Is the Protein RDA Too Low for You? What 40 Years of Studies Show - Dr. Don Layman & Dr. Heather Leidy | GLS #214
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The previous dietary guidelines over the last 20 years have progressively diluted out the protein.
People think it's this big shift that we're eating far more protein, and it isn't. It's always been there. It just has been overlooked, and people aren't consuming it. Now we're just bringing attention back to the idea of starting your diet, your meal, with protein.
The dietary guidelines, again, it remains very controversial. You did fMRI studies. What did that show?
When they had a breakfast that was higher in protein, their food cravings were blunted. Those that were eating a higher protein breakfast, they actually performed better on those cognitive function tests compared to the kids that skipped breakfast.
All three of us agree that the idea of protein forward-facing, but they had proteinificationized, I just made that word up, my popcorn, as well as almost everything else I'm seeing. Now we've got this added protein in everything.
If it looks like fairy dust, it probably isn't very useful. For it being a meaningful protein is 10 grams. If it has less than 10 grams in it, you probably shouldn't think of it as a protein food. It's not really gonna be beneficial.
Are dietary guidelines for Americans designed to treat disease, or are they designed for a healthy person?
Treat and nutrition gets a little tricky, but I would say with these...
What's up, friends? I'm Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, and this is a very important episode of the show. Today, we have two world-class protein experts in the house. Dr. Donald Lehman, never met him before. For those of you that don't know, he's my mentor of 25 years. Dr. Heather Leidy, who is an amazing, amazing scientist also in the protein metabolism space. You're both here today because I enjoy your company primarily. But secondarily, the US government released the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans. That, in my opinion, has been the most significant change that we have ever seen in the Dietary Guideline history. These Dietary Guidelines cover 2025 to 2030. We are getting old. And they come out every five years.
Care to discuss the changes and actually before that, perhaps your roles. So we can just set the stage.
Our role was as protein experts, we were asked to provide expert input into the HHS staff who was really putting the guidelines together. So we were officially contractors to the Health and Human Services group.
Yeah, same. I mean, just for a little bit more visibility, I mean, we were contacted much like, and you haven't mentioned it, but I was also on the 2020 Dietary Guideline Advisory Committee in the past. And so, you know, when I was contacted with this, maybe a slightly different perspective. interaction on the front end. But, you know, it's the same thing. There's experts that get contacted to do certain things. And for us it was, and Dawn and I independently got contacted. And, you know, we expressed our area of interest, our expertise, and we were asked to develop our own questions about protein. And so what you see that then led into, that informed the 2025 Dietary Guidelines, which is based on questions that Dawn and I put together, did the scientific review, and then, you know, completed our report.
There seems to be a ton of controversy around this set of guidelines. Any thoughts as to why that is?
As you started out, it's a significant change. I think for 45 years, we've had guidelines where sort of the fundamental principle evolved from avoiding saturated fat or cholesterol. I think that these guidelines have reprioritized the way you think about diets and how you'd structure it. I like to think of them as sort of a decision tree. So before the guidelines were all about what you should avoid and really aimed at eating a lot more carbohydrates and particularly refined grains, now we've reprioritized it toward nutrient-dense protein foods and then making the rest of your decisions from that. So we've kind of shifted the priority of how you think about putting diets together.
Yeah, I would just say there's the science part of it that might be the one that has caused the most buzz, but it also could just be the difference in the process.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–7:48
2
What changed in the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines about protein and why does it matter?
7:48–55:18
3
Why is the new protein range 1.2–1.6 g/kg considered 'healthy' and is it really high protein?
55:18–1:10:50
4
What evidence disputes claims that higher protein offers no benefit in randomized trials?
1:10:50–1:56:32
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show
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