Torwen:

Hello and welcome back to the Ideal Nutrition podcast. My name is Torwen and I’m joined today by my co-host Aidan. We’ve got a bit of a fun episode for you today. We will be sharing 10 underrated nutrition tips. Now we’ve actually written these tips quite separately. So hopefully we don’t double up. Let’s get straight into it.

Aidan:

So, tip number one on my end is around creatine, as you could possibly guess. Although creatine is normally a chronic supplement, which is how we view it for muscle and everything like that. If you are ever sleep deprived, having a high dose of 20 to 25 grams has been found to have acute benefits to cognitive function. It’s not something that you need to build up over time. You can literally do it. The benefits typically peak after around four hours.

They last for up to nine. So it is one of those ones where timing actually matters. You literally would just take it in the morning, upon waking, and you would get these benefits. Obviously I encourage everyone getting good sleep, but this is an easy win. If you care about how much this matters, the research looking at this so far found 24.5% faster processing speeds.

Because it’s still early, it looks pretty promising. Clearly, there is some level of improvement there that is noticeable. The other benefit that a lot of people get is the placebo on top of that. They’re doing something that makes them feel better. But right now, that looks pretty promising.

Torwen:

Cool. My first one I wanted to start with because I think it’s just a useful thing to know. A 500 calorie deficit per day leads to around half a kilo weight loss per week. This is based on the fact that a kilo of body fat contains around 7,700 calories. So if we split that number across seven days, theoretically supporting a kilo weight loss per week.

If we have that, then it’s around half a kilo per week. That’s around a 500 calorie deficit per day. It’s a pretty good rate to aim for. I think that’s a useful nutrition fact to know if you’re keen on manipulating body composition.

Aidan:

I found it so odd going through the university course that they never taught us that. And I grew up reading bodybuilding.com and stuff like that. I found it so interesting. I was like, damn. People would graduate without knowing this. I’ve thought about it being like, why did they not teach us this? And one of the reasons they didn’t teach us this is because that rule has some level of flaws.

It makes the assumption that 100% of this loss comes from body fat. Body fat has around 7,700 calories. It doesn’t come from anywhere else. It ignores water weight, so on and so forth. And it ignores changes in energy expenditure that do occur. But the deeper down the rabbit hole you go, as long as you’re not a perfectionist, you can be like, oh, that was pretty good. It is just off slightly. What I would say is it under-represents weight loss in the short term.

There’ll be water weight and stuff that makes it bigger than that. It slightly over-represents it in the long term. Once you factor in the changes in energy expenditure, that might slow things down a tiny bit. But it’s way better than just not having any kind of guide. And I was like, damn. We would have people graduating a course that have no guide at all.

Torwen:

Exactly. It’s a good one to know, I think, for sure.

Aidan:

Yeah, absolutely. I still think about it. There are new grad dietitians who I do mentor. I shouldn’t be slandering. I don’t know. I’m on a roll. I’ll go. That’ll be putting people in a small calorie deficit. They hope that will lead to a kilo of weight loss per week. I’m like, oh no. We mathematically can kind of figure this out. It’s going to be bigger than that. Anyway, going on to the next tip. Out of character for me. Plant sterols for cholesterol.

If you have high cholesterol, specifically high LDL cholesterol, plant sterols are one of the easiest ones in the world. There are very few things in this life where we can take a supplement and get a noticeable improvement. But we can get that with plant sterols. And this applies whether it is genetic cholesterol, like familial hypercholesterolemia, or whether it’s not. Sometimes people would be like, there’s nothing I can do to solve this.

But it still applies to familial hypercholesterolemia. The mechanism is simply that it reduces cholesterol absorption by the body. Totally safe. I’ve gone deep down the rabbit hole to be like, is there any downside to this? You can find sections on the internet where people have theories about how it could. I’ve seen no evidence that actually has any downside. You typically would see up to about a 10% reduction in cholesterol if it was high at the baseline. That can happen within about six weeks.

Torwen:

I’m going to double piggyback off that one for one of mine. And I’ll talk about psyllium husk being one of the best fibre supplements. It helps in terms of gut health and regulating bowel movements. It also helps with cholesterol as well. It’s a soluble, gel-forming fibre. It can help improve constipation and diarrhoea through that gel-forming property. Make sure that you drink enough water. Start with a low dose and build it up.

It also helps lower cholesterol by binding to bile acids. Bile acids are made from cholesterol. They help in the digestion of dietary fats by binding to those. They then get excreted through the bowel rather than being reabsorbed back in the blood. So then your body has to make more bile acids. It has to use cholesterol from the blood. And that, in turn, reduces cholesterol levels as well.

Aidan:

I’m somebody who cites my sources a lot. In our show notes, we’ll often have this type of stuff. So if you ever want to check my stuff, you can. I’ve got one here that you can’t really cite sources for. Vitamin C three times per day for the common cold. It likely improves the rate of recovery from that cold. And the reason why I can’t cite my sources is because it’s not something that’s really been researched. It’s just a bit of putting two and two together. Vitamin C has a short half-life. It’s around 30 minutes to two hours in the plasma. That’s what we care about for this purpose.

In other areas of the body, like the brain and adrenal glands, it could stay for 10 to 40 days. That’s less relevant for what I’m talking about. So much research on vitamin C is done on once a day supplementation. It has been found to reduce the duration of people staying sick with the common cold by about half a day on average. And they’re just supplementing once a day. So we have evidence that vitamin C helps with this.

What if you just had it in your plasma for a larger percentage of the day? What I would typically recommend is somewhere between one and three grams in each sitting. Do that three times a day. Spread it out relatively evenly. Three grams is a risk. The downside for a lot of people is they might get diarrhoea at the higher level. So just go conservative. We have evidence that lower dosages work. Go with a serving size that fits really well for you. You feel good and it could help with this.

Torwen:

Something my grandma always told me. You know what? I recovered from those colds quickly. So why not do something if it works? Cool. My next one is kind of an easy underrated nutrition tip. Frozen fruit and vegetables are a lot cheaper than fresh. They’re just as nutritious, if not more nutritious. They are frozen at peak ripeness. They maintain this ripeness for a longer period of time. So if budget is something that you’re concerned about, it’s a tip worth knowing.

Aidan:

One thing we did speak about off air was one of our tips. We did have one that did overlap. This was about supplementing iron every second day. I’m curious what you had on this, but my tweak on this tip is going one step deeper. Supplementing iron every second day is almost as good as daily. I do see, and this is actually something I’ve previously said, it might even be better. This is based around the logic that hepcidin can decrease iron absorption.

Hepcidin increases in response to high iron intakes. So the logic is if you supplement every day, hepcidin’s high and it’s blocking that absorption. And there was a bit of research that made it seem like supplementing every second day could be better based on this. If you go deep down the rabbit hole on this one as well, you will find that if you zoom out and look at studies, daily still wins slightly.

After three months of doing it daily versus every second day, the people that do it daily still get slightly higher levels. The reason why I bring it up is to say it’s almost as good. It means if you miss a day, it really doesn’t matter. It’s not a big deal. If anything, you get a bit of extra benefit of improved absorption on the second day. The second thing I think is really relevant is what I’d call a maintenance dosage. A lot of people go through this journey.

They get deficient. And they supplement. They get no longer deficient. They stop supplementing. Then they get deficient again. They repeat the cycle. I think there is a middle ground. There is a bit of a maintenance dosage. If you didn’t know this about iron, you might contemplate that the maintenance dosage is just halving your intake. You go from once every day to once every second day. But if every second day is almost as good as daily, you could take this logic further. You could maybe supplement twice a week, for example.

Torwen:

The little extra thing I had there is gastrointestinal symptoms. That’s huge when taking iron supplementation, especially constipation. If every second day is almost as good and it helps improve gastrointestinal symptoms, people are less likely to tap out. They won’t go, no, I’m so constipated, I can’t continue this. For me, that probably outweighs the benefit. That’s a positive benefit as well.

Aidan:

Absolutely. And you can even go further with what is the line. What is the amount that you could take? I was at a conference. I heard this concept that there’s no point taking a low-dose iron supplement. They said it won’t address the deficiency quickly. I found it a weird take.

I’m like, well, surely there’s something in between zero and 105 milligrams of iron. That’s what a lot of proper iron supplements will contain. The same kind of concept applies. If once every day is not tolerable and you do once every two days, and that’s still not tolerable, could once every three days be? I don’t know. I still think that some is better than none when it comes to this as well.

Torwen:

For sure. My next one is taking a multivitamin if you have a low intake of fruit or veg, or a low diet variety, it can help cover a general intake of micronutrients. This works especially well for those with restricted diets. That includes strict food preferences or textural sensitivities. Those are often people who miss out on a broad range of small micronutrients. It’s worth knowing that a multivitamin can help cover those.

Aidan:

Cool. I like that.

Torwen:

Have you got one more after me?

Aidan:

I do. I’ve got one more. I think this is underrated. I don’t think this is interesting, but I think it’s underrated. Prioritise leaner cuts of meat if you eat meat. I think this is more important than probably the majority of the population. That’s my own two cents. The obvious is it’s lower calorie. The slightly less obvious is it’s slightly higher in protein.

By definition, if you’ve got 100 grams of meat and it was lower in fat, it’s going to be more of something else. That’s how it ends up being higher protein, right? It dramatically reduces saturated fat intake. That can translate to better cholesterol. Better cholesterol can translate to reduced risk of cardiovascular disease as well. There’s all of this data from way back. People on plant-based diets tend to live longer lives than people who are not plant-based. I think this is one of the things you can do. It could dramatically improve your odds.

You just prioritise leaner cuts of meat. That matters if you are on an omnivorous diet. Sometimes people talk about fat being satiating. So, they choose high fat meats for that purpose. But if you choose leaner meat, you can eat more of it before you reach the same amount of calories. Using regular mince versus extra lean beef mince, you can have almost double the amount of extra lean beef mince. That would be pretty filling too. Even if you didn’t view the fat in meat as bad, that’s fair enough.

You can replace that fat with other sources. This is not me saying fat equals bad. I think if you even viewed it as neutral, you could replace it with extra virgin olive oil, nuts, seeds, salmon, avocado, and other options. Those are clearly linked to positive health outcomes. So that’s why I think this is an underrated one.

Torwen:

For sure. We’ve actually ordered this quite nicely because my last tip is also based around protein. It’s worth knowing that if your goal is muscle growth, certain amino acids are important. Ideally, having a complete range of amino acids is great. That is likely an animal-based or whey-based protein. Specifically, look at something like leucine to support muscle growth. In that tip then, collagen protein is possibly one of the worst protein sources for muscle growth.

And with everyone on social media promoting things like protein waters, which are often based on collagen peptides, it’s worth knowing that if that’s something that you’re including, great for your skin health, hair health, nail health. But it probably won’t support muscle growth.

Aidan:

Yeah. I’m going to add my own section. Have we spoken about collagen for skin health on together? I don’t know. I’ve probably spoken about it on the podcast. There is a bit of a back and forth. I am of the opinion that collagen is good for skin health. I think that the research shows this. There is one meta-analysis that came out two years ago, one year ago. I’m not really sure. And it concluded that the research is skewed by funding source.

It made it be like, no, you’ve all been tricked. The funding has made it look positive. Everything that’s unfunded has made it not look positive. Or not funded by the industry, or whatever. The oddest thing about it is if you read every individual study. The studies that are not industry funded seem to be getting the same results. They match the studies that are industry funded. If that meta-analysis didn’t exist, or if the conclusion was not written that way, I don’t think this would be controversial.

But now there’s a lot of people out there ripping on people on social media. They act as if they haven’t read the research. They didn’t realise it was skewed by industry funding. So I’m going to put my stance out there. At this stage, February 2026, which is when we’re recording, I believe collagen is good for skin health. But I don’t overrate it. I don’t think it makes a huge difference. I think it makes a consistent positive small difference.

Torwen:

For sure. Well, this has been episode 247 of the Ideal Nutrition Podcast. As always, if you enjoy these type of episodes, let us know and we can do more. Bye.