half were given. The high-fat, high-protein group did not gain as much weight, but worryingly they had 30% more plaque in their arteries.
MY WORLD OF TRUTH
Sunday 31 December 2023
Protein powders: Are they bad for your health?
When I go into my local health food store, there’s one corner that's always been a bit of a mystery to me – the shelves packed with dozens of white plastic tubs filled with powdered protein supplements. In the changing room at the gym, however, there are plenty who sing their praises, explaining that they simply add a scoop of powder to milk or to a smoothie, work out and then build extra muscle.
With their popularity reaching way beyond bodybuilders and professional athletes, now seems like a good time to look at the evidence around protein powders.
Some people use a protein drink as a snack between meals or even use it instead of a meal if they've not got time to eat.
People eating a vegan diet sometimes use the supplements to up their protein intake if they feel they're not getting enough. And there are hundreds of new food products in supermarkets – from cereal bars to ice cream and chocolate – which signal their protein-containing credentials in bold letters.
There's a range of strengths available, with the highest doses aimed at bodybuilders. The powder might come from an animal source such as eggs or milk, or from plants.
For example, protein from peas, potatoes, rice and soybeans can all be extracted and powdered, sometimes with added flavourings to make them taste good.
Protein is big business. But how many of us really need any extra?
There’s no doubt that protein is an essential part of the diet. We need it to build and repair muscles, to help our bones stay strong, to maintain the immune system and to keep our brains, hearts and skin doing what we need them do.
Older people don't need to eat as much protein as was previously thought, recent studies suggest (Credit: Getty Images)
The problem is that it's hard to generalise from mice on a high-fat diet taking in large amount of protein to young human gym-goers adding a scoop of powder to a drink. So it's early days for this kind of research. But it is true, of course, that we don't know what the long-term impact might be for the heart or the kidneys or any other part of the body of adding large quantities of protein powders to your diet on a daily basis.
Some argue it could bring health benefits quite separate from the muscle gain. A meta-analysis of nine randomised controlled trials found the people given protein powders lost more weight and saw an improvement in blood pressure and cholesterol levels. But the people in this study were overweight or obese, so we don't know if the same beneficial impacts would be seen in those of a healthier weight.
Dieticians are often keen to emphasise that ideally we look to our food to get everything we need before turning to supplements
At Reading University, Agnes Fekete found – in an admittedly small study with just 27 people – that if their blood pressure was just a little on the high side, then extra whey protein could lower it. Meanwhile, a new paper combining the results of 31 trials found that if people took whey or soy powder there was a reduction in two markers of inflammation in the body.
This is interesting because there are high levels of inflammation in people whose muscles become particularly weak in old age, which raises the question of whether there might be some way of trying to prevent this using protein powders.
But to really know whether there are health benefits beyond the small effect on muscle mass provided it's accompanied by exercise, we need more trials conducted over longer timespans.
Time will tell, but eventually we'll discover whether it's the fit gym-goers or the older people with small appetites who stand to gain from consuming protein powders.
Dieticians are often keen to emphasise that ideally we look to our food to get everything we need before turning to supplements. Intact food seems to be the best for us, and yet we still don't know exactly why.
posted by Davidblogger50 at 08:57
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