Carbs vs. Protein: Which Macronutrient Is Actually More Dangerous to Overconsume?

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:00)
The biggest mistakes that people over 40 make when it comes to body composition. Are you ready? Americans right out the gate have a calorie problem. We are over consuming total calories. The average American consumes about 300 grams of carbs daily. This will distort metabolism. 75% of Americans are either overweight or obese. We are exposed and have access to cheap processed carbohydrates that we haven't had before. How do we structure a meal plan and really understand our bodies and the environment that we're in will allow us to succeed? 95% of Americans are over consuming refined grains and 80 to 90% of Americans are under consuming fruits and vegetables.
Understanding your carbohydrate tolerance is probably one of the most important things that you can do to empower your own nutrition plan. A lot of the information out there is very clear on protein. Carbohydrates, there are things that we are beginning to learn that can reframe how we orient ourselves to carbohydrates.

**Nick Barringer** (1:12)
Where can you consume the minimum amount of calories to get the maximum amount of protein?

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:16)
Are you ready?

**Nick Barringer** (1:17)
I'm taking notes.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:18)
Okay.

**Nick Barringer** (1:26)
Based on metabolic science, which one is actually more dangerous for the average person to overconsume? Carbs or protein?

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:33)
Sounds like a trick question, it's not. It's carbohydrates, and let's talk about why. Let's base this answer in reality versus a theoretical construct. Nick, I think this is very important. First of all, Americans right out the gate have a calorie problem. We are overconsuming total calories, and 75% of Americans are either overweight or obese, which is staggering. 12%, almost 12% have type 2 diabetes. This is according to the CDC. Obesity is definitely a problem, and it's a problem of excess calories. Thinking about what kind of calories are causing this problem, I would argue it's a dysregulation of carbohydrates.
And let's just look at what Americans are eating. So the primary source of calories in the US is carbohydrates, and they provide about 50% of daily calories. And of course, we know that it's not fruits and vegetables. Do you know the number one food ingested?

**Nick Barringer** (2:40)
Carbohydrate food? Yeah. I'm going to go with chips.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (2:42)
Okay. So I've got some numbers here, and this is based on data set and Hanes. The top food categories for dietary energy are the following. Cookies, cakes, pastries. And this is about, this says here, 7.2% of daily calories.

**Nick Barringer** (3:02)
I can see that.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:03)
Yeast breads, 7.1%.
Sugar added soft drinks. People are still drinking this. 5.4% and 40% from high-fructose corn syrup goods, like the following. Crackers, pretzels and chips.

**Nick Barringer** (3:20)
So chips were down on this. Cookies beat chips.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:24)
The categories of high-carbohydrate foods provide nearly 30% of our daily calories, with the majority coming from refined grains. And your original question is, which is more detrimental? Is it carbohydrates or protein, and why? Now, you and I right out the gate were talking about carbohydrate disposal.

**Nick Barringer** (3:48)
Yes.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:50)
And I made a statement saying that anything above 40 grams of carbohydrates, and to be clear, I'm not talking about fruits and vegetables. I'm talking about those highly, exactly, these highly processed, highly calorically dense foods. The average American consumes about 300 grams of carbs daily. If we were to break that down into a meal, that would be three oral glucose tolerance tests a day.

**Nick Barringer** (4:20)
Yuck.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (4:21)
Carbicide. That is fully carbicide. If we were to think about the average American eating a hundred grams of carbohydrates per meal, this will distort metabolism. And here is why I did not make up this number, despite what you see on social media, because there was some situations out there, we have to understand this being very taken out of context, but glucose is an important fuel for most cells in the body. There's, it's an obligatory fuel for brain, red blood cells, and the kidney cortex. We can agree upon that.

**Nick Barringer** (4:53)
Yes.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (4:53)
However, the three tissues combined use approximately, are you ready for this? I mean, you probably know this, 80 to 100 grams of glucose daily, which translates into approximately 4 grams per hour.

**Nick Barringer** (5:05)
That's not a lot.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (5:05)
No. And if you have a small brain, if 4 grams per hour with the brain accounting for the majority of the use, we're in trouble. When you consume more than 40 grams and you are sedentary, then you begin to rely on other mechanisms like insulin, which should be not used, meaning we shouldn't rely on insulin for every meal because from my perspective, it's more of a fail-safe mechanism, but it is not what we should be doing.