I'm often asked what my opinion about a diet or disease is.

Who cares what my or anyone else's opinion is?

Always you care about is what the science says.

What does the best available balance of evidence

published in the peer-reviewed medical literature

have to say right now?

Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast.

I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger.

There has been a history of enthusiasm for protein in the nutrition world.

In fact, a century ago, the protein recommendations were more than twice what they are today.

Let's start with a public health case for modernizing the definition of protein quality.

In 2019, Dr. David Caffsen colleagues, including one of my favorite researchers, David Jenkins, published a public health case for modernizing the definition of protein quality.

The prevailing definition seems to have more to do with biochemistry than the net effects on human health.

The popular concept that protein is good and the more the better.

Coupled with a protein quality definition that favors animal protein,

fosters the impression that eating more meat, eggs, and dairy is desirable, preferable.

But this is directly opposed to nutrition guidelines that are instead trying to push more plants.

Although protein malnutrition is still prevalent in many areas of the world,

it is exceedingly rare in the industrialized world,

where the most formidable public health threat is not something like Quash York or protein calorie malnutrition.

But from chronic diseases in 2016, a landmark study was published out of Harvard,

involving more than 100,000 people that found that replacing animal protein with plant protein was associated with lower risk of dying prematurely.

...