Rethinking Protein: Simple Changes To Help You Burn Fat, Increase Energy, Get Stronger & Live Longer with Dr Rupy Aujla #534

Often misunderstood as simply being about muscles and bodybuilding, protein is, in fact, the fundamental building block of life – forming everything from our DNA and skin to our enzymes and hormones. And today's returning guest believes that many of us are simply not eating enough. Dr Rupy Aujla is a London-based doctor, nutritionist and founder of The Doctor's Kitchen, who is on a mission to make healthy cooking accessible and enjoyable for all. He has authored multiple best-selling cookbooks, including his very latest: Healthy High Protein: Supercharge Your Energy, Feel Stronger and Live Longer. In this conversation, Rupy challenges the traditional protein recommendations and why he believes that many of us should be focussing on increasing our consumption. He shares how muscle wasting affects around 40% of us as we get older and he explains that this muscle wastage is not just about losing strength – but also affects our metabolism, energy levels and overall wellbeing. We also delve into the protein content of our breakfasts, the differences between animal and plant proteins, the potential downsides of protein powders, how protein needs change as we get older, and why increasing our protein intake can often reduce our snacking and ultra-processed food consumption. Whether you're dealing with mid-morning energy crashes, looking to support healthy ageing, or simply wanting to feel better, Rupy's practical wisdom transforms protein-focused eating into something manageable and enjoyable for all. I hope you enjoy listening! Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Thanks to our sponsors: https://drinkag1.com/livemore https://boncharge.com/livemore https://exhalecoffee.com/livemore Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/534 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Proteins are the macro and microstructures of life. They are the most incredible biomolecules that are responsible for so many parts of our physiology. Everything from our DNA, our collagen, our skin, our hair, our enzymes, our transport molecules. This is all protein.

• 0:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hey guys, how you doing? I hope you're having a good wheat so far. My name is Dr Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, Feel Better Live More.

• 0:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  Many people are not aware that protein is the fundamental building block of life and not just about the health of our muscles. And today's returning guest believes that many of us are simply not eating enough. Dr Rupy Ogilvy is a London-based doctor, nutritionist and founder of The Doctor's Kitchen, who's on a mission to make healthy cooking accessible and enjoyable for all. He's authored multiple bestselling cookbooks, including his very latest, Healthy High Protein, Supercharge Your Energy, Feel Stronger and Live Longer. In our conversation, Rupy challenges the traditional protein recommendations

• 1:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  and explains why he believes that many of us should be increasing our intake. He explains how muscle wasting affects around 40% of us as we get older and he explains that this muscle wastage is not just about losing strength, but also affects on metabolism, energy levels and overall wellbeing. We also delve into the protein content of our breakfasts, the differences between animal and plant proteins, the potential downsides of protein powders, how protein needs change as we get older and why increasing our protein intake can often reduce our snacking and ultra-processed food consumption.

• 2:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  Whether you're dealing with mid-morning energy crashes, looking to support healthy ageing or simply want to feel a little bit better, Rupy's practical wisdom transforms protein-focused eating into something manageable and enjoyable.

• 2:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  In your brand new book, Reapy, Healthy High Protein, which I absolutely love, you make the case that many of us are under-eating protein.

• 2:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  I wanted to start today by talking about breakfast. I think this is a meal where many people are probably massively under-eating protein. So first of all, why is it, do you think, that many of us are under-eating protein? What are the consequences of us doing so? And how should that play in to our breakfast?

• 3:03Speaker 00

  I think breakfast is a great place to start because, like you said, we tend to under-consume protein at breakfast and that sets us up for the rest of the day. And if you think about typical breakfast foods, and if anyone's listening or watching this, they can probably conjure up croissants, cereals, oats. While some of those are healthy, or healthier than other options, they have a common denominator in that they tend to be quite low in protein unless we supplement with certain elements. And what that does is it does not replenish what we've been breaking down overnight. So when you wake up first thing in the morning, you're in a fasted state.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  And in that fasted state, during sleep, you're breaking down your proteins, you're repurposing those, you're rebuilding them up into all these different structures, some of which are muscles, other which are enzymes and hormones. And you need to replenish that store of amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. And so breakfast offers a prime opportunity to replenish those amino acids that your body has been breaking down. The other thing that I think a lot of people fall into the trap of is when you don't have protein at breakfast, you tend to have hunger mid-morning. Everyone's had that.

• 4:29Speaker 00

  Time where they've had something quick, maybe a cereal or something on the go. And then by mid morning, you're hungry again. You know, I've just eaten. Why is that? Well, protein is incredibly satiating. So it signals to your brain when you've had enough protein. There's a signal to your brain that says, I've had enough food. I don't need to crave any more food. So it curbs your cravings. And there is something called the protein leverage hypothesis that perhaps some of your listeners have heard, which is your body will continue to signal to you to keep eating until you've met your personal protein threshold. And unless you've hit that personal protein threshold, you will continue to be hungry.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  Hence why you're reaching for the biscuits, you're reaching for something sugary, even though you've just eaten a couple of hours before. Does that make sense?

• 5:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, let's just bring in ultra-processed foods here because that protein leverage hypothesis is really interesting. There's, you talk about it, Ted Naaman's been talking about it for years. Um, this idea that we'll keep consuming food until we get enough protein. Okay. And then we think about the modern food environments and all these ultra-processed foods, which usually are very low in protein. So when we think about ultra-processed foods and the fact that they drive us to overconsume, do you think one of the reasons why that is, is because of their low protein requirements?

• 6:03Speaker 00

  Absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt. I think there are lots of issues with ultra-processed and processed foods in general, one of which is the protein content of them. And people might think to themselves initially, okay, well, I'll just go for some of those protein, processed foods that label themselves as high protein, having 20 grams or 25 grams of protein. And that's not what I'm suggesting whatsoever. I think the majority of the processed foods that we see on supermarket shelves are not only deficient in protein, but they also have ingredients that are Remarkably different from the initial ingredients that they were generated from, whether that's from wheat or grain, et cetera.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  And that processing makes it super easy to absorb the carbohydrates, the sugars within that food. And that leads to sugar spikes and corresponding crashes. But it's also not satiating. And what happens when you eat protein is that not only does it signal to your brain that you're having enough food and it has the satiating effect, but it also delays something called gastric emptying as well. So when you consume food, if you eat something, you swallow it, it goes into your stomach. That is bathed in acids and other enzymes to break down that food. And if you're having protein in that mix, it delays that gastric emptying.

• 7:28Speaker 00

  So it spreads out the absorption of those ingredients over time. So you don't get these big spikes in carbohydrates and sugars.

• 7:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, this has got implications, doesn't it, beyond just energy? Because of course, two hours after you've had a sugary bowl of cereal, which is, you know, there's many issues potentially with that. One of them being it's low in protein. You have that mid morning hunger. Where you think, you know, why am I still hungry? You know, I used to have this many years ago before I fundamentally changed the way that I eat. And I think it's so common and breakfast cereals are still such a common food. And it's, you know, it's interesting, yes, that mid morning hunger. But also what many people are trying to lose, but if excess fat off their bodies, aren't they? And of course, not consuming continually throughout the day

• 8:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  is probably going to be a good thing for them.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  But if you eat the wrong thing at breakfast, that's going to make it really, really difficult, isn't it?

• 8:26Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And I think we can't disentangle what you're alluding to, energy balance, out of this equation of fat loss. So if you're going to be consuming something that is low in protein and that leads you to crave and overconsume food during your day, then that's going to put you in an energy surplus, which means you overeat. And we tend to store that excess energy as fat. And with protein in the morning, not only is it going to be satiating, it's going to lead to less hunger, reduce those cravings, so you don't overeat, but it's also going to give you the best possible chance to actually consume enough protein for your

• 9:09Speaker 00

  needs over the course of 24 hours. Because as you said right at the start of this, my belief is that our protein recommendations currently in the UK and the US are too low. And actually, if we look at the latest research over the last four or five years from protein researchers, that using more sensitive techniques that are true reflections of our protein requirements, we tend to need more per day. And I think that even increases as we go into older age, as we'll get into a little bit later. So if you're not having enough protein at breakfast and you have to compensate at lunch and dinner, you're less likely to

• 9:53Speaker 00

  hit your overall target. And over time, you can see how easy it is to underconsume for your requirements.

• 10:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  Would you say we've got it the wrong way around in modern society? What I mean by that, Rupee, is I think if you were just to go on the street now and talk to Joe Public about protein, I think a few things would come to mind, like meat and fish probably would come to mind for a lot of people. And I hypothesize that most people, when they think about protein, would be thinking about their evening meal. So you talk about the amount of protein we need in a 24 hour period, but a hypothetical question for you is, do you think that if we just flipped what we were doing, right? So let's say we didn't

• 10:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  increase the amount of protein we were having in 24 hours, but we just flipped it. So the evening protein that many of us are having, we had in the morning instead. In theory, do you think that would lead to better health outcomes?

• 10:59Speaker 00

  It's a very good question. And I'm not too sure if there is any. Evidence that I can point to that's actually done that experiment. What I do and have come across are studies where they emphasize breakfast protein. And what tends to happen is people consume less and they tend to lose weight. Whether or not that has impacted what they eat in the evenings, I'm not sure. But there are also benefits of having evening protein as well. Yeah. So particularly if you are someone who exercises, goes for walks, resistance trains, et cetera.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  You need a collection of amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins to be present for you as you go into that rested state where actually your body is repairing and replenishing a lot of those protein structures in your body overnight as well. Yeah. Actually, let's take a step back because I think people, like you said, assume when we talk about protein, we're talking about meat and fish. And whilst those are great protein sources, I think people need to really reestablish a new understanding about what protein is because we tend to think about protein and muscle, right? When you think about meat and fish, you think of bodybuilders, you think of strength training,

• 12:25Speaker 00

  you think of rippling abs. And whilst that's all true, proteins are the macro and microstructures of life. They are the most incredible biomolecules that are responsible for so many parts of our physiology. Everything from our DNA, our collagen, our skin, our hair, our enzymes, our transport molecules, hemoglobin, that transports oxygen to our cells and nutrients, the receptors of signal molecules, hormones that are on the surface of our cells. This is all protein.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  And to think that protein just equates to muscles, I think, is a naive assumption. And actually, when you think about protein, when you consume protein, only about a quarter of that actually goes to skeletal muscle.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  The majority of the protein that you consume is actually being broken down and being used for those other structures that I just talked about, enzymes, signaling molecules, hormones, this is where the majority of your protein is going. And our need for protein every single day is insatiable. We go through around 300 grams of protein every single day, not necessarily from our diet, but from breaking down and repurposing those different amino acids

• 13:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  in our bodies. Let me just pause you there a minute, because that's really interesting. We go through about 300 grams of protein per day. Some people may hear that and go, so what are you saying, Rupy? I have to eat 300 grams of protein a day? Because I don't think you're quite saying that, are you?

• 14:08Speaker 00

  No, no, not at all.

• 14:10Rangan Chatterjee?

  Because that's a lot of protein.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  It's a lot of protein.

• 14:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  Even for a tall guy like me.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  100%.

• 14:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  That's a lot.

• 14:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, so to put that into context, that is around a kilogram of chicken breast, if we're just looking at proteins. And whilst the need of proteins are around that level, it's between 250 grams to 300 grams, regardless of your age, regardless of whether you exercise or not, your body is like this intelligent recycling plant. You are constantly breaking down big proteins into their constituent parts and then rebuilding them. And the analogy that gets bandied around a lot, which I think is useful, is kind of like Lego blocks. So if you think, when you used to play with Lego, I'm probably going to start playing with Lego again because I have a son, you could make these incredible structures that are as simple

• 15:00Speaker 00

  as a little car with 20 Lego blocks. You could also make something as magnificent as a cathedral or a big spaceship with the same 20 Lego blocks, as long as you had enough of them. It's the same thing with amino acids. Depending on how we sequence them, depending on how we fold them into these big 3D structures, we can create microstructures like enzymes, and we can create big molecules like our collagen, our skin, our muscles. It is phenomenal.

• 15:33Speaker 00

  Think that the idea of using simple structure, simple sequences to build something much bigger than, you know, a very simple input is an important realisation for people. Because I think people think protein muscle and that's not how we should be thinking about proteins.

• 15:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, it's a take home then from this Lego analogy that, look, these building blocks are really, really important, right? And if you're not consuming enough of these building blocks, you're not going to have the capacity for all these incredible benefits of protein.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So, and this is a realisation that I only came to quite recently, I would say. I assumed that most people, particularly in the UK and the US, were consuming more than enough protein. And if you look at the current recommendations of how much protein we should be consuming every single day and the actual amounts, looking at national dietary statistics and data, we overconsume or we have more than enough protein in our diets. But actually, if you look at the more recent research studies that determine that we should be consuming more protein, we underconsume.

• 16:56Speaker 00

  And there is obviously a big range as well of people. And if you look at the typical diets that are largely ultra processed, that are low in protein and low in nutrients, you can see how this plays out in the long term. And I think protein, whilst it's not the only thing, it plays a really important role because of the magnitude of things that proteins are responsible for. Our satiety levels, our cravings, but also our hormones, our weight maintenance and even our immune cells, these are all built from protein. So we need to give ourselves the best building blocks to ensure that our health thrives.

• 17:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay, so this is really interesting because you, you write about this, you've just shared it now, that you have changed your mind about protein. Do you remember the exact moment when that happens? Because I think. There's a couple of things. Protein, I think, has become this quite controversial macronutrient, okay. As you say, I think many, most of us recognise it's important for muscle. But in the start of your book, and I honestly think it's the best writing you've done today, honestly, I think it's beautifully written, the way you write about protein in your new book. You talk about these short term and long term benefits, about the short term, fewer sugar cravings, it can help with weight loss, energy, focus, better sleep. You also talk about the long term

• 18:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  benefits for your bone and your muscle health, right? So you really make this compelling case that we need enough protein. But let's say in the longevity space, for example, there's been people saying, no, no, we're eating enough protein. We're over prioritising this at the expense of other things. So help us understand, when do you change your opinion? Why did you change your opinion? And help us navigate this controversy which many of us are seeing online.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think this is a really good point. And I think this is where it pays dividends to lean into both clinical experience as well as reading the academic literature and looking at the mechanistic evidence. And there's sort of two protein camps, right? So in certain longevity fields that are bullish on low calorie diets, not over consuming energy in total and not over consuming protein, they're focused on this idea that if you reduce protein intake, you reduce the signals that trigger growth and that potentially can have

• 19:36Speaker 00

  some anti-cancer benefits. And it can also train your body to be a lot more efficient with the nutrients it receives. So

• 19:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  Which kind of makes sense.

• 19:47Speaker 00

  Completely makes sense, because that is also net anti-inflammatory, right? Completely understand that perspective. And I think there are specific cases where this kind of thinking could be quite useful in combination with, say, anti-cancer treatments, chemotherapy, for example. There are some human trials going on right now where they're doing what's deemed fasting mimicking diets in combination with conventional therapies and actually having some quite interesting results. Small studies, but interesting nonetheless. And then with my clinical hat on, and I think of this as more of a pragmatist

• 20:27Speaker 00

  perspective, what is the commonest thing that we tend to see in older age? It's frailty. And that's exacerbated when someone has a fall and they're off their legs for a few weeks. And then you see this massive reduction muscle bulk. And then after that, there are some stats to suggest that your mortality almost doubles within 18 months. So there is a lot of what I look at in the literature and I appreciate, but then there's also what I see when I'm a, when I'm practicing, when I'm seeing patients. And I'm leaning

• 21:03Speaker 00

  more towards the pragmatic view than actually maintaining muscle bulk as a way of ensuring metabolic health, as a way of ensuring strength, particularly in our older age groups, is something that we should be paying much more attention to. And I also think it's quite easy to be fooled by mechanistic studies and looking at specific pathways or, and not really leaning into the, the major problems that affect people of certain age groups. And this isn't just an old age problem. You know, there are, there are some stats, I couldn't

• 21:43Speaker 00

  find any for the UK, but the rates of sarcopenia in those over the age of 50 in the States is around 40%. So sarcopenia is essentially where your muscles waste, where you have reduced strength, where you increase frailty. It can put you but further risk of metabolic disease because your muscles are not just there for strength, they're also sinks for your sugar, your glucose.

• 22:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  When you said it's when your muscles waste. I think that a lot of people will hear that and go, that doesn't apply to me. Muscle wasting, oh yeah, maybe my grandma, maybe elderly people who I see walking around with their stick. Oh, they've got muscle wasting. That doesn't apply to me, but that's not the case, is it?

• 22:34Speaker 00

  No. So, over the age of 50, the prevalence of sarcopenia is around 40% in the States. And 10% of people in their twenties have sarcopenia.

• 22:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay, I think we need to pause on these stats, right? Because I think they really hammer home why you've dedicated a new book to this topic.

• 22:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? In America, 40% of the adult population above the age of 50 have sarcopenia. And you're saying 10% of 20-year-olds. And you've also said that sarcopenia is muscle wasting. These are quite high numbers, right? How much of this can we attribute to inadequate protein intake versus inadequate resistance training?

• 23:18Speaker 00

  Exactly. That's a very good question. And it will be very hard for me to ascertain the amount of sarcopenia that we can attribute to low protein intake versus sedentary lifestyles. And it's definitely going to be a combination of both. I would say if I was to hazard a guess, the weight and the contribution of sedentary lifestyles is going to be more than simply low protein. And the reason why I can say that with some degree of confidence is because when we look at this process called muscle protein synthesis, that I'll define in a second,

• 23:57Speaker 00

  the stimulus for muscle protein building tends to come more so from exercise and resistance training versus just providing your body with amino acids. Muscle protein synthesis is the biological pathway by which we build muscles. And muscle protein breakdown is the counter to that. And ideally, what we want to be in is a balance between the two. And what happens in sarcopenia is we have more breakdown versus more synthesis. So we have a net negative in terms of our muscle health.

• 24:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  How might someone know if they've got sarcopenia?

• 24:49Speaker 00

  So really good question. And in terms, if we want to get clinical about it, doing a great history, ensuring that we are asking them questions about how much they can exercise, grip strength, falls, frailty, how far they can walk, for example.

• 25:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  I mean, that's from a clinician's perspective. But for someone listening who has basically heard those stats and have just gone, wait a minute, maybe I'm sarcopenic. Is there anything they can do to ask themselves?

• 25:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it really comes down to a subjective feeling of how strong you are. So how much can you feasibly lift in a gym? How easy is it for you to hold your bags of shopping and take them to the car, put them on the bus? Do you have to make changes to the way you walk around, you know, just to do your activities of daily living, for example? And if you want to get really clinical about it, then there are certain investigations that you can do to actually look at the bulk of your muscle.

• 26:06Speaker 00

  And this is something that can be hidden with our obesity issues. So you can be sarcopenic, or you can have quite low muscle bulk, but you can still be overweight. And there's this, this, this big issue, and this is why I believe it's understandable when you think about the obesity issues, the obesity crisis, particularly in the States, that there is so much muscle wasting in 20-year-olds. This is something that we would have never have seen 40, 50 years ago.

• 26:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  What about Gabrielle Lyons' work? Gabrielle has been very passionate for numerous years about talking about this idea that we're focusing on the wrong thing when it comes to the obesity epidemic, instead of focusing on the amount of fat on our bodies. She's basically saying that we're, we're not over fat, we're under muscled. What's your perspective on that?

• 26:57Speaker 00

  I completely agree. I really think muscle health should be the focus of what

• 27:07Speaker 00

  Public health strategies should be concentrated around if we are to tackle the obesity crisis. I think it's very easy to simply put calorie counts on menus and tell people to eat less without really thinking about muscle health because as a side effect of focusing on muscle health, strength, resistance training, exercise and coupling that with protein, you improve your weight control, you improve things like satiety, which is why we have, you know, studies that look at, we just simply increase protein without even changing the amount of energy some people consume, you naturally see a

• 27:52Speaker 00

  reduction in weight. And the reason why is because you feel more satiated, there's the thermic effect of protein that we'll get to a little bit later, and we're focusing on the right thing. So I completely agree with the idea that muscle health should be the focus. And against the backdrop of medications that are going to revolutionize healthcare, Ozempic, GLP-1 agonists, that chemically induce anorexia, which is, I know it sounds extreme, but that's essentially what they're doing, we're going to become under-proteined even more so because we won't be able to have the appetite to tolerate the amount of food that we require for our muscles and for our health.

• 28:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. I think this highlights, Rupy, one of the, the big issues, right? It's quite hard to know if we're sarcopenic, right? So we can see if we're carrying excess weight on our body, right? If we're concerned about our blood sugar, we can go to the doctor and get a blood sugar test, right? But actually, you know, we don't have that readily accessible test to tell us if we're sarcopenic, right? So first of all, the awareness of it gets tricky for people. I think so far what you're saying, and correct me if I've, if I've misunderstood anything, you're saying basically that for muscle protein synthesis, which is very

• 29:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  important, there are two things we need to think about. We need to think about the amount of resistance training we're doing and the amount of protein we're consuming. If we go back to breakfast then, right? And talk about these common foods that people are having, which, as we've already outlined, are going to be low in protein. Let's go through a few of those, like oatmeal, like croissants, like breakfast cereals. And then perhaps you can suggest how we might change that up.

• 29:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? Both for meat eaters and for vegans. And I know your book's got loads of recipes to help people with this. But I think that might be quite a useful way to help people understand what they could start doing immediately.

• 30:04Speaker 00

  Completely, yeah, I agree. I think just to hammer home that point about trying to determine whether someone is sarcopenic or someone who has less muscle bulk than they should do at this point in time. There are a few questions you can ask yourself. Have you lost confidence in your ability to push heavy weights? Are you feeling that you've lost strength in your upper body or your lower legs? Does it take you a little while to bend down to get something on the floor, for example?

• 30:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  Compared to what, six months ago?

• 30:42Speaker 00

  Compared to a year ago, a couple of years ago. Perhaps you've got grandkids and now you're struggling to get up from the floor.

• 30:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  Can I just say on that though, Rupy, some people will go, yeah, but I'm getting older. So that's normal because I see all around me is people get older, they get frail. So it becomes tricky. These kind of societal narratives then become self fulfilling. Oh, I can't do it like I could six months ago. It must be because I'm getting older.

• 31:11Speaker 00

  Exactly. And I think this idea that we excuse frailty because we are getting older, I think is detrimental if we want to thrive in our later years. And I think now people are coming around to this idea, particularly people who listen to your podcast and mine. That it's not good enough to just expect to naturally decay as we get older. That's going to happen, but we can certainly bend the curve towards our favour. We can be stronger and more energetic in our later years and we deserve to because we're living in an era where we've never been more, we've never had more access to medicine. We've never had more access to the ability to look after our bodies.

• 31:55Speaker 00

  We now have more access to healthy food, healthy lifestyles. We should be really thinking about our older years as a time where we can be stronger and healthier in general. I don't think it's, I think a lot more people come into this idea of actually wanting to thrive in their sixties, seventies and eighties.

• 32:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, and I guess the other way of looking at it is whether you currently have sarcopenia or not, chances are in this modern world, if you're not actively doing something about it as you get older, you're probably going to get it.

• 32:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. And I think there are lots of things that we'll come back to that you can do to improve your muscle health. It doesn't have to be this general decline. And I think, you know, giving people the confidence and the tools, one of which is through diet, one of which is through exercise, and there are a few other things that we can do as well. I think, you know, people can begin to aspire to thrive in the, in the later years.

• 32:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  And before we get back to breakfast, like when we think about weight training, I think I said this when I came on your show a few, a few weeks ago. Like one thing I have done for many years is our local supermarket, the car park is on the second floor. Okay. So yeah, sometimes I'll walk, but often if it's the way back from the kids at school or something, we'll park on the second floor, get the stairs down.

• 33:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  I don't think I've taken the lift in the last five years. I mean, I will not take the lift. Even if I've got a ton of bags, I will literally carry them up those two flights of stairs. And it's just an internal decision I've made to go, no, no, I'm not outsourcing my body's ability to shift weight and move it to the second floor, to this elevator, to this lift. Right, walking up with three bags in your hands, up two flights of stairs, you know, you're feeling it on the final bit, but strength training without going to the gym, isn't it?

• 33:58Speaker 00

  Completely, completely. And the way I think about it, and maybe this is sort of like my nerdy analytical mind, is when, when you think about the stimuli for muscle protein synthesis, this process that builds muscle, you have a few key things that accelerate that. One of which is exercise, both resistance and aerobic. So every, every time you have your heavy shopping and you take it up those stairs, what are you doing? You're using and engaging your upper body muscles to stabilize those bags. You're using your large muscles, the bulk of which are in your glutes and your, and your hamstrings and your thighs, and you're going upstairs.

• 34:40Speaker 00

  So that is resistance training and you're basically shearing those muscles and giving the signals to your body, these are now broken. It's sort of like, you know, you've got a, a structure of Lego bricks and you've smashed it down. I don't know about you, but I always have an impetus to like build that straight back up again. That's essentially what your body's doing and you're going to build it up stronger the second time around. So if anyone comes and tries to knock them down again, they're going to take a lot more effort to do that. This is essentially muscle protein synthesis in action every time you do something as simple as that, taking it to the car park. And the other big stimulus is having enough amino acids. So you have those building blocks to build up that tower and make it stronger in the first place.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  Otherwise known as hypertrophy or the bulk of muscle, but this is essentially what we're doing every single time as well. This whole process of me doing the research for the book and thinking about how I was fueling myself over the last couple of years and actually not providing myself with the, the amino acids that I required for exercise and general wellbeing. It actually made me reflect quite a bit on patients that I've seen. During my clinical career, you know, when I was working full time as an NHS general practitioner, you know, I'd see a lot of women who come in with fatigue, right? And you go through all the different things and the differentials in your head. You want to make sure that it's not a menstruation issue.

• 36:06Speaker 00

  You want to make sure there's no red flags, you know, make sure that you're ensuring that you've ticked off any evidence of cancer, bowel issues. One of the simplest things that I think gets brushed over is actually how they're fueling themselves with enough protein. Because if I think back to a lot of, in particular, women, I know it's not just women, who tend to not have any animal-based products in their diet. And look, it is possible to have enough protein on a vegetarian vegan diet, but it takes a lot of careful planning. I think back to the reasons as to why they might have had fatigue. After we've discounted everything else and done all the tests and ensured that,

• 36:48Speaker 00

  you know, their B vitamins aren't crushingly low and the vitamin Ds will fine, all that kind of stuff. If we didn't find one of those reasons, could it have been protein? And obviously, there are, you know, things that we should also be addressing, psychological causes, et cetera. But if we're just thinking about the basics, I should have been inquiring about protein at a much earlier stage before getting to the point where we're doing a number of other tests.

• 37:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 00

  And I think that that's going to be informing, hopefully, other people's medical practice in the future.

• 37:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, it's really interesting because, you know, as you say in your introduction, part of the reason for writing this book is you want to reframe how people think about protein. And I guess going alongside that is this idea that...

• 37:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  I don't know if it's more in the UK than the US. One thing I noticed when you go into the US, that protein is a term that's used in common parlance, right? So I was in Boston in New York recently and I went to Sweet Greens in Boston.

• 37:58Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah, yeah.

• 37:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  It was near my hotel and, you know, there's a thing on the, you know, you pick your protein.

• 38:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? It's a concept in America that I've noticed that we typically haven't had here in the UK as much. That, you know, you're almost being driven to, oh, first of all, pick your protein source. Now, for me, and we did cover this when you came on the show a few weeks ago, because I'm so tall, those protein amounts are nowhere near what a six foot seven guy like me needs. So actually, if I was to get my requirements, I'd need to order two protein sources.

• 38:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  But I'm saying in the UK, we don't really have that to the same degree where you're choosing a protein. And so I find that really interesting. But beyond that, I think, and it goes back to what we said before about Gabrielle Lyon, right? There's this idea that most people, I think, when they're thinking about food are thinking about their waistline.

• 38:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  And they're thinking about, you know, I don't want to put on weight or I want to lose a bit of weight. But you could be losing weight in a variety of different ways and still not eating enough protein. So you could look at yourself in the mirror or in the scales and think that you're actually winning.

• 39:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  But it could come, of course, it's interesting, you, Rupy, to me, you've always struck me as someone who looks after themselves. You work out a lot, you, obviously, you try and eat well as much as you can. But you recognized a few years ago, didn't you, that you weren't eating enough protein?

• 39:27Speaker 00

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 39:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  Which I think will surprise people because they go, oh, Rupy's got it all figured out. And it's like, well, no, hold on, even with your medical degree, with your nutrition qualifications, you've written a ton of books on this stuff, you still found that you were under eating protein?

• 39:43Speaker 00

  Yes, and I think it's because particularly in the holistic medicine space, we over-index and we have been over-indexing on things like gut health, which is super important, things like anti-inflammatory diets, again, super important.

• 40:01Speaker 00

  Having more plants in our diet, absolutely agree with that. But we've sort of forgot one of the primary things, and I think protein is really coming back into fashion. Because people understand that you can't just have a focus on plants and gut health and not really think about the core foundation of what makes a diet nutritionally balanced. Yeah. And that is protein. And unfortunately, you know, it's a zero sum game. When you take something away, you need to replace it, otherwise you risk deficiency. And if I think about some breakfast that you see on Instagram, they look beautiful and they look colorful and they're, you know,

• 40:42Speaker 00

  easy to make and oatmeal, for example, is one of those, which we'll talk about in a second. If you do the nutritional analysis on them, whilst they do have a bit of fiber, good carbohydrates, particularly if you're training, you know, if you're doing endurance training, for example, carbs from oats can be a great thing. But they tend to be deficient in protein. And well, the one thing that I think was a stark realization for me is after doing my nutritional medicine masters and completing that and doing a section on endurance training in sports medicine, sports nutrition, but also part of the building of the Doctor's Kitchen app

• 41:25Speaker 00

  was actually recreating a nutrition calculator from scratch. Because I wasn't satisfied that the nutrition data sets from the US, Europe and the UK were sufficient to cover the bases of all the different ingredients that we were analyzing. And so what we did is we literally line by line, looked through every single ingredient to determine what was the most appropriate nutritional analysis for said ingredient. And then we started compiling together on recipes and then I realized. Of course, some of my recipes are actually quite low in protein. My breakfast is actually quite low in protein. Is this the reason why I feel quite hungry mid morning? And I'm, I'm a constant snacker.

• 42:08Speaker 00

  I think that's a part of like my nature, you know, being at home and stuff. And I tend to just always look in the cupboards. But also maybe it's because I'm not having enough protein and I tend to exercise most days. And I do resistance training and all the right things. And when I started eating more protein, I kid you not, Ron, I, my snacking fell off a cliff.

• 42:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 42:31Speaker 00

  And it makes complete sense.

• 42:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  And it goes back to what you said at the start about the protein leverage hypothesis. Maybe our bodies will just keep on eating whatever it needs to.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 42:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  Until we've met those protein requirements. And look, there's the research to look at and then there's clinical experience. I know there's this number at the moment about 30 grams of protein at breakfast. Right. I'll definitely get your perspective on that. I've never given that to a patient before, but I've definitely advised patients to increase protein intake, particularly at breakfast. And the truth is, I've never seen any downsides. I would often say to patients, eat your dinner for breakfast. That's a simple way of reframing the way you look at breakfast.

• 43:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right. But let's go, let's get back to breakfast, right? Because what's interesting about Healthy High Protein, your new book, is these three pillars you talk about, right? Number one, maintain protein. Number two, support gut health. Number three, lower inflammation.

• 43:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right. So you just mentioned that in the health world in which we sit, for the last years, there's been a lot of talk about gut health and inflammation. Right. And you're not saying they're not important in your book. You're just saying that we need to bring in protein.

• 43:52Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 43:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  Into the equation, right? And there are three questions in the book you want people to ask themselves when they sit down to eat. Is there enough protein on my plate to meet my requirements? Are there ingredients in this meal that are supporting my gut health? And number three, is the overall impact of this meal going to be anti-inflammatory? Okay, how about this, Rupee? How about we look at breakfast and then try and apply these three questions to certain common breakfast meals? Is that a reasonable way of looking at this?

• 44:23Speaker 00

  That's a great way of looking at it. So let's imagine oatmeal, right? Oatmeal, it's been touted as super healthy. It's got fibers that lower your cholesterol. It's got fiber that can support your gut health, beta glucans, et cetera, et cetera. If we look at it through the lens of those three questions, right? Is there enough protein in plain oatmeal? The answer is no. Because even if you're consuming 300 grams of total product, let's say, it's about three to four grams per 100 grams of protein in oats. So no, it's not going to be enough for folks unless you're super, super small and your protein requirements are very low, which we've established is not the case.

• 45:07Speaker 00

  Is there, are there products that support gut health? Yeah, probably. Yeah, we've got some fibers in there. We've got some beta glucans. It's probably going to be generally quite healthy. Is this going to be anti-inflammatory? Potentially, but with the blood glucose spiking potential of oats, if you're not having it with berries or you're having any other anti-inflammatory ingredients like cinnamon, too BD, I would say. I wouldn't say it's going to be a home run for inflammation.

• 45:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, this is really interesting. So my bias, based upon what I've seen throughout my career, is that I, I don't generally recommend oats to people for breakfast, right? I'm not saying it can't be good for some people, but of course, my bias will be based on what I've seen, right? So usually people are coming in to see the doctor, not always, but usually. They've got some degree of health issue that they want to help with, right? And if we look at the degree of metabolic dysfunction in society, it is reasonable that a lot of patients who come in to see you or me over the years would have a degree of metabolic dysfunction. So I've often found, not for everyone, but I've often found oats tend to cause this

• 46:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  big blood sugar high, blood sugar low two hours later, people feel hungry again. Now, I know that's not the same for everyone and I'm sure that will come down to their microbiome and their state of metabolic health. Some people have a big bowl of oatmeal in the morning and they're not hungry again for four hours. So I think metabolically, microbiome wise, there's something different going on.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  Definitely.

• 46:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  I personally don't have oats for breakfast, but you do, don't you?

• 46:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I have changed the way I have my oats in the morning. And I don't always have oats in the morning. I change it up throughout the week because I think diversity of ingredients is super important as well. The way I have my oats now, and just to riff on your point, you know, there are some endurance runners, for example, people who do triathlons and marathons who love oats because they're using that big store of sugar to efficiently power their muscles. That's not most people. Most people in today's world are going straight from their oatmeal at breakfast, jumping on the train and going to work where they sit down for multiple hours a day. They're not running up hills and doing mountains.

• 47:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  And that's the context and nuance that it's missed so much when we talk about this. You know, that diet, that breakfast in the context of what? As you say, if you're really active and you're a builder, you're a painter, you're a decorator. Okay, your breakfast need may be completely different than if you're actually sat behind a screen for four hours.

• 47:52Speaker 00

  I'll tell you who loves oatmeal? Kipchoge.

• 47:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  He does.

• 47:54Speaker 00

  And Kipchoge is one of the world's fastest runners at distance. So, you know, it gives you the context, you know, just using that very simple example, that's someone who's going to thrive on oats. I'm not saying that you can't thrive in oats unless you're like, you know, an ultra marathon or distance runner, but that's sort of the ballpark of where people are going to be thriving.

• 48:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  So how have you changed the way you do oats to meet these three criteria?

• 48:20Speaker 00

  So whilst I'm someone who exercises most days, I have a very simple base formula for my oatmeal in the morning. So I do overnight oats in a big tub, which is literally what I had this morning. I'll have two tablespoons of oats, which isn't actually that much. It's around 30 grams of oats, not 120, 150 grams of oats, but two tablespoons of oats, two tablespoons of milled flaxseed, a tablespoon of chia seed and a tablespoon of shelled hemp seed. Let's go through the nutritionals. So oats is largely carbohydrates there, right? Quite low in protein, has some beta glucans. Milled flaxseed is around 20, 25 grams of protein with a large amounts of fibre as well.

• 49:06Speaker 00

  Chia is on the lower side of protein in terms of the different seeds, but it's still quite a rich protein source, around eight grams per 100 grams or something like that. Shelled hemp seeds is 30 grams per 100 grams of protein and it is one of those novel plant proteins that has all nine essential amino acids as well. I have that as my base and then I combine flavours on top of that. So I have raw cacao, again, another really rich protein source. Sometimes I'll also add a protein powder. I'm sure we're going to get to protein powders a little bit later, the pros and cons of those. And then I'll have either water or a milk of

• 49:46Speaker 00

  choice that in my case is either a full fat dairy or it's a plant milk that doesn't have any fillers or any extra sugars in. That compared to a typical overnight oats recipe is much higher in protein.

• 50:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's like two different meals, isn't it?

• 50:03Speaker 00

  Completely different. When you look at the nutritionals, the one that I've just described to you is around 35 grams of protein. The previous one was sub 10.

• 50:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  Have you noticed a, I think you've already answered this, but let's just highlight the points. You've had times in your life where you'd have a standard bowl of oatmeal.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  And how did you feel throughout that morning? Energy, focus, hunger compared to when you're having your new, you know, improved, supercharged overnight oats, basically, with all these other protein and gut health sources?

• 50:37Speaker 00

  It's like night and day. It really is.

• 50:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  So you can feel a difference?

• 50:40Speaker 00

  You can feel the difference. Like, as I'm chatting to you now, I know I've had a couple of cups of coffee, but my focus, my energy is completely steady. I'm not feeling like, gosh, I'm gonna have another biscuit. Or, gosh, you know, I wonder if I'm gonna have a snack in between lunchtime, which I used to feel, particularly when I was working full-time in A and E. I now have this steady energy because I'm powering myself first thing in the morning with protein. And that's a mantra that I'm sort of getting people to think about. It's protein first, power all day. If you have protein first in the morning, it will give you power all day. You will be, you will have better energy. You will have less fatigue and less cravings as well.

• 51:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay, I'm gonna put another thought experiment on you.

• 51:27Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 51:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  Three pillars of eating that you talk about in this book, right? Number one, maintain protein. Number two, support gut health. Number three, lower inflammation. Out of those three,

• 51:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  which one do you think is the most important for people to focus on?

• 52:00Speaker 00

  Here's a sneaky way of answering that question, right? If you focus your diet around plant-based sources of protein, you're getting a twofer. So you're getting not only the protein from the ingredients like tempeh or tofu or, you know, hemp seeds, nuts and seeds, that kind of stuff. But you're also getting the fibre combined in that as well. I'm sure we're gonna talk about animal versus plant-based in a bit, but I've sort of done it in a sneaky way.

• 52:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Love it. So you're first to the question.

• 52:35Speaker 00

  Because one of the reasons why I still believe, you know, as someone who is an advocate for healthy high protein, I still believe in a plant forward diet, plant focused diet, one that incorporates a lot of diversity and gut healthy and high fibre ingredients, that there is a way of marrying the two. And actually, for omnivores, there is this elegant solution of ensuring that you have enough high protein whilst also looking after your gut as well.

• 53:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  I love your thought process there. My bias would be, I think maintaining protein is probably the one for people to focus on. I'll tell you why I think that. It's not that I don't agree with supporting gut health or lower inflammation. Of course I do. Like you, I've written about those things on multiple occasions. My thing with patients is always thinking about, because you can think about a million things for your health and then it gets confusing.

• 53:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right, so I'm always trying to think about, well, what's the most important lever to turn that naturally makes the other levers follow suit.

• 53:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right, and I think given the stats that you've put out there about how many people have got sarcopenia and how many people are not eating enough protein, I kind of feel if you do start prioritising protein, you're going to snack less, which is actually going to end up lowering inflammation, right? And I think the other thing which we don't talk about enough about gut health, and again, I don't think we've spoken about this before, so, you know, I'd welcome your perspective on this. We're always thinking about what we can add in to support our gut health, but it's also a case of, like when you came on the show a few weeks ago, one of your principles, one of my principles is to unprocess your diet.

• 54:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  If you naturally unprocess your diet and reduce the amount of ultra-processed foods, you're actually improving your gut health anyway, even before you start adding in all the fermented foods and those sort of things, right? So, again, none of us are right or wrong here, we're just expressing our perspective.

• 54:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think out of those three, the way I look at things at the moment, I'd probably go. For most people, if they really focus on their protein, I think they're probably going to take care of the other two as well.

• 54:50Speaker 00

  That's a really, really good point because just to echo what you're saying is if you have enough protein, you're not going to overconsume energy in the form of calories. That's going to be naturally anti-inflammatory. You're going to de-process your diet because you're not going to be having all those snacks and stuff and sugary drinks and stuff to keep your energy up. And, you know, it's in terms of what I've just been talking about, in terms of protein, as it is arguably the most critical macro nutrient because of how the downstream effects of protein affect enzyme health, hormonal health, et cetera, that is the thing to prioritize. And if you look at like, you know, traditional tribespeople, protein is prized in those

• 55:35Speaker 00

  communities, right? They don't have, you know, a diversity of ingredients. They don't have all the sort of the grains and the selection of ingredients that we have in our supermarket shops. They have a very simple diet, but they prioritize proteins. They tend to have meat in the morning. They tend to have meat at the end of the day. They have that in combination with random ingredients, whether it's berries or tubers or whatever it might be. It's a very, very simple diet, but it works for them.

• 56:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  And that's one of the things I really like about this approach is that it does simplify eating for people, right? Even those three questions that you propose, right? Is there enough protein on my plate to meet my requirements? Are there ingredients in this meal that are going to support my gut health? Is the overall impact of this meal going to be anti-inflammatory? And, you know, there's a lot more education on that in your book for people who are interested. But it's not a bad way for people to assess breakfast, lunch, and all their meals frankly, is it? It's quite a nice, elegant framework to think about your food.

• 56:36Speaker 00

  Let's play with that because this is why I thought a lot about the questions that I ask myself whenever I sit down to eat. I ask myself a lot of questions. Let's imagine you're having lunch and you've got a meal deal in front of you, right? You've got a sandwich, some crisps, got a sugar sweetened beverage, Coke, whatever it might be. If you ask yourself those three questions, even if you're eating something that is deemed as ultra-processed as a meal deal, you can afford to do some tweaks that might help you answer those questions in a positive way. So if you think about protein, okay, what kind of proteins can I add? Can I add maybe some shelled umami on the side of that? Just

• 57:19Speaker 00

  boost up my protein. That shelled umami is also going to have a knock-on effect on are there gut-healthy ingredients that I'm adding to this meal? Bit of fibre in there as well. And also, from the anti-inflammation perspective, whilst the crisps and all that kind of stuff might be inflammation-producing, maybe you can swap those. Maybe instead of having the crisp, you can have some raw nuts. Maybe instead of the sugar-sweetened beverage, you can have water. And so you're tipping the balance towards more protein, higher fibre, less inflammation. It's a very simple way of analysing any time you sit down to eat, and what's in front of you, and what's on your plate, and how you can make some very simple tweaks. And I do this in the book quite a bit, you know, can you add just one

• 58:02Speaker 00

  more? Can you swap this for that? And in terms of proteins, you know, in terms of breakfast, I always think about, are there leftovers that I can have for breakfast? Breakfast, I think, has got this brand of having to be sweet, whereas actually, if you look at traditional diets, they tend to be very savoury. Like, my traditional Punjabi breakfast is definitely a savoury affair. It's whole wheat, it's dal, it's spinach, it's yoghurt. These are all high-protein ingredients that, when combined together, will give me enough sustenance for the day. Can you layer different proteins on top of each other? So just like I did

• 58:44Speaker 00

  with my oatmeal, I'm layering shelled hemp seeds, cacao, chia seeds. Can you use toppers? Can you think about your breakfast in a savoury manner? What about savoury breakfast? They tend to be higher protein by virtue of the fact that using savoury umami ingredients.

• 59:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  What about someone who's listening, Rupy, and, you know, they're interested in their health, but, you know, they're busy, they've got to rush out in the morning, they don't have much time for breakfast. And so, I don't know, let's say their current breakfast is two pieces of toast, butter, and strawberry jam, okay?

• 59:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  I don't know how many people who listen to this podcast eat a breakfast like that, but I'm sure there are many, right? So if that person came to you and said, "Rupy, okay, listen, I'm hearing what you're saying here. I think from what you're saying, Rupy, that's probably a breakfast low in protein." Make the case to that person why they should think about changing it. And if they are going to change it, can you recommend something for them?

• 59:48Speaker 00

  Okay, let's play with this. So let's imagine I'm not really asking you to change anything at all. If you fancy bread in the morning toasted with butter, fine.

• 59:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  Sounds delicious.

• 59:59Speaker 00

  Let's think about the bread first off, okay? So stage one is can we swap that white bread that is devoid of nutrients and actually they've had them stripped out and then artificially added in in the flour to meet the recommended targets that are set by the government? Can we swap that for a slightly higher protein bread? Now, bread doesn't naturally have that much protein in, but if you go for something like a sourdough, because of the fermentation process that has been allowed to actually release a lot of those proteins that are naturally in the grain, your protein absorption actually

• 1:00:41Speaker 00

  increases and the total amount of protein within that bread actually increases as well by a factor of around 100%. So that's not a bad swap. We're just looking for those marginal gains and I'm doing the least amount I can for this individual. That's probably something I would suggest.

• 1:00:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  And do you think that if there's someone who is feeling hungry two hours later, right? They're in a rush, they're having it, but two hours later they are hungry, they need a little snack at work. Do you think, and of course it's highly individual, that even that change alone... Might perhaps result in them being a bit less hungry mid morning.

• 1:01:15Speaker 00

  Potentially, absolutely, potentially. So let's, let's imagine that you're going one step further. I've actually got a recipe in the book.

• 1:01:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  You do, I was gonna ask about that.

• 1:01:23Speaker 00

  For my own bread, right? And that one slice of bread offers around eight grams of protein. And the reason why is because we're using nuts and seeds and psyllium husk, which is naturally high in protein, high in fibre, to deliver what is a really accessible and easy protein rich meal in the morning. So if all you've got time for is popping some bread in the, in the toaster or under the grill, then that offers you a really easy option. And that bread, I'm not a baker. I do not like baking. I don't do cakes, I don't do anything. That bread recipe, you put everything into a bowl, add a bit of water and oil, put it into a loaf tin and in the oven for about 60 minutes. I do this once a week with me and my wife.

• 1:02:08Speaker 00

  We have it every single week and we absolutely love it. And to go one step further, which is something that I do in the mornings as well, you can use that bread and instead of putting butter on it, maybe try peanut butter. What about tahini? What about some sort of seed butter? Because that again pushes your protein slightly higher. And then if you've got a little bit more time, exactly seven minutes, pop a couple of eggs into some boiling water. And that way you are far surpassing the 25 or 30 grams of protein that you may require in the morning. And I almost guarantee, I know I don't make guarantees, but I, I, I'm confident that people who have enough protein in the morning

• 1:02:51Speaker 00

  for breakfast will not have those sneaky cravings mid morning anymore.

• 1:02:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  Mate, we've seen it hundreds of times, right? With patients. If all you take from this entire podcast is to eat more protein at breakfast and then pay attention. Just pay attention to what happens in the day. I think people will be quite surprised.

• 1:03:11Speaker 00

  I agree.

• 1:03:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I think there's this wider point, which I think we touched on last time you came on. But you just mentioned your traditional cultural breakfast and what it might be. Breakfast, for some reason, has this real PR issue where we think of breakfast, we think of cereal.

• 1:03:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  And orange juice and croissants. This is quite a modern thing.

• 1:03:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's like breakfast doesn't need to be that. It can be proper foods.

• 1:03:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  You know, I had salmon for breakfast this morning.

• 1:03:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, brilliant.

• 1:03:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  The dinner last night, try and cook too much. Whatever's in the fridge, I'll heat it up in the morning. You know, that's how I eat because I feel better when I do that.

• 1:03:49Speaker 00

  Hundred percent.

• 1:03:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I think people, they're like, what, for breakfast? Yeah, I can't have that. So you can actually, and I bet you if you try that for a little while, you'll go, oh yeah, this, I'm actually really enjoy this. And I feel much better when I nourish myself properly first thing in the morning.

• 1:04:05Speaker 00

  It's so funny, the, my team, whenever I come in in the morning, they, they look at me. They used to look at me quite strange because I would literally pile everything into a little frying pan, put the lid on. And my go to in the mornings is some kale, pumpkin seeds, hot smoked salmon, little bit of olive oil on top of my protein bread. And I literally just put that on the hob, put the lid on and it literally, I'm not, I'm not exaggerating. It literally takes me five, six minutes and I eat it straight out of the pan because it's actually quite a small saucepan. And they used to think, oh, isn't that funny, like Rupy eating out of the pan and stuff like for his breakfast. But now they've all started doing it because I espouse these benefits of healthy, high protein.

• 1:04:50Speaker 00

  And they notice the benefits themselves as well because they're more intuitive about how they feel mid morning and they have a lot more energy.

• 1:04:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  And that's one thing I love about what you've been doing in public, Rupy, for many years now. You're trying to, well, you're trying to encourage people to cook. You're trying to simplify, go, no, it's not, guys, it's not as hard as you think. I think you do that really well in all of your books. I think in this one, again, you've done a really great job at helping people. There's, there's quite a few one pan recipes in here. I know you did a whole book on one pan stuff years ago, but it's. I think there's that wider point, isn't there, that we've forgotten how to cook?

• 1:05:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  You know, when many people don't know what to do. So cereal and milk is very easy.

• 1:05:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  And initially is tasty and fills you up, at least for an hour or so. If you don't know how to cook, but as you say, there are ways to do that. What about, um, somebody goes, hey, Rupert, listen, I ain't gonna cook in the morning. Right. But I hear what you're saying about protein. Why can't I get a protein powder?

• 1:05:54Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:05:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  Put it in my mixer and add in some ingredients like the ones you've already mentioned. Is that okay? So what would you say to that person?

• 1:06:04Speaker 00

  I say, look, I, I hear it and I get it, you know, um, people are time poor and people don't necessarily have the skills. And so I can see what the appeal of a high protein smoothie or high protein shake, uh, does for, for folks.

• 1:06:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  I'm sensing a but.

• 1:06:24Speaker 00

  There is a but coming. Look, I, as someone who does have protein shakes themselves, um, I don't recommend people start their day with a smoothie like that for a number of different reasons. Whilst it might have protein in, I wouldn't say it qualifies for the second question that you're asking yourself in the morning. Is this gonna be gut supporting? And the reason why is because when you juice or when you smooth your ingredients, you're essentially rapidly and quite destructively changing that 3D complex food matrix. What is the food matrix? Well, it's the, the shape that your berry has when you consume it,

• 1:07:09Speaker 00

  or the shape that your apple has when you bite into it. And if you imagine using the apple, just riffing on that for a second, when you bite into your apple and you are shearing through the pectin, the different cell walls, you're bathing that in the acid in your mouth and then in your stomach. And then your body digests that slowly throughout your Intestines, so you absorb the sugar that's naturally found in the apple, the fructose into your bloodstream and to your liver. You know, that's a very slow process, whereas if you were to add that to a blender and rapidly change that food matrix, then the amount of

• 1:07:52Speaker 00

  work that your body needs to do to break down the apple, whatever you're adding to that smoothie is far less. So you're going to be rapidly absorbing those nutrients into your bloodstream. And because of fruits and all the ingredients that have those natural fructose molecules in, I don't think that's a great strategy from a gut health point of view.

• 1:08:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  What about if someone does it in a smoothie maker? They put in their, you know, their protein powder, their milk, their frozen berries, for example, you know, gut health supporting, you know, although, as you say, you are going to crush them right down. Sometimes people can make them in quite a thick way, put them in a bowl and then add seeds and nuts and other gut supporting nutrients in that way. What's your take on that?

• 1:08:39Speaker 00

  I think that's better. Ideally, you want to consume your food in as whole a form as possible, but that's a lovely go between. And look, as someone who enjoys those kind of smoothie bowls and stuff, I get it. It's a nice way to enjoy your food. But as a strategy, as something that you want to do every single day, I would say it's probably not optimal, but it is definitely, and what you're describing there, where you're adding the nuts and the seeds and maybe some other ingredients that are in their whole form, like some high fiber ingredients, you're adding complexity to the millia of what's in that smoothie itself. And so that's going to naturally reduce the speed at which you digest said foods.

• 1:09:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay, so there's optimal and there's what's practical, right? So my understanding from what you're saying is that ideally,

• 1:09:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  You would like people to think about their protein intake and make sure for their first meal of the day, this very important meal after your overnight fast, that you are eating real food as much as possible, as close to its natural form as possible, where you are prioritizing protein, okay? That could be your overnight oats that you have with all those additions. It could be the bread that you recommend with the higher protein bread with some eggs. I guess it could even be fish, meat, roast chicken from the night before, heat it up, right? So that's ideal. You're saying that whilst you understand people buying protein powders and putting them in the smoothie,

• 1:10:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  and yes, they still can tick the protein box of your three questions by having that, it's not ideal for those other reasons. But if it was a choice of a breakfast cereal, plain, standard breakfast cereal with milk versus a smoothie with protein powder, I'm guessing you'd say that smoothie with protein powder, although not perfect,

• 1:10:44Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:10:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  is a better choice?

• 1:10:45Speaker 00

  I would, I would agree. Yeah, I think these are steps to success, right? So let's imagine that you have an individual, it might not be someone listening to this, it might be their friend or it might be their child that loves their cereal in the morning. And maybe one way in which to just slightly improve that is actually just to add a topper of nuts and seeds or whatever it might be to that cereal in the first instance. Then the next step might be the smoothie that you put in the bowl with, again, the extra toppers. All the way stepping to the success of a high protein breakfast or something that is leftovers. And let's not sleep on, on things like meat and fish for breakfast.

• 1:11:29Speaker 00

  I know it sounds a bit strange to some people, but leftovers for breakfast for me are one of the easiest things and far easier than the other. And the other thing is like, when, when we think of cereal, whilst we think, yes, it is a time saver, when you think about the trade off to your energy and how you feel the rest of the day, it doesn't make sense.

• 1:11:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:53Speaker 00

  It's not an equivalent and I wouldn't want to put my personal.

• 1:11:59Speaker 00

  Feelings and energy levels on the line for a a quick decision in the morning, a a decision that's based on time in the morning.

• 1:12:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I would say, just to highlight something that I think both you and I are passionate about is this idea. Actually, you know what? Don't necessarily believe what Rupy is saying or what I'm saying. Try it.

• 1:12:22Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:12:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  Try it for a week and assess for yourself. Do you feel better? Because ultimately, that will be, that's where you find the gold, right? I'm not saying ignore us. I'm just saying, look, if you're not sure, why don't you make a commitment to yourself for seven days? I'm going to try a high protein breakfast and pay attention to how you feel. Okay, animal protein, the plant protein.

• 1:12:45Speaker 00

  Controversial.

• 1:12:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  Got to cover it, mate. We've got to cover it. Okay. And you've also, you've also acknowledged that you are a proponent of plant focused diets.

• 1:12:58Speaker 00

  I'd say plant focused or plant forward. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay, right. So one of the things you're drawing attention to in this new book of yours is that

• 1:13:10Rangan Chatterjee?

  this promotion of gut health and plant's fibre over the past few years has come at potentially an unappreciated cost. Is that a fair way of saying it?

• 1:13:22Speaker 00

  That's a really good way of saying it.

• 1:13:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  Whereby, by doing that, some people are not eating enough protein, right? And you tackle that head on. So let's just go through all of that and help people understand the difference between animal protein and plant protein in terms of the amino acids, these Lego building blocks that we need.

• 1:13:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  Because the truth is that this, this does become so controversial for people, right? And I think it really needs to.

• 1:13:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. And I think, you know, it really does speak to some of the concepts that you spoke about in your latest book that I really do chime with me. This idea of minimal reliance on experts, because if we rely completely on, you know, what, what people might listening, be listening to me saying, or another expert that has a different opinion, a plant-based doctor or nutritionist, a carnivore doctor or nutritionist, a keto advocate, you can get really, really confused and stuck in the weeds. And I think. Riffing on what you said earlier about, you know, try it and see how you feel and

• 1:14:31Speaker 00

  become more intuitive about how this way of eating changes your day, how convenient it is, I think is something that people always need to to remember. And so with that in mind, let's talk a bit about the difference between animal and plant-based proteins. Putting aside the environmental controversies and the moral and ethics of eating animals that I think are valid and true.

• 1:14:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:59Speaker 00

  But I think we should be able to have a conversation that looks unemotionally at the science. And so with this in mind, animal-based proteins are more bioavailable and

• 1:15:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  What does that mean, bioavailable?

• 1:15:16Speaker 00

  So the accessibility of those building blocks, those amino acids are a lot easier to access from animal-based proteins and insufficient quantities that makes it easier to hit your protein amounts. So putting this into context, if you imagine a bar chart and along the X-axis, you have all your different amino acids laid up and on the Y-axis, you have a dotted line going across and that gives you your threshold for all your amino acids. Your animal-based proteins are all above that threshold. So if you have a piece

• 1:15:54Speaker 00

  of chicken, let's say 100 grams, you're going to be getting 30 grams of very good quality amino acids that will satisfy your body's requirements. If you were to line up the same amount of plant-based protein, let's say tempeh, and line up again the amino acids, in terms of the thresholds of amino acids, it's going to be lower. And that's across the board for all plant-based proteins, whether we're talking about beans, corn, grain.

• 1:16:33Speaker 00

  Um, other sources of, of protein, including nuts and seeds. It's the same story. It's always going to be less in terms of the accessibility and the availability of those amino acids and the amounts of those amino acids as well. That isn't to say that you can't get there, but it requires a lot more careful planning, particularly if you are a vegetarian or you're on a vegan diet. And we'll go through some strategies to ensure that you can cover all your bases. But these are the unequivocal facts. In the academic literature, we use some digestibility and bioavailability scores to determine the quality of proteins. We don't need to go into that much detail, but this is what people need to realise

• 1:17:17Speaker 00

  about animal versus plant-based proteins.

• 1:17:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  This is where I think we need to be really careful when we think about theory versus practical application. If we accept what you just said, that animal protein is more bioavailable for the human body than plant protein as a general rule, then yes, in theory, it's possible to meet your requirements by being very methodical and paying attention to what you're doing on a plant-based diet. And we can talk about some of your strategies for that. And there's plenty of them in the book for people, right?

• 1:18:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  But also then we have to superimpose that on the fact that, what is it, 88% of people in the UK have suffered with burnout in the last couple of years, right? So people are living in a stressed out world where people are rushing around. So are they, although it theoretically may be possible, I bet there will be some people who are listening to this show right now who are massively under-consuming protein. And as you say, they may have reasons for choosing the diet that they're doing, which I, both of us completely respect. But you may not have the time and energy in your life

• 1:18:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  to pay attention to all the things you need to do with your diet to get that. And now, you may also say, actually, for example, if someone's listening and they're eating a vegan diet for compassionate reasons, I totally respect that. I think we're all individuals, we can all make those decisions. But when it comes to purely health. If you're gonna eschew all animal proteins, I think what you're saying, Elise, is you've got to be very careful that you're getting enough protein.

• 1:19:11Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And I say this pretty unequivocally in this chapter within the protein section of the book, that if you have intolerances or allergies, or you simply don't like certain high protein, plant-based ingredients like soy-based proteins, tofu, tempeh,

• 1:19:37Speaker 00

  and nutritional yeast, edamame. I don't recommend you go on a purely plant-based diet because the amount of

• 1:19:51Speaker 00

  planning and forethought it's going to take to get you to your protein requirements is going to be pretty immense. It's not to say that it's impossible, but I feel quite strongly now, just looking at the data, that for most people, just like you were saying, given so many people are time poor, a lot of people are suffering burnout, to get to the point where we're going to be consuming enough quality protein to meet our needs is going to be really, really tough. Now, I can hear some people probably saying, well, you know, you just mentioned a few ingredients that aren't indigenous to a number of different cultures. Indian culture, we don't have tempeh and tofu and soy. Like,

• 1:20:34Speaker 00

  you know, why would you say that if you can't eat those, you can't thrive on a vegan diet? And the reason why is because those traditional diets actually did a lot of work and a lot of processing to the ingredients that they had available to them to make them higher on protein and make the proteins more bioavailable.

• 1:20:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  Like what?

• 1:20:54Speaker 00

  Soaking.

• 1:20:56Speaker 00

  Germinating, activating, fermentation, combination. So if you think about lentils and dal, I remember vividly, you know, my mum would first get a big bag from the Indian grocers and then she would methodically pick out the stones out of the lentils. And then she would throw that into a big pot of water with other lentils as well.

• 1:21:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:21Speaker 00

  Soak that overnight, clean that water, pressure cook those lentils and combine it with some, again, very high quality rice grains. And that combination, the amount that we would consume, that would give you a decent dose of protein.

• 1:21:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's a time consuming process, right? And that, again, speaking about this uncomfortable truth, we're living in this, many of us at least, in this time pressured environment where we're looking at what people used to eat, but not looking at how they used to eat it, how they used to prepare it. I mean, this is not to do with protein, but one thing Vid and I have noticed is that, so my background is Bengali, who's a Gujarati. And the way we prepare rice is different from how she saw it being prepared when she grew up, right? So if I've got white basmati rice, the way my mum taught me how to prepare it is that you,

• 1:22:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  you put the rice in a pan, you soak it in water, and then three times at least, you'll pour the water out, right? So you pour the water out, then you'll fill it up again.

• 1:22:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  Pour the water out, and then you'll soak it, right? And again, I haven't seen a scientist studying this, but mum would always say to me, oh, it just removes the excess starch, right? People are not doing that at the moment. They're buying the rice, cooking it, keeping all that water in it. And again, I'm not saying good or bad, I'm just saying, isn't it interesting how? These cultures had ways of, I don't know, ways of doing stuff that some of us don't do anymore, right?

• 1:22:57Speaker 00

  You know, there's a bit in the book where I lean into some of these traditional methods and I looked at some of the studies, right? Looking at the availability of the amino acids as a result of some of these traditional methods. And what happens, and what your mum was teaching you appropriately, was when you remove the starches, you're getting rid of anything that could disrupt the availability of those proteins. When you cook and when you soak overnight as well and you replenish that water, you're getting rid of these anti-nutrients. And these anti-nutrients is a bit of a misnomer because anti-nutrients are actually quite healthy for us. But when you reduce them to a point,

• 1:23:39Speaker 00

  they no longer disrupt the availability of those amino acids when you cook the rice or cook the lentils, for example. So these traditional methods, whilst they might seem a bit cumbersome and nonsensical, actually they hold a lot of wisdom. There's a reason why we do this and why we've discovered the cooking techniques of our ancestors is because it allowed them to do things like absorb more protein from the limited amount of food that they had.

• 1:24:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  I'm glad you said my mum did that correctly. I'm gonna go around afterwards and say you've got Rupee's seal of approval.

• 1:24:12Speaker 00

  I'll send her the paper.

• 1:24:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  You'll send her the paper? Okay then, Rupee. But for people who are choosing to eat plant-based, for whatever reason they've chosen that for, right? Have you got some top tips for them on how they can, you know, these little tweaks that will increase the amount of protein that they're consuming?

• 1:24:32Speaker 00

  Totally, yeah. So I would say one of the most important things is combination. So if you imagine... Going back to that bar chart and you've got all the different amino acids in a chicken breast, you've got all the amino acids that you require in decent doses and decent quantities. With rice, let's say you've got some amino acids that are high, it might be methionine, I actually don't know off the top of my head which amino acids that they're rich in, but they're low in others. Lentils, it might be high in some of the amino acids that rice is low in, but low in some of the amino acids that rice is high in. And so what you're doing

• 1:25:13Speaker 00

  is by layering proteins and combining them across your meal, you're covering the bases of the amino acid deficits. In combination to that, the quantity of rice and lentils and beans will need to also be upped as well, because the actual dose of those amino acids is going to be a lot lower. So you're beginning to see a bit of a picture and some of the conundrum around vegetarian vegan eating. Not only do you need to be more cognizant about the combination of different proteins, you also need to be consuming a lot more.

• 1:25:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, so an increased amount of calories potentially to get what you need protein wise.

• 1:25:56Speaker 00

  Yes, and I think even more so than calories, because plant-based foods tend to be lower in calories anyway compared to animal-based foods. That increase in fibre, as you've probably discovered during your clinical practice, can be completely intolerable for certain people who aren't used to consuming fibre in the first place, or may have an intolerance to some of the sugars that you find in carbohydrates, raffinose, verbascose, you know, these are all different types of polysaccharides that can be quite troublesome for people. And so you can see why, particularly if you're not preparing these foods in the right way, it can be actually quite detrimental to your gut.

• 1:26:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, and there's a wider point here for me, Rupee, right? So, yes, allergies are on the rise, intolerances are on the rise, many theories, but of course, one of the big ones is to do with the decimated state of our gut microbiomes compared to what our ancestors would have had, okay?

• 1:26:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  You often see this judgmental look at what people are eating online. Okay, obviously nutrition has become quite divisive, not for everyone, but for a lot of people whose voices get amplified online. Okay, and I think another thing that people forget is that they're not aware of what that other person might be going through. Right, so if you are someone who has had a ton of antibiotics, right, and a ton of stress and childhood trauma, and your gut microbiome is, you know, has been impacted quite significantly, actually, if that's you, you may struggle to absorb or tolerate

• 1:27:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  large volumes of plant food. I've seen that time and time again. So these are often the people who prefer eating animal-based diets because they feel better.

• 1:27:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right, but then often someone who's chosen a plant-based diet for, let's say compassionate reasons, can be quite judgmental without realising, hey, wait a minute, maybe that's the only diet that person can tolerate.

• 1:28:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:28:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I don't think, I don't think I've actually said that on the podcast this way before, but I kind of, you know, both me and you are quite interested in compassion and trying to bridge the gap of all these controversies and go, actually, some people find that that's the best way of eating for them.

• 1:28:17Speaker 00

  You know what, I completely agree, and I'm glad you've said that because I used to be of the opinion that this sort of hype around bone broth and, you know, drinking and using an animal-based diet is not rooted in science, right? Maybe five, six years ago, it was sort of fashionable, it wasn't really something that could be explained mechanistically. And when you think about it from the lens of someone who is intolerant to certain fibres. And you know, they might have tried a high fibre diet or they might have tried, you know, maybe let's say they're tolerant of certain fibres, but they just haven't figured

• 1:28:59Speaker 00

  that out. And then they start doing things like drinking bone broths that are actually very nutrient dense. They might not be that high in protein, but whatever is in the broth is actually a lot more accessible because it's just broken down and it's very simple. And you can buy that with some of those calming anti-inflammatory herbs, for example. You can understand why people become such advocates

• 1:29:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:21Speaker 00

  for broths and

• 1:29:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  Totally.

• 1:29:23Speaker 00

  animal-based diets. Absolutely. I can totally see that. And I think to your point, we definitely need to be respectful of people's individual circumstances whereby it would be completely unadvisable from a medical or nutritional point of view to recommend that someone go on a plant-based diet because their guts would not be able to tolerate the foods that are being restricted and thus available to them.

• 1:29:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, which goes back to the point that you talk about, that I often talk about, about trusting yourself, about paying attention and going, actually not every advice from every bit of expert is relevant for me at this point in my life. And I think we've become overly seduced by what the latest science says. It's important, but you don't know for sure that that scientific study is relevant for you as an individual. And I think that's where our, you know, many years of clinical practice play in where we're like, yeah, okay, we love reading research, but we also like what works for people when they're struggling.

• 1:30:28Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:30:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  Now, I eat a lot of plants in my diet, okay. I'd love your take on this. One thing I really dislike doing is going now to a lot of these new plant-based vegan restaurants, right? I did this, I was in LA in November doing interviews for my new book, okay? And we went to supposedly one of the best vegan restaurants. Because I was out with some friends who are vegan and it was great nights. Except I hardly slept the night after, I'll tell you why. I didn't know what I was eating, right? Everything was like a substitute. It was like a pepperoni pizza, plant-based version.

• 1:31:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  Like, all of them, I couldn't see a vegetable, right? And I had a headache all night and I thought, you know what? I would have much rather had a plate of broccoli, a plate of green beans and like real vegetables, right? So I'm just thinking that some of these places are full of plant substitutes. Do you know what I'm talking about?

• 1:31:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, and you know, one of the things I talk about in the book is this rise of plant faux meats. And a lot of these ingredients are actually quite processed. And to be honest, like, you look at, there was an interesting article, I can't remember where it was now, but about whether mission-style restaurants are actually serving ultra-processed food that's jazzed up on fancy plates. And if you think about it, they use a lot of agar, they use a lot of jellies, they use a lot of emulsifiers, they use a lot of additives. It's probably meeting the criteria of NOVA4 ultra-processed foods, but you're paying like, you know, 10 times the price for it or something. So the same thing is...

• 1:32:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  They're gonna spy your cookbook, mate. Do you know what I mean? Let us save them money.

• 1:32:20Speaker 00

  And so the same thing is probably happening in some of these plant-based restaurants. But the other thing and the other trend I think you're alluding to is the rise of cauliflower steak or mushroom being seared and being put into a kebab.

• 1:32:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  What's wrong with that?

• 1:32:36Speaker 00

  So there is nothing wrong with trying to mimic the flavor and the texture of meat, particularly if you crave that, as we generally all do, and you are plant-based for whatever reason, whether it's ethical, environmental, etc.

• 1:32:54Speaker 00

  But to equate the protein in that product to a steak or to shredded meat or whatever, I think really does put people at risk of under consuming protein unless they are supplementing that charred mushroom or the cauliflower steak with something that is actually of sustenance that satisfies their protein needs.

• 1:33:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I honestly think that night I just had an explosion of UPF ultra processed foods. And again, I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to be critical of those type of restaurants. I'm sure they're trying to meet a need. I have no issue with having vegan meals, but I like it to be a real food vegan meal. Like, you know, beans that I can see that look like beans, broccoli that looks like broccoli. I kid you not, Rupee, I actually don't know what I ate that night. It was just this mishmash of stuff, but I just felt horrible afterwards.

• 1:33:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, and this is the thing, I think a lot of people who unfortunately go vegan, fall into this trap of actually relying on ultra processed faux meats to meet some of those desires for meat, or because that's the most convenient option for them to, to actually consume food when they don't have time in the mornings and they want that bacon sarnie, or they want something that gives them the sort of like nostalgia of the meat that they're trying to mimic. And so, and there is a certainly a rise in the labels that you see in supermarkets with the terms plant based branded all over it.

• 1:34:35Speaker 00

  And look, I, I think we need these products, but I don't think we can shy away from the fact that these are ultra processed products that are being snuck into a vegan's diet.

• 1:34:47Speaker 00

  Under the health guise of it being good for you because it's plant-based. And I think we need to get away from that equivalency because that's just not true. And look, I'm a fan of plant-focused eating, as you know. A bunch of the recipes are actually plant-based to meet, to help people who are vegan or vegetarian meet their protein requirements, because I think they need the most help, as well as a whole bunch of recipes that have got meat and fish and all the rest of the animal-based products that people love and, you know, should eat without fear of judgment.

• 1:35:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right, another tricky question for you, okay, right?

• 1:35:24Speaker 00

  I love these.

• 1:35:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  For someone who likes to eat meat and/or fish, right? Which is the recipe in your new book you'd point them to?

• 1:35:33Speaker 00

  Oh, that's a really hard question, Ronan.

• 1:35:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  That's why I asked it, mate.

• 1:35:37Speaker 00

  So I'm a big fan of diversity bowls, right? So it's a really simple, easy way of consuming foods with those three things in mind. Is this going to meet my protein requirements? Is this going to be gut-healthy? Is this going to be anti-inflammatory? So honestly, the salmon tikka bowls, which is salmon that's marinated in a very simple tikka sauce, combined with a few greens, a little bit of pickles, some lentils. It's just so easy. It's just a bowl of absolute goodness.

• 1:36:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  Amen. Yeah. Okay, and if you're a vegan listening, right? Which is the recipe you'd point them to?

• 1:36:19Speaker 00

  So there is-

• 1:36:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  And you can't have your overnight oats or your bread, because we've already mentioned them.

• 1:36:24Speaker 00

  So there is a lasagna recipe in the book, okay? And I'm calling it lasagna tongue-in-cheek. And I'm saying this as someone who has an Italian wife with an Italian nonna and an Italian mother-in-law. And I've given this recipe to them, I've cooked it for them multiple times, and they absolutely love it. And it's made with tofu, okay? It's gonna get so many Italians, if you have any Italian listeners, as I'm sure you do, it's gonna get their back up completely. But trust me, trust the process. This lasagna is gonna be one of the best plant-based lasagnas you have ever tried and I can, I can say that with full confidence because I've tried it with loads of Italians, honestly.

• 1:37:08Speaker 00

  And it was so funny because my, my wife's nonna, who sadly passed away now, she's, she was 105 when she passed. I, we talked to her on the phone every Sunday. And I told her about this tope and she was like, what are you talking? Got them blasted. But uh, there was definitely an appreciation in her voice. She never got to try it, but her daughter tried it, her dad tried it and everyone like sung its praises. So trust me, there is a plant-based lasagna and it does work and it's very high in protein.

• 1:37:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  Let's finish off talking about supplements, creepy, okay? Um, obviously your approach is food first.

• 1:37:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  Are protein supplements necessary? Can they play a role for some people? And if so, what do you recommend people buy?

• 1:37:55Speaker 00

  It's a really good question. Again, my opinion on this has slightly changed over the last couple of years. I used to be quite anti-protein supplements because of this overarching opinion that because we're meeting the government set requirements of 0.8 grams per kilo of body weight per 24 hours, there really isn't a need for any extra protein. Whether that's in the form of bars or powders or shakes, especially not in the ready-made bottles that you find in convenience stores. But I've evolved my opinion on this because I feel that those kind of supplements are

• 1:38:37Speaker 00

  a convenient option when having a meal is just not on the card. So after going to the gym or a workout or in between meals, or simply to satisfy your 24-hour protein requirements when you can't have chicken or tempeh or tofu at every meal of the day. So I think it's a necessary part of some people's strategy, particularly those who exercise regularly.

• 1:39:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  You mentioned the 0.8 grams there. Okay. We don't need to go deep into. The recommendations, because when you came on my show a few weeks ago, we did cover that, you also cover it in your book, but just top line, you're saying that the recommendations used to be, or some of them still are, 0.8 grams of protein per?

• 1:39:25Speaker 00

  So 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per 24 hours.

• 1:39:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay, right. And again, for some people, that's going to be too technical. They're not going to want to think about their food in that way. And I know in the book, there's all kinds of helpful ways that you ask people to think about this stuff, right? Your recommendation now, based upon the research, is what?

• 1:39:46Speaker 00

  So it depends. Not to say it's too technical, but I believe, and I think this is definitely reflected by other protein researchers in the field, that a minimum requirement of 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per 24 hours is ideal. And if it's if you are active, i.e. you exercise, you do running, you do resistance training, it should be 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per 24 hours. And I should say for folks, if this is all sounding quite technical, there is a protein calculator for free that you can use in the book, and it actually personalizes it to your age, your

• 1:40:30Speaker 00

  activity level, with your postmenopausal, all sorts of personalization there. So you don't need to like try and do the math.

• 1:40:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  Exactly. But I guess the point I'm getting to, again, we did it on the last podcast where you came on, and you've got it in a book for people. You're basically saying that if you subscribe to some of the guidance, which you don't, that the requirement is 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per 24 hours. Back then, you thought, actually, I don't really think people need to supplement protein. But now that your view on that has changed, where you think it's not 0.8 grams, it's 1.2, or even up to 1.5, 1.6, you're saying now with those new?

• 1:41:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  Requirements for people, based upon the latest research, you now think for some people, protein supplements and I guess protein powders, which is how most of them come, or a lot of them come.

• 1:41:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:41:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  You think they can be a useful option for some people.

• 1:41:31Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And I'll give you an example. So for yesterday, I went to the gym in the morning and I had a high protein breakfast, a really good high protein lunch because I was working from home, and a decent dinner. In that context, I didn't need a protein supplement to get to the level that I require, which is 1.6. On a day where I'm rushing around, or perhaps I don't have a Tupperware with my lunch in it, or I had to grab something on the go, there are instances where a protein shake that I make or I take with me might be an appropriate action to ensure that I'm getting protein for my needs.

• 1:42:16Speaker 00

  Those are the sort of nuances that we need to remember. I don't think it's something that we should use as a crutch, but it is like a sticking plaster if you find yourself in a pinch.

• 1:42:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. I mean, that's how I look at supplements in general. Like, I am a fan of supplements, actually.

• 1:42:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  Because I think we can think about ideal. My approach is always food and lifestyle first. But understanding that people are struggling, the soil quality isn't what it was 50 years ago. So are we even getting the same level of nutrients from a piece of broccoli that we were 50 years ago? Probably not. If you're chronically stressed, you're going to release less stomach acid perhaps, and are going to therefore absorb less. So I think all these things are quite useful sometimes for people as a way of navigating this modern world, which frankly is very different from how we've lived for most of our evolution.

• 1:43:09Speaker 00

  Can we just riff on the previous thing you just said there about the absorption of proteins? I think this is very important for your audience, particularly those. Uh, who are peri or postmenopausal and particularly those above the age of 50. Because one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about this is because having, you know, worked on geriatric wards and seeing frail people, I always wondered if there was something that we could do better for folks, particularly as their appetite reduces, but also with this new knowledge that our muscles become less responsive to protein as we age.

• 1:43:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  Anabolic resistance.

• 1:43:46Speaker 00

  Anabolic resistance, exactly. So, uh, what that means is your muscles become less responsive to the same stimuli of amino acids if you consume that through food than when you consume the same meal as a 20-year-old. So you have the less of this muscle protein synthesis stimuli from the same input of amino acids. And if you couple that with a reduction in your gastric acid and your digestibility, so the ability of you to break down those proteins, couple that again with a disruption in your gut microbiota that happens as you age, again with higher rates of inflammation,

• 1:44:26Speaker 00

  you can see that it creates this sort of vicious environment where you see sarcopenia accelerating, which is why you see people who are old and frail and then they fall off a cliff later on in age.

• 1:44:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, and I guess just following up from that, Rupee, if someone's listening and they're concerned about an elderly mother or an elderly parent, right? And your parent doesn't want to eat more food and you're concerned about their protein intake, I think protein powders can be incredible in those scenarios. It's a, it's a simple and maybe an easier to absorb way of getting in the protein for someone who's not getting it in other ways.

• 1:45:07Speaker 00

  Completely agree, and I think-

• 1:45:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  I did it with my mom, when she came out of hospital after her 40 years ago, like, she was getting protein powders every single day, because I was like, no, no, I'm getting it into her.

• 1:45:17Speaker 00

  Absolutely, and that's, that is, I'm so glad you brought up that example, because I think that is a scenario where absolutely a protein powder is necessary and useful.

• 1:45:28Speaker 00

  And should be prescribed. Unfortunately, we have a situation in the NHS where we rely on quite ultra-processed, high-calorie drinks that, you know, I wouldn't give to anyone. And if you have the opportunity to make a protein shake yourself, even in batch and put it in the freezer so you can use it. And you know, it's using minimal ingredients, flavors that you've put in, sweeteners that you understand and you've added yourself with perhaps a micronutrient tablet that you can add yourself from whatever source you like, with some healthy fats, avocado, coconut cream to bolster up their calorie intake because their appetite does go down unfortunately as we age.

• 1:46:11Speaker 00

  These are all things that I think we should be leaning into, absolutely.

• 1:46:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  What's your take on things like collagen and creatine?

• 1:46:18Speaker 00

  I think collagen is a really interesting subject. I haven't seen enough evidence in the human literature to suggest that collagen can improve hair, skin and nails. What collagen is, is very high in certain amino acids, proline, glycine, which are useful for those things, skin, hair and nails. But there isn't human evidence to suggest that it's actually having that effect when you consume it. What it is providing is a good millia of all those different amino acids. You can imagine why we see the anecdotes of people taking collagen and then having these, you know, improvements in skin and hair quality.

• 1:47:01Speaker 00

  Would we see the same effect if they just simply took away or a casein or a plant-based protein powder? Maybe. I haven't seen any studies that compare like and like, but I would say, I, anecdotally, if I had an injury, if I had a sprain or I had, if I had a tendon issue or a ligament injury, I'd probably take it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Without, without clear human evidence, but anecdotes are enough to convince me and the risks of taking collagen are so low, I'd probably take it.

• 1:47:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  To add another layer on there, I don't know if you're familiar with Ellen Langer's work at Harvard or not. I mean, she's brilliant. You know, she's a professor at Harvard and has been studying the power of the mind. On our physiology for decades now. And just to go back to what you said about collagen, right? So you're acknowledging that maybe there isn't enough human evidence. But if you've got an injury, you've seen those anecdotes and you believe that collagen is going to help you. There's a damn good chance that it is.

• 1:48:05Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:48:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  And she's got really good published research on the power of our minds and our expectation of what we take. And its impacts on us. So just, you know, without going down a rabbit hole, I think that's another thing we don't think about enough.

• 1:48:19Speaker 00

  Rangan, I completely agree with you and I need to explore this a lot more on my podcast because I think the power of belief is something that our current models of doing human trials don't appreciate.

• 1:48:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  Exactly.

• 1:48:33Speaker 00

  It blows my mind. I can't fathom like a mechanistic explanation as to how some of these studies are explained. I just don't get it.

• 1:48:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  Well, it's arguably the big elephant in the room.

• 1:48:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  Over the way we do medicine.

• 1:48:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? Now, what do we say? Oh, it's just the placebo effect. Wait, hold on a minute. Maybe saying just the placebo effect is half the problem. Maybe we haven't enough harnessed.

• 1:48:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:49:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  The power of the placebo effects. Okay, so we'll part that there. Creatine is another supplement that's all the rage at the moment. Do you have a perspective on it?

• 1:49:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I've actually recently started taking creatine because I was really convinced by the evidence that it can improve not only strength and power, but potentially it has some brain health benefits and some mood cognitive enhancing benefits as well. And may even reduce the risk of dementia. Creatine, I think, has had, again, a bit of a branding problem over the last few decades as being really in the realm of the bodybuilding community. And so a lot of women have been scared off taking creatine because of this idea that it makes you bulky and it makes you big and it's all about muscle hypertrophy. Where in reality, it improves the health and the function of your muscles that if there's anything that people have learnt from.

• 1:49:56Speaker 00

  Today's conversation is something that we want to rigorously preserve as we get older. And actually, I think this is kind of a good metaphor for the entire book. The reason why I wrote Healthy High Protein is to bring people who are not naturally aligned or interested in protein because of the bodybuilding fitness community wrapper around it, but would actually benefit from some of the information around improving protein intake in their diets from a holistic point of view, a medicine point of view, an immune function point of view, a menopause, a post-menopause point of view.

• 1:50:39Speaker 00

  So creatine, sorry to go back to my point, creatine, one of the most widely studied supplements. I think it's terrible for most people and I think you can tolerate 3.5 grams as a minimum. I'm currently taking 10 grams. I don't know if you take creatine or interested or yeah. That's, that's my take on creatine.

• 1:51:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  Ripley, it's always fun chatting to you. Honestly, I think this has been so insightful. I'm sure there's plenty for people to take. Genuinely, I think your new book is the best one yet. Okay. I think the writing's great. The recipes are great. Healthy, high protein. Supercharge your energy, feel stronger and live longer. Who wouldn't want that? Okay. To finish off, and maybe this will summarize elements that we've already discussed. But for that person who has had a realization today whilst listening that actually, I'm not eating enough protein, what would you say to them?

• 1:51:43Speaker 00

  I would say, first thing is try and get an idea of what your number is. I'm not someone who is recommending people fastidiously measure their macronutrients and weigh their food. I think that's a very detrimental and destructive behavior that I can, I can see leading to eating disorders and an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. But having an idea of what your protein requirements are every single day is something that, that many people would benefit from. And being a good guestimator of what protein is in your food that you're eating is something that you can learn through the book as well. So I'd say number one, know your number.

• 1:52:26Speaker 00

  Number two, think about breakfast protein. This is the meal that people tend to under consume protein in. And that sets you up for the rest of the day. And I would say if you are omnivore, you're in a great position because you get the opportunity to layer in all the different types of proteins with animal based proteins. So you're going to very easily hit those numbers whilst also answering those three questions positively. Getting enough protein, supporting your gut health and making sure that your overall dietary pattern is anti-inflammatory.

• 1:53:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  Rupy, always fun chatting to you. It's a great book. That's coming back on the show.

• 1:53:12Speaker 00

  Thank you, man. Appreciate you.

• 1:53:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday 5. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email, I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I've been consuming and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect.

• 1:54:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I have to say, in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something you would like to receive each and every Friday, you can sign up for free at drchatge.com/friday5. Now, if you are new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that I have written five books that have been bestsellers all over the world, covering all kinds of different topics, happiness, food, stress, sleep, behaviour change and movement, weight loss and so much more. So please do take a moment to check them out. They are all available as paperbacks, ebooks and as audiobooks, which I am narrating.

• 1:54:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  If you enjoyed today's episode, it is always appreciated if you can take a moment to share the podcast with your friends and family, or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. And please note that if you want to listen to this show without any adverts at all, that option is now available for a small monthly fee on Apple and on Android. All you have to do is click the link in the episode notes in your podcast app. And always remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle change is always worth it, because when you feel better, you live more.