Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Protein Powders

Episode Date: November 13, 2015

In this podcast I talk about all things protein powder: which types I like and recommend, which I don't, how to avoid "amino spiked" powders, and more. ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS VIDEO: The Top 4 Scientifically Proven Benefits of a High-Protein Diet: http://www.muscleforlife.com/high-protein-diet/ How to Make Meal Plans That Work For Any Diet: https://legionathletics.com/diet-meal-plans/ How Many Calories You Should Eat (with a Calculator): https://legionathletics.com/how-many-calories-should-i-eat/ How Much Protein Do I Need? The Definitive (and Science-Based) Answer: https://legionathletics.com/how-much-protein-do-i-need/ How to Find the Best Protein Powder For You: https://legionathletics.com/best-protein-powder/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, it's Mike, and this podcast is brought to you by Legion, my line of naturally sweetened and flavored workout supplements. Now, as you probably know, I'm really not a fan of the supplement industry. I've wasted thousands and thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that basically do nothing, and I've always had trouble finding products actually worth buying, and especially as I've gotten more and more educated as to what actually works and what doesn't. And eventually after complaining a lot, I decided to do something about it and start making my own supplements. The exact supplements I myself have always wanted. A few of the things that make my products unique are one,

they're a hundred percent naturally sweetened and flavored, which I think is good because while artificial sweeteners may not be as harmful, some people claim there is research that suggests regular consumption of these chemicals may not be good for our health, particularly our gut health. So I like to just play it safe and sweeten everything with stevia and erythritol, which are natural sweeteners that actually have health benefits, not health risks. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer-reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself. If you go on our website and you check out any of our product pages, you're going to

see that we explain why we've chosen each ingredient and we cite all supporting evidence in the footnotes. So you can go look at the research for yourself and verify that we're doing the right thing. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in those studies that prove their effectiveness. This is very important because while a molecule might be proven to, let's say, improve your workout performance, not all dosages are going to improve your workout performance. If you take too little, you're not going to see any effects. You have to take the right amounts. And the right amounts are the amounts proven to be effective in scientific research. And four, there are no proprietary

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then I guarantee you'll like my books. I make my living primarily as a writer. So as long as I can keep selling books, then I can keep writing articles over at Muscle for Life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like this and all that fun stuff. Now I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger if you're a guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger if you're a girl. Now these books, they're basically going to teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build muscle, lose fat, and look and feel

great without having to give up all the foods you love or live in the gym grinding away at workouts you hate. And you can find my books everywhere. You can buy books online like Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you're into audiobooks like me, you can actually get one of my audiobooks for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks.

That's muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks, and you'll see how to do this. So thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast. I hope you enjoy it, and let's get to the show. Hey, this is Mike from MuscleLife.com and welcome to another episode of the podcast. Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to check it out. In this episode, I want to get back on to supplements. There's still a few more I want to talk about. So I'm going to do protein powder this week. And we're going to cover protein powders. Do you need them? Are they necessary? Do they really help you build muscle and lose fat or not? And then which protein powders are, I mean,

I could say which ones are good and which ones aren't, but you know, it's, it's, it's not like black and white, like, Oh, that one's good. That one's not, it's more of a spectrum. So that understand what your options are and what are, what, what is good and bad about each of each of the least, the most popular types of options. Um, and then I'll talk a little bit about what protein powders I myself like the most and what do I use them for and why? So first let's talk about building muscle because, uh, if you are a guy or a girl and you are new to all of this and you want to, you know, build some muscle, you want to get stronger and you start looking into supplements. Protein powder is going to be inevitably one of the first things that you're going to be recommended or you're going to run across recommendations for.

And the bottom line is protein powders per se, like just the powders themselves, they don't help you build muscle faster. They don't help you lose fat faster, but high-protein dieting does. And by high-protein, I mean somewhere around a gram of protein per pound of body weight. If you are muscular and lean, looking to get really lean, you'd probably want to eat a little bit more than that. And if you're new to working out, you could eat maybe a little bit less than that. Or if you are not new to working out but you have quite a bit of body fat to lose, you could go as low as maybe 0.8 grams per pound and still be fine. But again, I mean, to be safe, simple intake is around a gram of protein per pound of body weight, or if you're very overweight, it'd be more like a gram

per pound of fat-free mass. So that's what I mean when I say high-protein dieting. And high-protein dieting definitely helps you build muscle faster. There's a lot of research on this. I've written about it extensively all over the place. So if you're familiar with my work at all, you've, uh, probably seen, uh, quite, quite a few, or, or if you've clicked through the links and you went and looked at a lot of research that I'm citing, you've already looked at a lot of the science behind it. There is just no question that high protein dieting is better for building muscle than low protein dieting. It's also better for losing. Uh, I wouldn't say, well, not only is it actually better for losing fat, like there's quite a bit, there are quite a few studies that show that on a high protein diet, you lose fat faster.

And that's probably due mainly to the thermic effect of food, which is the energy cost to process it, to digest it and absorb it. And the energy cost of protein is quite high. And TEF or TEF is it's kind of just, TEF, that's the acronym, thermic effective food, it accounts for, I'd say generally speaking, and this is just based on some research that, again, I've written pretty extensively about, it's about probably 10% of your total daily energy expenditure just comes from processing the food you eat. So you can manipulate that with protein. A low protein diet has a lower overall thermic effect than a high protein diet. There's also a bit of research that shows that high protein dieting is particularly good at helping you lose stubborn fat, especially abdominal fat. And I've written about this as well. I won't dive into all of it here, but I'm just going to kind of give you a general overview. And if you want to learn more about this, I'll link an article down below. And if you're listening, if you search for protein on muscle for life, or if you go to

Legion and search for protein, which I know there's not a search function yet, but we're rolling out a whole new thing. There'll be a search function is initially when we designed the blog and even think of it because it was brand new. The Legion blog is only four or five months old, maybe six months old. And initially, we didn't even think of search because there was no content there. But anyways, stupid. And there will be search soon. So anyways, I'll link articles. You can go search and you can go read.

I've written quite a few articles specifically on high-protein dieting and how to work out your macros for, for losing fat and gaining weight and why and so forth. But that's, that's the, the bottom line is protein powders. You, you can do just fine without them. Um, but you're going to find that like, you know, I weigh about 190 pounds. I eat somewhere between 190 and 200 grams of protein per day. Um, I would find that I find protein powder convenient. That's why I like it. So, um, there also are some potential benefits specifically with whey protein and in your post-workout meal, which again, these are, this would be a minor point, but a lot of what you're trying to do with natural bodybuilding But a lot of what you're trying to do with natural bodybuilding is basically accumulate a lot of little bumps, little edges, things that make little differences that just if that's all you did, if that's all you did was have 50 grams of whey protein after a workout, after your weightlifting training. And you didn't use any other strategies.

You didn't take creatine. You didn't optimize your training. A lot of other little things you can do. If all you did was have whey protein after your workouts. Yeah. It doesn't matter. It's not, it's not, it's not going to have a big enough effect. It's not like steroids or something like that. But when you take that and it gives you, I'd say a little bit of boost in muscle growth over time. And you combine that with a lot of other natural strategies for getting little boosts in muscle growth over time, it can add up to something significant. Again, it's not going to be, you know, night and day game changer. It's not like you're going to gain twice as much muscle in three years by doing a bunch of little things,

uh, or a bunch of little using a bunch of little strategies, but you can definitely gain, let's say 20 or 30% more. I think that's very realistic. And the same thing goes in the fat loss side of things. Just like, for instance, just taking caffeine alone, is it going to make that big of a difference in your fat loss? Not really. Like it will, you will burn more energy. You will lose fat faster, but you know, you might be talking about, let's say just because of caffeine alone, you, you lose a, an extra half a pound a month or something like that.

That's not very exciting, obviously. I mean, you'll take it, but it's not like, you know, that's not blowing your mind. very exciting, obviously. I mean, you'll take it, but it's not like, you know, that's not blowing your mind. But if you combine caffeine with other supplements, like if you're doing faster training and combine it with your him being, if you combine it with sinephrine and a few other things, now you can lose fat significantly faster. And especially the stubborn fat, like if you're lean looking to get really lean and you know what it is to struggle with, struggle with, with stubborn fat. If it's a guy, if you're a guy, it's going to be your lower, lower ab region. If you're a girl, it's going to be your hips and thighs. And some, some,

some girls find the stomach fat stubborn as well, but it's usually hips, thighs, butt. So you know how slowly that fat, uh, just how, how long it takes to really get rid of it as opposed to fat in your shoulders and your arms, maybe in your face, you know, um, your upper body in general. And with supplements though, it goes noticeably faster. Like I would say just based on, I don't have, I mean, I don't have, uh, studies I can refer to specifically for this because I'm talking about combining, you know, uh, caffeine with Sanephro with your, him being with faster train. I'm talking about combining, you know, uh, caffeine with synephro with your him being with faster train. I'm talking about doing with high protein dieting, blah, blah, blah. Talking about doing all these things together. But, uh, you know, each of these little things were chosen based on research on that, you know, each piece individually. And I would say you put

it all together and based anecdotally with not just my body, but working, I've worked with thousands of people by now. I think it's very realistic to say that you could lose fat 20 to 30% faster period by using supplements properly. Um, so coming back to protein powder, that's kind of, that's kind of the reality is it's not going to do anything super special by itself, but it is convenient. It is when you do need to eat that much protein. Um, if you really like eating food and you don't mind doing all the prep and taking the time to eat it and blah, blah, blah, then do that and eat food. I mean, there is definitely something to be said for, um, I mean, then again, if you're really just looking for protein, it's not like eating protein is, uh, it's, it's not a sensual experience. You know, eating a chicken breast is also kind of like, yeah, whatever. Or even, you know, even if you, if you put some time into it and you make a, you know, a good tasting high protein meal,

me personally, I just, you know, I'm fine having my, my lunch. Like I work out early in the morning. I come to the office, do a couple of scoops of protein. I have usually a salad of some kind with a bunch of stuff in it and, and, and some protein in the salad. And then I have a scoop of protein in the afternoon. And then I have a big dinner where obviously I'm eating protein and dinner, but I'm eating meat or really always some sort of meat for dinner. And then I have some more food later at night. So that's how I like to eat. But some people, they like to have, for instance, a lot of protein. They wouldn't like just doing a couple of scoops of whey in the morning. They like breakfast. So they want to have, um, you know, whether it be eggs or bacon or turkey bacon, or

you know, oatmeal is a bit of protein and depends on, you know, you can make protein, we can mix protein with oatmeal stuff. So it really just depends on how you like to eat. But most people find that the convenience of protein powder just makes it worth it. And then also the, the, the slight added benefit, which I'll talk a little bit more when we get there, that if you use it properly, it can help you build muscle a little bit faster. They'll take that as well. And I wouldn't say that's like a big selling point. The big selling point for protein powders is definitely just convenience. point separate to convenience is it's protein powder is good for balancing your macros, especially if you want to keep your carbs high and you want to keep your fats relatively low.

Then something like a whey protein isolate, which is what I personally use and like the most is great because it's basically just pure protein. And that, that makes, you know, balancing your macros and setting your macros up the way that you want very easy. Cause you don't have to unless you really are just going to eat a bunch of chicken breast, you know, if you're trying to also enjoy eating your protein, it's probably going to come with some fat and that's not necessarily bad, but you know, the higher your fats are, the lower your carbs have to be. It's just the way it is. And there's a point where that becomes counterproductive, especially if you're wanting to build muscle. You know, I've spoken about this a lot.

I've written about this a lot. Unless you have a very good reason to not be eating a lot of carbs, that'd be like a health reason, and you want to build muscle and strength, you want to be eating a lot of carbs, period, which means that you do have to keep your fats low. And protein powder can be very helpful in that way. can be very helpful in that way. Again, unless you really are just, you know, going to eat just chicken breast, chicken breast, chicken breast, or 98%, you know, ground turkey or whatever. But if you're going to get into red meats and if you're going to get into darker meats, you know, like darker chicken and stuff, it's just going to come with quite a bit of fat. And, you know, you might find that when you start combining that with fats, like that you actually want to be eating as well, whether it be nuts or oils or,

or butter. Um, and then also sometimes fats that come with different carbs, depending on what you want to eat, especially, you know, if you're making dishes, uh, you know, you can, the, the 20 or 30 grams of fat a day, that's coming from your protein intake, it starts to add up and you can eliminate, you know, quite a bit of that by using protein powder. Oh, and one last thing is affordability. Actually, a lot of people think protein powders are, are they are just expensive. Supplements are expensive. Yes, they can be expensive, but you also can get protein quite affordably. If you go with a whey concentrate type of product like Optin Nutrition's gold standard. I mean, I don't

actually know the price off the top of my head, but that's probably going to be the cheapest protein that you can trust. And we'll talk about why I'm saying that you can trust in a minute. But if you want to go with something where you're just getting maximum protein and you're not really worried, it comes with carbs and fats as well, which is why I like an isolate more. And it kind of tastes like shit. But if you don't mind that, if you really just want to get the most protein for your dollar, then you could go with a good concentrate like Optin Nutrition's product. And when you look at it in terms of price per gram, it actually becomes of protein that you're getting. It becomes quite affordable if you start comparing that to meats you know, meats and other things. Now,

it depends. I mean, of course you can buy chicken in bulk and you can get things pretty cheaply, but when you look at it in terms of price per gram, protein powder isn't necessarily, you know, it's not necessarily a financial burden. It might be slightly more expensive than what you can get for protein or for like chicken. If you can get, if you can get it in bulk and get a really good deal or something, but, um, it'll be pretty comparable actually. Okay. So now let's quickly talk about the different protein options that are out there. So you have obviously whey protein is the most popular, uh, best selling option. You have casein, which is also pretty popular. You have soy egg. Um, you have rice proteins are fairly popular. Hemp proteins are, um, I mean, they're out there. I know

how well they really sell. Pea protein is out there. It probably doesn't sell that well. But out of all of those, and again, I've written a lot about this. I can link an article down below if you really want to dive into the science of like when I talk about soy, I'm kind of just going to go over it quickly. I'm not going to spend five minutes talking about why I'm not a big fan of soy protein, but I will explain why. And if you want to really dive into the details, I'll link an article below, or you can go to just Google best protein powder Legion, L-E-G-I-O-N, and it'll come up and you can see my in-depth kind of explanation on it. But whey protein is great. Like I said, on it. Um, but whey protein is great. Um, like I said, you can especially whey isolate, um,

cause you know, you have, uh, you have concentrate, which is going to have the problem with whey concentrate is that its quality is going to range. It could be as low as 20 or 30% protein by weight with a lot of fat and carbs, or it could be as high as 80-ish percent protein by weight. It still has, obviously, some carbs and fat. And the problem there is you just don't know what you're getting as a consumer. Do not think that because something is sitting on the shelf of GNC that it is a high-quality protein. I get contacted all the time by Chinese suppliers of raws where I could cut my protein costs in half right now. If I just didn't care, uh, I could get protein from China. That is, yeah, it's shit quality. And it would test out probably at half. Like they would tell me that, you know, a serving would be 20 grams of protein

and it would test out at half and the rest would just be carbs and fat or filler or who knows. Um, but if I didn't care about that, sure, I could just basically double my margins on my protein products if I wanted to. And you as a consumer, you'd have no idea. In fact, you might even think that, hey, this tastes pretty good because if it does, if the rest of, if it only has 10 grams of protein instead of 20 and the rest is carbs and fat, it's going to make it taste better. So unless you as a consumer were actually to get it sent off to a lab and tested, uh, you would never know. And we actually see that that happens fairly. It seems like every few months, something pops up on Reddit where someone that either works at one of these

labs or just takes it upon themselves to send off, you know, 10 different proteins, popular protein powders off to a lab to get tested. And they'll come back where, you know, the reason why I recommend Optin Nutrition, if you want to go with a low, with a cheap concentrate is from all the tests I've seen there, they're within, you know, 10% or so, which is maybe even 5%. I mean, I, it's been a little bit since I've seen one of these, but Optin Nutrition has consistently tested well, whereas other companies have tested very low. Um, you know, there's a lawsuit right now.

If you, if you just Google, there's a Forbes article on it. Um, just Google like Forbes muscle farm lawsuit and it'll come up where muscle farm is being sued. Um, the country, the company that it's, I think it's called NBT Y that owns the whole body fortress line, which is like in Walmart and stuff. And it's, I think it's called NBTY that owns the whole body fortress line, which is like in Walmart and stuff. And it's very cheap. They're being sued because their protein powders tested out like pitifully bad muscle farms, like Arnold iron mass or something like that claimed 40 grams of protein per serving. And it tested out like 19. Um, and I think the Body Fortress claimed 20 grams per serving

and it tested at like nine. So there were some other companies involved in this lawsuit as well. We'll see where it goes. And of course, MusclePharm and MBTY and all the other companies involved, they're like, no way, that's wrong. We would never do that. Yeah, okay. So we'll see what comes out of that. But my point is, you just can't trust. I mean, the supplement industry is such a shitty industry. Now that I've been in it for, this is my second year in the supplement industry, and I've gotten to just know kind of from the inside, talking with manufacturers about other companies and understanding how they work and understanding the people behind some of these companies.

It's a fucking joke. This is like a, it's, it's such a snake oil bullshit industry, um, where people will do, I mean, it's, it's really just about money. They'll say anything. They don't care. Um, and it's, it's, it's, it can be, it's not an easy industry to make money in, but if you get into, if you have the right, uh, if you have all the right pieces in place, you can sell a lot of stuff that's just straight garbage and you sell it on nothing, just hype and bullshit. If so, if you're a good bullshitter and you have the right bullshit engine in place, you can make a lot of money selling supplements basically. So anyways, when it comes to protein,

one of the most common scams these days is called amino spiking. And that's what that Forbes article talks about. And what it is, is you can take, see like the protein content that's listed on a, on a supplement, on a food, on a fact panel, like on a food is usually based on the nitrogen content of the food. So we're, because protein, when you talk about protein, carbs, and fats, the nitrogen is coming from the protein. Now someone figured out along the way, because protein powder, the price of protein powder has gone up exponentially in the last few years, it's doubled. Whey protein specifically has doubled in the last two years. So companies that used to be able to make their protein product for $5 a pound or whatever, now are having to pay double that.

So because of how the supplement industry works, the standard like retail model requires such a large markup from manufacturing to consumer about eight to 10 times it. And all of a sudden pro a lot of companies actually lose money on their protein. Like the big ones don't, but a lot of the middle range, uh, supplement companies are offering a protein that that protein on the shelf is, is that at best they're breaking even on it. And they have it out there as a loss leader, basically. And so the idea is pump it full of chemicals, make it taste as good as possible. Because whey protein is probably the number one single best-selling supplement out there, period.

So the idea is people are going to come in. They want whey protein. If they buy your whey protein and they like it, then they're going to start buying the rest of your stuff where you absolutely gouge them on, you know, where you produced it for $3 and you replaced it with a cheap amino acid that is also nitrogen rich, like glycine, for instance, that also tastes good. Glycine is naturally sweet, tastes good. So what if they did that? Then they could technically claim, you know, the nitrogen that's coming from that glycine, they could count that toward the total protein count. Oh, smart. So that's what they started doing. So glycine is used. Taurine is used. Even glutamine is used because glutamine tastes good. Glutamine is a little bit expensive, but also not if you get a shit quality glutamine, like a good glutamine is

not cheap, but a shit glutamine is cheap and it tastes good. So that's what amino spiking is. So basically what it is is you take what should have, let's say, a kilogram, 2.2 pounds of protein, and you drop it down to one and a half pounds and you fill the rest with amino acids that taste good. And now all of a sudden you can claim that there's more protein in there than there actually is. Because protein is a collection of amino acids. You have 22 amino acids that are formed into molecules and that's protein. It's not glycine. Glycine is not protein.

Um, and I forget like in the Forbes article, there was a funny statement from like a just standard bullshit statement from some company that they claim like 40 grams of protein. It wasn't the MBTY is a different one. It was like their mass gainer that claims 40 something grams or something. And then they tested lower and they were trying to, and they was just amino spiked. And they were trying to say that like, they are accurately representing when they say that it's 40 grams of protein. We're not saying that it's like full protein. We're saying that it has these

amino acids, which are great. So it's like, shut the fuck up. Oh God, these fucking people. So that's the kind of shit that's out there. And, um, signs of amino spiking would be if a protein has added amino acids, that's a red flag. Now I'm saying that with my protein powder, which has a additional leucine, uh, added in every serving. And I explain why in the sales copy, there's a bit of research that shows that a higher leucine meal specifically in your post-workout meal can help you build more muscle over time essentially. But, and I state this explicitly that leucine is not counted toward the total

protein. It's so it has this amino acid, but it's not amino acid spiked in that sense. Now, that said, though, I'm actually removing the leucine and I'm changing that protein product up a bit because as much as I like the leucine there for the, just for the purpose of like, there's some, there's, there are two good studies behind why we put it in there. And it, and it makes it, uh makes our whey protein a bit unique. The problem is it tastes really fucking bad. Leucine is gross. It tastes – it's very bitter.

It's just nasty. And we've worked really hard to try to mask that, but when we're using natural sweeteners and natural flavoring and we're not using any other chemicals to mask flavors or change flavors, it makes it makes it, it just, it's a, it's a struggle. I mean, our, the flavor team is very good and they've gotten better with it because it's unusual. They're not, they weren't used to it in the beginning. They were, they were not very good because they didn't use natural flavoring all that often. Now they've kind of built their skills and they're getting better, but still some people are very sensitive to the taste of leucine. So, um, I'm killing the leucine. Uh, I think I'll be able to put it actually in a, in a meal replacement shake that I want to make almost like a weight gain or meal replacement

type of deal, because then I can have carbs and fats that then you definitely won't taste it. The problem is my protein is a hundred way, a hundred percent way isolate. So it, it doesn't, there aren't carbs or fats there to, to, to, um, buffer the taste. It's just protein and whey protein itself doesn't taste very good already. It's pretty bitter actually. Um, and then you add bitter leucine on top of it and then you're trying to fix it with just all natural stuff. It's hard. So I am pulling the leucine from the way, but I'm replacing it with a way that I've sourced from Ireland. Um, that is just, it's so good. The taste is significantly better than the best stuff. I've

tried so many different proteins now here from the United States and this stuff from Ireland just destroys it all. It's so good. The mouthfeel it's super creamy, but it's a hundred percent isolate. So it's no carb, no fat, essentially, uh, a few carbs in, in no fat basically. And, uh, but it tastes so good. So that's kind of my, uh, that was my, okay, if I got to kill the Lucy and I have to do something, I want to make some, I want to make this special in some way. So let's find a whey protein that is just, I, you know, with being naturally sweet and naturally flavored is just the best tasting protein that you've ever had. Basically, like I'm confident in saying that this new protein is going to be the best tasting protein that you've ever had. Basically. Like I'm confident in saying that this new protein is going to be the best tasting natural protein. You might be able to find

something that's loaded with chemicals and artificial stuff that tastes better. Cause I've tasted some things that tastes like milkshakes and water, but then you can't even pronounce half the ingredients in the ingredient label. So for just natural sweetener, natural flavoring and whey protein isolate, uh, this is going to be the best tasting protein that, that you, that you've had. I'm confident in saying that. So getting back on topic here of signs of amino spiking, the first thing is if it has amino acids added, like BCAAs are often added. If it, and a lot of times what these companies do is they're the amino spiking now is getting, uh, the awareness, general awareness of it is coming up, but you know, for a long time, people had no

idea. So what companies would do is they'd spike their products with like BCAAs, which are cheap or glutamine, which is cheap. And then also, I mean, like those would be ones they would then call out in their marketing. They would say, Oh, and it has added BCAAs and BCAAs are sick and make you super shredded. And then, you know, glutamine, glutamine is, helps you build more muscle. Well, they're pitching you on their amino spike. They're saying, yeah, this shit's amino spike, but you don't know what that means. Isn't that cool? Um, glycine, they wouldn't call out because glycine, ironically, actually glycine is in

my sleep product, which is coming out soon because it can help you, uh, sleep better, but that's, that's not what you're going for with a whey protein. So that's a sign if a, if a product is, um, you know, boasting about it's added amino acids, uh, not good. Um, also you want to look at the serving size in terms of how many grams it weighs versus what's actually in the, in the, in terms of grams of protein. Um, and protein powders can have different densities. Um, so it's not going to be necessarily uniform in terms of X grams of whey protein powder is going to give you X grams of protein. Um, but they should be very close in terms of the number of grams of protein,

grams of carbs and grams of fats should cumulatively be close to the total weight in grams of the serving. Now, of course, it's not going to match exactly because again, protein powders have different densities, even flavoring profiles like chocolate protein powder is generally going to be denser than vanilla protein. You're going to have to have to get the same amount of protein. It's just going to take a bit more powder and a bit more flavoring. Just the whole mixture is just denser. And you also have sweetener and you also have flavoring and usually have what would be called what there's some different other ingredients that need to be in there to prevent clumping and things. So, you know, it's say it weighs, you look on the, on the, just look on the supplement facts, or you can weigh it yourself. Just, you know, uh, put a bowl on a, on a scale, digital scale, zero it, and just put a scoop in there and see how much does it weigh. So if a, if a full serving

weighs, let's say 45 grams and it has 20 grams, it claims 20 grams of protein. That is a red flag. It doesn't necessarily mean amino spike. It's just a red flag because there are beyond amino spiking. There are worse things out there. There are companies that you can buy protein that has straight flour, just basically mixed into it where it's part protein, part flour, and you don't even claim it on your, uh, supplement facts panel at all. Of course, you're not saying ingredients, protein powder, flour. Um, and you just, everything is just made up. The macros are made up and yes, of course it's against FDA regulations, but the FDA is not there. And you know, where, how we're the companies that are getting, um, nailed by the FDA are the

companies that are putting like dangerous drugs in their supplements. Like, you know, USP labs, oxyly pro tested positive for Prozac. It tested positive for a drug that was causing liver failure. The FDA cares a lot more about that stuff than they care about some obscure little company lying about their supplement facts. Now, technically if that company got caught and they, yeah, blah, blah, blah, but it's, you know, the FDA only is able to regulate so much and you, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So, um, that's why companies can get away with it. No, they're not supposed to. Yes, it is against FDA regulations, but you know, it's kind of like the Obamacare, um, penalties, right? So the, right now there's no way for the government to, uh, collect that

money. It, you know, the, if you, if you don't, if you don't get into the system, you owe money, but they can only get it from tax, uh, refunds. If you don't have the tax refund coming, there's no way for the government to come get the money. So a lot of people right now are just like, yep, don't care. Not paying you. They're not paying the penalty and you have no way to get the money. So maybe one day if you have a way to get the money, I'll, uh, I'll give a shit. So similarly, companies, something companies are saying, you know, yeah, sure. I'm not supposed to do it, but until the FDA shows that they can do anything about it, I'm going to continue doing it. So, yeah, sure. I'm not supposed to do it, but until the FDA shows that they can do anything about it, I'm going to continue doing it. So, um, if the serving size is, if there's a big

discrepancy between the weight of the serving size and the amount of, and what it, what, what the amount of protein carbs and fat equals in terms of grams, that's just a red flag because you want to know what else is in there. Then if, if not, if not protein, carbs, and fat, uh, is that stuff that, you know, that you want and it's probably not. And in, I would say that when you see that, it's usually that the macros are not what they're saying. It, uh, it has more carbs or it has more fat, or it just has more straight filler. Like it could be Molto or it could be a

cheap amino acid. Um, that again, it makes it taste good. Uh, and you know, yes, they sometimes would, they normally would want to claim that on the protein, but sometimes they don't. Again, it's just a lot of shady type of stuff. One other caveat just worth mentioning is, uh, when it comes to protein powders, you kind of get what you pay for. Cheap, cheap protein powders are going to be shitty products. You're just not, unless you're getting like a known good product for a very good discount or deal or some kind. But if it's something like that Body Fortress line of protein, I'm not surprised that they're involved in that lawsuit because their shit is cheap. Like when you're paying as a consumer, if you're paying less than $10 a pound of protein for protein, I mean,

I just know, I know what it costs to make a good protein powder. And there's just that you're getting what you pay for. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you should be buying the most expensive protein either. Like what way hydrolysate, which is a, it's a, it's a special type of processing that done to protein. It's usually done to isolates, but can also be done to concentrates, um, to basically almost like pre-digest the protein. So it makes it easier on your, on, on your, uh, GI and makes it easier to digest, you know, people who, and I'm one of those people, if I have too much whey concentrate, like if I were to take, let's say three or four scoops of ons, just standard gold standard, uh, like their gold standard product, um, I would probably have a bit of an upset stomach. It just doesn't sit well with

me. So, uh, because hydrolysates are normally with isolates, you have all the lactose removed and they're pre-digested in a sense. It can be just easier on your stomach. Now that said, hydrolystates are generally sold as like, oh, they're the best for muscle building and they're going to be the best for losing fat. And that's not true. There is absolutely no research that even suggests that. There is just research that shows that it's more water soluble, it mixes better, water soluble, it mixes better and it's easier to digest. So I would say that if you are someone who, you know, your way doesn't sit well with you and you don't want to take in, you don't want to use any of the alternatives. Um, you know, like personally egg is, I would go to egg. Egg is a great alternative. Although right now it's super expensive, uh, which I don't know if that price

is ever going to come down, unfortunately, or I would go to maybe a, uh, like a brown rice or pea blend, which I'll talk about in a minute. But if you want to stick with whey, but you know, gold standard or a concentrate upsets your stomach, I would try and isolate first, like a hundred percent isolate, like, like my product, for instance. And if that still doesn't sit too well with you, then try and hydrolysate. And if that doesn't sit well with you, then really, I mean, that's it. There's no other way option. But if you are fine with a concentrate and you don't mind the extra carbs and fats and you don't mind the general just poor taste of a lot of the concentrates that are out

there and you like it for the price, I understand. Just stick with that. If you want to eat those carbs and fats and you want something that tastes a bit better and has better mouthfeel and mixes a bit better than go with an isolate. Um, and don't bother with the hydrolysates. They're very expensive and you're not going to get any, it's not, they're not any better than an isolate, uh, or a concentrate in terms of getting results. Now, casein, casein is a slower digesting, a slower burning protein, whereas whey is a very fast digesting protein, which is one of the reasons why it's recommended for post-workout use. That's what I do personally. Casein is a

slower burning protein. It's a good protein. It's very thick. I don't personally like the mouthfeel all that much, and it tastes it tastes a bit different i just prefer whey the only reason i would say to use casein is if for some reason you don't like whey and that also you could use it like before you go to bed there are two or three studies that show that having some protein about 30 grams or so 30 or 40 grams uh i'd say 40 is probably high, right around 30 is good. It helps with muscle recovery when you sleep because it's not that

you're going to lose muscle when you sleep, but there's a point where your body runs out of it. It needs amino acids. Those are the building blocks to repair itself. And your body is in a constant, it's always repairing and recovering. So you work out and that's a process now of, depending on what you did, it could be a few days, it could be three days, it could be even four days before your body's fully recovered from the workout. And it needs raw materials for that amino acids are those raw materials. So when you're sleeping, if you eat your final meal, let's say like 7pm, and then your body's done processing it by let's say 11pm or 12. And now it needs to go, you know, overnight without those building blocks that the amino acids that it needs to go, you know, overnight without those building blocks,

that the amino acids that it needs to continue repairing. So you kind of just miss out on some repair time essentially. So if you eat some protein before you go to bed, you don't miss out on that repair time. And ideally you would have a slower burning protein because you're going to be fasting now for let's say eight hours or whatever. Whereas something like whey is processed in, let's say a a scoop of whey could be processed in three or four hours. Whereas a slower-burning protein like casein, if you had 30 grams of casein or if you had 30 grams of egg, it might be six to eight hours for your body to finish processing and using all of the amino acids.

And, of course, there are other things in the food as well, but we're talking just about amino acids here. So casein is good, he's good for that use. Personally, I just eat food. I just do, um, like a zero or 2% Greek yogurt, uh, or I'll do low fat cottage cheese. And again, I'm partial to the low fat foods because generally my diet is lower in fat. Uh, it's not a super low fat diet. It's maybe 50 or 60 max, 70 grams a day. And I'm 190 pounds because I want to keep my carb intake high. And I like to eat a variety of foods throughout the day. And so if I were to eat full fat yogurt, full fat cottage cheese, if I were to use full fat milk in some oatmeal stuff

that I do at night, it just would rack up plus the fats in the meats that I eat and blah, blah, blah. So I'm generally going with lower fat varieties of everything. So I can still keep my fat intake where I want it to be, but it'd be able to have the cottage cheese and the yogurt and the milk and have some meat and all these different things. Also, I do an egg or two a day as well. Um, so that, that's why I'm kind of generally partial to the lower fat foods. Um, so that's what I would do for, for before you go into, before you go to sleep. But if you really don't like yogurt or cottage cheese, or you don't like eggs, eggs are of course another slow burning protein. Then you could just get some casein protein and it'll last you a while. If you're only doing one scoop a day, um, you know, it'll last you a month or whatever. And, uh, so that's

kind of the story on it on casein soy protein. Uh, again, there's, this requires a bit of an explanation, which I'm not going to take all the time to go into. Um, cause this one's already This requires a bit of an explanation, which I'm not going to take all the time to go into because this one's already podcast already kind of running on. But basically the long story short is there is definitely evidence that soy can have a feminizing effect in men. And it seems to be determined slightly by genetics or at least partially by genetics in that some people's bodies, there are, there are estrogen like compounds in soy protein that can have estrogen like effects in the body. And in some people, some guys are, the effects are not

seen and other guys, the effects are seen. And the, the most likely explanation, at least from all the research that I've done on it and the, the, the, well, it's not the research that I've read on it. I mean, it's like, I'm doing the research. I'm just reading everybody else's stuff and kind of, you know, synthesizing and understanding, um, is that basically certain people, certain guys, bodies produce, uh, a, a substance that are a larger amount of a substance that converts these, they're called phytoestrogens in the soy into estrogen in the body. And in those guys, soy has a feminizing effect. And in guys' bodies that do not produce a lot of this compound or this substance, it does not have this effect.

So, I mean, I would say to be safe, just don't bother with soy. And also for women, the research is on both sides of the fence where some research shows it's totally fine. And also for women, the research is on both sides of the fence where some research shows it's totally fine. Other research shows that it can have unwanted hormonal effects. It's less of a problem for women than it is for men. But you also have the general quality of soy protein is just not very high. Then there's the whole GMO issue, which I haven't written or spoken about because I haven't done a ton of research on it. And, uh, again, it, from what I have looked at, it looks like it's kind of similar to with artificial sweeteners and, um, artificial food dyes and things. And that it's not that those chemicals

by themselves or the GMO foods, they're probably not as bad as like natural news would want you to believe. We're definitely not as bad as natural news would want you to believe, but you get what I'm saying. However, in the case of GMO, I forget, there was, I read an article from, I forget his name, pretty prestigious scientist that's been in the food sector for decades. And basically what he was saying is a lot of the research on GMO is the funding

comes from the big food companies. So you have to realize that. There definitely are funding biases. And that, in his opinion, we just don't know enough. We don't know what the long-term ramifications of getting a large percent of our food from GMO foods. We just don't know. How is that going to play out? And he was saying that he's not saying it's dangerous necessarily, but he thinks that we should be, we shouldn't be embracing it.

So just wholly before knowing we shouldn't just say, yeah, whatever. We have this potentially biased research, a lot of potentially biased research that says it's totally fine. And then we have, I mean, there's also, I mean, of course, there's like the famous Serralina study, which then got totally debunked and it was a hoax. That actually really hurt the anti-GMO movement because they championed this study as like, look, look what it's doing to these rats. And then it turned out the study was a complete sham, basically. But anyways, that scientist position made sense to me in that it's like,

we just don't know yet. And before we go and get 90% of our calories from GMO foods, maybe we want to do a bit more research and just make sure that we're not going to, you know, have a rash of health problems in 30 years because of it. So I, myself to eat mainly organic foods, I'm not like a Nazi about it, but, um, you know, I like organic vegetables cause in a lot of cases they taste better to me and they are more nutritious. That's there's research on that. Uh, same thing with fruits, um, organic meats, sometimes taste better. Sometimes don't, I go by taste on the meat. If it's, I don't really, I mean, I I'm, I'm all for the no hormone, no antibiotic type of stuff, but it's not

necessarily all organic meat. Grains generally tend to be organic. And that's also just where I shop, you know, is either Whole Foods or a store like Whole Foods. And it's all there. And, you know, it's one of those things that it's possible that it matters a little bit more than the mainstream diet world would have you believe. And it's a little bit more expensive. And I'm fine with that. So I just kind of like I'm not going to think much more about it. I'm just going to do that and be open to whatever is going to come out of research in the future.

So back to soy. Soybeans are – I think it's soy and corn are the two top genetically modified crops. So you're going to have a lot of genetically modified just soy protein products out there. And if you care about that, then you care about it. If you don't, you don't. So that's kind of the story on soy. Just stay away from it. It's not worth it.

Egg protein, as I said, is great, but it's very expensive right now. Like prohibitively expensive. It doesn't even make sense how expensive it is. And I don't, it's been like that for almost a year now or over a year actually. So maybe it's never coming down. And if that's the case, it's just, it's not even viable anymore. I think a kilo of, of egg protein, like if you're as a consumer, you go to buy a kilo of egg protein, it's like $60. Like that's, that's the kind of price that's like hydrolysate prices, whey hydrolysate, $60 to $70, not worth it. Hemp is not a great protein powder. It's more

of a meal replacement because it also is high in carb, high in fat, like hemp products are, hemp protein products. Also, there's research that shows that it's not very well absorbed by the body. So it's just kind of a shitty hemp protein products. I don't see why you would do it because you have such better options, especially even if you want to go plant, then you go pea protein, you go rice protein, both of those protein powders or just protein sources. They are good. It's good protein. It is, they have good amino acid profiles and they compliment each other actually. And that where rice protein is a little bit weak in its amino acid profile. And by that, I mean the levels of the different amino acids in there, especially the essential amino acids that you really need to get from your protein. Where rice is a little weak, pea is strong and vice versa.

So that's why a rice-pea blend is kind of called the vegan's whey because when you combine them, its amino acid profile is actually very similar to whey. its amino acid profile is actually very similar to whey. It's not, whey is still better in that it weighs higher in, especially branched chain BCAAs. And leucine in particular whey is very high in, which is great for muscle building purposes. But a rice pea blend is a great option. And it's actually something that that's when,

it'll probably be next year. And I can't say for sure that we're going to do it, but it is on our list to do, or at least look into the viability. I don't know how big of a market there is really for, for that, uh, type of product, but I think if there's a big enough market where it would just make it worth doing, um, I want to do a naturally sweet, naturally flavored, uh, pea rice blend for that reason, just because it's a great plant alternative to, to weigh or to animal proteins, basically. So that's kind of a broad overview of your protein choices. Um, one thing that randomly just popped in my mind that you should just keep in mind is when you're looking at the

ingredients list of any, of any supplement, keep in mind that they're sorted by predominance of weight, meaning that the first ingredient, that's what there is the most of in that product. weight, meaning that the first ingredient, that's what there is the most of in that product. Second ingredient by weight, by grams, there's, that's the second most, uh, predominant ingredient in that product and so forth. So when, what companies will do often is they'll promote, um, on the bottle, it might say way, way hydrolysate, or it might say way isolate. And, uh, and then you go and look in the ingredients and whey isolate is like fifth on the ingredients. So you'll have like whey concentrate, you'll have milk protein, you'll have some other, something else, something else in whey isolate. What that means is let's say the first ingredients, whey concentrate that product in terms of the protein

content, it could be 95% whey concentrate with a little sprinkle of whey isolate in there. And then they would say, oh, it's a blend and it has whey isolate and whey isolate is so great. But then you look at the macros and the macros are kind of shitty and it has a bunch of carbs and fat. And you're like, how does that make sense? That's why. So when you're looking at something, a protein product, when you're considering buying one, you want to be looking, obviously, I was talking about earlier about the size of the serving, uh, in grams versus the protein carbs and fats and seeing how do these things match up. Um, and, and also just in general, I mean, you want to be looking, if you want, if it takes 40 grams of powder to get 20 grams of

protein, that's a stuff that product has a lot of shit in it. And you better know that what all that other shit is and know that you want all that shit. Cause if not, it's just a bunch of junk basically. So there's that. And then there's looking at the ingredients. Know that like milk protein, if you see that as a very low quality stuff, whey concentrate is a bit higher quality, but again, the way concentrates can, can range. So just keep that in mind when you're seeing a protein that's, it's,

that is selling itself as a blend or that is just, it's not saying it's 100% whey isolate, but it's just saying like whey isolate or whey hydrolysate, check it out. When a product is claiming 100%, then again, check you're listening to this, you can find it at Legion Athletics, L-E-G-I-O-N, athletics.com. But that is the only form of protein in the product because it is truly 100% whey isolate. But there are companies that, again, so much shady. I mean, it's so unregulated. It's a lot of peep. A lot of it is just like, what can we get away with? Do you think we can get away with that? That's a little bit ballsy.

Yeah, but YOLO. Good point. And then do it and see what happens kind of thing. That's like how a lot of shit goes down in this industry. Um, so make sure to check that check ingredients, uh, ingredient lists and, um, think of that. Just keep that in mind in terms of first ingredient is not just, it's not just the most, it can be almost all of it. That's the proprietary blend scam. That's when, you know, you have the muscle pumping matrix and the first ingredient is something cheap like maltodextrin. It doesn't matter. There can be 19 different ingredients after the Malto all said and told those 19 ingredients could constitute a gram. It can constitute two grams out of a 15 gram blend. And in terms of 15 grams, like think of a full protein scooper. Your average protein scooper full is about 30, let's say about 30 grams, give or take a few grams. So you can think of that in terms of powder. So half of you could fill half of a scooper, which is junk easily put it in a proprietary blend, call it the super muscle pump matrix. And you know,

it's, it's just Malta, which is costing nothing. Um, so that's not just that, that applies to all, all, all products. You want to, you want to be looking at the ingredients and what order are they listed in? And does that, uh, jive with how they're promoting their product and what they're promoting is in it. So, uh, just to wrap up here, I know I've kind of bounced all over the place. So just to summarize, first, no individual protein powder is going to be best for losing weight or building muscle. Whey protein is going to be, there maybe has a slight advantage in terms of building muscle, especially if you're taking it after workouts. Taking some protein before your workouts is a good idea as well, but there is that to keep in mind with whey protein. Whey protein, casein protein, egg protein, uh, brown

rice protein, pea protein. These are all great, uh, for, for general use. Um, there is a bit of evidence that shows a slower burning protein like casein and egg. If, if you're using it frequently, like if you're having several scoops a day, as opposed to like one or two scoops after a workout, there's evidence that suggests that a slower burning protein in general, that having a more, a higher proportion of your protein coming from a slower burning source may be better for long-term muscle gains. This I think is a bit speculative and I'm not convinced of it. And that's why I don't really push it. And I don't, I don't try to sell a slow burning protein. And yeah, some people do that. So they'll take those studies and be like, this is conclusive evidence. You need this slow burning protein to get big. And that's not true.

But I'm throwing it out there just in case you've heard of it, chalk it up to like, maybe, and we may never know. And it's speculative and not convincing basically. A slow burning protein like egg or casein, or you can get casein. That's really like what I was talking about with Greek yogurt or casein is that that's the protein in milk that is curds, turns into curds. So when you're eating, let's say cottage cheese, you're eating casein protein. So you can go with food, you can eat eggs, and you can even eat egg whites if you want to cut down on the fat. I have an egg or two a day, but to get 30 grams of protein, you know, that would be four eggs or five eggs. And I might not want that fat. So I would probably go with egg whites. And, um, like what I used to do is I just won't feel like cooking it anymore really

is I would make like an egg white frittata basically at night before I'd go to bed, put some vegetables in there. I'd use, I'd put some, uh, put some hummus on it and some salsa and stuff. It was, it was good. It's just, I don't really feel like taking the time to cook it these days. So you can do something like that, or you could do a low fat cottage cheese or a low fat yogurt. Um, or you can do casein protein. If you really just want to mix some, something in water and drink it down, you could do that. And, uh, if I probably should say that if all you, if your only option for whatever reason is whey protein before you go to sleep, then do it. Like I said, it's a faster digesting. It's not like a hundred percent

ideal, but it's better than nothing. So it's probably better to skip protein, soy proteins. Don't even bother with soy protein. That's just you, you, there's no reason to, to, to use it. You have better options. You have better plant options with rice and pea, and you have better, um, animal options with whey, casein, and egg. And if you want to stick to plant-based protein, I recommend that you get brown rice and pea. And I don't know if there's even a good blend out there, a product that actually comes with that blend. I don't think so, which is also why I'm thinking of just making it because I don't know if I'd use it myself. I'm fine with whey, but I know that it's needed.

I don't know if I'd use it myself. I'm fine with whey, but I know that it's a needed, it's just something that other, uh, I've, I email with a lot of, uh, I've emailed just with over time with a lot of vegans that run into this problem of how do I get enough protein without having my macros go to complete shit? How do I get enough high quality protein? So it's always kind of like, well, I mean like sun warrior has a brown rice protein that is pretty tasty. The macros are pretty good. Um, I think there's like bulk powders or something has a pea protein and you can mix them yourself. So, you know, do that for now. And, uh, next year there's a very good chance that I'll come out with a really high quality rice pea blend. All right. I think that's everything. Um, yeah, this has been, this has been a bit of

a longer one. I hope you've liked it though. I hope you found it informative. And, um, next week we'll talk about, we'll talk about post-workout supplementation next week. Cause that's a very popular, just hot category because it's associated with your building muscle, building muscles. So we'll talk about which posts, like what is actually worth basically taking post-workout and what's not. All right. Thanks for taking the time and I will see you next week. Hey, it's Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe.

I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast but you'll also find a bunch of different articles that i've written i release a new one almost every day actually i release kind of four to six new articles a week and you can also find my books and everything else that i'm involved in over at muscleforlife.com all right thanks again bye