- Welcome back everybody to the Building Lifelong Athletes podcast. I'm your host, Jordan Renke. Thanks so much for stopping by. If you've never been here before, the goal of this podcast help keep you active and healthy for life through actionable evidence informed education. Today we're doing another dive into literature, so let's get started. All right, so let's dive into the first article. It is titled, Exploring the Longitudinal Association Between Stress and Unhealthy Eating Behaviors. And this is done in the Netherlands. And specifically here, we're looking at university students. And you know that university students at your college, they experienced a lot of stress due to new environments, right? New academic demands, social changes. They don't have their support system anymore. They have harder classes, lots of things going on, and that can be very stressful. And long-term stress can lead to negative coping mechanisms like unhealthy eating. Those are the things we're looking at here. And the purpose of the study, well, the purpose was to understand how prolonged stress influences unhealthy eating behaviors over a period of time. And they also wanted to look at factors like if physical activity, BMI, and loneliness played a role into monitoring these associations. And they're trying to figure out, there's kind of a gap in research on stress and eating behaviors in young adults. And so specifically, that's what they're looking at. From a background perspective, previous research, there are cross-sectional studies that have shown a link between stress and unhealthy eating with individuals often consuming more high fat and sugary food than are stressed, right? That just seems to be our experiences. Like when you're feeling bad, you just wanna grab something, you just wanna grab something that's terrible. And eat it, that's just what it goes. The evidence though, however, for a longitudinal link in terms of how stress over time affects eating habits is less established. And we don't really know. And not all individuals react the same to stress, right? Some eat more, some eat less, some make no changes. So that's what we're looking for. And here specifically, they're looking at specific moderating factors, right? So physical activity. Can physical activity mitigate stress-related eating by enhancing physiologic satiety and emotional regulation? That's one question. The idea is that those people who had an elevated BMI that they had when you exercise, it helped better in terms of decreasing your amount of eating. That's what their idea is. And also BMI, individuals with a higher BMI are more prone to stress eating due to impaired inhibitory control. Those are what we're looking to. And it kind of leads to this vicious cycle. And they're also worried about, hey, does loneliness play impact on that as well? So previous data has also shown that social isolation can exacerbate stress and lead to unhealthy eating as a coping mechanisms. And 30 to 40% of college students complain of some sort of loneliness. So they're saying, hey, does loneliness, does BMI, does physical activity, do those things which we've seen previously in data can play a role with satiety and eating, do those affect these college students as well? And moving on to their objective and hypotheses of the study, the primary objective was to examine if prolonged stress in university students is associated with increased unhealthy eating behaviors over time. And specifically, they looked in their specific hypotheses, stress at time one or T1, they thought it'd be positively associated with unhealthy eating at time two, which is later, about six months later. So they're saying, hey, stress here early, six months later will still affect you. And on top of that, for physical activity, they thought that physical activity will buffer the association between stress and unhealthy eating, meaning that if you exercise more, we are less likely to have poor eating habits in the future. And then on top of that, they also thought that the buffering effect of physical activity will be stronger for students with a higher BMI or with greater loneliness and seeing better outcomes, saying, hey, if you exercise or that's gonna help you if you have a higher BMI or if you're more lonely, that's gonna be there. And so we're kind of seeing, hey, how do these relationships all affect their together? That's what they're mainly looking at here. For the methods, this was a longitudinal survey study with two time points, like I mentioned, T1 and T2 about six months apart. And participants here, there were about a little over 1300 university students and from Redbound University. And demographics wise, predominantly female, average about 22 years old and inclusion criteria ensured that participants were between 19 and 30. So that's the average, but overall skewed a little younger. And for measures, what they did is they gave a bunch of surveys, right? So they gave someone called the sweet and savory snack intake, which is an adaptation of a food frequency questionnaire, kind of if you have a higher score indicates higher intake of sweet and savory snacks. We also measured uncontrolled eating using three items from the loss of control overeating scale. So once again, scale and then stress, gave another survey, 10 item perceived stress scale, seeing what's going on in physical activity. They measured that using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire, short form, long story short, they did that for loneliness as well too. So they just gave a bunch of surveys, a bunch of surveys, they hang what's going on, so they didn't measure anything necessarily. And they kind of ran a correlation analysis first. So what did they see? Well, they found with stress and eating behavior, there was a significant correlation, stress at time one was significantly correlated with uncontrolled eating at T2. So uncontrolled eating there. However, stress was not correlated with sweet or savory intake at T1 or T2. So what they're saying is, hey, they found stress at the first time point to be associated with uncontrolled eating, but not necessarily with sweet or savory snack intake. So just something to mention there. And then physical activity wise, physical activity at the first time point was negatively associated with stress and uncontrolled eating at time two, particularly in those with higher BMI. So what that means in English is, the higher physical activity was linked to less stress. So that kind of makes sense that intuitively know that people who are exercising more tend to have less stress. However, we didn't find an association between physical activity and sweet or savory snack intake. So that's our association kind of analysis there. Now, moving on to the regression analysis, this kind of brings in a little bit. The way I think about it is that we kind of have the correlation analysis and now we have the regression analysis. In short, correlation, the analysis they're looking at whether two variables are related, meaning, hey, is there some sort of signal to this noise? While the regression analysis determines if one variable can predict or explain changes in another, and the regression kind of can control for more factors is the way I think about making it a more detailed exam of the relationship between these different variables. And so we're looking at the same outcomes just with now kind of a little tighter window. And for stress and uncontrolled eating, what they found was that the regression analysis did show that higher stress at T1 was linked to greater uncontrolled eating at T2, just like we saw previously. And they found no association again with snack intake. So stress at the first time point was not linked to changes with sweet or savory snack intake at T2. And then physical activity wise, there was no significant moderation of physical activity. So physical activity did not buffer the relationship between stress and unhealthy eating behaviors and suggest that physical activity may not actually universally protect against stress induced eating. So really the big findings that they found was that, yes, they did show that you had issues with uncontrolled eating. It didn't lead to an increased snack necessarily and physical activity didn't really buffer it. And then there's an interaction analysis as well. And what this interaction analysis does, it helps researchers examine how multiple variables work together to influence some sort of outcome rather than looking at just two factors in isolation. And so there's kind of this two way interaction, right? So a significant interaction between physical activity and BMI was found for uncontrolled eating. Meaning that physical activity reduced uncontrolled eating only in those with a higher BMI, indicating this kind of subgroup specific benefit, meaning, hey, the people who were in this group would hire BMI who exercise, that seemed to be helpful with reducing uncontrolled eating. And that's really all they saw. And then there was a three way interaction as well where they found no significant three way interactions between physical activity, BMI, loneliness at all. And so physical activity did not appear to mitigate stress related to eating differently based on loneliness. So it was really only BMI in those who had an elevated BMI. And so from a discussion key findings perspective, stress and uncontrolled eating, stress was associated with a greater likelihood of uncontrolled eating, but not with an increase intake of snacks. So you might be like, well, what does that mean? That's what they found is kind of interesting that maybe uncontrolled eating doesn't necessarily mean you're snacking more, just eating more of the things that you're eating. That's kind of what we're thinking. And in terms of physical activity, physical activity did not buffer the effects of stress on snack intake or uncontrolled eating in the general population. However, individuals with a higher BMI did benefit from increased activity in terms of reduced uncontrolled eating. So the implications of this is that stress may specifically affect the ability to control eating rather than the frequency of unhealthy snack consumption. Meaning you're not eating more snacks, just like when you're eating, you're eating more. And so also we need to consider that tailored dimensions that consider BMI may be effective in managing stress-related eating as we saw that kind of BMI does have relationship with that. And what are the limitations in future research? Well, limitations, smaller sample size, very specific, skewed, mostly female, also self-reported measures, right? So lots of bias in reporting eating habits, physical activity and stress levels. I think that's it. Measurement of snack was only registered for number of days, not total snacks. And so you're saying, okay, maybe if one day you had a really good day, but then the other day you ate like a thousand bags of chips, well, that could skew the numbers. So they could just be housing snacks, but the same number of days, so it looks no different. So normally I snack on these days, but then if it's this day you're eating way more, that wouldn't account for it in these surveys. And then for baseline data, there was no baseline measure of uncontrolled eating, limiting kind of conclusions on what we see. And overall, as I mentioned, this is from a Dutch university, so a pretty homogenous sample of these students, limits the generalizability to other populations. And hopefully in the future, we can have more diverse populations to look at the implications of stress and eating, all that stuff, and that's kind of the thing. So, but in summary, from a conclusion standpoint, the study demonstrates that prolonged stress in university students is associated with increased uncontrolled eating behaviors, but not with general snack intake. And physical activity, while it did moderate stress-related snack intake, it was associated with reduced uncontrolled eating only in those with a higher BMI. And so the implications really is that for interventions wise, we just think about, you know, what are the characteristics that we can look for, right? So many patients with higher BMI to effectively target stress-related eating issues. That's something we can think about. And at the end of the day, I think this is just a cool example. We know that when you're stressed, you tend to eat, right? And most people think it's chips and pizzas and whatever, and it might be, and who knows, that's just standard, you know, everyone's diet these days. But this article showed specifically that when we're under stress, it may increase the amount of food you're eating, not necessarily the snacking that you're doing. Not perfect, but I think it was a cool study to look at and just kind of understand that, hey, when we're stressed, sometimes out of our control, even subconsciously, it affects our dietary habits. And that's really like the big takeaway from this, is that, hey, when you're stressed, things can happen. It's just harder to stay on track, right? If you're stressed out, you just wanna relax, lay down, go sit on the couch, eat some food, I get that. And so that's just one point to look at that even subconsciously we might be looking at and eating more than we were thinking about. So that's something we wanna consider. And that's why I thought this article is interesting. Now we're gonna move on to our next article, which is looking at protein timing and muscle gain. So let's dive in. The title of this article is "Timing Matters, the effects of protein intake timing on resistance training outcomes." The main author here is Lack et al., and this was published in 2024 in Frontiers of Nutrition. And so let's dive in here. So introduction-wise, resistance training, combined with sufficient protein intake, is essential for growing muscles, for hypertrophy and for also strength. But there's also lots of training variables, like volume, intensity, and frequency to optimize muscle growth. However, there's different protein intake variables as well, meaning the total daily protein intake, protein distribution throughout the day, the timing relative to exercise, all these things that people pontificate about all the time on the internet. But however, the current consensus is that anything up to about 1.6 grams per kilogram per day has effects, and anything above that doesn't really lead to better gains in hypertrophy or strength, specifically hypertrophy we're looking at here. But about 1.6 grams per kilogram per day, that's what you'll see everyone online talking about, "We gotta get that, we gotta get that." It doesn't necessarily show you have to get there. They're saying when you get to above that, doesn't necessarily have better improvements. And so you can actually have less than that still make gains, that's kind of a nuance there, but that's what we're looking at here. And the study here, we've had previous studies that have provided mixed results regarding the optimal timing of protein intake for hypertrophy. Existing meta-analyses showed inconsistent findings due to lack of controls or different methodologies. And what they do is they'd give one group protein, but didn't give the same amount to anyone else or any protein at all to the control group. So it was kind of difficult. So the whole goal of this study was to compare the effects of immediate versus delayed, meaning right after exercise or three hours before after exercise. So they're immediate versus delayed protein intake on body composition and performance in resistance-trained males. So moving to the methods, the participants here, we have 40 resistance-trained males. So they've on average been exercising for a while. They're used to this. They're about 24 plus or minus four years. They train three or more times per week for a year. So they've been lifting for a while here. They can't use steroids or any other supplements, no medical issues, and they have consistent sleep. And their protein intake currently is less than two grams per kilogram per day. And in the final sample, he's supposed to have 40, we got 31. That's what happens because we had a couple of dropouts. And this was a randomized control trial. So this is kind of our gold standard here. The participants were divided into two groups. One was the immediate protein intake group. So pre and post exercise, they pretty much had protein right before and right after exercise. And then we had the delayed protein intake group, which took protein three hours before and after exercise. And from a protein supplementation, the participants consumed about two grams per kilogram per day with 50 grams as whey protein concentrate during the training days. And we've had a bunch of things measured on them. Body composition, they're looking at skeletal mass, fat mass, and BMI. They looked at performance metrics like strength, specifically one rep max endurance, vertical jump height, and Australian pull-ups were essentially inverted rows. When I saw Australian pull-ups, I was like, "What are those? They're inverted rows." They looked at biochemical markers as well, looking at liver function, things like AST, ALT, GGT, which we've talked about before, kidney markers, creatinine, urea, and lipid profile, HDL, LDL, cholesterol. So they looked at a bunch of different things. Specifically, how did they randomize? So they used something called a block randomization approach. And that was to ensure that we had a balanced distribution. A match pair design was implemented based on baseline skeletal muscle mass. So what they kind of did is they kind of matched people. So you had a baseline skeletal mass, we want you to be compared to the other person who's kind of similar. So they really kind of went far into this thing. It wasn't just like this group, that group, they kind of got granular with it as well, which is kind of cool. And from a training program perspective, I also thought this was really cool. They did a nonlinear periodization model, and they had about four or five resistance training sessions per week, depending on their history and whatnot. So the four-day protocol had an upper and lower body focus. This was given to people who generally did, before the study, less than 20 sets per week. And then they had a five-day protocol, which added an additional upper body training day for participants with higher training volume. So if they had greater than 20 sets per week, they were at their baseline, they're not. I think this is really cool. The program design was subject specific, and that's awesome. We need more of this. A generic program that's given to someone maybe way too much or too little for someone, and this kind of gives the opportunity to get the best shot at getting results, 'cause that's really what we want, right? And in this program, we did about eight to 15 reps with a RIR, so reps in reserve of one to two for each set. So they're definitely working hard there, right? The end of each set, you're getting one or too many of only one or two reps left in the tank. That's working pretty hard. And it was supervised by a certified strength and conditioning specialist to make sure that everything was going on there. And then the protein supplement protocol, participants consumed whey protein concentrate. They gave 25 grams pre and 25 grams post, and the timing of it was the big factor we're looking at, right? So non-training days though, so that was on training days, non-training days, protein intake derived from dietary sources with guidance from a dietician. And they tried to eat about four to seven times per day with 20 to 40 grams of protein per meal to optimize muscle protein synthesis. So a pretty well thought out study. I think it's a pretty cool looking through it, trying to compare people, and yeah, overall it was really cool. So I think they, what they, you know, body composition wise, what do they do for that? They took measurements to the body composition pre and post, they used bioelectrical impedance. They used a specific, you know, machine there to look at, skeletal muscle mass, fat-free mass, and BMI. And overall, you know, this is one of those things where biological impedance is where you use electricity to kind of run through and estimate what's going on. And they step on this machine and you have to be, you know, hydrated, fasted overnight, all that stuff, avoiding caffeine, alcohol, all that stuff. And overall, bioelectrical impedance is relatively high reliability, but it's not quite the gold standard like a DEX is. But at the end of the day, this is what they use, so it's what we got. From a strength and performance assessment, the maximal strength, they did a one-rep max test for leg press and chest press following, just kind of general NSCA, so National Strength and Conditioning Association guidelines. Participants underwent familiarization with the testing protocols, and they made sure they're feeling good about the leg press and chest press, and then they did it. And then they also did a muscular endurance test, which conducted using the leg press and chest press machine at about 75% of what their one-rep max was to assess their endurance capacity. They kind of did as many as they possibly could. And then they did maximum reps until technical failure. And then they also tested a couple other things like vertical jump height, and then the Australian pull-ups is what we mentioned. For blood tests, they also did a bunch of different things, as I mentioned before, taking pre and post intervention after fasting, markers were analyzed, and we mentioned the ones we got before. So moving on to the results here. Results, the 31 participants completed the eight-week intervention. The baseline characteristics were comparable between groups with no significant differences. From a body composition changes for skeletal muscle mass increased significantly in both groups in both the immediate and delayed protein intake. For fat mass and BMI, there were no significant changes observed. Biochemical markers, urea levels increased significantly in both groups because increased protein metabolism. So urea is a classic thing you'll see on labs for people who are out of protein, urea numbers will be up. They observed no significant changes though in the markers. From a muscular performance perspective, strength gains, there were significant improvements in leg press and chest press in both groups. And endurance performance, there were significant increases in Australian pull-ups while other metrics remained stable. Next, let's talk about training volumes. So both groups showed similar training volume throughout the intervention with no significant time or group interactions. For my protein intake and dietary assessment compliance, the protein intake increased significantly in both groups reaching that targeted two grams per kilogram per day. Carbohydrate and fat, they were maintained within acceptable micronutrient ranges. They say, "Hey, keep your macros relatively good. There's kind of a range of what you could get for your carbs and fat." And they kept it there. And it was monitored throughout the whole study with a dietician and food tracking apps as well. And the key findings here, there was no significant difference between immediate and delayed protein intake. And the main conclusion here is that total daily protein intake is the most critical factor for muscle growth regardless of intake timing. And the implications for this is that this kind of supports that the idea that the, the quote unquote anabog window is broader than we previously thought, right? Lasting several hours. So you don't need to slam down a protein shake immediately. And it seems like training adherence and consistency of protein intake and your physical fitness and lifting, those things were key drivers of muscle hypertrophy and performance. So sticking to a program, getting enough protein in general, that's the biggest thing. And I think this is cool with, you know, a lot of times people think of, you know, you see people drinking the protein shakes while they're working out or right after you have to have it. And that's not wrong. You can definitely do that, but it just goes to show here, you can be more flexible than that. You have a bigger window of the anabolic window, so you don't have to run home and slam a protein shake necessarily right away. There were some limitations. Obviously this is only an eight week study. May not capture long-term differences. They did use bioelectrical impedance, like I mentioned before, instead of DEXA. So we could have maybe some slight body composition change that we couldn't quite pick up. But the fact that we use the same thing for both, it makes it feel better about that. There was some variability between participants. There's differences maybe in their training history, fitness level and genetics could all affect things as well. And kind of going into conclusions though, is high protein diets, significantly enhanced muscle performance and skeletal muscle mass and resistance trained males irrespective of timing. And big takeaway from here is focus on achieving sufficient daily protein intake rather than stressing over precise timing. And how does this change anything for me? Like this is already on my radar, kind of it's what I've been seeing in the literature. And so nothing really groundbreaking. However, it's just another piece of evidence that hyper-optimization is necessary. Get enough protein and you'll be good enough. By far and away, the most important point is to intake enough protein throughout the day. That's the biggest thing and train hard, right? That's the biggest thing. These people trained hard. It was RII one to two, meaning one or two reps in reserve. They're going hard in their sets. This isn't just, "Hey, doing a couple there." If you want to have these gains, then you have to push it. And that's really what the big thing is. And it's really not that hard. That's the biggest thing. That's why I really like this study. And I'm glad that my biases are being confirmed once again. I know it's bad, but obviously I'll change my mind if things come up. But really like hyper-optimization of everything is just really not that important. Unless you're like an elite athlete. If you're an elite athlete where every single thing matters and that can be your edge and that can get you a million dollar contract, I get that. Then, hey, we got to nerd out. But here it's like, hey, I want to get stronger and I want to get bigger. Okay, what does it say? Work hard, lift heavy things, get enough protein throughout your day. Like that's really what it comes down to. It's that simple. Worrying about perfect this and perfect diet and perfect supplement this and there. Like that's not necessary. I think the data keeps continuing to show that. That just be consistent in your training and consistent with what you eat and you should be good. And going forward, I'd love to see more of this just to kind of corroborate it or maybe call it into question. I'm not sure. I'd love to see though the impact of protein timing in different populations, whether that's older adults or untrained individuals. And then it'd be cool if we did this study with the index. I think it could be helpful. But overall, I thought this was a really cool study. Once again, I like to reiterate and I wanted this to portray to people listening that, hey, focus on the big things, right? Let's talk about big rocks all the time. Big rocks are nutrition and resistance training when it comes to hypertrophy and strength. Do the big things. Don't worry about the small things and you'll be good. For our next article, we're gonna talk about trust. So trust of the public of nutritional information. So let's dive in. So this topic that we're gonna talk about, the title is called brief overview of the survey conducted by the International Food Information Council. So this is kind of a outline. It's not necessarily a formal research study, but this is what they found this IFIC, this International Food Information Council did this survey. And this is what we're discussing. It explores the trust in food and nutrition science among US adults. And the survey aimed to understand the public's attitude towards the science of food and nutrition, recognizing the importance of trust in shaping adherence to dietary policies. So that's what we're looking at here. And so let's dive into the survey methodology. This was a survey done in July, 2024 with about a thousand US adults age 18 or older. And the results were weighted to make sure represented the US accurately. And they did fine with their stats. They were within their confidence intervals and there's a good representation of the United States. But that's the methodology, only 1000 people, but still be kind of cool. Here's kind of some key out, key findings. The key findings about trust in food nutrition is that 38% of Americans report strong trust. So that's either between eight and 10 on a zero 10 scale in food, nutrition and diet science. So 38% of people have strong trust. 21% are ambivalent and 12% express distrust. And 53% of those who with lower trust say that they'd be more willing to change their diets if they had more confidence in nutrition science. And quite honestly, I have no code to make of that. So pretty much half the people who don't have any trust in science would pretty much do nothing ever. Even if the science got better, they wouldn't change their diet. So that's kind of interesting to me. People who had no trust, half of those people said, "Yeah, it doesn't matter. "It doesn't matter. "Nothing you can do is gonna get me changed." And that's America. That is like literally America in a nutshell. It's just like, yeah, you can do whatever you want, but I'm not gonna believe it. And so that's fantastic. And that's very not helpful, but fortunately that's still a smaller percentage of people. And these are the people we call in the pre-contemplation stage of change, right? Behavior change, there's different stages. And pre-contemplation means like, hey, I'm not ready to change yet. And that's okay. It takes multiple passes to get there there, but that's where we're at. And next let's talk about who Americans trust for food information. And the most trusted sources of food information are food and nutrition scientists. So 55% of people saw that, followed by medical doctors and nurses, 51%, and then registered dieticians, 41%. Honestly, this surprised me. Mainly because people think doctors are good advice for nutrition. That's to me, and I'm a physician, right? So that's me. We as physicians get literally like six lectures on nutrition and it's all like biochemistry. Like, hey, how do you process this? Like what, you know, in the urea cycle, like all these like biochemical mechanisms that's like nutrition, that's what we get. Is literally it was like probably maybe a week on that is where we were. And we don't get anything on behavior change or counseling on diet. Everything I know is because I've spent countless hours being a nerd and learning on my own. So like you're running the middle doctor and once again, I'm not saying like, oh, look, it's me. I am not, I'm just saying this is like a nerdy hobby of mine and I've gone on the rabbit hole. But if you don't do that, then it's gonna be tough. Like everything I know is because it's just been something I've learned on my own, outside on my own time. And so if you're a standard doctor here is not gonna do that. And I'm not saying that they're wrong, right? I'm not saying nutrition advice, this shouldn't be our field necessarily. I think we have a really unique impact as primary care physicians to be like, hey, be able to counsel people and say, hey, this is what we should consider, this is what we look for. So I want that 'cause I want that as part of my practice and be able to counsel on that. But it's not necessarily everybody's bread and butter or thing they wanna do. So just understanding that your mileage may vary drastically between physicians. On top of that, people mentioned that about 29% of people trusted their family and friends, that was a big thing. So family and friends, 29%. They trust them more than government agencies and media outlets like television and news and newspapers. And so people trust family and friends more. And 66% of Americans would trust food advice if it came from registered dietician, that's cool. But then, and then on top of that, 64% said they would trust it if it cites scientific evidence. And then 59% would trust it if it were easy to follow. And then 26% of people say that they'd be more likely to trust information if it shocks or scares them or if it's shared widely on social media. So we'll just step back there a couple of different things is that 66% of people said they trusted if it comes from dietician, 64 if they had a scientific evidence, 59 would trust it if it were easy to follow, but then 26 per se, they're more likely to trust information if it shocks or scares them or it's on social media. I think this is, I honestly think that's so like understated, like completely understated. It just shows that people place the most trust in individuals they know or professionals rather than government or media sources. So people you know, very, very important. And then the whole shocking on social media thing that honestly that was shocking to me that it was that low. Social media is nothing but just scare tactics, right? I should title this something. You're gonna die if you do this. And then people click on it, right? And I get it, you get the, have to get the click to some people see, they can't see information and get the click, but trying to scare people seems to work. And that's, you know, even a quarter of people when they're scared, they seem to improve there. So their knowledge in terms of the things they would trust. And so I thought that was terrifying and scary, but overall that was still a minority, which is good. And then dietary recommendations. Overall, the public perception of these changing dietary recommendations is not great. About 79% of Americans believe that food recommendations are always changing, leading to feelings of confusion, frustration, doubt, and distress. And I get why people think like this, but I don't think it's really true. And hear me out. I know sometimes things will shift. It's first of all, they're talking about, people think that overall big governing bodies and huge body research like that has been changing all the time. That's not what's happening. What they're hearing is multiple things on social media. Hearing this person talk about keto, this person talk about carnivore, this person talk about vegan, this person talk about intermittent fasting, whatever. Like they hear all of these different things by the media and by random people. And by that, they're conflating saying, hey, the recommendations are changing. Recommendations have not changed that much. They've shifted for sure. Obviously we know the food plate back in the day to my plate, but that's a slow and gradual change here in America. I think what people are talking about is just hearing the conflicting information back and forth. Overall, the general things that people have recommended for a long, long time have not changed. Yeah, we've changed a little bit on the idea of, cholesterol intake or fat intake, maybe specifically not demonizing all fats, but really up in the day, like we didn't go from, hey, like fruits and vegetables and whole greens and legumes to just something drastically different. That's not the case. So that's not really changing, but the perception is, and perception is reality, right? If people think that it's moving all the time, that's what we have to think about. However, though, on a positive note, 35% of respondents feel curious and 14% feel inspired by these changes. Meaning, hey, even from all this stuff, people can feel inspired. And the constantly shifting landscape of dietary advice does create an emotional burden for many, making clear and consistent guidance from professionals even more crucial. And then moving on to then trust. Trust for people, I thought this was super interesting. Trust in university-based science and scientists is the highest with about 49% net trust score compared to about 38% for scientists from the food industry and 25% from government. And so government scientists have the least amount of trust from people, which is interesting. And mixed teams of scientists in academia, industry and government have a trust of about 39%. And overall this indicates that the public values that perceived independence and credibility of academic institutions over other sectors, right? I think that kind of makes sense, right? If you are not funded by someone, you have less bias to there. And I do wanna step back though, just because someone receives funding from something does not inherently make their data to be biased. That's not the case, right? You know, you're getting funded, that's the key. And I understand that and you're publishing it. So I understand why people think that, but it's not necessarily that everybody who's, you know, had a study funded by something is doing something bad. Just kind of step back. But the public is generally that they trust academic scientists the most. And so what are the implications, right? How long-term health implications for professionals and overall as a health professionals, like we do play a pivotal role in communicating clear evidence-based nutrition advice to the public. That's important. And the public is more likely to trust advice that is simple and easy to follow and backed by scientific evidence. So shock-based or sensationalist advice is less trusted, although there's still a population that is, but it does indicate that we need, have measured reliable communication and we have to continue to collaborate with nutrition scientists and registered dieticians to make sure we're presenting a consistent unified message. You know, for me, as I said before, my dietary approach is flexible and meaning, hey, whatever works for you is gonna be where we're going with. And it's not just like what you think, right? Hey, like, I think this is fine. Like, no, we look at your markers, right? We look at your body composition and we look at your lipids, your blood pressure, your everything. We look at everything and build this picture. And if it's not going in the direction we want, and then that diet's probably not for you, we can alternate and move there. But I think there's just so many examples and data showing that you can do many, many things that there's not necessarily one correct way. And then moving on here to engaging it, public engagement with food and nutritional information. I thought it was kind of interesting that 52% of Americans are involved in private social media groups focused on food and nutrition with varying levels of activity. And 39% of respondents who notice social media headlines about food and nutrition search for more information about that online. So, you know, 52% of people are just in dedicated groups. And then of those people, only 39% dig deeper. And so what that's telling me is people see headlines and the minority of them go and research further, right? They just say, "Hey, like I see this headline, it must be true." And the digital space is growing, right? And shaping public food knowledge and highlights the importance of once again, incredible science-based information being available online. But the really big take home that I get from this is that people are seeing headlines, not doing any additional deep dive. And that's, we hear it all the time, like, "Hey, I saw this study, like, did you see the study or did you see a headline of the study?" Or someone on social media. And, you know, a lot of times even the headlines people produce are more click-baity than the actual research. And I'm not blasting the research at all, but yeah, we just, people aren't reading things or going deep at all. And so conclusion-wise, at the end of the day, trust in food and nutrition science is really important for improving dietary behaviors and public health outcomes. And we're trying to, you know, combat misinformation the best we can by providing consistent, clear evidence-backed education. And, you know, really when we step back as professionals, we can try to be clear in our communication. That's my biggest thing. And I think that I've learned from this and takeaway for me is, "Hey, how can I be clear in what I believe?" And to be clear here, I'll just say, to be clear, I don't think there's one perfect diet. I think there's lots of similar characteristics. It's gonna be a minimally processed diet eating predominantly whole foods, and that keeps you in a caloric balance. That's like, really, if I had to explain my nutritional dogma, that's like what it is. It's like, that's the big overarching goal is to keep you in a caloric balance and you eat unprocessed foods that are just food. That's the big thing there. And there's multiple ways to do it and ongoing from there, but that's my takeaway. So that's my, hopefully, my clear advice to people. But overall, nutrition science, it makes sense that we're all over the place because nobody trusts anybody. They don't trust media. They don't know who to believe. They believe they're friends. There's a whole lot going on there, but I thought it was an interesting topic at least to talk about. And that's gonna conclude our podcast today. Thanks so much for stopping by. Really appreciate it. If you enjoyed this, it'd mean the world to me if you gave us a five-star review on your podcast, Player of Choice, or if you shared it with someone. I think sharing with someone is the greatest compliment you can give me, and we'd really appreciate that. But we're done for today. Now get off your phone, get outside, and we'll see you next time. Disclaimer, this podcast is for entertainment, education, and informational purposes only. The topics discussed should not solely be used to diagnose, treat, or prevent any condition. The information presented here was created with an evidence-based approach, but please keep in mind that science is always changing and at the time of listing this, there may be some new data that makes this information incomplete or inaccurate. Always seek the advice of your personal physician or qualified healthcare provider for questions regarding any medical condition.
