some degree of like tonal for example i did injure myself using it it was my fault i just over trained it feels like it should be able to tell you like hey man you've done four heavy lifts in the last five days maybe not maybe you should think about it for a second peloton i mean i've over trained on it when i used to do it years ago you go on the reddit tons of people overtrain on it you get obsessive they have the the medals you can get and there's absolutely no like coaching aspect it's not like a hey you've done a lot of heavy stuff maybe do some like there's no real guidance and there's so much because all of these companies now operate like tech companies where increasing user engagement is one of the end goals of course you want engaged users of course you want your users that are moderately engaged to become highly engaged Why would you ever want to slow down that ramp?
48:58But it gets more complicated when you're talking about people and their bodies and habits and actual human things. Yeah, and it's also just – it gets back to the thing of there's not much qualified advice. There's a lot of seemingly qualified, but it's hard to tell what the actual – oh, there's 100 million different people who'd be like, I'll build you a plan. There's none of them have worked other than the guy called Ben the PC guy on Twitter, as in personal computer. used to work at Microsoft lovely guy he's the only person other than Ashwin I think who's given me like any like useful reliable fitness advice a lot of it's just yeah mixing a bit of cardio volume's good and it but you read a bunch of other say no dude starting strength 5x5 you fucking pig yeah if you don't have 1.5x by the end of the year I'm gonna come to your house and kick you in the balls yeah I'm gonna squat you in half yeah I'm gonna do to what Bane did to Batman and then I'm gonna log that in Strava Strava's also shit A lot of these things are also shit for logging fitness.
49:56Like it's just like the Apple Watch also doesn't stay on my... There's a lot of just times when I use the stuff, I'm like, do people who do fitness use this thing? Or is this just, to your point, Paris, just another tech company? I like to... I will go to bat for Tonal in that I've used it for years. And I think it's one of the best ones because it does actually really hound you about form. But like things like Peloton, they don't give us. I was going to say, I think any of these products, if you use them in moderation, if they bring some sort of joy to your life, They bring consistency. That's great.
50:24But it's hard when you mix kind of habit forming products and the kind of flywheel of engagement with something like exercise. Yeah. And I feel like it's almost antithetical to what makes exercise successful, which is you kind of need to learn how your body feels, which is a very woo woo thing. But it's true. Like, yeah, you know, when your body like some weeks you may do four exercises. sometimes you may do too because you're i don't know speaking for experience you hurt your calf and you hurt your elbow in the same week yeah you probably shouldn't push yourself to box or lift even if your brain's saying you get fat if you do but nevertheless it's like that it runs completely contrary to a product that's the goal is to keep you using it like the the you must log in every day if you don't do that you're a pig and a hat the duolingo owl is gonna beat you up i will kill the duolingo out i will i use i do my duolingo every day and like that lily will be like hey you haven't done it would be a shame if you lose your streak and i take all my sleeping pills tonight you're like chill out i'll do it but i'm in the garage like the the incentive for these you know the companies you know obviously they act like tech companies where they're trying to keep things as sticky as possible and you know have things on subscription basis instead of just being able to buy stuff outright.
51:43And I found like it's antithetical to a proper business model, but a lot of this stuff is useful for a period of time. Like I tried Whoop and some of it I found useful. Some of it, it was annoying to me that it doesn't track weightlifting as well as cardio. And because I lost the forest for the trees, I would do more cardio because that would get counted, which is idiotic if you step back and be like, I'm doing it because of my bracelet that I'm paying for. But, you know, some people you use something to collect some data, and then you kind of pair that with your intuition and what works, or what you're feeling, you know, because I found whoop would tell me I had a great sleep, and I felt like shit and vice versa.
52:24And you realize you have to know yourself well enough to maybe make a overriding decision that it's not accurately capturing how you feel. And then once you spend a period of time doing whatever training, you don't necessarily need a gizmo or gadget to tell you what you feel you know intuitively but that's not something that they're going to say like oh try this and then throw it in the garbage yeah you're only going to need this a minute mate don't worry just pay us for a month who gives a shit they love that all the growth people are yelling at me but you just fucking get rid of it it it sucks but i i do love it i really i love you are the most i feel like metrics obsessed person i know in just terms of you're always posting uh your fitness metrics i love it no actually like it's just also like good to for me to just do and be like okay i did that i forgot whether i did it or not yeah no it seems like i don't know it's fun no i just run to a local basketball court and i just run around for 45 minutes missing i'm just imagining you by yourself there's not even a basketball you're just shooting just air shooting no i i admit i I went on Amazon and there was a tech-enabled basketball.
53:33I don't know. I imagine that your basketball can, like, degrade you while you're doing it. Yeah, it's like Claptrap from Borderlands. Like, ah, that was a bad shit. That's a good fucking – no, it's like you can measure your – Guys, we should stop this podcast right now. We have a ball to design. If you're one of the companies with a connected basketball, send it to me. I would love to play the basketball. You can send all my data to China. You know, just like there's a pig butchering operation that starts in on me because I can't shoot. If you shoot the basketball well enough, then a hole opens in it and it shoots a protein supplement right in your mouth.
54:08Like a fish biscuit from Lost. No, or just like if you shoot really badly, you have to keep playing. Again. The ball starts getting heavier. It was$250. $250. I guess like. I mean. I sort of. This is a dumb person thought, but my thought is, wouldn't it be kind of hard to make a tech product that works well if you also throw it at the ground repeatedly? That's the thing. I'm like, I'm oddly curious about it. And I guess now I've talked about it on the show, I could tax deduct it. But it's, there was also a$5 ,000 basketball hoop, which fucking. What? No, it's like, it's so cool. I definitely went down.
54:45I'm like, not, would never. What about it? What it is, is the backboard of it is a screen. So it's like Peloton. And it's like, shoot the ball. Why are you making a complicated tech product that is expensive that you throw something really hard at? Well, that I can understand because that's how basketball works. It's more I'm just like, who the fuck is this for? Because five grand for that, you can probably just go to a local court where people play and they'll just tell you why you're trash. They'll scream again at you. And if anyone in New York wants to get together, shoot hoops, absolutely.
55:22it ashwin i know it would be meaning but it's like the most joy i've got out of any of this isn't the tech enabled stuff it's shooting the shit with people once you get over the initial hoop of exercise sucking and i wish like it sucks because the supplement stuff online is very noxious the kind of predatory stuff but the communities online with fitness have been very good like there's actually like when you get away from the very negative ones it's just the people having fun it's great but there's such a war within them of like the the stat maxes or the cheats of course the people who just cheat yeah the peloton cheats are fucking great you can you can there's that a website that uh will allow you to cheat your strava yeah that's the peloton ones you can change the magnets you can unscrew it and change the hacking your no because like when i used to do peloton a lot i used to get really pissed off because i'd really like i knew my stats and i'd see a guy doing like 500 watts for like 45 minutes i'm like you are fucking this for it yeah it's like doping in the nerd olympics no it's it's straight up broke it's why i stopped using peloton because i'm like the whole reason i do this is to get better and this is a measurement of my strength this number no longer means anything like this number is meaningless now i can't even tell because it's obviously a competitive aspect yeah exactly it's like you're like i'm always being lapped by this person who clearly just has like their magnets and you look and the nut the line is just at the top of the graph i don't know maybe the strongest guy in the world yes just the guy with like terminator horse man like thighs three feet wide thighs just like he has to get a special pedal but tiny feet yeah all right i think we're gonna wrap it then i we've talked about the tiny footed peloton person paris where can people find you um you can find me on blue sky at paris.nyc or Twitter at Paris Martineau and follow my work at Consumer Reports.
57:14Ashwin? Yeah, you can find me at Blue Sky as well. I think I'm the only Ashwin Rodriguez on there and my website is ashwinrodriguez.com. And I am Ed Zichon. You can find me on the podcast Better Offline. I nearly misset the name of the podcast there, but I recovered flawlessly. I took a week off of my fucking premium newsletter last week, so please subscribe so that I can feel better about myself. should be a fun fun week coming up I think I'm just going to do a very simplified monologue this week and just really run through the basics because I've had requests that we need the basics of the AI bubble done which is crazy except I'm like 100 episodes on it anyway I love you all thank you so much for listening thank you to Bahid we're out here in New York City we've kicked ass out here and yeah catch you next week and actually on the monologue as well
58:07Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Ossowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at matosowski.com. M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I.com. You can email me at ez at betteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat.wheresyoured.at to visit the Discord and go to r slash betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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From the publisher
Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York City.
Ed is joined in-studio by Paris Martineau of Consumer Reports and freelance writer Ashwin Rodriguez to talk about the amount of lead in protein shakes, why people turn to the internet for medical advice, and how supplements are the wild west of e-commerce.
Paris Martineau
https://www.consumerreports.org/about-us/our-people/our-experts/paris-martineau/
https://bsky.app/profile/paris.nyc
Protein Powders story: https://www.consumerreports.org/lead/protein-powders-and-shakes-contain-high-levels-of-lead-a4206364640/
Ashwin Rodriguez
https://bsky.app/profile/ashwinrodrigues.com
Supplements Story: https://archive.ph/L6OZz/again?url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/well/doctors-supplements.html
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