Aidan:
Hello and welcome to the Ideal Nutrition Podcast. My name is Aidan Muir and I’m here with my co-host, Leah Higl and this is episode 137 where we are going to be talking about how to choose a protein powder. We’re going to cover quite a few things today. We’re going to go through common types of protein powders, what we care about from a macronutrient perspective, the amino acid breakdown, lactose content, some stuff around IBS, and then talk about specific protein powders like plant-based ones, collagen, casein, protein water. Then we will also be talking about batch testing and how much that matters and when it matters.
Leah:
So yeah, literally going over everything you could possibly want to think about when it comes to protein powders, essentially. So let’s start off with the basics and talk about the common types. So the main types we often see in practice would be your whey protein as kind of, I guess, the gold standard. Then we also see things like your casein protein, which is a more slow releasing, slow digesting protein.
Then we’ve got all of our plant-based options. So this is definitely my space. The few main types that we’ll see is soy, rice and pea, but there’s also hemp, fava bean, almond. Like literally, if you can make like a milk out of it, they’ve probably made a protein powder out of it as well. There are others that do exist, but those are the main ones we will be covering today as that’s like pretty much 99% of the market.
The first thing we likely want to look at when choosing a protein powder is the macronutrient profile. Ideally, one that has more than 20 grams of protein per serving while having less than five grams of combined fats and carbs. This essentially just makes it a very efficient source of protein, which is what a lot of people utilise a protein powder for.
There are absolutely other products that don’t meet that criteria and still can be a great option. It’s just likely in a different context of being like a mass gainer or like an overall recovery drink or something along those lines. So ideally we are looking for an efficient source of protein, but those other products can be useful.
Aidan:
And if we have the macros covered, the next thing we would be paying attention to is the amino acid breakdown. As a huge disclaimer, this matters far more when you do not have a high total protein intake coming from a variety of sources. But I still want to talk about it because I think it’s important to know. So the gold standard, one of the first things we want to look at is we typically want the protein powder to contain greater than two to three grams of leucine per serving. We also probably want other BCAAs in a decent amount as well.
So there’s three BCAAs, which is leucine, isoleucine, and valine. We also probably want a complete amino acid profile containing a decent amount of each of the nine essential amino acids. We’re gonna talk through examples of protein powders that aren’t meeting that criteria. Then we’ll talk through, this will be later on, but we’ll talk through how much that matters and what you should do in those circumstances as well.
Leah:
Before we jump into that though, we’re gonna talk a little bit about lactose content because when it comes to utilising a whey -based protein, this is something that comes up a lot. So whey protein, particularly talking about whey protein isolate while it is dairy based It is actually quite low lactose with around 0.3 grams of lactose per 30 gram serve To add a little bit of extra context to that most people with lactose intolerance can tolerate around 3 grams of lactose in one sitting with minimal to no symptoms So 0.3 grams of lactose is is really such a minimal serving size.
So most people, even with a very sensitive kind of lactose intolerance, will be fine with a whey protein isolate. Whey protein concentrate, on the other hand, a little less isolated than your whey protein isolate, typically has around one to two grams of lactose per same 30 gram serve. So a little bit higher than your isolate. So depending on how much you are having that may be an issue.
Often it is not, but in very sensitive people it still can be. And especially if you are having quite a large serving size or having this multiple times throughout the day on top of other lactose containing products. Outside of dairy based options, obviously we have all of our plant based options, which are naturally going to be no lactose content. So they can be a great option as well.
Aidan:
So if, I guess we’ll talk about IBS related stuff as well. So if it’s not lactose causing issues to somebody, there can be so many other explanations. There are a bunch of people who have say whey protein isolate and will experience symptoms. If it’s not lactose because it’s too low, there’s gonna be other explanations. So we’re just gonna chuck a bunch out there. Some of these may not be relevant for you specifically to get symptoms from this, but we’ll go through a few.
One is that there could just be issues in relation to the higher concentration of protein consumed in a short space of time and that might be difficult to digest. The example that immediately jumps to my mind that’s not relevant to this, but did you ever see 2 cal in hospitals, like those drinks?
Leah:
A really long time ago, yes.
Aidan:
Stuff like 47-sustagen would probably be around one calorie per mil. And then there’s a drink called 2 cal, which is two calories per mil. Then that creates a bit of a slippery slope where it’s like, we have three calories? And the reason for this is in certain hospitals or in hospitals in general, there could be a lot of people who are at risk of malnutrition but have very low appetites. So theoretically, it’s like how many calories per mil of fluid can we get in to make it easy to consume everything? One of the issues that practitioners often face is even with two calories, and definitely beyond that, a lot of people get symptoms like bloating and diarrhoea basically just because it’s such a large concentration of calories in a small amount.
That doesn’t directly apply to protein powder because it’s usually relatively low calorie and just so high protein but that’s part of what I’m getting at being like you could just have a bunch of protein all in one go that is hitting your system quicker than you would ever get through other foods. That could be one potential explanation. Another one is whey allergy or intolerances to milk proteins.
It’s not super uncommon for people to say that they struggle with whey protein and then they switch to a plant-based one and they’re like, it’s completely fine. So there’s many explanations there. Sugar alcohols can also be an explanation. Certain protein powders will have sugar alcohols added and there is potential that other sweeteners could play a role. Sometimes FODMAPs can play a role. For example, if a plant-based protein powder happens to not be super isolated, there could be some FODMAPs in there, oligosaccharides and fructans, which could play a role too. I don’t know how common that is. Is that super common?
Leah:
It’s actually, yeah, I do find it quite common. It’s hard to say if it is like one of the other points in terms of it being such a concentrated amount of protein, but I do find sometimes changing from like a pea -based protein to a rice or a soy protein isolate solves the problem. So that would tell me that it’s probably FODMAP related.
Aidan:
Yeah, gotcha. And then some protein powders also have prebiotics added, particularly if they’re marketers like gut health type products. So if they’ve got prebiotics added that also be a trigger for certain people too.
Leah:
Talking a little bit more about the plant -based stuff, so there are like I said so many options in this space. It’s very very wide wide market when it comes to plant-based proteins. The most common though is your pea and rice as well as your pea and rice blends. Pea and rice blends are by far the most common that you’ll see.
But you’ll also see soy quite frequently and also hemp is becoming a lot more popular these days. So some reasons why people would want to opt for a plant-based option could be that a, they’re lactose intolerant, so they’re just going to bypass all lactose and just go for a plant-based option, or they have like a dairy allergy, or it could just be from an ethical point of view, whether it’s like environmental or animal rights concerns. So there’s lots of reasons why someone would want to opt for a plant -based protein.
So if you fall into this category and this is your choice, my main suggestion would be to go for either a soy protein isolate or the pea and rice blends. And the main reason behind that is ideally we’re looking for this kind of complete amino acid profile. So having an abundance of those essential amino acids to trigger muscle protein synthesis. Soy protein is naturally a complete protein. So a soy protein isolate, really great option.
Whilst pea and rice proteins separately are technically an incomplete protein, when they are combined together, they complement each other’s amino acid profile and make a more complete amino acid profile. So that’s why a lot of companies will use that pea and rice blend because they do complement each other so well. I would also in those circumstances though, pay a little bit more attention to the leucine content.
So leucine is specifically an essential amino acid that is well known for triggering muscle protein synthesis. That’s when we’re wanting to optimise muscle protein synthesis, it’s something that we want to look at getting around 2.5 grams of leucine or more per protein serve. So ideally when we’re looking for a protein powder, it has at least that amount of leucine per standard serving size.
Some of your plant-based proteins that are even just a pea and rice blend may not be getting all the way up to that mark. So it could be something just extra to check on the back of that nutrition information panel to see if it does have adequate leucine. On the other hand, our soy protein isolates will usually naturally meet that leucine content as well. So we don’t really need to kind of double check that typically.
From an IBS perspective, like I said, typically the safest options or ones that I suggest would be your very plain soy protein isolates or just a rice based protein powder. And then you can even just like add extra essential amino acids or leucine to that rice based protein powder to enhance its overall profile. So there are absolutely things that you can do there from an IBS perspective if you aren’t tolerating things like your pea proteins.
Aidan:
Talking about another form of protein powder we’ll go through, collagen. Collagen is quite low in certain amino acids. It typically has only 0.3 to 0.8 grams of leucine per 30 grams served. As we previously mentioned, typically we’re aiming for like greater than two to three grams of leucine per 30 grams served. It has low levels of BCAAs in general, and it is low in tryptophan and cysteine specifically, which makes it considered to be an incomplete protein.
Often we have a pretty heavy focus on leucine, but there is even a study where they compared whey protein versus collagen protein, where the collagen protein was matched for leucine, so they added leucine to it. At the end of the study, whey still resulted in significantly more muscle growth than the collagen. So it’s not just about the leucine, it’s also the other stuff in the amino acid profile. A quick note though, there are other potential benefits to collagen outside of muscle growth.
It’s partly because the amino acid profile is so different to these ones that are good for muscle growth. It’s low on certain stuff, it’s very high in other things. The only reason why I’m talking about the way I am in relation to this is just because like when we’re talking about protein powder, usually we’re playing a bit of a level playing field where we’re talking about it being like for muscle growth is usually like how we’re talking about it. Collagen may or may not be beneficial for stuff like joint health and skin health and stuff like that.
That’s a bit of a separate topic. I, as a fun fact, have turned down one podcast request in the past like 18 months, I think. Everyone who asked me to be on their podcast, I just say yes. The only one I’ve turned down is actually a pretty big platform. And the reason why I turned it down is because they’ve hyped up collagen heaps for muscle growth and they’ve hyped it up for other stuff as well. They’re hyping up for everything, right? Right. And they invited me on to talk about collagen for injury recovery because I’ve written about that heaps. I’m pretty passionate about that.
I was like, I just don’t want to go on that podcast just in case it goes down this route. And then I have to have a separate opinion on this topic that they’ve really hiked up. And then like there’s a lot of mechanisms that they use to hype it up. For example, potentially growing the fascia, which surrounds the muscle, which means if you add more there, maybe it allows more room for the muscle to grow inside the fascia is the kind of logic.
And I’m like, I feel like there’s a chance that they just start talking about deep mechanisms that I don’t understand because I don’t think I need to understand because if you look at the research like collagen, it’s pretty clear at this stage. It’s worse for muscle proteins emphasis and the studies directly measuring muscle growth, it has performed worse. I’m like, I’m just going to leave this one. Let’s not play with fire.
Leah:
Another one we’ll talk about is casein. So often casein is used predominantly before bed because it is that slow digesting protein. In the gram scheme of things though, it doesn’t really seem to matter. It doesn’t really seem to make a difference. When you mix either casein or like a whey protein isolate with other foods or drinks, so something even just like milk, for example, the differences in absorption largely disappear.
So yes, in isolation, there is a little bit of a difference as part of a meal and the rest of dietary context comes in, not that much of a difference between the two. While research often finds having casein before bed improves muscle growth in general, that’s typically what research finds from having any kind of quality form of protein before bed. whether it’s a casein away, any other good quality source of protein. So that’s more about the increased protein intake likely and the improved distribution more so than in the specifics around casein being a slow digesting protein.
We do have a pretty comprehensive blog post on this linked in the show notes. So if you do want to kind of delve into the research, have a little bit more of a look for yourself, that’ll all be linked.
Aidan:
In that blog post, there’s an interesting study in there that it’s just a massive curve ball, right? the common consensus is have whey protein after a workout because it’s fast digesting, have casein before bed. You obviously just talked about why the casein before bed thing doesn’t matter. But there’s a study in there where they compared whey protein versus casein protein post-workout, and they just measured muscle growth. And they both got the same results as well. In either case, doesn’t seem to really matter.
The final form of protein, supplement or powder that we’ll talk about is protein water. Protein water, it’s obviously hard to summarise this because it can be made from anything, right? It can be made from collagen whey or plant -based sources. There’s a variety of things that can be made from. And that therefore means that everything we’ve just talked about applies just based on what it’s made of.
One thing to look out for is a lot of them include decent amounts of collagen. So that therefore means everything we’ve talked about applies. If they include decent amounts of a certain plant-based protein, everything we talked about there applies. So it’s just looking at the ingredients in those cases and then making a judgment from there.
Leah:
Yeah. And I find some of the plant-based ones just end up being an amino acid drink rather than a protein drink. Their marketing is a little bit shifty. So that’s something to be mindful of as well. The final thing we’re going to touch on is that batch testing component. So if you compete in a drug tested sport, you should probably only use batch tested protein powders and batch tested supplements in general. In Australia, there’s a great website that is literally called batch tested. So it’s very easy to find, which you can find products that are sold in Australia and are batch tested and have all the things you need for being properly batch tested.
A larger percentage of sports supplements do contain banned substances and probably more than you would think. I think in Australia we always consider our food environment as being relatively safe and really well monitored. A group called International Anti-Doping Laboratory tested products that are not batch tested in Australia and found that 19% of them contained banned substances. I had no idea the number was that freaking high.
Aidan:
Yeah, and like I think we could like it could be debatable in the numbers particularly because it’s like they’re looking at things that are not batch tested which like brings the average up and stuff like that. It’s still like if that number is even remotely close and like they only measure their sample size and everything like that but like you just wouldn’t pick it you just wouldn’t think that in Australia’s anyone need that high.
Leah:
Yeah, especially when you think like most products that people are using are not batch tested so I feel like that does cover like majority of the market. So yeah, very interesting.
Aidan:
Like I’d seen data from like it was very early like in the 2000s from countries outside of Australia and like the banned substances typically seem to be like the most common thing was pro-hormones so like almost like oral steroids basically and that makes you wonder, raises more questions than answers being like are companies intentionally doing this so people get better results from their products? Is this unintentional? If it’s unintentional how does it get in there?
The reason why I originally went down that rabbit hole was just because there’s a few studies have looked at protein powder as an effect on like male fertility. And if it has impacted male fertility in those studies, which in some cases it did, in other cases it didn’t, it makes you just ask the question being like, was the protein powder used in that study, something that had pro-hormones in it?
Because I do not think there’s any reason that whey protein would be affecting fertility in any way. Yeah. And like that’s also why we’re research finding no difference. But just the fact that like this is why it’s like maybe like if you’re just a kind of cautious person, maybe it makes sense not to have untested products.
Leah:
It definitely increases my, I guess, suggestion that if any pregnant people are going to be using a protein powder that batch tested products, definitely the code.
Aidan:
That’s definitely my recommendation at the moment as well.
Leah:
So as a little bit of a summary, ideally we’re looking for protein powders that are efficient sources of protein. So have more than 20 grams of protein per serving, pretty low in fats and carbs, have a good amino acid profile. And there are other things that you may want to consider depending on who you are, like lactose content, FODMAP content, sweeteners, et cetera, and things like batch testing.
Aidan:
This has been episode 137 of the Ideal Nutrition podcast. As always, if you haven’t already, if you could please leave a rating and review, that would be massively appreciated.