Beef or Chicken?

In this episode, we talk about the difference in meats and how they relate to bodybuilding. Beef Protein, versus Fish & Chicken and how the body processes them differently. We also uncover whether amino's are actually needed, assuming you have your diet 100% on-point. 

• Beef Protein, versus Fish & Chicken and how the body processes them differently.
• The importance of BCAA'S.

Muscle Talk - Bodybuilding podcast by International Protein

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Transcript

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Ash Horton:

Our host, the world renowned Christine Envall, an IFBB professional, three times world champion, a mentor, an icon and, of course, a founding co-owner of the best supplements money can buy, International Protein.

Ash Horton:

In this episode we talk about the difference in meats: beef proteins, versus fish, versus chicken and how the body processes them differently. We also uncover whether aminos are actually needed, assuming you have your diet 100% on point.

Ash Horton:

All right, Christine. We've got another listener from Germany that's asked on our Aussie Muscle Guru Facebook page, his name's Marcus, and his question is how good is beef protein for building muscles? So I guess that begs the question is, in comparison to what different kinds of meats?

Christine Envall:

Cool. Okay. Beef protein is an excellent protein for building muscle, of course, because it has all of the essential amino acids that you need, which are the first thing that you need to build any kind of muscle is that you can't be lacking in one of the essential aminos. 

Christine Envall:

I'm not going to list them right now, but there's nine of them, and they are needed in a specific ratio. That's why things like chicken, beef, fish, all your whey proteins, your casein, your egg, all have a complete compliment of those essential amino acids.

Christine Envall:

So in terms of is it any better at building muscle, well, not necessarily because all of those types of protein, all those types of meats and other proteins do also have all of those essential amino acids.

Christine Envall:

However, what beef has going for it is it's really, really high in vitamins B6 and B12 in particular, which have a lot to do with the quality of, I guess, your blood cells. So the blood cells are to do with transporting oxygen, so essentially, I don't know what the actual research behind it is, but I know there's a direct relationship between, I guess, more blood cells and strength if you're anaemic and you're lacking in iron, I guess, and you don't have proper formation of blood cells, and then B12 is the other component that goes into making those blood cells, you will have lower strength.

Christine Envall:

So I think there's a direct relationship between strength and red meat. That's something that I also know anecdotally from when I've been training, where when I have put more red meat into my diet, I definitely notice the impact of strength.

Christine Envall:

So, for someone who's trying to grow a lot of muscle and get stronger in the gym, and obviously, of course, we just talked about in the last podcast was that beef has the highest level of creatine out of all of the meats, and of course your protein powders, unless it's added in, don't have the creatine naturally really occurring at a significant level.

Christine Envall:

So, beef is higher than chicken and fish in terms of how much creatine it has, so if you're eating half a pound of beef a day, you're getting a good couple of grams of creatine, so that's going to be impacting your strength and your performance, but then you're going to have the impact on increased blood cell production and that's also going to have an impact on your strength. So everything that you need, you've got all the correct essential amino acids and you've got a couple of other things which are going to help with strength. So, that's the positives.

Christine Envall:

All right. The negatives are-


Ash Horton:

Digestion?

Christine Envall:

Exactly. Exactly. The problem with beef is that it is very slow to digest. Now, I've looked into this a lot and the only people, of course, who are doing research on how beef digests are beef companies. 

Christine Envall:

Now, people always think that that's a little bit weird and say, "Oh, how can you believe a study when it's done by the people behind it?" Well, who else is going to do it? To me that's a silly argument because people selling rice aren't going to go do a study on beef because it serves no purpose to them, so of course the beef people are going to do a study on beef. But, what it showed was that the digestion, it really didn't start... There wasn't any kind of significant digestion till round about the four-hour mark, and I think it went onto about four to six hours.

Christine Envall:

So, if you're trying to do post-workout, get that protein in really, really quickly, having beef after your workout really isn't going to do it. Even if it has all of the correct amino acids, it's not going to be available to you till the right time. So beef is something that needs to be incorporated into the diet, but not specifically around your training time. 

Christine Envall:

So, again, when we're looking at a meal plan and looking at how to eat for growing muscle, I always like that mix up of like, if you're doing six meals a day, then maybe three or four of those need to come from what I call a flesh protein, so that would be from your chicken, your beef, your fish, and then the other two to three would come from some type of protein supplement like a protein powder. One, for convenience, and two because of the specific needs that you have at certain times, like straight after training.

Christine Envall:

We talk about a bedtime protein, and whilst steak would probably be quite fine before bed, it's one of those things that nobody really wants to go to sleep on a really heavy thing like steak. It's one of those things where I find very few people that like to eat a big steak and then go sleep. It's just too heavy. So that also comes into it.

Christine Envall:

There's also something where as a female I find it very difficult to eat red meat two days in a row because it is so slow to move through and it can take... That's the period of time, that four to six hours in breaking down through the stomach, but then to move through the entire system can take about two days, and if you have too much of that, everything just kind of slows down a wee bit too much and it just doesn't feel comfortable. 

Christine Envall:

So there's some drawbacks of people who are eating too much red meat, and even a lot of the big male bodybuilders I know who do eat two or three red meat meals a day, they tend to go for more the ground beef because it does actually digest quicker because it's mechanically broken down, and that's just an interesting point.

Christine Envall:

For older people, again, they actually need to have a mince version of meat because they actually, with their lack of being able to chew, don't break it down enough. So the meat does physically need to be broken down. So if you do struggle with digestion, have it in a mince beef form rather than a steak, particularly if you're eating it really, really frequently. But it is definitely a great source.

Christine Envall:

Obviously chicken and fish generally have less fat naturally occurring with them than what beef does. So beef, even some of your leanest cuts, probably the best you can get is about a 10% fat meat. I know, again, when you come back to the mince beefs they have 85% beef, so 15% fat, they'll have 70%, which is 30% fat, and then the best one, lean is 90% beef, 10% fat. 

Christine Envall:

So, something like chicken might only have about 2 or 3% fat with it, and fish even less, unless you're having the fish as a fat source, something like your salmon. So the drawback of the beef is that obviously it carries a lot higher calories with it, so when you're trying to get lean muscle, a lot of that muscle's going to come at the expense maybe of a lot more fat than what you would expect. So the older you get, the less you need to have that much fat coming in with your food, and it is saturated fat, which is the less healthy type of fat. 

Christine Envall:

So you couldn't just go ahead and eat beef five times a day, think that you're going to feel good and think that you would be really, really healthy, even though it might be really great for growing muscle. So my recommendation would be that you have... You know, people three to four times a week are looking at red meat, some people can tolerate it every day, but I think that mixing it up with other types of proteins, and as I said, mixing that three to four meals of either chicken, beef. Lamb, I guess, is still a red meat, it's still very fatty red meat, but it's in that same kind of category. But really mixing up the types of proteins that you're having, because they do all have different nutrients with them. 

Christine Envall:

So there's also zinc and phosphorous that comes in with the flesh proteins, which are really, really essential to our overall health. So a good variety is always a good idea, but being mindful that beef generally has a lot more fat in it than what chicken and fish do, so you need to just balance it up a little bit there and then, of course, balance it up with your protein powders. 

Christine Envall:

But yeah, how your body processes them definitely is... They processes everything in the same way. It has to get chewed up, it has to go into your stomach, gets broken down into small enough particles that it goes through into the intestine. Most of the absorption happens in the small intestine and then obviously the rest goes out.

Ash Horton:

So based on what you're saying there, I'm assuming that fish would be easier to digest than chicken?

Christine Envall:

It is a little easier to digest, but interestingly they have relatively the same kind of absorption rate through the body. So it's one of those things where things like egg white and fish for some reason appear to empty from the stomach quicker, so they do leave you feeling a little bit hungrier, but they don't necessarily, when they study those things, they don't necessarily uptake into the system significantly quicker. It might be like an hour difference. So you're talking three hours not four, or two hours not three. It's not like a massive one's 10 minutes and one's three hours. It's still in relatively that same kind of phase, but for some reason...

Christine Envall:

It's like with carbohydrates. Rice seems to really digest a lot differently to what wheat does, even though when they research it, it doesn't really show any difference in how quickly the body takes it up, but it just feels different in your body. And that is different for everybody as well, and again, you'll find foods which work better for you and some people, as I said, can tolerate a lot of red meat.

Christine Envall:

As I said, I find if I have it two days in a row, I just don't feel great. So once a week's probably quite enough for meat, but I do know when I was eating more of it, I definitely felt the benefits to it in the gym. So it would be something that I would eat daily if I was still trying to gain a lot of muscle.

Ash Horton:
I just realized when I said the word "fish", everybody's going to know I'm a Kiwi. I mean, if they didn't know already.

Christine Envall:
I think they already knew that, Ash. The fish and chips. So no chips.

Ash Horton:
Yeah, something like that. Something like that. I'm revealing all.

Christine Envall:

But again, fish is a broad category. We say fish, but there's everything from your white meat, low-fat fish, right through to your fatty fish which are high in your omega fats.

Christine Envall:

Salmon seems to be a really popular one with bodybuilders, and we all know how I feel about salmon so I don't go there. And yet it is, from a health point of view, it's a great fish to have if you can stomach the smell and flavour and everything.

Ash Horton:
Just go over why you don't go there.

Christine Envall:
Personally just hate-

Ash Horton:
Just hate it.

Christine Envall:
I hate the smell of cooked salmon.

Ash Horton:
Do you? Fair enough. That's fair.

Christine Envall:

It just really puts me off. I don't mind... When I was competing one time, and I think we talked about it, and I had to drop my weight really significantly low and I started to crave really weird things, I craved the tin salmon with bones in it and everything. So I don't know what-

Ash Horton:

Yeah, that's bizarre.

Christine Envall:

... my body was looking for then, but it was definitely telling me what it needed and I was absolutely loving that tin salmon. But as far as fresh fish, I would much prefer to go like a tuna steak or a swordfish. If you can get grilled swordfish, absolutely awesome. But as I said, salmon's so popular with so many people.

Ash Horton:

Yeah, cool. All right, let's move on. We've got another listener posting on our Aussie Muscle Guru Facebook page. He's a chap called Raf from Belgium. Might be Raf, might be Ref. Let's go with Raf.

Christine Envall:
Say what a New-

Ash Horton:
Let's go with Raf.

Christine Envall:
As. New Zealander would say.

Ash Horton:

Let's go with Raf. All right, and he's from Belgium and his question is: some say that if you eat proteins like you should be, then there's no need for extra BCAAs. But others says it's an absolute must during and after training.

Christine Envall:

Okay. So there's two ways of looking at this. Obviously it's easy to say those things because everyone trains at a different level. So some people who train not that hard, maybe they can derive everything from their food if their diet is spot on, and that's the thing. People make the assumption that their diet is amazing and sometimes it kind of lacks.

Ash Horton:

I think I made that assumption ...

Christine Envall:

Yeah. And that honestly, it is. If you haven't sat down and had your diet analysed for its nutrient content, you maybe will be surprised that what you think is a great diet is actually unbalanced, or isn't giving you everything that you need.

Christine Envall:

Now, a lot of the literature that is around that is based very much on sedentary people, meaning people who don't exercise, so the requirements change vastly. Now, it changes whether you're doing resistance training, resistance and cardio, how long your sessions are, whether you're trying to build muscle, whether you're trying to lose fat and retain muscle so you're on that knife's edge of slightly under calorie to be able to lose weight. So all of those things are going to impact on what you actually need. 

Christine Envall:

So a lot of people look at the added branched chains and things like that as an insurance policy to make sure that you're definitely getting enough, because there's no harm in having more, but there's definitely harm in not having enough. That's why a lot of people like to supplement, just to make sure. Because, as I said, you might think that your diet's great and then you realise that it's lacking in so many things, so that's one reason.

Christine Envall:

The other reason is that, particularly the branched chains more so than the essential amino acids are the ones that are used during your workout, used during your training session. So they're used as an energy source. So if you don't have them floating around in your bloodstream, and how you get those in there is generally by consuming them. So if you're consuming them during your workout or just prior to your workout, you've got ample amount of those branched chains floating around ready to be picked up and used as an energy source. 

Christine Envall:

If you don't have them there and your body's looking for them, it's going to actually take it from your muscle. So you're therefore putting yourself... Whilst your muscle gets broken down while you train, you don't want it to then get broken down and consumed.

Christine Envall:

So there's a difference between breaking down muscle that the amino acids are still floating around and then when you go to recover, they go back into rebuilding the muscle, you're breaking down and releasing amino acids whilst you're training and your body needs to then consume those for energy because you didn't put any in whilst you were training, then you've lost those amino acids, so we go back to rebuild.

Christine Envall:

If you're not looking after your recovery and not getting the food in at the right times, then you're basically breaking yourself down but not rebuilding back up. So it's always better to not break it down in the first place, or not have it consumed once you've broken it down. You'd rather consume it as a food, as the supplement, so it's there for use, use it while you're training and then you're basically going to maintain whatever you broke down in your muscle hasn't been consumed. It's there to be put back and then you supplement afterwards. You have your whey protein straight afterwards and then you get all of your essential amino acids in because that's when you have to have all of the essential amino acids to rebuild the muscle. It won't rebuild on the branched chains alone. 

Christine Envall:

We look at the branched chains as an energy source more so than what we look at it as a muscle-building source. So I look at energy, energy whilst you're training, that if you didn't time your food, like if you didn't time your food protein properly, those amino acids may have gone elsewhere to create other proteins, to create other enzymes. 

Christine Envall:

So just remember, your body uses amino acids for so many different things, not just for building muscle. Obviously muscle, connective tissue, hair, skin, nails, all of your enzymatic processes that allow every other metabolic process to happen are all coming from proteins, so you're body's going to be using them in all different ways, and it's going to use those in preference, I guess, to what you want to be left over to grow muscle, and then obviously it's going to consume for energy if it needs to as well.

Christine Envall:

So there's so much competition going on, and if the right things aren't provided at the right time, then you're not necessarily going to have them left over to do what you need them to do.

Christine Envall:

So, again, coming back to, one, your diet has to be really, really spot on, so the supplements are like that insurance policy, and then even if it is really spot on, again, it's like you're wanting to be better than what you would be just at that status quo, hence why they call them a supplement. The idea is that it's like an ergogenic aid. It's making you better. It's making your performance better, so you're enhancing how you perform.

Christine Envall:

That's why I believe that it's not just get it out of your food if you do... Like you walk one day a... You know, you walk. If that's your cardio and that's all the exercise that you do, but as soon as you're heading in the gym, and as soon as you're doing any kind of structured exercise, then you need to look at that for optimal recovery.

Ash Horton:

So, in the perfect world, Raf's question is fair.

Christine Envall:
Yeah, yeah.

Ash Horton:
But, no one lives in the perfect world.

Christine Envall:

No. In the perfect world, but also in the perfect world of people who wake up, drive in the car, sit at their desk all day, go home, sit in front of the TV doing nothing. That's what that's around, anyone who's active and anyone's who particularly wanting to improve their fitness, improve their muscle size, just be able to perform better. Because we don't want to go in the gym and feel like we're going backwards. Anyone who wants to get improvement, it's definitely going to help.

Ash Horton:

Yeah, for sure. Big thanks to Marcus from Germany and Raf from Belgium. Thanks for asking those questions, and if anybody wants to get involved, jump on our Aussie Muscle Guru Facebook page, ask questions and we'll answer them on these podcasts.

Ash Horton:
Thanks, Christine.

Christine Envall:
Thanks, Ash.

Ash Horton:
Words of wisdom. If you like what you've heard, recognise that these tips are free. So show your support by becoming a loyal International Protein customer by jumping online, hunt our product down and hit that Buy Now button.

Ash Horton:
So once again, like, share and subscribe to our podcast so we can continue to bring you these episodes from our one and only Aussie Muscle Guru, three times world champion, Christine Envall.