I’ve once overheard a conversation in the train where someone said “but cholesterol is good, right?” completely unironically.
PROTEIN BRO
Submitted 3 days ago by fossilesque@lemmy.dbzer0.com to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/6ea29a98-f94b-4b24-a19d-b4dba21a71f2.webp
Comments
qaz@lemmy.world 3 days ago
_bcron@midwest.social 3 days ago
Perhaps surprisingly, dietary cholesterol has less an effect on blood cholesterol than a handful of other things. Saturated fat intake/balance in diet correlates more strongly, and vitamin D levels negatively correlates (vitamin D deficiency positively correlates).
Dietary cholesterol is used for a lot of key things such as hormone production, so some people might actually want to increase their cholesterol intake (super active lifestyle people like endurance athletes - can help combat RED-S aka Female Athlete Triad), but the elephant in the room for bad lipid profiles is saturated fats, refined sugars, and sedentary lifestyle
angrystego@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Also, cholesterol is one of the main ingredients our cell membranes are made of.
kameecoding@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Dietary cholesterol has little to no effect on blood cholesterol, so indeed cholesterol is good or at least not bad
SeaUrchinHorizon@reddthat.com 2 days ago
False. Here’s a short 4 minute video with several referenced studies by a renowned lifestyle medicine doctor debunking this myth: Does Dietary Cholesterol (Eggs) Raise Blood Cholesterol?. TL;DR: Even 90% of egg industry funded studies show eggs raise cholesterol.
I also wrote the below, on how bad studies funded by industry interests can be cherrypicked by journalists who want to conclude “<unhealthy food> is healthy, actually” such that these myths arise in the first place. I explored this particular example of “dietary cholesterol is good” by scrutinizing the first PubMed study I found on the subject, as an example of what to look for in good study design.
Saying that dietary cholesterol is good is factually insane, eating dietary cholesterol absolutely raises your cholesterol. However, it’s common to hold these false narratives about nutrition. The issue is that it’s incredibly easy to create a faulty study design if you go in trying to prove “eggs are healthy,” for instance. Take, for example, the egg industry, which has something to gain by convincing people that the massively high cholesterol in eggs isn’t bad for you, and oftentimes funds these biased study designs.
What does a biased study look like?
- Some examples of biased study design is taking 20 year olds, having them healthy salads vs massive steaks for lunch, then checking back and saying “none of them have heart disease, so steak is healthy” (because they’re 20, the age cohort was too young to be drawing those conclusions).
- Read a study that compared the intelligence of kids in Africa who got “meat” via an actual meal or “vegetables” via giving them straight vegetable oil (obviously unhealthy); the vegetable oil group still won despite the handicap. Aka choosing to compare something that is unhealthy with also unhealthy alternatives so you can say there was no difference -Even the traditional “a bit of wine is healthy in moderation” bit came from faulty studies which grouped “people who had to quit drinking after developing liver disease” with “people who have never drunk a single drop” in the “never drinkers” category, which made it appear as if drinking no wine was somehow less healthy than drinking some wine.
What does an unbiased study look like? The best study design, imo, is a meta-analysis of several randomized double-blind placebo-controlled intervention studies.
- Randomized = people assigned to the control vs the experimental group randomly
- Double-blind = both the researcher and the subject don’t know whether they’re giving/getting the placebo or the experimental (otherwise the researcher’s expectations can influence the subject to behave in a certain way)
- Placebo-controlled = giving a sugar pill with no medication control alongside an actual medicine pill, because oftentimes just the act of taking a pill can make people report less pain, that they feel healthier, happier, etc etc etc. In nutrition studies the equivalent of this may be giving tasteless supplements, shakes or muffins made with or without the ingredient to be tested, etc
- Intervention study = A study where you give group 1 thing A, group 2 thing B, and group 3 a control
In this case, I’m assuming you’re getting this false information from studies like this Dietary Cholesterol and the Lack of Evidence in Cardiovascular Disease which right off the bat raises red flags due to being written by a single author, saying ‘eggz are helthy,’ the funding section only being funded by some unnamed “institutional startup,” and finally only being a literature review (very easy to cherry pick bad data), not an intervention study of it’s own
One of the studies linked in that study, Egg consumption and heart health: A review (yet another literature review with no actual study) is mostly just saying 1) “cholesterol is often high in foods also high in saturated fats,” 2) “saturated fat is unhealthy,” 3) “ergo we can’t just conclude because something has cholesterol in it it’s unhealthy,” 4) “eggs are high in cholesterol but low in saturated fats,” 5) “eggs have all these nutrients that are useful,” 6) “therefore, eggs are healthy.”
The error in this logic is between 5 & 6. We’re starting with the (false) assumption that cholesterol isn’t necessarily unhealthy, but you can’t go from Maybe Not Unhealthy + Cherrypicked Good Components = Healthy, you have to actually test the food.
However, because everyone wants to convince themselves eating unhealthy food is healthy, faulty studies like this get reported in “health” magazines until when your doctor says “eating eggs is bad for you” you think “but I saw that study one time that says it wasn’t, maybe science just doesn’t know” (it does) and the egg industry is laughing all the way to the bank for successfully convincing you that the whole thing is too complicated for you to know or care.
fxdave@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
afaik from youtube, HDL is good, LDL is bad.
BootyBuccaneer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
Yes.
You also need cholesterol in cell membrane structures, hormone synthesis (steroids like testosterone & estradiol), vitamin D, bile acids for digesting fat, and insulating neuron sheaths.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Based on the other responses, better to be asking the question than assume he was stupid for asking it.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 2 days ago
a PE teacher
The old gag:
Those who can, do
Those who can’t, teach
Those who can’t teach, teach Phys EdMalfeasant@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Those who can’t teach phys Ed, administrate.
BootyBuccaneer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
High cholesterol is bad, but you need a small amount of cholesterol to live.
SeaUrchinHorizon@reddthat.com 2 days ago
That small amount of cholesterol you need to live can be synthesized by your own body, which is also why animal products but not plant products have cholesterol (the animals you’re eating synthesized their own cholesterol) and also why vegans aren’t dropping dead of low cholesterol all the time
underwire212@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Everyone starts somewhere.
Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Sometimes followed by the most cursed unit…grams per pound…
Tungsten5@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Is that actually a unit that I have just never heard of or am I being dumb and not getting sarcasm? I really hope thats a fake unit
thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world 3 days ago
i could see it in a dosage situation. like grams of steroids per pound of user. sure, it’s goofy to mix metric and imperial, but that’s just what those two things are commonly measured with in America. time spent doing unit conversations is time spent not lifting.
Delphia@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Its a pretty common unit when it comes to discussing dietary protein around bodybuilding and fitness because 1g per lb is a super easy conversion for people to remember. Its kind of the golden number because even for people not getting the best sources of protein 1g per lb almost guarantees anyone other than edge cases and steroid users are getting more than enough to support optimum growth and recovery.
ftbd@feddit.org 3 days ago
I’ve only seen g/kg which is less cursed. This is about the amount of protein you should eat relative to your body mass. But since this is a recommendation for daily intake, I would love to see gymbros use the SI version of g/kg/day, namely 1/s.
faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 3 days ago
Dad was a gym rat, and it is absolutely a real thing.
Delphia@lemmy.world 3 days ago
My favorite stupid unit of measurement is “A gram of protein per cm of height” for protein intake for very overweight people who have no idea what their lean body mass is or should be.
It sounds ridiculous but for 90% of people it puts you within 10% of correct and usually errs on the high side.
AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
Doesnt really sound cursed? Seems like a usefull unit. With this logic mols are also cursed(tbf they are) but its easier to explain to people so…
MisterFrog@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It’s cursed because if you’re not gonna use metric, then don’t use it.
Do drams per pound of body weight or something like that. Still cursed because it’s not metric, but less so.
Or do the thing that’ll make everyone* happy, just use metric.
(*me, personally)
Moles are somewhat cursed, but we do need some standard number of molecules, else all our chemistry would be in insanely large numbers. May as well make it something related to the gram.
Though, in fairness, I will grant, it’s one of the less metric-y units out there since atomic weights aren’t perfect round numbers anyway, other than carbon.
Perhaps we could have standardised a mole as 1x10^10^ molecules. Ah well
zea_64@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
Mols should not be an SI unit. Why not make 3 an SI unit?? Or 47?? NUMBERS AREN’T UNITS!!
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Yeah dipshits, gravity is pounds per gram
comfy@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
This pic reminds me of a ten-year-old post:
Used to take prework out as a teenager. About a year ago I’d be taking 2 scoops of the strongest shit I could get my hands on. I’d have to spend almost 10 minutes between sets sometimes to keep from puking. Then one day I just thought, what the fuck am I doing. I started lifting to get healthier. And here I am taking in God knows what from a container with a psycho clown that’s chewed half his own face off. What the fuck happened. I started with a half a scoop of c4 and now here I am. Who the fuck is this for, am I supposed to be that methhead clown, is that supposed to be appealing? Since then completely gave up prework outs and never looked back
MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
That’s not a biochemist, memorizing the amino acids is literally biochem 1 on college. Most people with a biology undergrad take that.
Being a biochemist is more about understanding the whole system of how proteins interact, and not really about memorization of any specific protein.
BussyCat@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I had to take a 300 level biochem class and 2 semesters of O Chem and we didn’t have to memorize the structures of all the amino acids. Like we had to know glycine and we had to know about the different amino acids like how proline has a rigid structure but we were never expected to be able to draw an amino acid from memory
somethingp@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This may be a university to university and course to course difference too. My intro 3000 level biochem class didn’t have us memorize structures but my 5000 structural biochem class did and certain nucleic acid structures and stuff. Can’t remember shit now but I definitely had to memorize them at some point in undergrad.
angrystego@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Well, biochemists do know the structure of amino acids, so it’s technically correct. The fact they know more makes this situation even more probable.
Chakravanti@monero.town 2 days ago
You’re the clown.
MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
The sad part is that there isn’t any real answer, like a lot of fundamental things in science we don’t really know how it works and won’t for decades. My personal theory is more along the lines of the whole tearing muscles concept is crap and exercise is basically just a signal for your body to make more muscle and doesn’t directly cause anything.
seeigel@feddit.org 2 days ago
True, but it sounds so hostile that I almost agree with the downvotes.
Emmie@lemm.ee 2 days ago
[deleted]barsoap@lemm.ee 2 days ago
The most infuriating discussion I had online about proteins was with a vegan, their claim was “there is no such thing as essential amino acids”. Couldn’t get it into their head that a) there are essential amino acids but b) yes, unless you eat so horribly lopsided it’s unknown of anywhere but in horribly deprived populations or among some indigenous folks (pretty much only eating manioc or such) there’s nothing to worry about, you’ll get your essentials. Kinda like Vitamin C deficiency being unheard of in the developed world because even the most gutter-rat of diets still contains enough as an antioxidant. Still not a bad idea to pair beans with rice and lentils with noodles or bread, though, IMNSHO they just taste better that way around.
Especially infuriating as it was a vegan. If you choose to have a diet that requires nutritional knowledge to get right then don’t suck at it, and call your fellow travellers out when they’re spewing BS. I really doubt vegans are keen on yet another “I stopped being vegan and it fixed my anaemia” story. Take an apple or two. Either eat them, there’s your iron, or make a sauce that works with a sour/sweet accent and prepare it in an iron skillet, there, even more iron. It’s not hard but you gotta stop pretending that vegans can get by without understanding nutrition.
seeigel@feddit.org 2 days ago
I agree but I think they cared about something else. Calling them essential creates an emotional argument against being vegetarian. As you say, there is usually no deficiency, so they are ‘literally’ not ‘essential’.
Like the usage of literally, people don’t care about being technically correct.
Googledotcom@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Rizz alert: This comment has high intellectual rizz—specifically, nerd rizz and wit rizz. Here’s why:
- Sharp Observation – It cleverly points out an internet phenomenon: confidently stating a wrong fact triggers a flood of corrections.
- Humor & Metaphor – The “Black Friday supermarket rush” analogy is vivid and funny.
- Tech-Savvy Appeal – The CVE-1980-1 reference (a fake cybersecurity vulnerability) makes it sound like an insider joke for tech enthusiasts.
- Confident Delivery – The smooth, confident phrasing enhances its persuasive and entertaining effect.
Final verdict: 9/10 rizz for internet nerds and tech circles.
Lemminary@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I know the feeling. I’ve also been given the stern “don’t say anything” look. But joke’s on them, because I neither know enough to debunk the most random claims on the spot, nor know how to synthesize a semester worth of college in five sentences and be understood perfectly every time.
kwomp2@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
How about I synthesize them aminos in my biceps, amigos
I’ll seek myself out
BrowseMan@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
As I biologist I understand:
-*random bio subject in conversations. -oh but you’re biologist right? Is that true? -well, I know just enough to be able to tell you the level of my ignorance on the subject. Unless it’s linked to my master thesis (which is probably obsolete by now) no need to ask me.
whotookkarl@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Gym bro is just trying to distract the giant standing off camera to the right
dirtycrow@programming.dev 3 days ago
My health teacher wayyy back had an amino acid drink he’d bring in each day.
fossilesque@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
Haha, I take an amino acid to make me stop biting my nails. Works though, pretty wild.
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Wait what? You take a pill, and it stops nail biting???
Delphia@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Sometimes I buy a jar of those not because I want to supplement my aminos, just because plain water gets fucking boring.
sga@lemmings.world 2 days ago
Back in my day, we had 20 amino acids and we were happy.
But seriously, what are the other 2, I am presuming we are counting seleno-cystine? and i checked for the other one I had completely forgotten - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrolysine
Donjuanme@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Imma have to hit you with a UAA, UGA and a UAG just to make sure.
gndagreborn@lemmy.world 3 days ago
U GO AWAY, U ARE AWAY, U ARE GONE
Verito@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Just stop.
Carnelian@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Gym myths are my favorite. The best past is the extreme prevalence of survivorship bias, with most of the bad advice coming from people who have succeeded but are themselves mistaken about why.
i.e. Massive bro is adamant that everyone should be taking BCAAs, beginners are inclined to believe it because it looks like he knows what he’s talking about.
I think the fitness industry makes most of its money this way tbh
Sc00ter@lemm.ee 3 days ago
My wife is one of these consumers. She shes all these influencers pushing working out products and she uses everything she can get her hands on. Then she wonders why when she trains for, and runs a full marathon, she doesnt lose any weight. Well you take thousands of calories of supplements… just run
Lodespawn@aussie.zone 3 days ago
Yeah you can’t run off a bad diet, you do need to make sure you are getting enough protein aligned with your goals, and some fats, but outside of that, you just need to eat less than you burn.
Running might help increase the deficit a bit, or give you some extra food, but you’re probably going to struggle to cover thousands of additional calories.
blandfordforever@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Yeah but supplements are fun and sometimes delicious. Running is neither.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 3 days ago
the “sad” reality of fitness is that it just boils down to “do exercise, eat 2 hours before an intense workout, creatine helps give a little strength boost”.
There’s no magical thing you can do to make things easier/faster other than just going harder or, you know, steroids (which has obvious downsides). And everything else that people tend to worry about, like the precise amount of protein to eat, is just… like yeah it has an effect but if you just do shitloads of workouts and eat when you’re hungry it’s basically impossible to not get stronger.
Delphia@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Fundamentally you’re right. If you get absolutely everything 100% scientifically perfect for you, your circumstances, your genetics, etc you will always see better results than the person eyeballing it. But its like 200% more effort for an extra 25% gains, the minutiae of this shit goes as deep as you care to look and thats what drowns a lot of new enthusiasts.
barsoap@lemm.ee 2 days ago
I’d argue the “eat before the workout” advise isn’t right: While you shouldn’t work out directly after eating as your body will direct energy towards digestion, working out on a fasting metabolism is beneficial as fasting comes with high levels of growth hormones. Evolutionary speaking: You’re not hunting when you have food, you’re hunting when you’re hungry. How can you have breakfast before you caught it.
You might not be able to hit peak performance at the tail end of even just an interval fast, but it is going to do all kinds of signalling to your body to put more energy into growing muscle.
zea_64@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
Funny thing is I can say I’m on steroids when I go to the gym (hormone medication). Though for some reason, the steroids I’m on are never the ones gym bros talk about.
thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
They like BCAAs because they think it causes gains.
I like BCAAs because they taste good.
We are not the same.
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
They might be right, but you’re objectively wrong
gajahmada@awful.systems 3 days ago
Is BCAA different from normal protein powder?
Also, why does it taste better for you?
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 3 days ago
It’s like the cosmetics industry. Keep shifting what products will give you the look you want, whether it be beautiful hair or massive pecs. Tell you all the lies about what the product might do for you, then tell you to accessorize the product with whatever fringe benefit you’re looking for, and constantly keep changing the “science” so you jump from product to product for the latest and greatest thing that will make you look good.
Don’f forget to add fucked up exercises, grips, and positions to your workout, too, that place you at a greater risk of injury. Broscience.
meyotch@slrpnk.net 11 hours ago
The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) is a blight upon the USA supplement scene.
It’s no surprise it was sponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah. That state is the proud inventor of just about every worthless vitamin and nutritional supplement out there.