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October
20, 2000 Protein
Supplementation:
Something New??? In the world of fitness and bodybuilding, we’ve seemingly heard it all when it comes to protein. It all started out with recommendations to eat voluminous amounts of eggs, milk and beef to obtain enough protein, amino acids and of course nitrogen to “feed” and stimulate muscle growth. Growing up, I always remember my dad speaking about his weight lifting days. He was an officer in the United States Air Force in the early 60’s. After a grueling day giving commands on a runway in Valdosta, Georgia, Craig Elliot would hit the gym with a few of his buddies. I’ve seen a few of his pictures and I can tell you that he was quite muscular and fit. Of course he was not large by today’s standards but at 5’11’’ and 200 he was not small either. Now, according to my dad, the “thing to do” back then was to go to the local diner after you worked out, and fill up on a few eggs, a glass of milk, and maybe a steak if you were exceptionally hungry. If you will notice, these are all high quality protein sources which seemed to work quite well. This was the 60’s…in the 70’s things changed! Sooner
or later it was bound to happen!
Life was getting faster and faster in the 70’s.
People, including bodybuilders, were looking for ways to make
their lives easier. In
our capitalistic environment, there was only one possible outcome
and that was the creation of the protein shake.
For many years, there were just two possible choices—egg
albumin (the white part of the egg) and casein (a milk protein).
Both of these are high quality proteins but back then they
were not instantized and so they required a blender to prevent the
creation of a shake that looked like something from the peat boggs
in Scotland. Let me
explain briefly the concept of instantization.
A protein is designed to be highly soluble in aqueous
mediums. This
characteristic is essential but it means that if you were to take
regular ole protein powder and throw it in a glass of milk, it would
immediately clump and lump up on you.
Because the protein powder is so incredibly soluble, the part
of the powder which immediately contacts the aqueous fluid dissolves
and turns into a functional film which surrounds the rest of the
powder…thus forming the lumps and clumps.
Today, we rarely see such a phenomenon because all of the
protein powders have been physically modified to disperse and go
uniformly into solution. There
are two main ways this is accomplished and the best protein powders
use both. The first and
most important is what is known as agglomeration.
Agglomeration makes the particles of the protein powder
irregular and of different sizes.
Practically, this allows the aqueous fluid to penetrate the
powder (and any lumps) much more efficiently.
The other technique is to lecithinate the powder.
The only thing this means is that the particles of the
protein powder are coated with lecithin which is a natural, healthy
emulsification and dispersion agent. The lecithin works by temporarily changing the
characteristics of the aqueous medium surrounding the particle.
This prevents the protein from gelling and sticking together
and forming clumps. Together,
agglomerating and lecithinating do a fantastic job in making a
protein powder convenient and easy to use. Casein
and egg albumin reigned supreme until the 90’s when a little-known
protein by the name of whey was introduced to the fitness world. Almost overnight, this protein displaced the sales of casein
and egg and became one of the most popular dietary supplements of
all time. Why and how
did this happen? Well,
there are two reasons. One,
whey was the first protein powder that was really marketed by
capitalizing on the fact that it was instantized.
Before this, few protein powders were instantized and most
people just couldn’t handle the trouble of using a blender several
times per day to adequately blend the protein powder.
Whey was hyped as the ultimate protein powder that EVEN would
instantly blend with a spoon into your milk or water.
Second, whey was hyped and lied about to the extremes calling
it the absolute highest quality protein known to man.
Reading the advertisements, you would think that a person
using it would become Frank Zane overnight.
Now, I’ll admit that whey is high quality but in reality it
is no better than total egg protein.
In fact, total egg protein has a Biological Value (BV) of 100
and whey a BV of 94. Shamefully,
supplement companies, and the magazines that owned them, were
printing that whey protein had a BV above 160. They were also using big words like hydrolyzed, and di-,
tri-, and oligo-peptides. All
of this deception basically fooled the average Joe into thinking
that he couldn’t live without whey protein—that it was the very
key to his muscular growth. Once
the whey protein mystique was perpetuated, there was little hope for
any other protein source. I
remember that my friend a few years ago would not feel satisfied
eating eggs as his protein source.
Once in awhile he would come over to my house to eat
breakfast and we would have eggs.
He would have probably four or five and then rush home to get
his whey protein shake. I
told him that this was ridiculous but he would hear nothing of it.
You see, his magazines told him that whey was better so in
his mind it was and so he wasn’t able to live without it.
The sad thing is that the protein in the eggs was overall a
better and more utilizable protein source than his whey shake. Whey
wasn’t the only protein that was refined and marketed in the
90’s. The technology
behind soy protein isolates improved dramatically thus making them
high quality, instantized, and palatable.
A few products were introduced with soy protein isolate
throughout the 90’s but they never seemed to take off.
Like casein and egg albumin, soy too was stricken by the
success of whey and was living in its shadow so to speak.
This was unfortunate because soy isolate is not only
economical but is a very good protein at promoting lean muscle gains
and keeping the fat stores down to a minimum.
All
of this talk of protein foods and supplements is all good and dandy
but practically speaking where are we right now; what are we to do?
Well, I can tell you one thing and that is that the
supplement companies could care less about telling you the truth
about which protein supplement is best.
They are only interested in promoting their bottom line and
this doesn’t necessarily mean giving the customer the truth.
I am going to present some very new insights into protein
supplementation that are backed by documented scientific evidence
that will have you looking at and supplementing dietary proteins in
an entirely new light. In
the past, we have seen nothing but the promotion of single sources
of dietary proteins. Once in awhile you might find an egg and casein blend but for
the most part you could only buy a container of just egg albumin
powder or casein powder or whey powder.
The reason for this is that various supplement companies
would stake their claim by saying that one protein source was vastly
superior to another one. Once
they made such a claim, they were locked in and could not then mix
their “superior” protein with an “inferior” one.
The latest result of this phenomenon was the vast hype and
promotion of whey protein. Nearly
every supplement company jumped on the whey bandwagon and excluded
every protein source from their supplements except for whey.
Because all the supplement companies (and the magazines that
are owned by them) committed to this particular course of action, it
prevented any truly truthful information from being disseminated to
the consumer. Thus, for
the last ten years, athletes from all walks of life have been kept
in the dark regarding how to properly supplement their diet with
protein. The
first notion that I want to dispel is that the usefulness of a
protein supplement for an athlete is directly related to one of the
protein quality rating scales that are currently in use.
Many exist but the most common ones that are used by the
fitness community are Biological Value (BV) and Protein
Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS).
Basically, BV and PDCAAS rate how perfect the ratio of amino
acids are for “WHOLE BODY GROWTH AND MAINTENANCE”.
On a daily basis, your body requires specific amounts of
amino acids for the growth and maintenance of proteinaceous bodily
tissues and processes. If
a high percentage of the amino acids in an ingested protein are
directly used by these tissues and processes, then the protein will
be efficiently used and the BV and PDCAAS will consequently be
extremely high. If,
however, the protein source has a bunch of amino acids in high
amounts that the body doesn’t need then these will not be used
efficiently and the resulting score will be rather low.
Now, this is where it gets interesting people!
BV and PDCAAS measure the efficiency of a protein for WHOLE
BODY growth and maintenance. Remember
that there are tons of proteinaceous tissues in the body besides
muscle tissue. With
PDCAAS and BV you have no idea if certain proteinaceous tissues are
consuming the bulk of these amino acids preferentially over other
tissues. As an example,
a certain protein might have a high BV but it might do very little
to add growth to muscle tissue.
It is quite possible that much of the protein is
preferentially used in other tissues and process such as connective
tissue repair, etc. Believe
it or not, there is ongoing research right now to elucidate this
phenomenon. I wish I
could disclose the particulars right now but I am prevented from
doing so because of confidentiality agreements.
I will say though that in the near future you will be seeing
several new protein sources that have been shown to stimulate muscle
tissue growth better than high quality protein sources such as
casein and spray dried porcine plasma.
Am
I saying that these new protein sources will take over the protein
supplement industry? Of
course not! I
wouldn’t even recommend this to happen.
We would be in the same position that we are in now.
Although these particular proteins might do well at
stimulating muscle growth, they might not do well at supplementing
other important bodily processes and the overall health of the
individual might suffer. I
am, and always have been, a firm believer in combining various
protein sources. Would
you be satisfied with just consuming maltodextrin or sucrose as your
only carbohydrate? Would
you be satisfied consuming only olive oil as your only fat source?
Of course not! Our
bodies were not designed to eat just one type of a particular
macronutrient like protein or carbohydrate.
Like fats and carbohydrates, different proteins have
different effects on the human body.
Finally, in the last several months we are seeing a little
bit of this come into play with the various whey/casein
combinations. These are
an improvement but they still are not good enough.
One thing you must be aware of with these protein supplements
is that certain companies will try to use the inferior caseinate
instead of micellar casein. How
can you tell the difference? Well,
you could call the company but good luck getting any honest
information. Or, you could look at the label and see how much sodium,
potassium, and calcium is listed.
If there are significantly greater amounts listed than what
is on the label of a whey protein supplement, then the company is
trying to sell you inferior goods.
To reap the wonderful benefits of casein, you must use
undenatured, micellar casein! Although the casein/whey combination is better than any
stand-alone protein, it is still not good enough. What we are after is a combination of 3-5 proteins that will
give the user a wide variety of benefits for optimal health and
muscle growth. If
I had my way, I would use whey protein for its very high BV and for
its immune system stimulating properties.
Whey protein is also good to use because it is absorbed into
the bloodstream very quickly which is essential when using a protein
supplement after a workout. I
would then add micellar casein since it also has a high BV and has
been shown to be significantly anticatabolic to muscle tissue.
Casein is also a good choice because it balances the
quick-acting properties of whey.
The micellar nature of casein causes it to be released very
slowly into the blood and gives the user a very ideal, steady flow
of amino acids to the target tissues.
Now, this is probably the absolute best you will see on the
market right now but there is so much more to be had from a protein
supplement. To the
above whey/casein, I would add some soy protein isolate as it has
been shown to significantly reduce fat deposits in comparison to
milk proteins. Furthermore,
soy protein isolate has been shown to lower cholesterol and actually
improve thyroid function as well as kidney function.
You might think I am done, but I have saved the best for
last. I would add good
portions of the two proteins that I previously mentioned which
specifically stimulate muscle growth. These proteins have a fairly good BV and cause much greater
muscle growth than even casein!
Even better, one of these proteins even causes VERY reduced
fat deposits in comparison to casein.
This combination gives you the best of all worlds:
a protein that gives everything you need for whole body
growth and maintenance, as well as slow and fast absorption rates,
as well as improved thyroid and kidney function, as well as lower
cholesterol levels, as well as DIRECTLY stimulated muscle growth and
DIRECTLY stimulated fat catabolism.
What more could you ask for! Unfortunately, no supplement company is even thinking about a protein supplement like this right now. Soon, the research lab that I am working with will complete their preliminary trials and will look for companies of integrity to market such a product. It may be a few months but keep your eyes on the lookout for the next generation of protein supplementation. Until then, try to buy several different types of proteins and mix them together to achieve as many beneficial characteristics as possible. They say that variety is the spice of life. When it comes to protein supplements, I couldn’t agree more that variety is the key to perfection! Dr. Seth Elliot is one of the leading minds in developing efficacious dietary supplements that are based on sound science. One of his special areas of expertise is in the area of various proteins and their effects on the human body. If you have any questions, please go to our CONTACT US section and send him an email. |
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