Dr. Donald Layman

We know that as people go toward lower protein diets, they tend to be more likely to be deficient in protein

B12, B6, niacin, iron, zinc, selenium.

So those data are pretty clear out there.

So your protein food choices make a lot of difference to your overall diet quality and nutrient density.

Exactly.

At higher concentration, if you look at meats, for example, all of those are micronutrients that are exactly the same as we would have in our muscles.

I mean, it's exactly the same role, the same metabolic role.

So they're in the same concentration.

And as you pointed out, they're all bioavailable.

So iron might very well be in plants, but it's less than 10% absorbed.

And so bioavailability and also nutrient form are all big issues.

And the animal products just provide more nutrient-dense foods.

Yeah, I think that there will be individuals and groups who think that inappropriate, just like there are individuals like me and groups who think that the previous guidelines were inappropriate.

I think what is important about these guidelines is they allow consumers

to make choices.

They provide the science and people can make their choice.

Before they were kind of social prescriptive type of things that government knows best and you should follow what we tell you.

I think the guideline should be, this is what the science tells us and you are free to make choices.

And I think that's a big difference.

That's actually part of the report that Dr. Leidy and I put together is that we looked at that specifically comparing all of the RCT type of really rigorous research, comparing values of studies that used above 1.2 versus something higher.