Protien Bars & Shakes, Worthless Junk?

[soulforge]

So guys i make every effort to make sure I am eating at least 4 times a day, with high Protien low Carb meals.

Lots of chicken, Turkey, Steak, Brown Rice, white fish, tuna.

However there are some days when I am very tired or just TOO busy and I don't get the opportunity to prepare 4 meals for the day..

I work in the city, and most of the food available is mostly junk with hardly any nutritional value!

So occasionly I rely on picking up some Protien shakes, and protien bars!! These usually contain upto 20g of protien!

Am I just throwing money away here? Or are these products ok to use occasionally??

 

[wifehunter]

You can get a few healthy options on the road. Chipotle has a brown rice option, as does pickup stix.

 

[R.U.G.]

Watch the sugar, pasta and grains, and you'll be fine. I mix protein and creatine in my morning bulletproof coffee regimen. As for food for during work, I usually pack it in the morning or the night before and go. I find nothing of any nutritional value in the city. All they have is fast food garbage. Chipotle is not as heathy as one may thing. Certainly healthier than McDonalds, but they still have additives and chemicals. It's always best to make your own and take it with you in one of the cold containers you can get for a few bucks. Remember, it's not only what you put in your mouth, but what it's actually made of.

 

[stovepipe]

I've tried so many products on over the years. I'm at the point now where (for me) I will no longer buy any supplements other than the occasional bag of high quality protein powder. The industry is unregulated, they manipulate you to buy their bs products, put who knows what in it, have ingredients that are not even on the listed, cut with fillers, ect. Is there some legit stuff? Of course, but you dont really "need" it.

We're all being manipulated into buying crap we don't need or doesn't work. If people from 40+ years ago could get jacked when there really wasn't a supplement industry, then you don't need any now. Now you got every other person in the gym sippin on pre workout or muscle milk, with their big a$$ Beats head phones and man bun, texting while doing 1/4 reps and not putting the weights back when he's done, then walks around thinking he's cool all while walking with invisible lat syndrome.

Everyone's got their opinion. Instead of supplements I put my $$ into a healthier whole food diet. I used to be a protein powder junkie. There was zero difference in what I was able to achieve without it. Some people have a great deal of trouble getting all their calories in via whole foods. You can still make a healthy & tasty protein shake without pp.

 

[EyeBRollin]

Protein bars and shakes are a waste of money. They are processed. They don't make a lick of difference in your performance and are overpriced.

Stick to whole foods. You can easily get 100% of your protein from meat, dairy, eggs, etc. Being on the go is hard, but you're better off picking up a chicken salad from a place like Panera bread. Although restaurant food is always worse than what you can prepare at home, it's usually better than packaged ****.

 

[R.U.G.]

Not true at all. Protein supplementation has been shown by at least one study to be an excellent post workout muscle builder:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25169440

And I quote directly from the scientific study:

"CONCLUSIONS:

This review suggests that protein supplementation may enhance muscle mass and performance when the training stimulus is adequate (e.g., frequency, volume, duration), and dietary intake is consistent with recommendations for physically active individuals."

This scientific conclusion also directly contradicts one of your other silly claims in another thread, that



Eyebrollin i commend your attempt to contribute to the health forum in any way possible, but all of your "facts" in support of your conclusions on fitness are just grossly incorrect.

While it's best to rely on whole foods, eating 150 or so grams of protein every day (that's like 6 or 7 chicken breasts, minimum) can get tiring. Healthy protein shakes and bars (with no sugar) can be a valuable supplement to improve upon and make more interesting what should already be an already clean diet, especially for guys like me who rely on eating the same clean foods over and over again.

Really depends on the sugars and the type of protein in the shake. The pre-made stuff is garbage. Most of the bars have fillers. Over on Bodybuilding.com there's a good recipe to make your own with high quality protein. Just remember, anything processed is bad for you. Bars are processed. Shake mixes are not as much. You can get some really good quality ones from Ireland and the UK, but the shipping will kill you. I forgot the brand, but when it comes to mind, I will post. Active something.

 

[R.U.G.]

Agreed. Anything processed is indeed bad, but you cannot completely avoid refined foods, sugar, and carbs. Keep it to a bare minimum, the more clean you eat the better and faster your results will come, for sure.

I stay away from the protein bars, I treat them like I would a candy bar more as a once in a while treat. I know some of the atkins bars have very low sugar content, like 2 g of natural occuring sugar and as much as 25 g of protein. To put it into perspective, a tomato has 1g of naturally occuring sugar and this is one food that is allowed on ketogenic-friendly dieting. Not bad for a bit of protein if nothing else is available. Certainly a far better choice than almost any other unhealthy food, and with much more protein.

But for protein powder, I think this is absolutely indespensible especially if you're a serious lifter as eating 180 grams worth of fish and chicken every day gets kinda boring.

Nothing beats a high protein shake mixed with whole milk and some creatine and hmb with no fillers, additives, or refined sugars right after a hard workout. One study stated a protein shake was more effective for post-workout natural anabolic muscle growth than whole food proteins because as a liquid it's digested faster.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3577439/

Also stated in the study:

"These results support the presence of a post-exercise window and suggest that delaying post-workout nutrient intake may impede muscular gains."

Not to mention:

"In an elegant single-blinded design, Cribb and Hayes [70] found a significant benefit to post-exercise protein consumption in 23 recreational male bodybuilders. Subjects were randomly divided into either a PRE-POST group that consumed a supplement containing protein, carbohydrate and creatine immediately before and after training or a MOR-EVE group that consumed the same supplement in the morning and evening at least 5 hours outside the workout. Both groups performed regimented resistance training that progressively increased intensity from 70% 1RM to 95% 1RM over the course of 10 weeks. Results showed that the PRE-POST group achieved a significantly greater increase in lean body mass and increased type II fiber area compared to MOR-EVE. Findings support the benefits of nutrient timing on training-induced muscular adaptations. The study was limited by the addition of creatine monohydrate to the supplement, which may have facilitated increased uptake following training."

Agreed completely. There's also several studies which show consuming creatine after a workout with a protein is actually better for your muscles than prior. Sugar is the main devil in food. That's what spikes insulin and makes a person gain weight through fat.

 

[EyeBRollin]

Not true at all. Protein supplementation has been shown by at least one study to be an excellent post workout muscle builder:

Eyebrollin i commend your attempt to contribute to the health forum in any way possible, but all of your "facts" in support of your conclusions on fitness are just grossly incorrect.

While the science is correct, does it quantitatively differentiate the demands between amateur, professional, and elite athletes vs. recreational athletes.? The majority of people in the gym are just there to look good at the beach. Can they benefit from protein shakes? Sure. Is the benefit significant enough to warrant the $30, $40, or even $50 a month people are shelling out on protein shakes? (Remember, natural lifters build muscle slowly and are limited in how much muscle they can build)

The fitness industry is 80% marketing and 20% science. Any science they can find is used to sell more supplements to the masses.

While it's best to rely on whole foods, eating 150 or so grams of protein every day (that's like 6 or 7 chicken breasts, minimum) can get tiring. Healthy protein shakes and bars (with no sugar) can be a valuable supplement to improve upon and make more interesting what should already be an already clean diet, especially for guys like me who rely on eating the same clean foods over and over again.

It's not hard to eat 150g of protein per day. Every solid food you put in your mouth has protein. Most people eat chicken breasts and fish filets closer to 6-8 oz, which is actually 2 servings of 25-30g each. Even fruits and vegetables have small amounts of proteins. Oatmeal, rice, beans - all have protein. (1 cup of rice + serving of beans = 20g of complete protein).

 

[R.U.G.]

Thanks, that's all I wanted to hear from you. At least an acknowledgement that the intense scientific study of muscular growth is correct, and your conclusions are all incorrect.

And yes, the study did differentiate between amateur, professional, bodybuilder, and elite. It even included a substudy of senior citizen males and found that protein supplementation helped them too. If you had read the study - as well as my comments on it - you would see that one of the studies that had been sub-analyzed included carefully monitoring two dozen recreational male weightlifters - very much like the men reading this thread.

As for your expenditures, maintaining health sometimes costs money. Treat your body like a high performance machine, and supply it with high performance nutrients. Sometimes those nutrients cost a little money, yes even $20 or $30.

As I said before, eating the equivalent of 6 or 7 chicken breasts a day is difficult, which is why the vast majority of serious lifters on the planet take some kind of supplement. Some guys prefer to mix up their diets with a healthy protein shake. Like all products, health related or not, there are good choices and bad choices.

But to state that it is a "waste of money" to purchase protein supplements that contain vitamins, bcaa's, creatine, and amino acids that are important to developing muscles and that have been shown to drastically improve muscle size through experience and intense scientific study is just very lazy and irresponsible of you.

To pay $20 0r $30 for a huge tub of almost pure protein is NOTHING compared to all that effort and hard work we put into our diets and weightlifting routines. I spend $20 or $30 for just a few days of fresh fish or chicken, so actually people save a lot of money by just buying the protein powder and mixing up what should already be very clean diets with a tasty shake.

Is $20 or $30 a month really too much for you to invest in your health? By the way, my last 2lb batch lasted 3 months and cost $19.99. The shakes I had prevented me from eating unhealthier options, and they also probably saved me hundreds of dollars in extra chicken or fish I would have had to eat instead. $20 plus tax is hardly a huge outlay for me considering the immense time and effort I put into my diet and weightlifting.

Just make sure you are using high quality protein. Not that soy crap. I like Nutrabio and Trutein as a runner up. I also get the unflavored as I do not want any additives, sugar or flavorings. Don't forget about Wheatgrass. You'd be surprised how well a daily shot of Wheatgrass helps with muscle definition and fat loss (notice I said fat loss, not weight loss).

 

[EyeBRollin]

Thanks, that's all I wanted to hear from you. At least an acknowledgement that the intense scientific study of muscular growth is correct, and your conclusions are all incorrect.

My conclusion that protein shakes are a product of an extensive marketing campaign, offering only marginal utility for the average recreational lifter to build muscle is not "incorrect." Natural lifters are limited in how much muscle they can build and how quickly they can do it. No amount of downing protein shakes will change that fact.

And yes, the study did differentiate between amateur, professional, bodybuilder, and elite. It even included a substudy of senior citizen males and found that protein supplementation helped them too. If you had read the study - as well as my comments on it - you would see that one of the studies that had been sub-analyzed included carefully monitoring two dozen recreational male weightlifters - very much like the men reading this thread.

The study is promising, but it has some less than confident proclamations:

Despite claims that immediate post-exercise nutritional intake is essential to maximize hypertrophic gains, evidence-based support for such an “anabolic window of opportunity” is far from definitive. The hypothesis is based largely on the pre-supposition that training is carried out in a fasted state.

The body of research in this area has several limitations. First, while there is an abundance of acute data, controlled, long-term trials that systematically compare the effects of various post-exercise timing schemes are lacking. The majority of chronic studies have examined pre- and post-exercise supplementation simultaneously, as opposed to comparing the two treatments against each other. This prevents the possibility of isolating the effects of either treatment. That is, we cannot know whether pre- or post-exercise supplementation was the critical contributor to the outcomes (or lack thereof).

Another limitation is that the majority of studies on the topic have been carried out in untrained individuals. Muscular adaptations in those without resistance training experience tend to be robust, and do not necessarily reflect gains experienced in trained subjects.]

This inevitably begs the question of how pre-exercise nutrition might influence the urgency or effectiveness of post-exercise nutrition, since not everyone engages in fasted training. In practice, it is common for those with the primary goal of increasing muscular size and/or strength to make a concerted effort to consume a pre-exercise meal within 1-2 hours prior to the bout in attempt to maximize training performance. Depending on its size and composition, this meal can conceivably function as both a pre- and an immediate post-exercise meal, since the time course of its digestion/absorption can persist well into the recovery period.

This must explain why I have not consumed a protein powder in well over a year, yet continue to hit PRs. This is why - 80% marketing, 20% science. The facts are facts, but they are essentially cherry picked.

As for your expenditures, maintaining health sometimes costs money. Treat your body like a high performance machine, and supply it with high performance nutrients. Sometimes those nutrients cost a little money, yes even $20 or $30.

Strawman argument. Protein shakes are not synonymous with maintaining health.

​

As I said before, eating the equivalent of 6 or 7 chicken breasts a day is difficult, which is why the vast majority of serious lifters on the planet take some kind of supplement. Some guys prefer to mix up their diets with a healthy protein shake. Like all products, health related or not, there are good choices and bad choices.

And as I said before, eating 6 chicken breasts per day is not required for health or to build muscle. An average chicken breast is 6-8 oz, which means you are suggesting to eat ~40 oz of chicken breast per day. That's actually 250-300 g of protein; twice the suggested amount... without accounting for anything else in your diet.

​

But to state that it is a "waste of money" to purchase protein supplements that contain vitamins, bcaa's, creatine, and amino acids that are important to developing muscles and that have been shown to drastically improve muscle size through experience and intense scientific study is just very lazy and irresponsible of you.

It's not irresponsible at all, as essential proteins and vitamins can be found in food. If you a balanced diet and lift heavy, you will grow with or without protein supplements.

​

To pay $20 0r $30 for a huge tub of almost pure protein is NOTHING compared to all that effort and hard work we put into our diets and weightlifting routines. I spend $20 or $30 for just a few days of fresh fish or chicken, so actually people save a lot of money by just buying the protein powder and mixing up what should already be very clean diets with a tasty shake.

Is $20 or $30 a month really too much for you to invest in your health? By the way, my last 2lb batch lasted 3 months and cost $19.99. The shakes I had prevented me from eating unhealthier options, and they also probably saved me hundreds of dollars in extra chicken or fish I would have had to eat instead. $20 plus tax is hardly a huge outlay for me considering the immense time and effort I put into my diet and weightlifting.

As I said before, protein shakes are not synonymous with general health.

 

[R.U.G.]

It supplements it. Overall, you need to eat healthy. Diet is #1.