Protein shakes and "staged release" mechanisms

[mattikake]

Anyone buy into it?

Thinks of a guy I saw picking up a tub of Gold Standard "staged release" "pure" whey + vits and minerals (hardly pure whey then?) in Tesco and I slapped him on the shoulder and told him it was a waste of his £50. He kind of grunted back at me, so I left him to it. Mind you, he was wearing a DW fitness tracksuit, so it probably says enough...

IMO there's no such thing as your digestive system intelligently sifting though a masticated pile of porridge and carrots in your stomach and deciding which bits to process first. If it were so, all food would be "staged released" and mixing fats with carbs in order to slow digestion and reducing blood sugar spikes, would have no effect.

Or is there such a thing as encapsulating macro-nutrients in a substance that breaks down in a certain order so that the exposure to enzymes in ordered?

[goldblum]

The person who invents a protein compound that can be injected directly into the bloodstream as/when the exerciser needs it, ie after exercise, will be a very rich man. Or Woman.

I saw a DW fitness chap in Sains the other day - he looked like he'd put on a good few pounds in his upper arms, chest, shoulders and traps very quickly, his DW branded shirt was stretched... I wonder whether he advocates the taking of steroids to his clients.

[ikarl]

goldblum said:

The person who invents a protein compound that can be injected directly into the bloodstream as/when the exerciser needs it, ie after exercise, will be a very rich man. Or Woman.

I saw a DW fitness chap in Sains the other day - he looked like he'd put on a good few pounds in his upper arms, chest, shoulders and traps very quickly, his DW branded shirt was stretched... I wonder whether he advocates the taking of steroids to his clients.

How quickly did he put on these pounds if you watched it happen?

[markcoznottz]

ikarl said:

How quickly did he put on these pounds if you watched it happen?

What he means is that the bloke probably looked a stone and a half lighter two weeks earlier. Hence the deduction that he juiced.

[Mastodon2]

mattikake said:

Anyone buy into it?

Thinks of a guy I saw picking up a tub of Gold Standard "staged release" "pure" whey + vits and minerals (hardly pure whey then?) in Tesco and I slapped him on the shoulder and told him it was a waste of his £50. He kind of grunted back at me, so I left him to it. Mind you, he was wearing a DW fitness tracksuit, so it probably says enough...

IMO there's no such thing as your digestive system intelligently sifting though a masticated pile of porridge and carrots in your stomach and deciding which bits to process first. If it were so, all food would be "staged released" and mixing fats with carbs in order to slow digestion and reducing blood sugar spikes, would have no effect.

Or is there such a thing as encapsulating macro-nutrients in a substance that breaks down in a certain order so that the exposure to enzymes in ordered?

Some things genuinely do absorb more quickly through the gut an into the blood stream. The more complex a molecule, generally the longer it takes to break down. Not everything can be absorbed through the gut walls quickly and easily, and not everything is absorbed entirely (a quantity of the nutrients eaten are always excreted as waste).

A couple of GCSE level science books should hold the answers, have a look at digestion, active and passive transport, phospholipid bilayer membranes, enzymes and how they work and denaturation. These are all factors in what is absorbed by the body and how quickly they can be absorbed. Read up, make your own mind up. The quick answer is that no, not everything is digested and absorbed through the gut lining at the same speed. Your use of the words "sifts through" is misleading though, as that implies that the body is searching through what it has eaten to procure choice parts of the meal, which is not the case, the body just digests what it gets with what it has. What gets taken into the blood stream, and the order and speed at which this happens depends on what has been ingested.

With regard to protein shakes etc, and "fast acting" vs "timed release" protein sources, it's likely not quite as simple as their marketing would like you to believe (there is still an awful lot of debate about the protein synthesis window for a start) but there is some science to back their logic. Simple protein molecules will be denatured and absorbed more rapidly than complex molecules. "Complex" refers to structure, as in primary (individual pieces), secondary (chains of pieces), tertiary (folded chains) and quaternary (structures built of folded version of folded or coiled chains). These are broken down into amino acids, which are the small individual pieces that are absorbed into the blood stream. At a guess, whey protein is likely a simple secondary structure that can be quickly broken down into amino acids that can be readily absorbed, whereas a slow release formula would likely utilise tertiary or quaternary protein structures that take longer to denatured by enzyme activity.

Edited by Mastodon2 on Wednesday 28th August 22:50