00:00
you

00:03
Hey everybody, it's Mikki here. You're listening to Mikkipedia. This week on the podcast, I speak to returning guest, Professor Emeritus Don Layman, a leading nutrition scientist whose work has been central to how we understand protein metabolism and the role of diet in long-term health. Super excited to bring this conversation to you guys because Don was at the helm of the recent changes to protein as part of the USDA dietary guidelines.

00:32
And we just start at the top, know, what the guidelines are for, why they exist, and how they came to shape the way we think about food for a population level. So we talk through some of the historical context, including where things may have gone off track, particularly around the treatment of fat, cholesterol, and protein-rich foods. We also discuss the limitations of relying heavily on observational nutrition research and contrast this with the findings from controlled trials.

01:00
particularly in relation to protein requirements and metabolic health. And this is why the guidelines had to change. explained that recommendation to new and higher protein targets to better support muscle satiety and overall health. this is the third time Don has been on the podcast actually. Dr. Don Layman is a professor emeritus in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at the University of Illinois. Dr. Layman has been a leader in research about

01:30
Protein, Nutrition for Athletic Performance, Obesity, Diabetes and Cardiovascular Health and has over 100 peer-reviewed publications. He has received numerous awards for his research from the American Society for Nutrition and the National Institutes for Health and for his nutrition teaching. Dr. Layman currently serves as Associate Editor at the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior and on the editorial boards of Nutrition and Metabolism and Nutrition Research and Practice.

01:59
He has extensive consulting background including work with NASA, the Shriners Children's Hospital, the US Air Force, plus numerous food companies and organizations including Kraft Foods, Nestle, AgriPer, and the National Dairy Council. Dr. Layman earned his doctorate in human nutrition and biochemistry at the University of Minnesota. I have got links as to where you can find Professor Layman's publications.

02:26
his conversations with Dr Gabrielle Lyon, former guest on this show, of which he actually wrote the nutrition chapter in her new book for the Forever Strong playbook as well, but I've got links to the YouTube channel here and also links to Don's previous podcast on Micropedia in the show notes. Before we crack on,

02:48
Into this conversation guys, I'd like to remind you that the best way to support this podcast is to hit the subscribe button on your favourite podcast listening platform. That increases the visibility of Micopedia and amounts to literally thousands of other podcasts out there. So more people get to hear from the guests that I have on the show, like Professor Don Layman. All right guys, enjoy this conversation.

03:15
than I really wanted to do. so I did it. And so you're a runner, so you're interested in health. So that's you got into nutrition? Actually, yes, because I was also doing physical education as a degree. And I was living with girls in my third, fourth year. And I didn't know what else I was going to do with physical education. They were like, just come do nutrition. It's what we're doing. So here I am. It's funny how things like that work out.

03:45
I get it. had no clue what nutrition was when I went to uh college. I'm a chemist by training, but my master's advisor said, you know, you really have an intuitive knack for the field of nutrition. You should really get a PhD in it. And that's how I got it. It was no plan. now Donnie, how much of your time has still been working? um

04:14
My children, my grown children would argue I work harder now that I've retired. And so, you know, I pick and choose. I mostly do consulting. I'm on a couple of boards that are very active. uh So, you know, you know, I've, I've been writing a paper or two per year and, you know, doing podcasts and served on the dietary guidelines. So, you know, the last year I've probably worked practically full time.

04:42
But anyway, it just comes and goes. I get to pick and choose. is great. And in fact, of course, the dietary guidelines is what we are talking about today. I've hit record. we may even just jump in there, if that's all right. That's fine. I'm interested, actually, to sort of the broad picture of the dietary guidelines, but also the changes that have occurred. And just your perspective, obviously,

05:12
to your point you were involved, so on the protein front. And in fact, one of my first questions, Don, before I even crack on into giving people some historical perspective on the guidelines is, did you think that the guidelines would change in your lifetime before the last couple of years? Because they seemed pretty set in stone. Yeah, no, I think that's right. you know,

05:40
no matter what anybody thinks about the current US administration, they're open to change. And I think your point was that prior, the system sort of perpetuated itself and there was a lot of economic push behind it. The food industry liked the old guidelines, the pharmaceutical companies liked the old guidelines. There's a lot of people who liked the old guidelines and certainly didn't want to change. So,

06:06
I actually got involved and that unto itself is an interesting story, but ah interacting with Secretary Kennedy and others who are very interested in food quality and things like ingredients and colors and pesticides and everything else, I basically said, if you don't change the dietary guidelines, that's why people are eating these ultra processed foods. If you don't change those, you're going to lose the battle.

06:34
And I got involved because I thought they had the nerve to change it and they didn't really care what the negative feedback would look like. They said, we're going to do what's right. And, you know, we don't really care if the press doesn't like it. Yeah. That's super interesting. So Don, can we just sort of step back then? And because I think a lot of people might argue that the dietary guidelines are a bit useless because nobody follows them anyway. But of course they've got a much broader

07:04
use case than just the individual. So can we sort of chat about that um historical perspective of why they're put in place um and how they originally came about? I mean, you mentioned a couple of different interests there and then I guess the use case for them. Yeah, the dietary guidelines have evolved over years as to what their purpose was and who pays attention to them. So the original ones really began

07:35
in the 1970s and people recognized in the public health arena that the primary cause of death in the United States was heart disease. And it was almost 50 % of deaths were occurring due to heart disease and people started asking why. And so the original dietary guidelines were about individuals changing behavior relative to heart disease. So it was really kind of focused on individuals.

08:04
In the seventies, the U.S. didn't have a lot of government welfare programs. Over the years, the government has developed more more welfare programs and gotten involved. So now the dietary guidelines have direct impact on any organization that takes government funding. School lunch, nursing homes, daycare centers, hospitals, the military, and programs like WIC and SNAP are federal programs.

08:33
assistance programs, all of those have to follow it to the letter of the law. And so your point of, nobody pays attention. I think if you'd have gone out on the street in the United States five years ago and asked 10 people, what are the dietary guidelines? At least nine would have no clue. They might've said something about the food guide pyramid, but chances are they would have no clue. ah

08:57
I think now since the new ones have come out, I think most people have a sense that there are dietary guidelines that have been sufficiently controversial. to your point, the average consumer doesn't really care. They're going to do what they want. Yeah. And Don, are the dietary guidelines different from the recommended dietary allowance values? So there are different set of rules. Okay.

09:26
So the um dietary guidelines are the consumer facing interpretation of nutrition guidelines. And so uh the RDA, actually more specifically the DRIs, the dietary reference intakes uh are developed by our National Academy of Science. And they set the guidelines for the numbers. So the RDA is established by the

09:56
National Academy of Science and its definition, as you stated, uh recommended dietary allowance is to define the minimum amount of a nutrient that prevents a detectable deficiency, which for vitamin C, know, scurvy vitamin D, it's rickets for protein. It's pretty vague. I mean, what is a protein deficiency? You know, it's not something you can easily

10:24
measure actually. So we have an RDA based on nitrogen balance, but then we have a range of intake for every nutrient up to what's called an upper limit. And so for protein, that ranges from about 0.8 grams per kg at the low end, the RDA up to around three grams per kg, which is an enormous level. ah so then the dietary guidelines then have to fit within that.

10:54
So the dietary guidelines don't define any of the numbers. One of the things that working on the dietary guidelines with Heather Light, Dr. Heather Lighty and I, uh what we put in it, what we decided was the consumer needed some guidance as to one of the things that I find when I go out and speak about protein, which I do frequently, one of the things people always ask me is, well, what's my requirement? And what they need to understand is that

11:24
That implies there's a single number, but the number for each individual depends on their age, it depends on their physical activity, it depends on body composition, and it depends on the protein, the protein quality. And so we need a range, and so what Heather and I were able to do was get into the dietary guidelines, basically a range of 1.2 to 1.6. We think that's an enormous step forward in giving the consumer

11:52
a target for where they ought to design their diet. Yeah, that's great because you mentioned 0.8 was that sort of minimum threshold or standard that was historically used. You also mentioned nitrogen balance, Don, and can we chat about um some of the limitations of the nitrogen balance method and why it's not um probably so suitable for understanding

12:21
Nates? mean, again, just to start with the definition of the RDA is the minimum to prevent a detectable deficiency or so. What is a nitrogen balanced deficiency? What does that relate to? And so just fundamentally, it's a it's a challenge. If you're a growing child where you're continuously adding nitrogen, we can measure that.

12:49
But in an adult who's basically in nitrogen balance and maintenance, what does it mean? So then you step back and say, well, how do they calculate it? Well, they went and they got 25 year old males. They fed them a diet of pure dairy products for seven days and they measured their nitrogen balance. These were physically active, healthy young males. And as I just said, age makes a difference, body composition, physical active.

13:19
So basically it gives you a minimum number for 25 year old healthy young males eating nothing but dairy products. ah It probably has absolutely no relationship to a 65 year old sedentary female. And so, you know, I think people argue about the RDA. I think it's a waste of time. It gives us sort of a bottom number. It's been around for a long time. ah I don't have a problem with it and we don't really have a better

13:49
choice. My point is that we know there's nothing about it that's optimal. It's uh a minimum number and I don't know of anybody whose goal is minimum health. So what we're really looking for is optimal health and that's what Heather and I tried to do with the new dietary guidelines. If you're within that range, your chances of having a healthy protein amount, the right essential amino acids and an overall nutrient balance, vitamins and minerals is pretty high.

14:18
If you're out of that range, then you need to know the liabilities of that. And that's what we're trying to get people to understand. It doesn't mean you have to be, it doesn't mean you have to be, but what we're saying is this is the range that if you do that, chances are you'll have a healthy diet. Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. And so when you and Heather looked at the research and the science around that, values that subsequently were sort of recommended,

14:49
What changed? So did you look at just specific studies? Did you look at the big picture? Because I think it's really helpful for people to understand how you arrive at the value you did. Okay, so kind of at the two ends of the protein intake from the RDA up to an upper limit, lot of that data comes from nitrogen balance. At the low end, are you in nitrogen balance? At the high end,

15:17
can the body actually handle them? Can the urea cycle handle the nitrogen? So they're coming from that. But we know that there are a lot of outcomes in between. ah Probably the most data ever has been with protein synthesis. There have been literally hundreds of studies looking at protein synthesis, particularly in skeletal muscle, but also whole body with protein intakes. And essentially all of those studies show that

15:48
If your protein's in the range of 1.2 to 1.6, you'll have a higher range of muscle protein synthesis than if you use 0.8. The criticism of that was that, well, protein synthesis doesn't relate to muscle mass. If I have a higher level of protein synthesis at breakfast, I'm not gonna have bigger muscles by the end of the day. And so you're using a biomarker that doesn't have a uh clear outcome to it.

16:18
ah And so what and one other thing to frame that the the previous dietary guidelines have used a lot of survey data. They've used a lot of epidemiology data. And if you actually look at the questions they asked the committee, the questions were what is the relationship of and so what you get is high protein diets relate to heart disease or something and

16:48
It has nothing to do with the protein in the diet. has to do with the lifestyle of people who are eating them. And, you know, we've done various studies, for example, we've done some egg studies where if you look at egg intake, what you find is egg intake directly correlates with obesity and diabetes and heart disease. But if you take that data and you factor out the people who eat eggs at fast food restaurants versus people who eat eggs at home,

17:18
You find that people who eat more eggs at home actually are less likely to have obesity, less likely to have, so it has nothing to do with the eggs. It has to do with the lifestyle. And so that's what we were looking at. And so what Heather and I did is we excluded all survey data. And the only thing we used was random controlled trials where there absolute isolation of the protein aspect. And then we use two very distinct outcomes. One is change in body composition.

17:47
body weight, body fat, body lean mass, or nutrient density. What's the health of the overall diet? And we use those two factors. Then what we show is that people who are in the range of 1.2 to 1.6 are far more likely to be healthier than people who have less than one, somewhere between 0.8, 0.9. So basically we use very hard data outcomes. We did the surveys.

18:17
We pooled that data based on body composition and on uh nutrient density. And that's where the values came from. And basically, people will argue, well, not every study shows the same thing. They're not all consistent. But what is consistent is there's never been a single study to show 0.8 was better than the higher range. Sometimes the higher range

18:45
Sometimes body composition isn't different. Sometimes weight wasn't, but it's always in the same direction. It might be a 0.8, it might be an 8 % change that didn't reach statistical significance, but it never ever goes the other way that 0.8 is better. And so that's what we based it on. Yeah. Did you get any pushback from not using the rest of the body of literature? Not particularly. You know, I think that

19:14
The biggest pushback we got was a lot of the body composition studies we used had some sort of energy control. A lot of them were weight loss studies. And so people were saying, well, the guidelines aren't about obesity. They're not about dietary interventions. and our, our, our response to that was, well, we know that 75 % of Americans are overweight, which means they're overeating calories. And so

19:40
What you're saying is that we should design our dietary guidelines to keep them fat. No, we should design our dietary guidelines to get them to the ideal weight, which means that energy restriction of four or 500 calories is exactly the right model. And so basically the peer review said, okay, we agree. We agree with that. So the reality is we haven't gotten much pushback about the range of protein. Most people kind of accept it. uh

20:11
Some pushback comes from, we highly recommended animal proteins, which are higher quality. And so we get a little bit of pushback in that arena because it relates to the saturated fat guidelines. So that's probably where the majority of the pushback has come. Yeah. And can we chat about that, Don? Because it seems like when I was just looking through them and I wondered how much of this, because the saturated fat guideline hasn't changed from previous.

20:39
iterations of the guidelines and I wondered whether it was a concession to the, you know, for other people or like, can we chat about the saturated fat guidelines? Yeah, I think that the 10 % guideline for saturated fat is fictitious. There's no data to support that. It's just dreamed up. And if you go back to

21:07
1980 with the first ones, it was frankly just dreamed up in a committee room. Nobody had any idea what they were recommending. And one of the problems of the dietary guidelines, which are reviewed every five years, is the rule is that you can never look back. You can never evaluate the old, the only thing you can do is in this five years has there been conclusive proof for another number. And that's going to be virtually impossible to ever do.

21:35
And so basically you can perpetuate the error. you know, the way to think about the dietary guidelines for saturated fat and the way that the guidelines are now written is that you should make your protein choices using natural foods and see where your fat falls. You can easily use a hundred percent animal protein and get a diet with a hundred grams of protein and still be way under the 10 %

22:04
saturated fat number. We've done that. I've published multiple studies doing that. We, we in fact published these exact dietary guidelines back in the early 2000s in a multiples of studies where we compared it to the old guidelines of the food guide pyramid. And what we showed is on every marker, these new guidelines are better. So, you know, the saturated fat needs to be in perspective. I think the 10 % number should disappear.

22:33
But to your point, it's probably a political concession at this point. ah I know that Secretary Kennedy has basically gone to our National Institute of Health and said that in the next three years, I want a definitive answer on that number. And so we'll see where that falls out after a while. I think people need to recognize that since the 1960s,

23:01
Saturated fat in the US diet was around 15%. Now it's down to about 11%. So it's gone down. But we now get 35 % of our saturated fat from hydrogenated seed oils. So we have dramatically taken the animal products out and got it put in ultra processed foods. And there's absolutely not a single piece of evidence that shows that's been healthy thing to do. So the new guidelines say

23:29
Get your saturated fat, get your fats from, choose your protein foods, decide where that puts you in your calories and your fats, and then build the rest of your diet around it. That's, mean, what we need to understand is that the only really essential nutrient in the diet are amino acids. Vitamins and minerals are kind of a loose, you need them over time, but you need a daily supply of essential amino acids.

23:58
And so that should be your first decision. And if you make an omnivore decision, that has certain risks to it. If you make a vegetarian decision, that has certain risks to it. And so what people need to understand is that protein decision defines everything else about your diet. And that's what we're trying to get people to understand. I'm not sure how much input you had into the visual because I feel like when I look...

24:23
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like the visual was the thing that people were getting sort of up in arms about much more so than the actual written guidelines. you know, again, how much input? I never saw it until somebody in the public sent it to me. So I never did see the visual until after it was actually released. I think what most people reacted to

24:52
was the red meat piece. They saw that and they said, oh my, but if you really get all your biases out of the way and look at what the new pure, the more I've looked at it, the more I like it. If you look at it, what it says is select high quality protein dense foods and it could be white meat. It could be beans. It could be yogurt. It could be meats. Okay. And then select vegetables.

25:21
high fiber vegetables and you want to look at the pyramid, you want to look at the visuals in it. It has broccoli and high fiber, you know, apples and berries at the top. And as you go on down, bananas are way down at the bottom. And so it's basically, it's basically proteins and high fiber vegetables. And then you go on down to high carbohydrate foods, which you should basically use based on your exercise level.

25:50
Most people are way overeating carbohydrates for their exercise level. We know that carbohydrate, the RDA, is 130 grams per day. In the United States, most people are eating over 300. If you think about where do carbohydrates go, well, at the RDA, they're being used by brain and nervous tissue and red blood cells. But once you get beyond 100, 130 grams,

26:18
The only tissue that can really use it is muscle and muscle uses it for activity at somewhere between 30 and 60 grams per hour. So basically the American intake of carbohydrates means that everybody should have three hours of intense exercise every day to burn it. And that's why we have obesity and diabetes in the United States is they're eating vastly too many carbs. And so the new pyramid basically

26:48
brings that down. says, this is your starting point, restrict those carbs, especially in refined forms. Yeah. It shouldn't be controversial at this point. mean, shouldn't wouldn't think so. Yeah. When I got involved, oh I told Secretary Kennedy, I told the HHS folks, I said, if you're going to make any change in the diets of Americans, the three things you have to accomplish are, prioritizing protein foods, two,

27:16
changing the view of saturated fat, I said eliminate the 10%, didn't get that, but we did change the view and produce a low carb diet. The food guide pyramid, the new one does those three things. Yeah, yeah. And Don, I've heard you talk before and I've never seen it written down actually, even though I've referenced different podcasts and stuff about if we think about protein again, you talk about a metabolic threshold for protein of about

27:46
100 grams a day. And can you describe or explain how you sort of get that number? And please correct me if I've been wrong hearing you talk about it. Yeah, no, I have said that. um Okay, so there's two factors going on. When we did our diets, we were interested in the relationship of how much protein you need and how much carbohydrate you can tolerate.

28:15
And so that's how we sort of built the diets. The protein need, we discovered the whole leucine story. And so when you're young and growing, leucine's not all that critical because you respond because of hormones. grow, young kids can have eight grams of protein at breakfast and 10 at lunch and they'll grow perfectly fine as long as they get their total for the day somewhere. Once you get beyond growth, once you get into your late 30s, 40s,

28:44
Now, hormones are no longer your friend, and now diet quality and exercise become the keys to it. And what we discovered is that for adults, really trigger protein turnover, muscle protein turnover, you needed around two and a half to three grams of leucine. That translates to 30 grams of protein. Three meals a day, 30 grams, okay, 100. Okay, so there's kind of the 100. uh

29:12
what we wanted to do is balance the skin's carbohydrates. So again, RDA is 130, people were eating 300. We brought that down to values that were about equal to the protein. So 100, 140 grams of carbs. So we were looking at sort of a one-to-one ratio. What we found is that with that kind of dietary advice, we would get dramatic changes in our

29:41
and our subjects, our participants, uh in dietary and things related to glycemic regulation, things like triglycerides, fasting blood sugar, blood pressure, body composition, et cetera. We found that when they fell below 100, so we'd have women will usually struggle to keep 100 grams per day. And we found that if women fell down to about 90 grams per day, ah they would lose a lot of the metabolic effects.

30:10
the triglycerides wouldn't be down, et cetera, et cetera. So we basically use that hundred based on our studies is that we would maintain those metabolic effects if they were A, keeping their protein above 100 and their carbohydrates in check, kind of toward a one-to-one balance. So that's kind of where that number comes from. But it's also sort of derived from that 30 grams per meal, 30, 35 grams per meal.

30:39
That ends up being about a hundred. Yeah. Yeah. um And so how are we going to see this play out over the next five years with the changes, Don? I know you don't have a crystal ball, like, so what are your views? are your thoughts on that? I think that's fascinating. you know, just the other day I was asked, you know, how, how long will it take the government to implement this in programs?

31:07
We're seeing elements of it. I think that Secretary Kennedy wants to go into next fall with a whole new approach to school lunch. There should be no question that his first priority is changing the health of children. The fact that one third of children in the United States show pre-diabetes is just abominable. the fact that 75 % of young people can't pass the military fitness test

31:36
I mean, those are things that he's focused on. you know, among all the noise one hears in the press, he is first and foremost focused on children. So I think we'll see that changing fairly quickly. We're seeing it in the welfare programs like SNAP and WIC. We're seeing that, you know, people can't use federal funds to buy sugary sodas and candy bars. They can only buy real foods. So I think we're beginning to see it.

32:06
There's also no question that the food industry is adopting where I, my new favorite word is proteinification. People are putting protein in everything, even, even places it doesn't belong. So, you know, I think the public is very aware of protein right now. ah I think was semantics is making people even more conscious of protein physical activity. So I think we're on the threshold of people recognizing it. um

32:36
The question will be who does it? You know, we, we know that there are big socioeconomic differences on how people respond to diet. And so I think we're going to see a lot of people adopting these directions, but will it impact some of the lower socioeconomic areas where there's a lot of obesity and health risks? Um, I don't know. I don't know if I can predict that. I hope.

33:04
Yeah, yeah, because I guess I'm curious as to your thoughts on either the food manufacturers, I guess the direction they've gone, which makes perfect sense, right? Because when the government told them to take fat out of food, they did a remarkable job of that. And this is how we've ended up where we are. So what are your thoughts on that proteinification of food? Yeah, the...

33:31
Your point about taking fat out, that was a huge economic advantage to food companies. If you can sell cheap grains, you make a lot of money. And that's why your earlier comment, the resistance, know, food companies were very happy with the old food guide pyramid, you know, because it said sell cheap grains, protein and fat, protein and natural fats are more expensive uh in every aspect there.

34:00
They cost more at the farm. They require refrigeration. There's more spoilage. Nobody makes much money from selling animal protein foods. Everybody makes a lot of money selling cheap grains. ah And so I think that what we're seeing is that companies are trying to confuse the consumer by putting, you know, two grams of

34:27
of protein into donuts or something. They're putting in irrelevant amounts and saying this is a high protein bread. uh My take on that is that if you have a product that has less than 10 grams of protein in it, it's basically advertising deception. So I think one of the next steps that we're going to see in the US is that our Food and Drug Administration, which falls under

34:57
Secretary Kennedy also, we're gonna see more limitations in front of package labeling. So it'll be interesting to see how that sorts out. But anyway, I think that the food industry is going to adapt. I think we're going to see more higher protein products. But again, I think as a rule of thumb, people should start with the fact that if it has less than 10 grams of protein as serving,

35:25
you should consider it deceptive marketing. Yeah. That's really good advice. I love to people pick up high protein products because it is at the forefront of their mind without looking at the full picture. Exactly. the other thing I think is going to come into it is protein quality. I think we're going to get a lot more knowledge about protein quality because the back of the package label, the facts panel,

35:54
And I don't know if New Zealand uses the Facts Panel. So the back of the panel is based on a nitrogen analysis. And that nitrogen analysis is then multiplied by 6.25 to get a protein number. That analysis means that every protein, every amino acid has exactly 16 % nitrogen in it. ah That's not true. Plant proteins have a lot more nitrogen in them

36:21
and fewer essential amino acids than animal protein. So the number on the back of the package is distorted and it doesn't include bioavailability. So the issue is the front, if you're talking about a weak bread that says it has six grams of protein on the fax panel, it probably has less than three in terms of viable protein for the front of the panel, for the front of the package. So I think all of that's going to have to get reworked because

36:50
The consumer, as you pointed out, reads the front and says, ah, high protein cereal, high protein bread, high protein donuts. I don't know. Yeah. And I guess that would be something else I'm curious about because this is just one change in one area. It's a huge change, but then what else needs to change in order to help implement them? to your point on that, sort of the nutrition facts label, like, do you have any knowledge as to whether that's in the works, Don?

37:19
And then on the flip side, about the availability of quality protein foods for the people who really need it, that must require change in other areas too. Like, yeah, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I think one of the discussions that's going on right now is people say, well, this is more expensive. People won't be able to do it because protein foods are more expensive than cheap grains. And that's partially true.

37:48
But when we were doing our studies in the early 2000s, I happened to also be director of human ecology at the University of Illinois. And one of the things under my jurisdiction was the statewide WIC, the SNAP program. And so we actually did a study in East St. Louis and South Chicago, which are two relatively poor areas.

38:14
where we went in and basically taught people this new dietary guideline and asked them about affordability. And what we found was that when they switched to real foods, they stopped eating snack foods. They stopped going to convenience foods and buying as much soda, buying as many candy bars, buying as many chips, all of those which are very expensive. They actually said they found they in general saved money by eating healthier.

38:43
And so I think that there's this theoretical argument that beans are cheaper than meat, but that's not the reality of what people eat. They're not choosing between beans and meat. They're choosing between candy bars and healthy food. And then on the other side of the, I mean, I'm thinking about the agricultural environment and the availability of affordable protein.

39:13
what might need to change there? if you had a wish list of what you could change with subsidies or like, do you think that's in the works? Is that also part of the conversation? Subsidies to the farmers or to the public? Yeah, well, I don't know. Where is required, I guess. You know, I'm unsure. Yeah. I think that what we have seen in the United States is that government policies

39:42
have severely damaged agricultural production. So we have, ah I might get these numbers a little bit wrong, but in 1950s, 60s, we had 600,000 dairy farms in the United States. We now have 24,000. Massive consolidation, all driven by government policies. We've driven farmers out of the business. So policies, you know,

40:11
People say, we should have more natural direct to consumer types of foods. Well, government policies have to change on that. And the reality is that in New Zealand and in the United States, we're blessed with enormous land masses that our populations can never exceed our ability to produce food. There's no possibility of that. And so the idea that we can't produce enough food or protein is an absolutely

40:40
ridiculous comment. Are countries like China or India challenged? Absolutely. ah But, my argument is we can't solve India's nutrition problems by restricting protein to school-aged children in the United States. That will never solve that problem. And so, you know, we need to look at what we can do for our population.

41:07
And to whatever extent we can help India, great, but we can't solve their problems. Yeah, very good point. Don, if someone is vegetarian, do you think that they can meet their protein requirements on their vegetarian diet? Like I've seen a few, obviously there are now studies, well, I've seen studies that show from a muscle protein synthetic

41:37
response perspective, you can, but people are still arguing that animal protein is better or is required. What are your thoughts? I mean, the bottom line is that animal protein always has a better balance of essential amino acids and higher bioavailability. So then the issue is how much protein? And so the studies that you've quoted typically use about 120 grams of protein.

42:07
And if you have 120 grams of high quality plant-based protein, you will meet your protein synthesis requirements. And that's why the range of 1.2 to 1.6 is so critical. What we know though is that most vegetarians are down around 0.8. The average vegetarian uh worldwide is consuming protein around 65 grams per day, and the average vegan's around 50 to 55.

42:36
They're extremely low. have poor quality protein and they have low bioavailability. We know that nutrients are at risk. Zinc, iron, selenium, B12, B6, niacin. You can go kind of go down the line. Calcium, vitamin D, they're at risk. There's a reason that there are more vegetarians in the ages of 16 to 40,

43:05
18 to 40, then there are between 60 and 80. It's because as you get older, your ability to eat calories goes down by about 100 calories per decade. So a 25 year old can be vegetarian pretty easily because they still have hormones on their side. They're physically active, all of the things that make their protein use beneficial and they can eat more calories.

43:31
But a 60 year old now has lost three, 400 calories per day. They have a higher protein requirement. They tend to be physically less active. Now they have to be much more precise in what their diet looks like. you know, I think that, and again, that's why we did the range is that ideally you'll be in that range of 1.2 to 1.6. Ideally you'll have some combination of plant and animal protein.

43:59
And a vegetarian who just doesn't eat meat, fine, fish and eggs and milk, that's fine. There's no problem with that. A vegetarian who gets to 120 grams of protein per day probably will be absolutely fine. But a vegetarian who's at 60 probably is going to be at high risk, certainly as they get older. Yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Don, these guidelines, they last for five years, is that correct?

44:28
They're reevaluated every five years, yes. Yeah. So, but I wonder, and this is just, this is just me thinking like, like the one thing, the one may not hiccup or hold up, or I don't know quite how to put it, but it's to your point, this is the administration that was going to affect change. So that was, that was a real bonus. However, as you mentioned as well at the start, the political interests, like

44:58
I don't know. wonder whether they're going to last beyond the five years. did like, what are your thoughts? You know, I, I started telling people 20 years ago that the only way the dietary guidelines were going to change is from the bottom up. They were never going to change from political down. And so if you sort of have seen over the last 20 years, there's been an increasing attention toward protein and reducing carbohydrates.

45:28
uh That has been there. And we've also seen more and more question about saturated fat. We uh see keto diets, we see carnivore diets, we see more and more people questioning it. So I think that the, I think the hill for changing back is gonna get higher by the day. I think each of the next year, we're going to see the threshold for people reversing backs gonna get higher. ah

45:58
To your point, it's unknown. mean, a next US administration could come in and decide that, oh, this was all nonsense and we're going to reverse it. uh I think the public pressure is going to be different from here on out, though. And so I think people who come in and, know, the question is going to be, uh who's going to invest the political capital to reverse that? And what's the liability of that?

46:27
I think that this change is logical enough when people actually sort it out in the next year or so, I think is logical enough that it's gonna be hard to reverse it. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I hope so, given just the sensibility oh of what you can see. Any sensible person who understands nutrition and health can look at the actual guidelines

46:57
and see the improvement clearly. Yeah. And I think that the fat argument, my opinion is what's missing in the fat argument is, is the saturated fat argument a public health guideline or is it a medical treatment? What percentage of people actually have saturated fat risk? So what percentage of the people actually have high LDLs?

47:27
The number of people who have high LDLs above 130 milligrams per deciliter is about 25%. The number that have it above 160, which is considered a really high level is less than 6%. So should the average 10 year old in a school lunch have their diet restricted and saturated fat when there's not a shred of evidence that that's healthy? Or should the average military person, ah you know, who's

47:57
who's whatever, out doing in the field, have their diet restricted based on saturated fat when they're burning 6,000 calories per day. I mean, those are the questions is that, if I had an LDL of 160 and I had family history of heart disease, I would consider restricting LDL. But if I'm pre-diabetic with a high triglyceride and normal LDL, the last thing I wanna do is restrict fat.

48:26
I want to restrict carbs. And so I think the next step in this understanding is that fat and carbs are actually equal in our diet. They're basically nothing but calories. And your choice between the two should be personalized. If I have a fat risk, then I should address that. If I have a carb risk, I should address that. If I'm an elite athlete, I need more carbs.

48:53
If I'm a sedentary overweight person, the last thing I need is more carbs. And I think that's the thinking we've got to get to is personalized nutrition is the next wave. Your choice between fat and carbs is one of the most critical to personalize your diet. Yeah. Yeah. No, that makes sense. And in fact, that actually reminded me of your thoughts on the sodium, because I guess that was the other place it didn't change. whereas, yeah, again, I think

49:24
I think that there were X number of battles to be fought. know, sodium just wasn't one that, you know, anybody wanted to particularly fight. ah I personally believe that sodium ah is a intervention, that it's a medical treatment. There are some people who have uh sodium sensitivity. There are some people who have high blood pressure.

49:52
ah We should treat that. Absolutely. ah I am an athlete. You're an athlete. I actually crave salt. I have to go out of my way to get salt in my diet because of dehydration and salt losses. you know, I think having a low, you know, whatever 25 milligram sort of target may be okay for somebody who has high blood pressure, but I think it's irrelevant for the average population.

50:22
Should we have food companies dumping lots of salt into foods? I can see that being restricted. That's fine. I don't have a problem with restricting that kind of use, but salt has always been in the human diet. I think that guideline is a health guideline. I think it's a medical guideline and not a public health guideline. Yeah, yeah. No, I completely agree. But I'm definitely not a...

50:49
sodium expert. So I wade into that as a personal opinion and not an expert. Yeah, yeah. And I appreciate that for sure. So Don, just from your um perspective, where are like, is this going to drive different research from different entities looking at nutrition science? Do you think? Like, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I think that I think

51:18
And I hope that the new guidelines will change the stage for what gets looked at and how it gets looked at. um Agencies, I know, for example, that Secretary Kennedy has gone to NIH and said, I want a definitive answer about saturated fat. So I know that he's gone to the Food and Drug Administration and saying, I want different labeling laws. So I know that it's gonna get changed.

51:46
ah And I think there will be agendas on that. NIH, I did a lot of nutrition research back in the early 2000s. I went to NIH for funding and they continuously told me that there's no health interest in protein. There's no reason to study it. So I had to go to the food industry to get funding to discover a lot of the things we did. People criticized that, well, you got money from beef or eggs or dairy or something. Well, it was the only way to study it.

52:14
Otherwise we would still have our head in the sand. And so, you know, I think there will be those changes. We're actually beginning to put together a protein summit that will be the end of, you know, end of summer. And we'll have a three day summit, basically trying to highlight research agendas in the protein world. So I think it will have a lot of ramifications as to the agenda of what's being looked at in the next few years. Yeah.

52:43
Yeah, no, I like that. And that summit is that for the research entities for industry. only. it'll be basically international leaders in the protein world. So yeah, it'll be a closed invitation only, maybe 45 or 50 people. But there oh will be a publication that comes from it. Oh, nice one.

53:13
How much of the conversation, you mentioned OZempic actually and the weight loss medications. And of course, like how much of the conversation Don needs to consider this increased use of the weight loss medications. yeah, like, don't know, like how much do you think about that given your role? A lot, actually, cause a lot of our research, so we were interested in protein needs as you got older. But the problem with that is that

53:42
body composition is about a 5 % change per decade. So you can never run those studies. You can never do a study long enough to get a change. So we shifted to weight loss studies where we could restrict calories, get a change in composition and look at different diets in a manageable length of time. You know, maybe as short as three months, but a lot of four months. did a, we did 52 week study with 120 subjects.

54:12
uh So I, you know, I think that I think, oh, some things, I think these drugs raise the question of the rate of change. What we know from, what we know from weight loss studies from animals or humans is that the rate of the weight loss determines the composition of the weight loss. If you're losing weight at faster than two pounds per week,

54:42
it has to come from lean body mass. you know, you ignore the first 10 days of a weight loss because that's water and glycogen and miscellaneous. But if you get out to the end of a month on a weight loss drug and you've lost more than eight pounds, all of that had to come from lean mass. And we know that if you're over 40 and you lean, lose lean mass, your chances of ever gaining it back are very poor.

55:10
We know that if you do total starvation for two weeks, more than 50 % of your weight loss will be lean mass. And so the issue is rate of weight loss. How are people using these drugs? And then what's the end game? Are you going to stay on it forever? Or the data right now is 50 % of the people who go on those drugs go off of them in six months and gain the weight back.

55:39
So now what you're going to do is gain back more fat than you gain back lean. So you're worse off from having done it. So the issue is going to be, you know, how do you do lose the weight? How quickly do you lose it? And how, what's your end game? Or have you learned a new diet? Have you applied the new dietary guidelines and learned how to eat? Or if you just go back to your old habits, you're going to be worse off. So I think the drugs, they clearly have a role in diabetes.

56:08
When people are just doing it for personal cosmetic reasons, they really need to think about why they're doing it and what the end game is going to look like. Yeah. Yeah. No, those are, I completely agree. So Don, you mentioned just to finish up your working on a couple of papers this year, what can we expect from you in your retired?

56:34
In your retired life, are we, you've got some papers coming up? um Nothing actually in the works right at the moment. um We uh published three papers associated with diet quality and protein quality in the last two years. uh One of which is a website where people can go and basically type in foods and look at protein quality. It's a really cool website. um

57:02
I mean, the process of developing a app with a group known as the Nutrient Institute, who have the biggest database of foods in the world. They have extensive nutrient uh composition, ingredient composition for 700,000 foods across the world. And basically, we've developed an app based on my

57:29
based on the new dietary guidelines basically, you can go in and scan a QR code on a food and basically it'll rank the food as excellent, good, fair, poor, and very poor for weight loss. And so it'll rank basically every food that's possible. So that's one of the things that's kind of fun that's going on. I'm sort of reviewing a final iteration of it next week. So that's kind of fun.

57:56
ah I think that we'll be focusing on translation of the dietary guidelines. We're developing a webinar with ah the Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Science, IFANS. Heather and I are gonna do a webinar for kind of translation of what these things do. ah And Dr. Gabrielle Lyon and I are working on a paper, it's kind of under a heading of carbohydrate tolerance.

58:23
How many carbs can you actually use depending on who you are? So those are the things that are floating around in my retirement. Yeah, that all sounds great. And in fact, that carbohydrate tolerance question is super interesting. So I'm definitely looking forward to seeing that because it's something I've heard both of you discuss quite a bit. So it would be really great to have it sort of uh in peer review, published for

58:52
people to be able to understand better, I think. Yeah, we talk about it. So we need to get something out there in the peer review that we can point to. So some people simply don't believe it when we say it, but now it's time to sort of put it into the literature. So anyway, that's what we're working on. It's sort of the dietary guidelines has kind of put that onto my back shelf for a little bit, but I'm about to get back to it.

59:17
Well, that sounds great, Dawn. You always are so super active whenever I talk to you. And this is your third appearance actually on my podcast. And I always appreciate how willing you are to come on and chat about this stuff because people love hearing from actual experts who are able to translate that science into the practical um sort of application of it. And you're brilliant at what you do.

59:42
And I hope people can look at what we do and realize it's not extreme. We're trying to build guidelines that can accommodate everyone's personal choices from vegetarian to omnivore. We're not trying to denigrate anybody's approach to it, but what we want them to understand, what risks go with it? When you make this choice, what else do you have to do? And that's kind of what we're trying to do. And hopefully people can appreciate sort of the

01:00:11
the logic and the fairness of this approach. Yeah, yeah. No, I um hope for that too, Don. So you mentioned actually a website just before where people can plug in the food and figure out the amino acids. Are you able to let us know what that website is? And I can pop it in the show notes. I will send it to you. I don't have it memorized. My personal website is called metabolictransformation.com.

01:00:40
which has a lot of the diet information in it, because it's what we did back in the early 2000s, and it's very, very similar to the new dietary guidelines. But yeah, the protein quality hub, ah I will send you that and you can post that. It's kind of a fun website. Yeah, no, that sounds really great, Don. um Thank you so much for your time. I always appreciate it, and I look forward to what comes of the project that you've got in the mix as well.

01:01:10
So thanks, John. Always a pleasure.

01:01:24
Alrighty, hopefully you enjoyed that. I just love chatting to Don because he has such a wealth of information and he always so readily shares what he knows. So it's such a privilege to have these conversations. So again, please share with anyone that you think is interested in learning more about why these guidelines have shifted. Because it has obvious implications for the rest of the world because in nutrition at least, where US goes, the rest of the Western world tends to follow.

01:01:54
And for a little change in tact, next week on the podcast I speak to Dr Matt Nagra, a naturopath who specialises in plant-based diets. I think you guys are going to love this as a bit of a contrast maybe or even just a different perspective. That is next week on the podcast. For now though, you can catch me over on Instagram threads and X @mikkiwilliden Facebook @mikkiwillidennutrition or head to my website, @mikkiwilliden.com. Book a one-on-one call with me.

01:02:23
Alright guys, you have the best week. See you later.