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Protein
Supplements Vs. Protein Foods?
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
Are
protein supplements really better than protein foods?
Before
attempting to answer this question, I should first preface it by mentioning
that I do not sell supplements, nor am I associated with any supplement
company, so you’re getting an honest and unbiased opinion. Don't
get me wrong; I am not anti-supplement by any means. It would simply
be more accurate to say that I am "pro-food." There are a
lot of good supplements on the market, and I've used many of them, including
a multi vitamin, creatine and essential fatty acid (EFA) supplements
such as Flaxseed oil. Protein powders and meal replacements can also
be indispensable if you don't have time to eat every three hours. However,
protein supplements are not the master key to your success, real food
is!
Did
you ever notice how articles about protein in certain bodybuilding magazines
are seldom objective? Instead, they all seem to be slanted towards hyping
some "revolutionary" new product. Did you ever wonder why?
In my opinion, most articles on protein supplements are nothing more
than thinly disguised advertisements (some very thinly). Sometimes they
give you a very persuasive-sounding argument, replete with dozens of
references from scientific studies (mostly done on rodents, of course).
They even give you an 800 number at the end of the article to order.
(How convenient!)
When
protein manufacturers throw around fancy words like cross flow microfiltration,
oligopeptides, ion-exchange, protein efficiency ratio, biological value,
nitrogen retention and glycomacropeptides, it sure sounds convincing,
especially when scores of scientific references are cited. But don't
forget that the supplement industry is big business and most magazines
are the supplement industry. Lyle McDonald, author of "The Ketogenic
Diet," hit the nail on the head when he wrote "Unfortunately,
the obsession that bodybuilders have with protein has made them susceptible
to all kinds of marketing hype. Like most aspects of bodybuilding (and
the supplement industry in general), the issue of protein is driven
more by marketing hype than physiological reality and marketing types
know how to push a bodybuilder’s button when it comes to protein
"
Many nutrition "experts" (read: people who sell supplements),
state that there are distinct advantages of protein supplements (powders
and amino acid tablets) over whole foods. For example, they argue that
whey, a by-product of the cheese-making process, is a higher quality
protein than most whole food sources. There are many different methods
of determining protein quality, including biological value (BV), protein
efficiency ratio (PER), Net Protein Utilization (NPU), chemical score,
and protein digestibility corrected amino acid score (PDCAAS). If you
have ever seen advertisements for protein powders and supplements, you
have undoubtedly heard of one or more of these measures of protein quality.
BV
is one of the most commonly used and is arguably, the best measure of
a protein's quality.
BV
is based on how much of the protein consumed is actually absorbed and
utilized by the body. The higher the amount of protein (nitrogen) that
is actually retained, the greater the BV. If a protein has a BV of 100,
it means that all of the protein absorbed has been utilized with none
lost. Whole eggs score the highest of all foods with a BV of 100, while
beans have a BV of only 49.
Protein
quality is certainly an important issue, but it is one that has been
enormously overstated and even distorted for marketing purposes. Whey
protein is truly an excellent protein with a biological value at or
near 100. Many advertisements list whey as having a BV between 104 and
157, but if you look in any nutrition textbook it will tell you that
it is impossible to have a BV over 100. In "Advanced Nutrition
and Human Metabolism," BV is defined as "a measure of nitrogen
retained for growth and/or maintenance that is expressed as a percentage
of nitrogen absorbed."
When
a protein supplement is listed as having a BV over 100, the company
has intentionally manipulated the number for marketing purposes or unintentionally
confused BV with another method of rating protein quality. Certain whey
proponents claim that whey is "superior to whole egg" so the
percentage sign on BV had to be dropped and the scale extended beyond
100. It was noted by bodybuilding writer Jerry Branium in IRONMAN magazine
that in a study where the BV of whey was reported to be 157, the author
confused BV with chemical score. Chemical score is a comparison of the
amino acid pattern in an ideal reference protein to a test protein and
therefore the number can exceed 100. 157 was actually the chemical score
and not the BV.
Most
bodybuilders and strength athletes already consume more than enough
protein (an understatement if there ever was one), so the importance
of BV to these athletes who are already consuming copious amounts of
protein has been overplayed. Even though whey has a higher BV than chicken
breast, fish or milk protein, if the total quantity of protein you consume
is sufficient, then it is not likely that substituting whey for food
proteins will result in any additional muscle growth.
Whether
you choose a whole protein food or a protein supplement isn’t as
important as some would like you to believe. For the purposes of developing
muscle, the only guidelines for protein that you must follow are: (1)
consume a source of complete protein with every meal, (2) eat at frequent
intervals approximately three hours apart (about six times per day)
and (3) consume a minimum of .8 grams to 1 gram per pound of body weight.
There are times when it would be beneficial to consume more than one
gram per pound of body weight, but that will have to be the subject
of another article.
Because
whey protein does have a high BV, it probably offers the most benefits
when you are dieting on very low calories. When your energy intake and
correspondingly, your protein intake, are reduced, whey protein could
help you get greater utilzation of the smaller amount of protein that
you are taking in. In other words, choosing proteins of the highest
quality is more of an issue when you are dieting than when you are focusing
on mass gains when total calories and protein are being consumed in
abundant amounts. Whey protein also provides a way to get high quality
protein without the fat, which is also important when dieting.
It
has been suggested that whey may have other advantages besides high
protein quality, although they are frequently overstated.
These
benefits include enhanced immunity, increased antioxidant activity and
quick absorption. Several studies in "Clinical and Investigative
Science" by Dr. Gerard Bounous of Montreal have shown that whey
protein provides anti carcinogenic properties, protection from infections,
and other enhanced immune responses. Whey protein was also been shown
to raise levels of Glutathione, an important antioxidant that can offer
protection from free radical oxidative damage. While such findings are
very promising, all these studies, which are frequently quoted in whey
protein advertisements, were performed on mice, so it is unclear how
well the results extrapolate to humans.
Another
acknowledged benefit of whey protein is its fast absorption rate.
Although
there isn’t any evidence that protein supplements digest more efficiently
than whole foods (as is often claimed), they are definitely digested
faster. This is most important after a training session when the rates
of protein synthesis and glycogen re-synthesis are increased. This is
the reason it is often recommended that a liquid meal containing protein
and a high glycemic carbohydrate be consumed immediately post-workout
and that whey is the ideal protein for this purpose. Even in considering
post-workout nutrition, there is still little proof that a liquid protein-carb
complex will actually produce better muscular growth than whole foods,
as long as complete whole food protein foods and complex carbohydrates
are consumed immediately after the training session and every three
waking hours for a period of 24 hours thereafter.
Speaking
of protein absorption rates, the discussion of fast acting versus slow
acting proteins seems to be the latest hot topic these days in bodybuilding
circles.
The
interest was sparked by studies in 1997 and 1998 that examined the differences
between the absorption rates of whey versus casein. The researchers
concluded that whey was a fast acting protein and was considered to
be more "anabolic" while casein was slower acting and was
considered to be more "anti-catabolic. " It was further hypothesized
that consuming a combination of these two types of proteins could lead
to greater muscle growth. These findings have prompted the supplement
companies to market an entirely new category of protein supplements;
casein and whey mixes. The problem with drawing such conclusions so
quickly is that these studies looked at the speed of whey and casein
absorption in subjects who had fasted for 10 hours before being fed
the protein. Any suppositions drawn from this information are probably
irrelevant if you are eating mixed whole food meals every three hours.
Obviously, more research is needed.
This
recent fascination with various rates of protein absorption could be
compared to the interest in the glycemic index. The glycemic index is
a scale that measures the rate at which the body converts various carbohydrate
foods into blood glucose. The higher the glycemic index, the faster
the food is converted to glucose and the larger the insulin response.
Therefore it is said that high glycemic foods should be avoided in favor
of low glycemic index foods. The error in relying solely on the glycemic
index as your only criteria for choosing carbohydrates is that the index
is based on consuming a carbohydrate food by itself in a fasted state.
When
carbohydrates are consumed in mixed meals that contain protein and a
little fat, the glycemic index loses some of its significance because
the protein and fat slow the absorption of the carbohydrate. That’s
why the glycemic index is really much ado about nothing and the same
could probably be said for the casein and whey argument. It's just the
latest in a long string of new angles that supplement companies use
to promote their protein: free-form vs peptides, concentrate vs isolate,
ion exchange vs microfiltration, soy vs whey, casein and whey mix vs
pure whey and so on. Every year, you can count on some new twist on
the protein story to appear. Certainly there are going to be advances
in nutrition science, but all too often these "new discoveries"
amount to nothing more than marketing hype.
What
about amino acid pills? Amino acids pills are simply predigested protein.
Proponents
of amino acid supplementation claim that because the amino's are predigested,
the body will absorb them better, leading to greater improvements in
strength and muscle mass. It sounds logical, but this is a gross underestimation
of the body's capacities and actually the reverse is true: The human
digestive system was designed to efficiently process whole foods; it
was not designed to digest pills and powders all day long. Amino's are
absorbed more rapidly in the intestine when they are in the more complex
di and tri-peptide molecules.
Your
body gets better use of the aminos as protein foods are broken down
and the amino's are absorbed at just the right rate for your body's
needs. In "Exercise Physiology; Energy Nutrition and Human Performance,"
authors Katch and McArdle state that "Amino acid supplementation
in any form has not been shown by adequate experimental design and methodology
to increase muscle mass or significantly improve muscular strength,
power, or endurance."
Furthermore,
consuming predigested protein when you are seeking fat loss is not necessarily
advantageous because it shortchanges you of the thermic effects of real
food.
Whole
foods have a major advantage over protein supplements; they stimulate
the metabolism more. This is known as the "thermic effect of food."
Protein has the highest thermic effect of any food. Including a whole
protein food with every meal can speed up your metabolic rate as much
as 30% because of the energy necessary to digest, process, and absorb
it. This means that out of 100 calories of a protein food such as chicken
breast, the net amount of calories left over after processing it is
70. In this respect, the fact that protein foods digest slower than
amino acid tablets is actually an advantage.
A
final argument against amino acid supplements is the cost. Amino's are
simply not cost effective.
If
you don’t believe it, pick up a bottle and do the math yourself.
One popular brand of "free form and peptide bonded amino acids"
contains 150 1000mg. tablets per bottle and costs $19.95. 1000 mg. of
amino acids equals 1 gram of protein, so the entire bottle contains
150 grams of protein. $19.95 divided by 150 grams is 13.3 cents per
gram. Let's compare that to chicken breast. I can buy chicken breast
from my local supermarket for $2.99 a pound. According to Corinne Netzer’s
"Complete Book of Food Counts," there are 8.8 grams of protein
in each ounce of chicken, so one pound of chicken (16 oz) has about
140 grams of protein. $2.99 divided by 140 grams equals 2.1 cents per
gram. The amino acids cost more than six times what the chicken breast
does! I don’t know about you, but I’ll stick with the chicken
breast.
The
biggest advantage of protein supplements is not that they can build
more muscle than chicken or egg whites or any other whole food protein,
the biggest advantage is convenience.
It
is easier to drink a protein shake than it is to buy, prepare, cook
and eat poultry, fish or egg whites. Consuming small, frequent meals
is the optimal way to eat, regardless of whether your goal is fat loss
or muscle gain. To keep your body constantly in positive nitrogen balance,
you must consume a complete protein every three hours. For many people,
eating this often is nearly impossible. That's when a high quality protein
supplement is the most helpful.
Aside
from convenience, the truth about protein supplements is that they offer
few advantages over protein foods.
There
is no scientific evidence that you can't meet all of your protein needs
for muscle growth through food. As long as you eat every three hours
and you eat a complete protein such as eggs, lean meat or lowfat dairy
products with every meal, it is not necessary to consume any protein
supplements to get outstanding results. Whey protein does have some
interesting and useful properties and supplementing with a couple scoops
each day is not a bad idea, especially if you are on a low calorie diet
for fat loss or when you're using a post workout shake instead of a
meal. Aside from that, focus on real food and don’t believe the
hype.
References
1)
Groff, James, et al, Advanced Nutrition and Human Metabolism, West Publishing
company, 1995.
2)
Fruhbeck, Gema. Slow and fast dietary proteins. Nature, 391: 843-844
3)
Boirie, Y. et al. Slow and fast dietary proteins differently modulate
postprandial protein accretion. Proc National Acad Sci, 94: 14930-14935,
1997
4)
Lemon, Peter, Protein and Exercise: update, Medicine and Science in
Sports and Exercise, Vol 19, No. 5, S179 - S190, 1987
5)
Carraro, F., et at, Effect of exercise and recovery on muscle protein
synthesis in human subjects. Amer Journal of physiology, 259: E470,
1990
6)
Lemon, Peter, Is increased dietary protein necessary or beneficial for
individuals with a physically active lifestyle? Nutrition reviews, 54:S
169-175, 1996
7)Bounous,
G., et al, The immunoenhancing property of dietary whey protein concentrate.
Clinical and Investigational Medicine, 11: 271-278. 1988.
8)
Sadler, R., The benefits of dietary whey protein concentrate on the
immune response and health. S Afr. J Dairy Sci, 24: No 24, 1992
9)
Bounous, G., Dietary whey protein inhibits the development of dimethylhydrazine-induced
malignancy. Clinical and Investigational Medicine, 12: 213-217, 1988
10)
Bounous, G., et al, The biological activity of undenatured dietary whey
protein; role of glutathione. Clinical and Investigational Medicine,
14: 4, 296-309, 1991
11)
Netzer, Corinne. The Complete Book of Food Counts. Dell Publishing,
1997
12)
Katch, Katch & McArdle, Exercise Physiology; Energy, Nutrition and
Human Performance, Wiliams and Wilkins, 1996.
About
the Author:
|
Tom Venuto
is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal
trainer (CPT), certified strength & conditioning specialist
(CSCS), and author of the #1 best-selling e-book, "Burn
the Fat, Feed The Muscle.” Tom has written hundreds of
articles and has been featured in print magazines such as IRONMAN,
Australian IRONMAN, Natural Bodybuilding, Muscular Development,
Exercise for Men and Men’s Exercise, as well as on hundreds
of websites worldwide. For information on Tom's Fat Loss program,
click
here.
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