ZOE Science & Nutrition - Recap: Do you need to eat meat to build muscle? | Simon Hill & Will Bulsiewicz

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

Today we’re diving into protein. It’s the nutrient at the centre of some of the biggest debates in nutrition - especially when it comes to building muscle. And as more people adopt plant-based diets, one question keeps coming up: Can non-meat proteins really support strength and overall health? So, what does the science say? Is it better to get our protein from animals or plants? I’m joined by nutrition expert Simon Hill and Dr. Will Bulsiewicz to break down the benefits of both, and to explore how we can build muscle in the healthiest, most sustainable way. 🥑 Make smarter food choices. Become a member a zoe.com - 10% off with code PODCAST 🌱 Try our new plant based wholefood supplement - Daily30+ *Naturally high in copper which contributes to normal energy yielding metabolism and the normal function of the immune system 📚 Books from our ZOE Scientists:The Food For Life Cookbook by Prof. Tim Spector Food For Life by Prof. Tim Spector Every Body Should Know This by Dr Federica Amati Free resources from ZOE: Live Healthier: Top 10 Tips From ZOE Science & Nutrition  Gut Guide - for a healthier microbiome in weeks Have feedback or a topic you'd like us to cover? Let us know here Listen to the full episode here

Hello and welcome to Zoey Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health. Today we're diving into protein. It's the nutrient to the centre of some of the biggest debates in nutrition, especially when it comes to building muscle. And as more people adopt plant-based diets, one question keeps coming up. Can non-meat proteins really support strength and overall health? So what does the science say? Is it better to get our protein from animals or plants? I'm joined by nutrition expert Simon Hill and Dr. Wilbosowicz to break down the benefits of both and to

explore how we can build muscle in the healthiest and most sustainable way. Protein is a building block, an important part of our body. And so we classically think about it as the building block of muscle or of bone, but it also is involved in signaling within the body and different biochemical reactions that are occurring throughout our entire body. It's also not just muscle and bone. There's other organs where protein is an essential part of building those organs. You think about the heart, the liver, the kidneys. We need protein in order to build those. And so protein is also part of our diet. And it's an essential part of our diet. And when we use the word essential in nutrition, what we mean is that you have to get this.

You have to get this. And so protein can be found in many different sources within our diet. The classic is animal-based foods. So eating red meat, so pork or beef, eating fish, poultry. With these, what we're doing is we're literally eating the muscle of the animal. And so naturally that's a high protein source. But there's also eggs, there's also dairy products that contain protein. But the thing that we're here to discuss is the role of plant-based protein. And what's interesting is that plants contain protein. All plants contain protein.

All plants contain amino acids. There's 20 amino acids. And all plants contain the nine essential amino acids. So plants absolutely can be our source for protein. In fact, among omnivores, even people who consume animal products, they also get a huge percentage of their protein from plants on a daily basis.

And Will, you mentioned just within this, and I think it's come up in some of our previous podcasts, this idea that sort of these 20 amino acids sort of building blocks that could be turned into proteins, but you mentioned that nine of them were essential. What's the difference between the nine essential and the 11, which therefore sound, they're not essential, which is, you know, feels like the less important ones being invited to the party. Yeah. So, I mean, you can think of these almost like Lego bricks and the 11 non-essential Lego bricks or amino acids your body is able to produce for you. So you're not required to actually get that from your diet. Your body has the ability, the capacity to prepare that. Whereas the nine essential amino acids, again,

this word essential means that we have to get it from our diet, that our body is not capable of producing it. And so those nine Legos, it's like we have to source somewhere else to be able to, those nine Lego pieces, we have to source somewhere else to get them. When we're building muscle, when we're building different things within the body, these 20 amino acids become important players because basically if one of them is not at an adequate level, that's where protein production stops. So in essence, we can only build in terms of what are the Lego pieces that we have available to us.

Our goal is to have adequacy of all 20 Lego pieces, but in order to accomplish that, we have to basically outsource these nine in our diet, make sure that we get an adequate amount of them. So Simon, let me paint you this picture and I'd love to hear what you would say. So my son is 16, right? So he's sort of going, he's shot up, you know, a year ago, he was shorter than me. Now he's much taller than me. He started to get interested in the gym, you know, in the last, uh, you know, nine months or something. It's incredibly depressing because like he goes to the gym, he lifts some weights

and the following day, like his muscles have literally grown. And you were discussing this before I'm laughing because at this point, I can't put any muscle on at all, like, you know, it doesn't, it's not happening, but for him, it feels like it's sort of magical. And he's got really interested. He's really excited by this, which I think is very understandable that he's starting to get stronger, he wants to be stronger than me, all the rest of it. And he absolutely believes he needs to eat red meat because he wants to maximize this sort of growth that's going on. And, you know, we eat a very good diet at home, very much driven by myself and my wife

in terms of what sort of our Zoe app is telling us to eat. So he eats quite a lot of that. And then he's like, but I need to add like steak around the side of it. I guess my question is what's your message to him and how would you be trying to take him on a pathway that like reduces the red meat, which tends to come packaged in like a burger with fries, right? So it's like there's a whole package with this generally. And I'm thinking maybe he might listen to you because he certainly doesn't listen to me. Well, first of all, I was him. So I'm kind of speaking to my younger self here.

And you know, society has taught us if you eat muscle, you build muscle. And it kind of, you know, intuitively it makes sense. We can see that you take the muscle off an animal, you eat that and all of a sudden you're going to be, you know, Popeye, you know, these big bulging biceps. But what I would explain to him is that when you eat food that has protein in it, whether it is meat, whether it is a legume or tempeh, the body doesn't just absorb that protein. First, it breaks it down into amino acids, and then they get absorbed into the bloodstream. So by the time those essential amino acids are floating around in the blood, Jonathan, they're

not tagged. Oh, that leucine came from pork and that leucine came from beef and that leucine came from tempeh. At that stage, they're just amino acids. It doesn't matter where they came from. What's important is that you're getting enough of those nine essential amino acids into circulation. It doesn't matter where you're getting them from. If we're talking about a hypertrophy growing muscle point of view, I believe it matters a lot in terms of chronic disease because of all the

other things that come in the protein package that influence chronic disease risk. But providing you're consuming enough total protein, you will be supplying enough of those nine essential amino acids into circulation to support the work that you're doing in the gym. And if he said to me, well, how do you know that? I would point to these clinical studies where they take healthy adults like in Brazil, they took males in their 20s and got them on a resistance training program, had one group consuming all protein from plants and this was a high protein diet, 1.6 grams per kilogram and the other group an omnivorous diet, 1.6 grams per kilogram and they followed these people for 8 to 12 weeks.

See, they're 8 or 12 weeks. And along the way, they're doing the resistance training and they're measuring changes in muscle size and strength. And throughout that study, there was no significant differences between those young men who were eating an omnivorous diet so they were getting protein from red meat, as you just mentioned there, and from white meat, fish, versus the group who was getting all their protein from foods like tempeh, tofu, lentils, etc.

And so that's just further evidence for us that if you're consuming enough total protein, you don't need to be worried that somehow if that protein is coming from plants, it's inferior. It can't, a legume like an edamame bean isn't gonna build muscle as good as a piece of steak. That's a myth. It's a story that we've kind of told ourselves. And I understand how it kind of told ourselves. And I understand how,

you know, it kind of feels intuitive. And I was there once, but when you understand the physiology, you realize that that's not a fear that we need to hold. All right. Well, I will see whether I can convince him on this. I think when I do, he will immediately say, then, all right, then I really do need to know though, which are the plants that I need to eat that are going to those high levels of protein. Because in his case, I think he is in that rare group of people who is putting on a lot of muscle and is doing quite a lot of exercise, not just in the gym, which I know you've talked about, but also he's going off to school, carrying all his heavy books. You know, like he's physically just a lot more active than, you know, I suspect most of us are in our adult lives. So that brings us back to that.

That main food group is going to be legumes. Tofu and tempeh are really protein dense, plant-based foods. Then we can kind of move further along the spectrum to chickpeas and lentils and all the different varieties of beans. There are some other foods like seitan. If someone is not sensitive to gluten or celiac, that contains gluten. That's very protein dense. A lot of plant-based bodybuilders will consume seitan. It's not for everyone, but if you can tolerate gluten, then that might be one that you want to include as well.

The plant-based milks and yogurts that are high in protein, you're going to be getting protein from all your fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds as well. And then, you know, typically bodybuilders are having a protein supplement for convenience or also from a society point of view, it can be difficult to eat enough protein. People often feel, you know, too full to eat another meal. So in this instance, you'd be swapping out a dairy kind of whey protein concentrate or whey protein isolate for some type of plant-based protein like a pea protein isolate or a rice protein isolate or a blend of the two. And by focusing on those foods I mentioned plus the addition of a protein shake, he should comfortably

be able to get to 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram of body mass as his protein intake per day, which is, the evidence suggests, is more than enough to actually help support that muscle remodeling that we were talking about, so to support the training that he's doing and get the adaptations that he's looking for. But at the same time, all that protein is coming with the fiber, with polyphenols. It's low in saturated fat, doesn't contain dietary cholesterol, doesn't contain heme iron and it's all of these things that coalesce to provide a more favorable environment or a shift in biomarkers that predict risk of cardiometabolic disease.

So he's going to be in the gym, competing with his friends, setting records, building muscle, but he's also protecting his future. I can't help, but think about the fact that all of these foods that Simon is mentioning legumes, specifically tofu and tempeh, seitan, which by the way, thank you for mentioning that, like most people don't realize that gluten is actually a protein. So this gluten rich food is actually protein based or plant based milks like, you know, organic soy milk, nuts and seeds, all these different things.

These are the same foods that are prioritized in a Zoe oriented diet. And I do think that there is this value where Zoe is not necessarily designed specifically to talk to people who desire to be a bodybuilder, but it helps to give you sort of the nutritional foundation that you're looking for that you can build from in terms of understanding why you would be eating more plants and that motivation that comes from that or understanding how eating more plants impacts your gut microbiome. And we know that the gut microbiome, and we've seen this in our work at ZOE is connected to cardiometabolic disease and we have our method study that shows that by basically changing, I mean it's a whole

package, it's not just the gut microbiome, but we show that we can basically improve these cardio metabolic risk factors. But there's also an entire body of literature that's completely separate that connects the gut microbiome to our muscle, where we could go so far as to say that there's a gut microbiome muscle access where they're in communication with one another. And what we see is that like whether it be mouse models or human studies, a healthier guy is present when people exercise. present when people exercise. Also, a healthier gut is associated with muscle mass. And that if you were to deprive, for example, a mouse, where it's easier to do these studies, if you deprive a mouse of a healthy gut by giving it antibiotics, it loses muscle mass. And so I think that there's this broader picture that needs to be seen that you've been mentioning, that we get into a tunnel view and yet we have to zoom out and see this bigger picture of we can accomplish all these goals.

I hope you found the information in this week's episode useful. If you're interested in improving your gut health, you might want to download our free Gut Guide. It's packed with recipes and science-backed information to help you on your journey towards better health. Go to zoe.com slash gut guide to download it for free. Or if you're looking for another podcast to listen to, we have a lot more in our back catalogue. Would you like to know how to reduce your risk of dementia? Or how to make the most of coffee's hidden health benefits? Search for these episodes on your favourite podcast player.