There are a lot of public fallacies concerning personal health, but today, I am only going to cover the topic of nutritional health because it's the one that is familiar to most people and also the one I even feel the least bit qualified to discuss from my memories of my nutrition class and personal research.
Here's the deal. Your body is amazing. We can last three days without water and three weeks without food. Our bodies heal, we can create other humans, we can literally explore the world with just a thumb! We can even eat a wider variety of foods than most animals on the planet.
Guys, we can eat fake food and survive. Mind blown.
Yet, all we as a nation seem to care about is how fat we are and how to get rid of it.
We're so desperate for answers and scapegoats that we're willing to jump on any wagon that sounds halfway scientific.
I'm looking at you protein.
When I first heard the whole protein thing I instantly went into a rant that involved a lot of dramatic, "No!" and, "Are you kidding me?"
What nobody probably told you amid all the protein hype is that while it is essential to building muscle, too much of it actually does become fat, aka, it does the exact opposite of what people are telling you because you and I both know that the average joe is just going to ingest and continue on with their regular lives hoping for the better without really changing anything.
It works like this. In the broad classification of food science most foods fall into three macronutrients: carbs, fat, and protein. Of these three groups, your body will burn fat first, then carbs, then protein. When effort extends long enough, fat will still outpace the others in terms of ratio. You may be wondering how that makes sense when we are in an obesity epidemic. I thought the same thing when my professor at BYU-I told me this information. He said that the reason is simple, we consume so much more than we need that it almost doesn't matter which element burns first, anything not used will be stored as fat.
Ok, but why hate on protein then? This only seems to strengthen the Atkins argument even more. Answer, your body burns protein last because it has the hardest time burning it at all. People who take protein supplements, but then eat normally or don't work out at a high enough rate will gain fat, not muscle. The protein powder will just replace what the food was doing already and if the intake or energy output doesn't change then where is the excess supposed to go? Straight to your fat zones. However, that being said, protein supplements combined with fitness and a dietary regimen will increase the likelihood that you will lose fat mass because they do help with energy and muscle rebuilding. Which if you did that, you could argue that change would happen anyway without the extra fake protein, if at a slower rate.
Then there's the ketone problem. If you aren't eating carbs and relying on protein for your energy, your body undergoes a change. It will turn from a glucose (carbs) burning machine to a ketone (protein) burning machine. Your body will adapt at the cellular level in order to survive. Science has yet to say if this is a good or a bad thing, but the prospects are not looking good as traditional high protein diets that involve excessive meat have shown negative consequences for your heart. No word yet on whether or not this is also true for whole food, plant based proteins.
You probably never heard anyone put this information out quite like that. You may even argue with me and say if this was true, why has no one told you. If this is old news, then why is the new news touting protein as the next magic bullet for the obesity epidemic?
Answer, did you see how long it took me to explain all of that?
In the effort to make health science digestible to people whose last health class was maybe never, a lot gets lost in translation. Mostly, the context and other very important variables. It's easier for commercials and media to shout a quick, "Eat more protein, lose fat!" in the 30 seconds they have of your attention span. They're not wrong, they are just lacking in a lot of important details. It's like taking a drivers ed course for your body when the only thing you learned is to stop at the stop light. What about turn signals? What about yield signs and crosswalks? You kinda need a little more information than what the big red octagon means.
Additionally, markets who see the increase in demand may not necessarily check all of their science before selling to customers what they demand. After all, the customer is always right, even the ones who don't check their facts.
References
Proteins
https://ast-ss.com/creatine-fat-loss/
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=creatine+no+workout
Because this was interesting
http://thescienceofeating.com/food-combining-how-it-works/calories-fat-carbs-protein-per-day/
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