As a human survival trait we need to find a way to shut down misinformation. Knowledge is our path to survival as an animal. Like ants have teamwork and building, wildebeest have speed, plants photosynthesise, humans learn.

By creating and spreading misinformation you're chipping away at pretty much the only thing that keeps us in existence.

Bit of a broad-strokes extreme takeaway from your comment there, but it got to me.

Do they forget that estrogen is also a steroid?

Misogyny is a helluva drug

Ugh I had an older colleague, a PhD organic chemist, who was absolutely convinced that soy would make me (m) infertile. I ordered tofu once when out to lunch and he would not stop warning me to "be careful" and to be mindful of starting a family and "you know those studies." When I mentioned that the consensus was at best inconclusive and most likely there is no such link, he said that no, "they" definitely showed that excess soy is bad and that he worried about my reproductive health. Like dude even if eating tofu did cause reproductive health issues, mine is none of your goddamn business. On the other hand, the same guy is also convinced that BPA (another estrogen mimic used esp. in certain plastics) concerns are a total hoax because "they did bad science because their sample containers had BPA in them and it leached into the urine samples giving false positive." Also something about the only evidence of it binding like estrogen was that someone glanced at a crystal structure and halfassedly thought it looked like it might fit and rolled with it for career reasons. Like, I don't know, man, maybe a couple studies used containers made with BPA, but most probably didn't. I haven't read them, but I know you didn't, either. Also, you're literally a petrochemist, you know BPA is mostly used in polycarbonates, and lab plastics, especially for analytical work, are mostly polypropylene or polyethylene designed to avoid exactly this kind of leaching. Honestly.

bigger issue with these powders and shit (least in the US) is that damn near non-existent food/drug safety oversight means that your probably getting dosed with a bunch of lead or some other contaminate...

Meat and dairy contains hormones that increase estrogen and reduce testosterone, not plants.

Creatine is still very much a thing, but I think everyone actually knows what it is and what it does and it's not treated as a magic bullet any more.

Mainly what seems to have changed is that steroids and TRT have exploded in popularity, and a scary number of under 18s are doing it.

Apart from that I couldn't tell you, it's all happening on Insta and TikTok now and I don't participate.

Where I live grocery stores are a terrible example, all the plant proteins are jacked up in price with marketing about how it's organic and vegan and will cure cancer yada yada. And then the wheys they sell are blends with low actual protein content and/or poor aminos.

I buy my protein from a bulk supplements supplier, and soy is 75% of the cost of the cheapest whey, gram for gram of actual protein content.

I get my protein from Canadian protein dot com. The vegan protein is the same price as the whey concentrate and a little cheaper than the whey isolate.

I've never gotten it before mostly because I'm a creature of habit but might get some to try the next time I order because the dairy has not been sitting well with my stomach lately.

It appears to be mostly pea, brown rice and hemp.

Oh I know right bro, right? Bro?

Oh my god, everyone look at how tough this tough guy is!

Perhaps you mean phytoestrogen? Another commenter suggested that the applicable phytoestrogen found in soy may actually be protective against excess estrogen.

Shit man, I think I need to hop on this soy boy train myself!

It's fitting too because I've been taking in a little extra protein and putting on some muscle for the past few months due to some hobby stuff that led to construction projects, lol.

Right, for the average person, protein supplements are unnecessary as long as they are healthy and eat well.

Athletes (and people with body dysmorphia 😬) might struggle to get enough protein in their diet. But, far too many people think they’re in a position that would warrant supplements when just a little attention to diet is sufficient.

What was the original title, just to make some of the comments make sense? I can't seem to find a way to lookup the history

Unless the study controlled for the subjects' regular diet and non supplement protein, its conclusions don't mean much.

For example, if I get 100+g of protein on a typical day then, a 19g protein bar is a nice addition, but it's in the minority compared to the rest of my protein sources.

Huh? It’s what the research is about.

The full article is linked right here in the post. It reviews the background of why they're studying this

What relevance does that have?

Well, exposing the click bait in the title and providing context about the actual study involved is relevant because ...it exposes the click bait in the title and provides context about the actual study involved.

Plenty of studies in the past have already demonstrated dietary plant protein is just as good for you as animal protein.

This is not relevant to the context of the article, and like the vegan at a party, it's good information but not part of the discussion about protein supplements during strength training except as an adjacent fact about diet and not about strength training directly nor supplements.

You would still want it as a baseline comparison for the experimental groups.

So when presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, instead of changing your worldview you just reject reality? Most people grow out of that by age 3, but you do you.

The mix of metric and fantasy units is quite infuriating

That's a rather excessive amount unless you mean g protein/kg instead of g protein / lbs

People who exercise regularly also have higher needs, about 1.1-1.5 grams per kilogram. People who regularly lift weights or are training for a running or cycling event need 1.2-1.7 grams per kilogram. Excessive protein intake would be more than 2 grams per kilogram of body weight each day.

https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/are-you-getting-too-much-protein

2g / kg = ~0.9g /lbs for reference

iirc 1.5g per kg of body mass is enough above that you get diminishing returns fast

Rice does come up a bit short by my calculations, if you are just meeting your caloric intake needs. Oats provide more than enough, though.

Lead arsenate was a very common pesticides for decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_hydrogen_arsenate

There’s no reason to panic if you’ve been using any of the products we tested, or if you take protein supplements generally. Many of these powders are fine to have occasionally...

I found this quote hilarious, I don't know anyone who takes protein powder occasionally. They are either taking it mosts days out of the week or not at all in my experience.

Fairly certain it's not lead poisoning

most people wildly overestimate how much protein they actually need.

Amen to that. It's hilarious to watch the protein craze in action. I thought it might gradually die down decades ago, due to being able to find reliable information very easily. Instead it's gotten remarkably worse over time.

Typically protein supplements are in addition to regular food not a meal replacement when trying to build muscle.

The study participants were given protein supplements, not a dietary replacement.

Depends what they eat.

Even love?

And all of chemistry is just physics.

Well, except for nuclear physics...

Agreed, this is a dumb comment that has no relation to the study being done, only some study they imagined in their mind.

People love to second guess scientific studies like they're set up by complete fucking morons with no review or oversight. Truly their 10 seconds of amateur brilliance is going to see the trivial flaw no one among the team of people doing this as their actual job noticed. If something sounds obviously wrong in a science article, the source of that wrongness is almost certainly either the author of the article or you.

I think "this" refers to the posts original title, which was updated after some pushback from comments so now the comment I was replying to is a bit out of place

Hard, since basically everything has protein in it

Apparently the animal protein has less lead.

Depends. Price points can be vastly different. Plant based stuff is often novel pricing.

Such people unfortunately won't be reading science papers or understanding their significance.

Thats because it is? 100g of chicken has around 21g of protein. To get the same amount of proteins from plant, you would need to consume around 1000g of plants(give or take). This is why people should be really be eating both. You know, to be healthy and shit.

There is lead in the dirt that is taken up by the plants. This lead then gets into the digestive system of the animal from which the protein will be derived. This causes lead to be present in animal based protein supplements.

However, a significantly smaller amount will pass from the plant to the animal than from the dirt to the plant. As such, plant based protein powders will contain a higher concentration of lead unless it is removed at some point during the process, as the plants just have more lead in them than the animals.

Lead literally makes people dumb lol

You can't measure anything with a high level of confidence with 40 people. Typical health studies have hundreds to thousands of participants. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10000262/

Most of the plant-based protein on the market is sourced from China and seems to be contaminated with high levels of lead - probably due to poor processing controls, and far in excess of natural plant or animal sources.

Plants naturally pick up heavy metals from the soil they grow in, generally these are rather small amounts and both humans and animals can process them. There is almost no danger in consuming plants unless the soil is dangerously contaminated (generally an industrial source, or occasionally a fluke a geography).

The problem comes with the concentrated protein supplements, as it also concentrates the contaminants. Protein supplements are generally sourced from the fruit of the plant, e.g. the bean from soy or the pea from pea. This is also where much of the soil nutrients bioaccumulate, as the plant is sending a bunch of water to the fruit in order to make it grow. When millions of soybeans are then ground up and concentrated into protein powder, the lead/cadmium/arsenic/Mercury remain behind in the powder - still in low amounts, but enough that if someone is using large amounts of the supplement daily they can be ingesting a lot more heavy metals than they are aware of.

With animal-sourced proteins, contamination is generally lower (although plenty of brands still have concerning levels) simply because the protein is sourced from places where heavy metals don't preferentially accumulate. E.g. lead bioaccumulates in bones and teeth, cow-sources protein is generally whey (from milk) or more rarely from the muscles - both places naturally lower in lead Owing to the cow's biochemistry.

For the record, I am a vegetarian (vegan + eggs) and use vegan protein supplements. I buy from brands which publish third party testing results on heavy metals contamination by lot to help control this exposure risk.

According to the research I read, in this community, for some reason it’s the plant protein supplements that have more

There is no safe level of lead in consumables. The standards being tossed around are basically about forcing government or corporate action, not about what's actually healthy to consume.

Maybe you are correct. But I have seen hundreds of papers and claims about to not worry about this or that, since I began reading news in the 1970s. And I have noticed a trend of smart people being wrong.

I think it’s good to be cautious

Not b12. Vegans have to supplement with b12.

Plenty of swole guys are vegetarian. Not Vegan. The difference is vegetarians don't tell everyone.

plus all that free lead...mmm.

Makes sense

Both of those (pea and rice) are just starchy AF before processing. My best guess is that isolating pea/rice protein is a real bitch to pull off since most of it isn't protein to begin with. Soy should be cheaper but that might be changing here real soon...

i doubt this is true.

I guess we get to eat our cake, and have it, too

You know it's funny. I'm getting called a lib by the left, which I am ironically part of and a dudebro by you, science person, of which group I am also a part of. Plant protein and animal protein having no difference in muscle development has been know forever. Studied in detail by millions of athletes on their own bodies. Your comment assumes I do not appreciate the data produced by this study, which is false.

Just because you don't like my comment does not mean you get to define me.

Sure, though I rarely say it, this being a science based community makes that sentiment even stronger. But if you step just one toe out of the science world, then every single person that knows a penny's worth of information about nutrition, knows that it does not matter one bit where the protein comes from. There may be differences in accessing it, but that's about it. If it were another way, the first people to find would've been high-level bodybuilders, but there's a decent number of vegans in that group, which are just as competitive. And yes, I know hypertrophy ≠ strength, but that's besides the point.

My point is, this is pretty well known by now and while I find it important to be backed up, I think it is pretty evident from my like/dislike ratio, that there are two groups that interacted with my comment: Ones that think largely scientifically and ones that say "no shit" to this. And I'm not even saying either one is bad, I'm just part of the latter.

I get my whey at 80cents a scoop. It's 150kcal/32grams protein. It tastes great.

I want cost, taste, kcal/protein.

I've come across plenty that compromise on taste, kcal/protein.