Is the Protein RDA Too Low for You? What 40 Years of Studies Show - Dr. Don Layman & Dr. Heather Leidy | GLS #214

**Dr. Donald K. Layman** (0:00)
The previous dietary guidelines over the last 20 years have progressively diluted out the protein.

**Dr. Heather Leidy** (0:07)
People think it's this big shift that we're eating far more protein, and it isn't. It's always been there. It just has been overlooked, and people aren't consuming it. And now we're just bringing attention back to the idea of starting your diet, your meal, with protein.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:21)
The dietary guidelines, again, it remains very controversial. You did FMRI studies. What did that show?

**Dr. Heather Leidy** (0:27)
That when they had a breakfast that was higher in protein, their food cravings were blunted. Those that were eating a higher protein breakfast, they actually performed better on those cognitive function tests compared to the kids at skip breakfast.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:38)
All three of us agree that the idea of approaching forward-facing, but they had proteinificationized, I just made that word up, my popcorn, as well as almost everything else I'm seeing. Now we've got this added protein and everything.

**Dr. Donald K. Layman** (0:52)
If it looks like fairy dust, it probably isn't very useful. For it, being a meaningful protein is 10 grams. If it has less than 10 grams in it, you probably shouldn't think of it as a protein food. It's not really going to be beneficial.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:06)
Are dietary guidelines for Americans designed to treat disease, or are they designed for a healthy person?

**Dr. Heather Leidy** (1:16)
Treat and nutrition gets a little tricky, but I would say with these...

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:29)
What's up, friends? I'm Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, and this is a very important episode of the show. Today, we have two world-class protein experts in the house. Dr. Donald Layman never met him before. For those of you that don't know, he's my mentor of 25 years. Dr. Heather Leidy, who is an amazing, amazing scientist also in the protein metabolism space. You're both here today because I enjoy your company primarily, and secondarily, the US government released the new dietary guidelines for Americans that, in my opinion, has been the most significant change that we have ever seen in the dietary guideline history. These dietary guidelines cover 2025 to 2030 We are getting old, and they come out every five years.
Care to discuss the changes and, actually, before that, perhaps your roles, so we can just set the stage.

**Dr. Donald K. Layman** (2:32)
Our role was, as protein experts, we were asked to provide expert input into the HHS staff, who was really putting the guidelines together. So we were officially contractors to the Health and Human Services group.

**Dr. Heather Leidy** (2:52)
Yeah, same. I mean, just for a little bit more visibility, we were contacted much like, and you haven't mentioned it, but I was also on the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee in the past. And so when I was contacted with this, maybe a slightly different interaction on the front end. But it's the same thing. There's experts that get contacted to do certain things. For us, it was, and Don and I independently got contacted.
And we expressed our area of interest, our expertise, and we were asked to develop our own questions about protein. And so what you see that then led into, that informed the 2025 Dietary Guidelines, which is based on questions that Don and I put together, did the scientific review, and then completed our report.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:36)
There seems to be a ton of controversy around this set of guidelines. Any thoughts as to why that is?

**Dr. Donald K. Layman** (3:44)
As you started out, it's a significant change. I think for 45 years, we've had guidelines where the, sort of the fundamental principle evolved from avoiding saturated fat or cholesterol.
I think that these guidelines have re-prioritized the way you think about diets and how you'd structure it. I like to think of them as sort of a decision tree. So before the guidelines were all about what you should avoid, and really aimed at eating a lot more carbohydrates and particularly refined grains. Now we've re-prioritized it toward nutrient-dense protein foods, and then making the rest of your decisions from that. So we've kind of shifted the priority of how you think about putting diets together.

**Dr. Heather Leidy** (4:30)
Yeah, I would just say there's the science part of it that might be the one that has caused the most buzz, but it also could just be the difference in the process. So I think we are just back and forth of knowing really what it is, what has caused the most concern. And so you'll hear the terms transparency. There's a lack of transparency with this. And I would say if you go back to the reports that most people just don't read because they inform the guidelines, there was transparency in that process. There was rigor in the process, but it was different than the previous guidelines. And then when you go back to look at the previous guideline framework, every iteration is a bit different. Sometimes experts are chosen on the front end, they're on the back end, questions are asked by HHS or USDA, sometimes the experts ask the question. And so I think for us, I would say most of the scientific community, where the concern is, is this lack of transparency, where if you go back to the reports, there is a list. The transparency I think happened a little bit later on, whereas the other guidelines, the transparency was very early on. And so everybody understood the timing, there were public meetings. And for this one, that just didn't happen in terms of we didn't have that public interfacing. But the end game, you've said this all the time, the science is still there. The science has come out, it's rigorous. We went through the very similar processes that we always have. So I still am trying to figure out, is it really the recommendations themselves that are creating the bigger concern or is the transparency? And I think it depends on who you ask. I think it's the scientists have one angle, because I've had a number of conversations with them, and that's very different than if you're talking about the pyramid. And the pyramid is in a separate one, right, in terms of what do we think about the pyramid? So I think that's just something we have to wrestle with, because there's two things that are playing into this.