The Protein Debate: Dr. Layman Reacts to Dr. Gardner's claims on The Huberman Lab

26:41So when you're doing this nitrogen balance and you're giving increasing levels and nitrogen balance is positive, which means you're storing protein, where's it going? The inherent issue is that if there's no storage, that nitrogen balance technique has to be wrong. Because if you translate that into actual protein gain per day, it would be outrageous. And so it's a technique that shows you something about a break point where the body is partitioning protein or amino acids differently. But to extrapolate that as a meaningful requirement is a stretch.

27:21Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:All I can say is, wow, I've heard you say a lot of fascinating and interesting things. But that is fascinating in the way that if we all take a step back and our discussion has been on protein and the RDA, whether the RDA is enough or not enough or the minimum amount, it really makes me reconsider the entire landscape about protein and how it's being spoken about. Meaning the RDA based on a nitrogen balance study seems just simply way off base. Yeah, I think there is a lot of very good data that suggests the RDA is quite low, by about 20%. If you look at estimates of using the nitrogen balance, when you realize it's not a linear, it's based on a linear extrapolation, that this curve goes up and there's a clean break and it's linear.

28:17And it's not. It knows that it goes up and it has a lower slope, but it's still positive. And so it's fundamentally wrong and people think it's wrong by about 20%.

28:29Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I want to pause a second because I want to know what that means. Explain to me what the graph looks like as you're talking about what are we trying to visualize as how they put these pieces together. And quite frankly, it's shocking that we are still talking about nitrogen balance without this reevaluation. but help me visualize the concept of what you are saying, that there is this progression and then it breaks off. If you go to zero protein intake, you can imagine that would be a negative nitrogen balance. If you're starving, obviously you're catamounting. And so they begin to bring in some small amounts of protein.

29:10And so you get a curve that is going upward. You're getting more positive nitrogen balance. And at some point, it begins to plateau. The analysis that is used is a linear concept where you get a break point and basically it stops gaining. It implies that you can't use any more. But it turns out the data, when you really look at it, all of them continue to go up. And so it's a curvilinear relationship as opposed to a linear relationship. And when you then begin to bring that into it, you realize that the current RDA, the current concepts of the EDR are underestimating it. So we've got the starting point that the intake and excretion are not accurate.

29:56So they're underestimating it. We're using an analytical method that is underestimating it. We're using a concept of nitrogen balance, which inherently doesn't make sense in a non-growing person. How can you be in positive nitrogen balance if you're maintenance? Okay, so now we've got methods that are underestimating certain things and overestimating other things. And most of the people who have studied this, Vernon Youngs and Peter Pellett and Hamish Monroe and Mark Hagstead and Bob Wolf and all of the true experts in protein in the world, have concluded that the RDA is probably about 20 % too low.

30:39that the real target should probably be about one gram per kg as the absolute minimum to prevent deficiency. And that's been related to protein synthesis measurements. It's been related to glutathione measurements and erythrocytes and all sorts of true outcomes, true functional outcomes, as opposed to just a vague nitrogen balance.

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32:19Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Lyon and use the code Dr. Lyon to get 20 % off. I recommend trying their starter pack with all three different formats. And of course, their gummies, which are incredible. In a perfect world, how would you rectify this? The way to rectify it is to just recognize that RDAs are defined to be the absolute minimum and that the healthy intake, the optimum intake for health is probably above that. So whether we're talking about vitamin C with a minimum intake of 60 milligrams and during the winter, we all take 500 or vitamin D where the minimum intake is 400 I use and we all take two or 3000 for bone health and etc.

33:08I think we need to recognize that protein has a healthy and safe range from somewhere maybe as low as point eight up to probably 2.5 or higher. And then where is the healthy range for you or for me or for for Huberman who personally likes it. It's personal choice. So I think that gardeners idea that that's the requirement and everyone should adhere to it isn't consistent with any nutrition principle. And it's certainly not the way we apply the carbohydrate requirement. We eat three times that and nobody recognizes it's too high. So, So, you know, I think what we're looking for is a consistent interpretation of the RDA as the minimum of which people shouldn't go below.

33:58It has nothing to do with the healthy requirement.

34:01Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:The statement that you make about the RDA being 130 grams a day, but Americans are eating 300 grams a day. When you say that they need to be thought about or at least discussed comparatively, tell me what you mean. So we know that carbohydrates are a risk metabolically in the body, that the body has a challenge in getting rid of carbohydrates. In the short term, you might be able to store some as glycogen. But in the long term, if you're eating three times your level, now you have to distort metabolism. And you'll see that in things like triglyceride levels, insulin sensitivity, and things like that.

34:46So Americans are eating way more carbohydrates than they need for basic metabolism, you know, three times the RDA. So now you have to think about what you're distorting. My specific experiments with that is we looked at weight loss, which is a way of trying to evaluate protein requirements. And what we did was a series of experiments where all we adjusted was the ratio of protein and carbohydrates. So I mentioned earlier that the RDAs tell us that the ratio should be about two to one. Americans are eating around four to one. And so what we did was that basically experiment. We had one group that had a high carbohydrate diet, was based on the food guide pyramid, four to one carbohydrate to protein, and they were eating exactly 0.8 grams per kg, that RDA.

35:40The other group, we went to twice the RDA for protein. we went to 1.6 and we reduced the carbohydrates down to about the RDA. What we found was that when we did that, and this was a weight loss study, that the individuals on the higher protein protected their muscle, lost more body fat, lost more weight. And we did this in a series of three different clinical studies, one of which was 12 months long with 120 subjects. So we know that a higher protein diet has body composition effects.

36:15Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Would you say that the conversation about carbohydrates is changing, meaning this? People are beginning to recognize that too much carbohydrates distort metabolism. And then on the flip side, we don't have that conversation about protein. We don't say too, quote, too much protein distorts body composition. You and I talk about muscle-centric health, muscle-centric metabolism. And I think what's missing in the conversation is that your carbohydrate needs relate to your muscle activity. So if you're an elite athlete putting in three hours per day of running or some activity, you probably need a lot of carbohydrates.

36:58But if you're a sedentary couch potato who's 65 or 70, your carbohydrate need may very well not be even the RDA before it begins to distort metabolism, insulin resistance, fatty liver, increased triglycerides. And so the issue is most Americans eating close to 300 grams per day need almost three hours of exercise per day to make that work. The comment about protein being converted to carbohydrates or glucose is true, but unlike, you know, carbohydrates coming from grains where you get an immediate spike right after the meal, the first 15 to 30 minutes after the meal, with protein, it takes five, six, seven hours to metabolize the amino acids into carbohydrates.

37:54So what you get is a very slow conversion, basically 24 hours a day that requires very little insulin activity. So from a carbohydrate standpoint, you can eat either bread, you know, white bread and rice and get carbohydrate boluses, or you can get the same carbohydrates from protein. I think a lot of people learn from the keto diets and things like that from studies of type 2 diabetes that that can be a very beneficial way to go. So you have one person who's an elite athlete who needs three, four hundred grams of carbs per day. And you have another person who's a type 2 diabetic where 100 grams might be too much.

38:37And I think that's the same with protein. We know we have a safe range of protein. So the issue is what's the individual need? What's their healthiest lifestyle? How do they get the nutrient density they need? What's the best for protecting muscle? And the RDA has almost no relationship to those kinds of discussions.

38:57Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:You bring up a very thought-provoking point, and that is if we were to take a step back, which you are very good at, by the way. Is that an age thing you're telling me? Totally. I mean, I can make a lot of it. I won't. The idea of putting together our plate, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. We eat in excess. It seems as if we are in excess of calories in general. Of those calories, typically the excess calories comes from carbohydrates and fats. But the safety, and obviously we don't eat individual macronutrients. We don't just say, I'm going to have a bag of fat today or a bag of amino acids.

39:44Well, some people do, which we're going to get to, or a bag of carbohydrates.

39:48Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:We eat foods. the three of those macronutrients do not affect the body the same way and here's where i'm going with this and i'd love your thoughts when we overeat carbohydrates and we're eating 300 grams of carbohydrates we know what happens to the body presumably let's say this person is sedentary and they're eating 300 grams of carbohydrates at a meal or i don't know a 150 twice a day breakfast for dessert, however you want to play that, there are metabolic consequences. These metabolic consequences include elevated levels of insulin, elevated levels of glucose in the short term, in the immediate.

40:31Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:If someone were to eat 300 grams of protein, let's say you split it up between 150, 150. Again, sounds like a lot. The metabolic consequences of that, if you were to say from a patient outcome perspective or lifestyle perspective, and our outcomes, broadly speaking, are health, and one could pick whatever is meaningful to them, you would not see the same negative effect. And even, and I would love for you to touch on this, and I'm going to throw one more expected macronutrient in there, fat. I would love your take on just conceptually that. Hydration isn't just about drinking Coke Zero or other sugar-free sweetened beverages like Red Bull.

41:18Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:No, I'm saying this for a friend. Or it's not even about drinking more water. It's about keeping the right balance of electrolytes and fluids. During life's most demanding season, like, I don't know, parenting, maybe pregnancy or postpartum, your body is going through massive changes, blood volume increases, hormones shift, breastfeeding demands, you know, all those things. All of these life transitions, you probably need more and better hydration. And you need electrolytes like sodium, magnesium, and potassium. Element has formulated to replenish what you actually lose without sugar, fillers, and junk that you don't need.

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42:32Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Go to drinklmnt.com slash dr lion to claim yours. That's drinklmnt.com slash dr lion. Stay hydrated, stay strong, and as Goggins would say, stay hard. You and I always talk about the macronutrients is you need to make a protein decision first. And that protein decision can be based on your personal culture or values or whatever are your goals. It doesn't matter if you want a low protein diet or a high protein diet. But once you make that decision, that determines a lot about foods. So that determines a lot about nutrients. Once you make that decision and you decide on your exercise and your lifestyle, now you have to make a macronutrient decision.

43:20We've had a 50-year period that has said, well, fat's bad for you. You should eat more carbs. The evidence for that was really bad. Where did the 30 % fat in the diet come from? That was just made up in a committee room. Where did the 10 % saturated fat come from? That was just made up number in a committee room. And there's no evidence to back that. But what we've done is distort the American diet toward grain carbohydrates. We got, we had a food guide pyramid that said, well, you should eat at the bottom. You should eat all these grains. And that's what Americans did. We got, you know, cookies with no fat.

43:59We got cookies that were nothing but sugar and things like that. And Americans were eating 16 servings a day out of that or more out of that bottom rung of the pyramid. In 2010, we got rid of the food guide pyramid because people recognized what it did to the American diet was to dilute the nutrient density and make people eat more calories to get the vitamins, minerals, and amino acids that they needed. So we know, and we've now had 30 years of keto diets that we know have an impact. They certainly have an impact on type 2 diabetes. So, you know, it's time to recognize that your choice between carbohydrates and fats is a fuel choice.

44:43Carbohydrates are actually the most risky of the fuels, and you probably need to tailor that fairly precisely to your muscle needs. Fat is actually the safest of the fuel needs, and that should round out your calories. So that's the way I always think about it. Make your protein decision. That's a major part of your nutrient decisions and where you're going to get your nutrients. Make a carbohydrate decision based on your muscle needs for physical activity. And then the rest of your calories really come from fat. You can also use protein to fill that in if you want to go higher. I think a lot of people who are choosing a gram of protein per pound are actually choosing it to avoid carbohydrates.

45:32I think that's a legitimate reason to do it. It has nothing to do with protein turnover, but it has everything to do with body metabolism. And I think that's a legitimate reason.

45:42Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:The reason I ask this question is because on one hand, I think that we are seeing the protein conversation getting a lot of pushback. We are seeing the New York Times, you know, we did an interview for the New York Times, Vanity Fair, you name it, people are coming down hard on the increase in protein discussion. That becomes thought provoking because if we were to say, wait a second, if you look at carbohydrates the same way, the conversation would be different just even from a metabolic perspective. Here is a macronutrient that you could arguably safely over consume. It does not have the metabolic derangement associated with carbohydrates.

46:32Yet, as I hear,

46:34Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:you know, professors and doctors talk about how our diet is wrong and that we can stop stressing about dietary protein, I have to say I disagree. And the reason is, is because we don't fundamentally understand the big picture of how we should be eating and the importance of each macronutrient. And what do I mean by this is that we have been over-consuming carbohydrates for decades. 74 % of us are either overweight or obese. We are eating a ultra processed, high caloric dense diet. And as we begin to have these messengers say, we are stressing too much about protein, it further distorts the message.

47:24Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And I do have concerns about that. Hopefully I'm, I'm making this clear. Let's say someone ate 300 grams of fat and they were in a ketogenic diet and their carbohydrates were controlled. They probably would have a better metabolic profile than someone who is overeating 300 grams of carbohydrates. So this is what I'm trying to do to concisely say with these different macronutrients, we have this conversation and group of people that are demonizing protein, telling us that we don't need to be quote stressing about it and saying all of these different things. And yet we have a population that is grossly metabolically unhealthy.

48:03The idea that people are stressing about it, for me, I interpret that as meaning, well, they're going out and buying all kinds of weird things and protein bars or shakes or free amino acids. And I don't really recommend any of that. But I think that we do need to make a protein first decision. We need to understand what that decision means. What we know is that the food guide pyramid, which said the worst thing in the world is to eat animal foods because of cholesterol and saturated fat was totally wrong. That information was totally biased and totally made up. And so what we did was distort the American diet by diluting the nutrient quality with carbohydrates, with grains.

48:52And that caused people to eat more calories. We know from a variety of research, one of which is referred to as the protein leverage hypothesis, that all animals, all humans, all people tend to eat toward a protein target. We're eating toward a certain amount of protein, maybe 16, 17 % of our calories, maybe up to 20%. That seems to be pretty consistent. But when you fake people out with what are called ultra-processed foods, foods where we are diluting the nutrient quality with carbohydrates, with grain products, now we have faked out the satiety system. Protein is the most satiating of all proteins.

49:35We get lost talking about protein and lean body mass or protein and muscle mass, but we forget that protein has a very high thermogenic effect. Protein has a very high satiety effect. Protein is metabolized to carbohydrates and are very slower. There's a lot of metabolic outcomes that are very beneficial with protein that aren't true of any other nutrient. And so I think stressing out isn't the right term. I would just say, I think it's time we shift back to being protein conscious. You know, when I was a child growing up on a farm in the Midwest, you know, we were very protein conscious, you know, protein was a central part of our meal.

50:17and then we sort of shifted away where we kind of got to a point where we treated protein as a garnish. You know, we would have big bowl of pasta with a little bit of meat sauce and refer to that as protein. You know, I think that's where we lost the track. We need to be protein focused with a logical concept of what we're achieving nutritionally.

50:39Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Based on that, I'm going to play this other clip here. So here's another myth that we need to bust. So the myth part is that plants are missing amino acids. They're not complete. I'm sure everybody listening today has heard quinoa, the only plant with all nine essential amino acids. Bullshit. So I don't know if you can look at my paper in your podcast or show it. And I have it on my computer. On the show note captions. So we wrote a paper in 2019. And this actually was pretty fun for me. It came from working with the chefs. Let's stop there. The concept of complete and incomplete probably is a bit over extrapolated.

51:25It's not necessarily a good term. What it means is that the amino acid profile isn't the same. What we know is that our protein, we don't actually have a protein requirement. We have a requirement for nine individual amino acids. They're called the essential or indispensable. And so what we know is that they're perfectly balanced in animal products, and they're not as well balanced in plant products. And some plants, such as quinoa, is very low in some of them. For example, if you compare a whey protein, which is a dairy protein, with quinoa, in the whey protein, the leucine, the essential amino acid, is 12 % of whey protein, where in quinoa is 6%.

52:13So that means you'd have to eat twice as much quinoa protein. So if you look at leucine that way, what you end up with is you can meet your protein requirement at a meal, say 30 grams, with about 23 grams of whey protein, where it takes 45 grams of quinoa protein, which is 1000 calories, you know, it's 1000s of calories to do it. So they're not incomplete, meaning that the amino acid is there, but they're not in the right balance. And in general, animal proteins are about 50 percent essential amino acids, where plant proteins are about 35 percent, ranging from something like almonds, which is quite low and only about 26 percent, up to soy, which is high at about 40 percent.

53:06So they just have a lot less essential amino acids in them, which, you know, our earlier comment about the nitrogen balance data, when you determine nitrogen and extrapolate protein from it, you're always going to overestimate the quality of the protein in the plant sources because they have more non-essential amino acids. I knew a lot about this, but to make a slideshow for them that day, I did something I had never done before, and I got a whole bunch of foods, and I plotted out the amounts of every single amino acid in the food in the proportions they were in. If you looked at that 0.8 grams per kilogram body weight per day, and if you thought that exceeded the needs of some people, it's plausible that a lot of people, by that calculation, need 40 grams of protein a day, which sounds, I'm sure, very little.

53:57and I'm only bringing that up because there's 20 amino acids and I would assume the average person would think well if I needed 40 and there's 20 amino acids I would need 2 grams of every amino acid and that is totally not the way it works it actually works more like the board game of Scrabble so when you're drawing there's 100 Scrabble letters in the bag and there's 26 letters in the alphabet and almost seems like there would be 4 of each letter in the bag but you all know there's only 1 Z and one Y and one X. I mean, there's two Ys. But there's a crap ton of E's and N's and R's. And your amino acids are just like that.

54:33So you need a crap ton of lysine and leucine. And you need very little methionine or cysteine. So it was really fun in putting these graphics together. I said, here's eggs, here's beef, here's salmon, here's pork. Get ready, because I'm going to show you beans and rice and grains and fruit. And I'm focusing on proportion. I will say per calorie meat has more protein than plants, just in terms of calories. But proportion-wise, one of the myths is the missing amino acids or the incomplete ones. Because if you make a graphic out of this, you will see all plants have all goddamn 20 amino acids. They all have lysine.

55:12They all have methionine and cysteine. And the idea that they're missing is wrong. The idea that you have to complement your beans and grains is wrong unless you're getting very little protein. At that point, it is important to complement them. But it's really not hard to get a lot of amino acids. You mentioned the quality of your protein. If you're getting 175 grams of protein a day, quality doesn't matter who. You met your needs at 60 or 70 grams, and I think you're converting the rest to carbs. So that's the point we made earlier that he's saying that in the first 60, you don't convert any of it to carbs and only the last 100 did he convert.

55:56That's simply not true. He converts all of it, whether it's Gardner's 60 grams or whether it's Huberman's 175. They both converted all to carbohydrates and fats. I mean, every day. So that's just a gross misunderstanding of metabolism.

56:13Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I'd like to acknowledge one of the sponsors, and that's our place. I'd also like to acknowledge my mom jokes that are coming in hot about my old pan. It was so toxic even my veggies wanted to detox after dinner. But, ooh, that's bad. Seriously, nonstick cookware is still used, very convenient, but it comes at a cost. Nonstick contains harmful chemicals like Teflon and other PFAS, which can leach into your food. In our home, we use our place, which is toxin-free, high-performance cookware and appliances designed for safer, simpler use. The hidden dangers of traditional nonstick cookware is loaded with forever chemicals.

56:50Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Dump them. It is not worth it. If you want to start somewhere, start with the four-piece cookware set. It is your best way to overhaul that kitchen. Stop cooking with toxic cookware. Stop spending time with toxic people, upgrade your place today. Visit fromourplace.com slash Dr. Lyon and use the code Dr. Lyon for 10 % off site wide. That's 10 % off site wide with a hundred day risk-free trial, free shipping, free returns. You will experience a game changing cookware. So Gardner's comment was comparing protein to protein, but beans have four-fold carbohydrates per gram of protein. So it's not an equal calorie density.

57:41You have to eat a ton of beans to get to the protein.

57:44Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:When you say a ton of beans to get to the protein, again, we'll listen to what Andrew replies and then Chris's response, but you had calculated it's 420 almonds for the amino acid equivalent of a chicken breast. And again, if you are new to this podcast, I apologize that this is your first one. Dr. Donald Lehman is my longtime best friend and mentor. The protein conversation becomes incredibly important if you want to age well, if you want to have a healthy metabolism. The information online and out there is extremely difficult to sort through. And by having a foundational understanding as to how to cognitively approach it can be very beneficial because then you can make good decisions.

58:33And so it's really a shame that the sort of the quality thing is like, oh, plant foods don't have quality protein. They're missing amino acids. So if I can add that to the pool, so the two standard deviations, no place to store it, and plants are better sources of protein than most people think. And so that's why there are vegan bodybuilders. You can win a gold medal in a bodybuilding competition strictly on plant proteins because they're not missing. So if I could just help dispel that myth, they're not missing. They're not absent. there is something to the proportions of protein. So if you were to see the grid of the heat map of amino acids that I'll share with you later.

59:16I looked at this prior to this, and I will say that the proportions of, let's just concentrate on leucine perhaps, since most listeners will be familiar with leucine as kind of the critical one for muscle building. I've got that in air quotes for those just listening. How do the different sources for protein play out in that case? Almost identical, all the way down the list of foods that I have. Leucine is not a problem in plant food.

59:38Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I'm just going to pause him there, Don Lehman, because you didn't. I'm just going to put a little, I don't know, checkmark on that. I'll let him play, see what else he has to say after that. And I just interjected for you. Hold on. Let's see what else he has to say. The problem in plant food is it's low in lysine for grains and it's low in methionine for beans. they're actually called limiting amino acids because they would run out for if you only ate grains or you only ate beans they would run out first and then you'd be screwed you can't actually substitute another amino acid for a hormone or an enzyme you have to have all the amino acids in the proportions you want and that's where the complementary thing came in because grains although they're low in lysine are a little high in methionine and beans which are low in methionine or a little high in lysine.

1:00:30If you ate them together, it would be closer to their proportions in meat. It's still, meat would still be better. It has like, because animals are animals and we're animals, the proportions are perfect in animals. But what most people in this conference where I presented to, the chefs, they're like jaws were on the floor. Like, seriously, the proportions are that similar? God, that is mind-boggling that they're that similar. I realize they're not perfect. Was this made equivalent for calories or was it 100 calories of beans versus – No, this is proportion. This is proportion. Proportion. But if I took – let's just say 100 calories, which just for sake of example, and we took your chart which shows – and again, I looked at this prior to our conversation today and it did hit me square in the face that like all these plant sources have a lot of – they have all the different amino acids that beef does in different proportions, but they have them.

1:01:26But if we said, okay, now we're going to make that chart, but for 100 calories of food. So it's either 100 calories of ribeye or 100 calories of red beans or 100 calories of quinoa. You get the idea. Absolutely. And that's why for the next slide, when I give these presentations, my next slide is 100 calories of 20 food. We didn't plan that, folks. So it shows like for black beans, two and a half cups would be 40 grams of protein. For soybeans, two cups would be 40 grams of protein. For rice, like 20 cups of rice would be 40 grams of protein. His comparisons are right, but what's the meaning of 40 grams of protein?

1:02:07At the very least, we think it's probably double that that people need, at least 80, if not 100, as the minimum. And so, you know, 40 is two and a half cups of black beans. That means you actually have to have six cups of black beans to get in the same category. So Andrew's comments earlier about, you know, I simply don't want to eat. I don't feel good eating that much fiber. There are absolutely you can get the amino acids from plants, but it always comes with more total protein and more total calories to get to it. He's picking the numbers to make it look similar, but what's the meaning of 40 grams of protein?

1:02:52That's an irrelevant number.

1:02:53Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I was surprised by that comment because it's almost as if when you look at the back of a label and it gives you a protein number and say, for example, it's collagen and it says 40 grams of protein on the label. but really that protein score is zero because it's not an indicator of the quality or the amino acid profile. And I understand that that would be very difficult to do, which is part of what the initiative that you're working on with the EAA9 is. That is surprising that he would make a statement somewhat misleading. And I don't know if I'm misinterpreting it, but to say that the 40 grams of protein from beans is the same as the 40 grams of protein from chicken.

1:03:44Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I'm not sure that I'm totally understanding that. I mean, one of the examples that we've used in papers and others is that if you take the RDA for protein as your target, you can meet the RDA with chicken breast with three and a half ounces. If you're going to do that with almonds, which some people will say as a great protein source, it would take 420 almonds. I mean, that's over 50 grams of fiber and it's pretty disruptive to the GI system. So, you know, the plants have the amino acids, but to make it equivalent, you have to eat a lot more of it. And, you know, that's why most vegetarians or vegans tend to be low protein.

1:04:26And so I understand his goal is to make the RDA look like the target, but nobody who works in the protein field believes that. Everybody who works in the protein field believes the target is something above 1.2. And his comment to Andrew was that 175 grams of protein per day, the protein quality doesn't matter. I think that's exactly true. If you get up in the 100, 120 grams of protein per day, now the fact that it comes, a lot of it comes from plants, doesn't matter. But we know, and we've done some modeling, that as you go down toward the RDA, you will become deficient in essential amino acid.

1:05:13The amount of, the quantity by far is the first most important, and then quality becomes second.

1:05:19Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Is there a number that you would feel comfortable with individuals having? Let's take a 45-year-old, 50-year-old postmenopausal woman, what is the minimum number of protein, the amount of protein that she should have a day? The minimum amount should be the 1.2 grams per kg. But what about a gram amount? I have a thought on this. And most of our studies were related to weight loss and people who had some metabolic issues. We found that we lost all of the metabolic metabolic benefits if we got below 100 grams per day. That's what I was going for and I wanted you to say. Yeah. So I mean, you've heard me say that before, I'm sure.

1:06:06But we always found that if people got below 100 grams per day, the metabolic benefits you get with protein, the satiety, the thermogenesis, the protein, the muscle aspects, we would lose all of those. The effects on insulin sensitivity, the effects on triglycerides, all of those seem to have a buffer at around 100 grams per day.

1:06:29Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Curious as to how you were able to parse that out, the number of 100 grams per day. So we were doing weighed food records. A lot of the stuff that's in the literature are food frequency questionnaires and things like that. We did three studies. The first study was 12 weeks long, and we actually fed every meal. The second study was 16 weeks long, we fed all the meals for the first month and taught them how to weigh them. And they had to do weighed records three days every week for the 16 weeks. The third study was 12 months long, where we taught them to do that. And they had to do weighed food records three days every week for 52 weeks.

1:07:13What we saw is that the effectiveness of the diets, when we started of looking at the individuals, people who weren't doing well, their protein intake had slid down. People who were doing better were above the 100 grams per day. So it was something we saw within our data set.

1:07:33Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:There are a few other things I really wanted to touch on. The upper limit of protein. He makes a point by saying there's no storage mechanism for excess protein. I don't completely understand the argument. I'm not sure that it matters. why there isn't a storage component for protein, because protein is so valuable to the body. Just to interrupt you there, so that the whole argument is based on amino acid oxidation data, or even the nitrogen balance data. What they are is break point analysis that you have, if you're, you know, direct amino acid oxidation data, if you begin to bring protein into the diet from zero, what you'll find is oxidation is very low up to a point, and then all of a sudden it goes up.

1:08:24And so the argument is that at that break point, you're now oxidizing, you're wasting the amino acids. But if you actually go back and look at the data, and people like Al Harper and Brooks and others have done this, if you go back and actually look at the data, they're only recovering about 15 % of the amino acids with that oxidation. So that means 75, 80 % of the amino acids are still not accounted for. So the idea that you're wasting all the rest of it is a total extrapolation from the graph that doesn't actually reflect data. So that is, you know, inherent problem with all of these interpretations of storage and wastage.

1:09:09Again, every amino acid you eat every day has to be oxidized every day. Doesn't matter whether you're eating 60 or 160, they still get oxidized. So let's think about the complementary protein. We did a study that we published last year in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. And basically, we took meals directly out of my plate, the USDA guidelines. And we took a meal that started out with a meal that had some chopped walnuts and chicken breast in it. And it was basically meeting the essential amino acid requirements with 260 calories. And then we looked at starting to substitute plant things into it.

1:09:56So if we kept the walnuts, so plant-based, and we substituted in what are complementary proteins, we use kidney beans, which was two and a half cups, and brown rice, which was two and a half cups. So all perfectly good nutrition. We now have met the 95 % of our essential amino acids, but we now have 1150 calories. So we went from meeting our essential amino acid content with the chicken breast and 260 calories. We can meet it with the complementary proteins, but it took 1150 calories to do it. So the issue is complementary proteins, amino acids are true, but the nutrient density of those foods is so low, you just have to eat too many calories to get to it.

1:10:45Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Don, I feel like we're on jeopardy. What is the relevance of essential amino acid supplementation? And I'm going to frame this up for you. A friend of mine who's been doing three-day fasts said, gee, I am fasting for three days, but I've been taking these amino acids. And I thought to myself, okay, well then you're not actually fasting. Out there on the internet, there's a lot of amino acid supplementation. It shows on the packaging that those supplements have zero calories, even though they're complete proteins. If someone were to take that, would they essentially still be fasting? They are fasting and then they are using a amino acid supplement, which is a full spectrum, complete amino acid profile?

1:11:33You know, on the surface level of what you just said, it highlights a real problem in our labeling laws. Amino acids were never expected to be a major supplement. And so they were approved on what's referred to as the grass list, generally recognized as safe as a supplement where people might use cysteine as an antioxidant or something. But now people are putting in all these essential amino acids. And the labeling law says when amino acid is a free amino acid, you don't have to count the calories on the label. So somebody could put in 10 grams of amino acids, which would be 40 calories and say it's zero calories or worse yet 20 grams and say it was zero calories, you know, even though it would have 80 calories in it.

1:12:28So your point is, they're not really fasting, you know, it's like saying, well, I'm fasting, but I'm taking a Gatorade or something with sugar in it. You know, I'm not chewing anything. But I mean, those amino acids all have calories. So that's a problem with the labeling laws.

1:12:47Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:A really important point. Friends, if you are taking a complete amino acid supplement in between meals or you are taking it while you are fasting, technically you are no longer fasting. Is that fair to say? Yeah. So they just need to multiply it. Whatever grams of amino acids they're taking times four, they're taking that many calories. One of the statements that you've said to me many times is how do you diagnose protein deficiency? It brings up a really important concept. There's immediate deficiency, and then there's lifelong deficiency. Can you explain a little bit about how you think about protein deficiency?

1:13:32I hear people a lot of times use the nitrogen balance argument in the RDA and say, well, people don't have deficiencies. And so then I started wondering, well, what outcome are you looking for? Does it relate to heart disease or diabetes or, or cancer or Alzheimer's? I mean, what does it look at? What do you relate it to? So, you know, we did the clinical studies looking at weight loss, and we know that higher protein diets are, are very good at protecting body composition, protecting lean mass during weight loss. So in my mind, that means that the food guide pyramid 0.8 grams is actually protein deficient because we see as true benefit of higher levels.

1:14:18We also know that you can substitute protein in for carbohydrates and you can reduce insulin problems. You can change diabetes. So is that a protein problem? But even simple things like osteoporosis, bone is first and foremost a protein matrix, sarcopenia, loss of muscle mass and functional mobility with aging. You know, these are long-term outcomes that you can't measure in a three or four or six week study. So, you know, how do you assess a deficiency? You know, unlike a scurvy where you start having gum problems in a few weeks, you know, protein doesn't work like that. It has much longer term effects.

1:15:02So nitrogen balance doesn't relate to anything. And one of the markers people have been using are things like erythrocyte glutathione levels. So here we have a relationship of protein, particularly the sulfur amino acids, to one of the primary anti-inflammatory mechanisms in the body. And what we can see is that when protein gets too low down toward the RDA, those levels will go down. To maximize glutathione levels in older adults, we need a minimum of 1.2 grams per kg of protein to do that.

1:15:39Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Over time, there are overt deficiencies, kwashi or kor, and then there are subtle deficiencies, and maybe deficiencies isn't the right word that we see over time. What we don't have and what we don't see in the immediate are those individual amino acid needs and then long-term outcomes. For example, what you just said, methionine and glutathione production. Glutathione is a master antioxidant. It's very important. Our ability to make it seems to decrease as we get older. yet we don't say we have a methionine requirement for X, Y, and Z. I just wanted to mention that because it's important to do that over time.

1:16:29We can go through and we can talk about others. I mean, we can talk about tryptophan relative to serotonin in your mood and sleep. We could talk about threonine and gut health and the mucin levels. We could talk about phenylalanine and tyrosine and dopamine and cognitive function and memory. These are all amino acid roles that have nothing to do with, you know, storage or efficiency. These are amino acid metabolism roles that are significantly above the RDA.

1:17:03Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And what would happen if we don't ingest those or meet the RDA, which... We don't really know. And that's one of the arguments I've been making is that I frankly think our RDAs for the essential amino acids are low, but we know that if you are eating a primarily grain-based diet at the RDA, you will be deficient in two or three of the essential amino acids. And that's really what Americans do. Americans get 80 % of their plant-based protein from wheat. And so wheat is a very poor quality protein. So we always have to be careful when we talk about plant-based diets or vegetarian diets to realize that when Americans shift that way, they shift toward grains.

1:17:52They don't shift toward eating more beans and chickpeas and almonds. They shift toward eating grains.

1:17:59Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I see that in clinic all the time at our group and strong medical, we see that. I do want to play just maybe one more segment because I think it's important. Americans eat more meat than anyone else in the world. It is, if you see these WHO World Health Organization graphics of who eats how much meat, it is the U.S. and Canada and some European countries that eat the most. And there There are countries who eat the least and they have limited access to foods. And some of those countries would benefit from more meat per person because really they're eating cereal. They're eating dry cereal based foods.

1:18:40So his comment that Americans eat more meat than other countries, all developed countries do tend to eat more higher quality protein. That seems to be a goal of becoming more economically advanced. People want more protein. But in terms of comparison, all of the Mediterranean countries eat more protein than we do. All of the Nordic countries eat more protein than we do. Australia eats more protein than we do. So among the developed countries, we're not particularly high in the list. And we're actually particularly low in red meat consumption. We have shifted since the 70s. We shifted away from red meats toward chicken.

1:19:24and we eat it in a lot of ultra-processed forms. So meat consumption has stayed sort of constant in the U.S., but it's dramatically shifted from red meat to chicken, and there's no evidence that that has been healthy. And in fact, what we know is that the micronutrient quality, iron, zinc, selenium, B6, B12, riboflavin, have all gone down in the American diet when we made that shift. red meats have a lot more nutrient quality than white chicken breast.

1:19:59Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I won't play anymore from this episode. Thank goodness. I'm truly hoping that Andrew has you on the show because it would be a justice to everybody listening. We've talked about a lot of things on this podcast today, things that are really important to understand, at least to lay the foundation of a conversation. And that includes dietary protein, how we think about daily dietary protein and amounts and what the RDA really means and nitrogen balance studies. In addition, we have to acknowledge that there is a large safe range for protein from 0.8 grams per kg up to 2.5 grams per kg. In addition, the idea of protein storage, what happens when you have more than you, quote, need.

1:20:49Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:all our topics that are really important. Dr. Donald Lehman, you are a true pioneer and so gracious. There's a lot that we could continue to talk about and we will because we didn't even touch on collagen in any kind of detail, but more to come on this. Thank you so much for spending time. Always fun to join you.

1:21:19Thank you.