#454: Eric Helms, PhD – Plant or Animal Protein: Rethinking Protein & Muscle

Sigma Nutrition Radio

Danny Lennon

Sigma, Dietetics, Evidencebased, Nutrition, Training, Health & Fitness, Science, Diet, Fitness, Evidence, Bodybuilding, Health

4.8 • 626 Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2022

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When it comes to eating to promote muscle hypertrophy, muscle repair/recovery and maintenance of mass and function, protein has been an obvious focus. Indeed muscle mass and quality are dependent on the continuous remodeling of skeletal muscle proteins. This is related to the amount of muscle protein balance, i.e. the net difference between muscle protein synthesis (MPS) and muscle protein breakdown (MPB). Because of this, MPS has long been used as a proxy measure for muscle repair and/or growth of muscle.

Protein feeding increases MPS, with the amino acid leucine having a specifically strong impact on MPS. Therefore both the dose of protein and the amino acid profile of the protein have been looked at to assess which protein sources are “superior” for muscle mass and function. This has typically led to viewing animal proteins as better than plant proteins.

But many assumptions are layered into conversations on the topic. In this episode we explore some important points that are often neglected. Is MPS as reliable as we assume? Does the amino acid profile tell us everything about the anabolic effect of a protein? Does dose and timing matter as much as we think? How does the picture change when we look at whole foods or mixed meals?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Sigla Nutrition Radio. This is episode 454 of the podcast.
0:21.6	You are very welcome.
0:22.6	Today we are going to be talking to Dr. Eric Helms, who is currently a research fellow at
0:28.6	Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, where his work is focused on training and
0:33.6	nutrition interventions that could have implications for strength athletes,
0:38.3	including bodybuilders, powerlifters, as well as other types of athletes as well.
0:42.3	And Eric has many peer-reviewed publications at this point, and some of his publications include
0:48.3	what we're going to be talking about today, which is protein, both generally, and then we're
0:52.3	going to focus in on some specific sub topics to that
0:55.1	as well. Eric is also one of the creators and reviewers for the monthly research review mass
1:01.0	or monthly applications in strength sports which you may have heard me mentioned before
1:05.1	and he's also been a coach at 3D muscle journey for a long period of time. And so today we are going to be focusing
1:13.0	in on the topic of protein. And this came off the back of actually discussions that myself,
1:19.9	Eric and Alan had at the Sports Nutrition Association conference, which was recently held in Brisbane,
1:26.2	Australia. And for that conference, Alan actually presented on some of the data related to animal versus
1:32.2	plant-based proteins.
1:33.2	And this kicked off a number of interesting conversations and discussions that we had, both in
1:38.8	the Q&A after that, as well as privately after the conference as well.
1:44.0	And so we thought we would discuss some of these concepts in a podcast episode.
1:49.0	And so this gets not only into the animal versus plant protein discussion,
1:54.0	but that itself raises up bigger questions around doing research on protein.
1:59.0	And all of this is hopefully going towards being able to interpret
	...

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