Summary
Protein is a health and fitness buzzword – plastered on packaging, prioritised in diets and praised by fitness influencers. But is our preoccupation with protein overshadowing another nutritional essential – fibre? Ruth Alexander explores the science, and marketing, behind protein’s popularity with expert guests Dr Emma Beckett, a food and nutrition scientist and communicator in Australia, and author of You Are More Than What You Eat; physician and social media creator Dr Karan Rajan, who is the author of This Book May Save Your Life; Scott Dicker from SPINS market research company in Chicago; Paul Kita, deputy editor of Men’s Health Magazine in the US.
Producer: Izzy Greenfield
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm no longer ravenous. I'll no longer eat until I fall asleep. The Hunger Game, |
| 0:05.9 | a new five-part series exploring the meteoric rise of weight loss drugs. It's been an incredible |
| 0:10.7 | story with these drugs. The uptake, the amount of product that's been sold, the amounts of money |
| 0:15.1 | is cost. What the drugs do, how they work, and the knock-on effects of their widespread use. |
| 0:20.5 | We'll be sitting here in three years' time going, oh, it caused problems that we're now going to have to fix. |
| 0:26.2 | The Hunger Game with me, Professor Gilesio. |
| 0:29.1 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:37.2 | I've come to a gym, evolve fitness in Timpally, south of Manchester in England. |
| 0:42.7 | I'm not here to exercise, I've got to confess, I'm here to chat to people about protein. |
| 0:49.5 | It's everywhere right now. |
| 0:51.1 | In fact, just here at the front desk. |
| 1:01.3 | A whole array of high-protein products. |
| 1:05.1 | Chocolate protein cookies. |
| 1:08.2 | Some kind of high-protein donut. |
| 1:17.4 | Flapjacks. This is a world-famous chocolate bar and its high-protein version. |
| 1:23.9 | You've got peanut butter protein bar, marshmallow protein bar. And in the fridge here, |
| 1:30.1 | protein shakes of all sorts of different varieties. |
| 1:34.8 | Apparently, you can even these days get high protein tea and coffee. |
| 1:40.9 | This is the food chain from the BBC World Service with me Ruth Alexander. |
| 1:47.2 | And today we're looking at how protein came to get so much attention and whether that could be at the expense of other essential nutrients, not least fibre. So let's start by asking |
| 1:54.6 | people here today how important protein is to them. Hello, we're from the BBC World Service. May I ask your name? It's Jason. |
| 2:02.8 | And what are you doing here today? Mostly back exercises. You're obviously here to do your exercise, |
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