Can Protein Reduce Ultra Processed Food Consumption?

The TLDR: 

• Protein-enriched ultra-processed foods (UPFs) led to lower calorie intake and higher energy expenditure compared to standard UPFs in a short-term study.

• Despite these effects, protein-enriched UPFs did not prevent overeating, showing only modest improvement in overall energy balance.

• Hormonal responses suggested better appetite regulation and nutrient partitioning with the high-protein UPF diet.

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Transcript:

Good afternoon, everyone. Dr. Wells here again with my research assistant, Jimmy. Hi, Jimmy. What article do we have today, huh? This was a good study. I know you've probably seen some of my stuff on ultra processed foods. We know the trend that Kevin Hall has established at the NIH with ultra processed foods and how they contribute to obesity as well as other major chronic diseases. So this new research update today is a good one. It's on the short-term effects of high-protein, lower carbohydrate, ultra processed foods on human energy balance. In other words, these researchers wanted to see we're gonna feed these people a diet of almost 85% of ultra processed food. But if that ultra processed food has a little bit more protein in it, does it impact the overall calories consumed? So what they did is they basically took about 20 subjects, put them in an award, basically like an inpatient sort of study. Not fun. They did a two-week randomized crossover trial and what they looked at is can we feed these individuals also ultra processed foods? And if we do that, is there a difference between their overall calorie consumption? And interestingly what they found out was that when they were able to give individuals a diet that had about 3.3 grams per kilogram of protein versus 1.5 grams per kilogram of protein, they ate about 500 kilocalories less. That's significant because over a week that's one pound of fat, right? So interestingly what they also saw was ghrelin was decreased and those that ate the higher protein ultra processed food diet. Meanwhile peptide YY, which is a new compound that has been researched and has an impact on dietary consumption, particularly of certain foods, was upregulated. So we've seen that even though the diet may have been ultra processed, having a higher protein intake helped modulate hormonal regulators that basically improve satiety and we saw that in the data overall with people eating almost 500 calories less per day of that ultra processed food. At the end of the study, when they looked at how much ultra processed food was consumed, those that were eating the lower protein consumed significantly more amount of food. So at the end of the day, we don't want people eating ultra processed food. Ideally, it's a tough category for us as physical therapists and health care providers to sort of educate our clients is what what does that look like? What is an ultra processed food? Well, at the end of the day, if they are gonna eat ultra processed food, obviously trying to bias them to eat foods that have maybe higher protein and or foods that have higher fiber as well, which usually most ultra processed foods don't have a lot of fiber, that's going to be more beneficial for them in the long run because they're gonna eat less calories and possibly have at least some nutrients in them that's beneficial. Anyhow, we have more information on ultra processed foods, weight loss, inflammatory diets in our board approved continuing education courses for physical therapists on specific for nutrition. So if you like what you see here, click the link, subscribe and sign up for our courses today. Have a great day. Bye.