Magazine_Spring2020_RND5_03.06.20.indd

The mightiest Macro Written by Owen Rothstein Protein. Protein. Protein. Protein. Protein. Protein. Protein. Any guesses on what this article is about? Yup, it’s about protein. We’re in the business of selling protein, so it really isn’t a surprise that we’d write a piece advocating the benefits of protein, but that isn’t the driver for this article. As a primer, and in case you don’t already know, there are 3 macronutrients (macros) in nutrition – protein, fat and carbohydrates. I’m almost 50 years old, and throughout my life I’ve seen quite a few different diets emerge. When I was about 8 or 9, my chronically overweight father was placed on a medically-supervised liquid protein diet. He eliminated a couple of meals a day and, in their place, drank this high-protein liquid (it tasted vile). At 5’6”, he went from about 250 to 195 pounds on this diet. It is my earliest recollection of the word protein. In years to come, the nation would become obsessed with diets that focused on reducing or eliminating specific macros. Around the time of my father’s diet, the rage was no-fat diets. Fat in foods were demonized as being the cause for fat in the body. Hey, it makes sense…I get why people would believe that. That lasted as a focus for a couple of decades, with food manufacturers capitalizing on the trend and coming out with reduced or nonfat versions of just about everything under the sun. Forgetting for a moment that most important vitamins are fat soluble (meaning fat helps your body absorb them), the idea of 98% fat-free bacon is as mystifying as it is unpleasant to me. The myth about fat-free products being a healthy choice has eroded some, but still persists to this day. Nutrition Quarterly · 2020 – Volume 2 18 The Good Life