The Midlife Feast

#155 - Q&A Episode: Food Tracking, Plant Proteins, & Collagen Supplements

• Jenn Salib Huber RD ND • Season 5 • Episode 155

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In this solo Q&A episode, I am tackling some of the most recent questions shared with me about the sneaky ways diet culture creeps in, what protein adequacy really looks like (especially for plant-based eaters), and whether collagen is fact or hype.

If you want to get your questions answered in the future, submit them here! 

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Jenn Salib Huber:

Hi and welcome to the Midlife Feast, the podcast for women who are hungry for more in this season of life. I'm your host, dr Jenn Salib-Huber. I'm an intuitive eating dietitian and naturopathic doctor and I help women manage menopause without dieting and food rules. Come to my table, listen and learn from me trusted guest experts in women's health and interviews with women just like you. Each episode brings to the table juicy conversations designed to help you feast on midlife. And if you're looking for more information about menopause, nutrition and intuitive eating, check out the Midlife Feast Community, my monthly membership that combines my no-nonsense approach that you all love to nutrition with community, so that you can learn from me and others who can relate to the cheers and challenges of midlife.

Jenn Salib Huber:

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of the Midlife Feast. So today I'm diving into some listener questions. So a few weeks ago I answered a listener question on another episode and I put a link to send in your questions and I've gotten lots of great ones. I'm going to work my way through them and over the next few months I'll throw in a Q&A episode every now and then. So today we're talking about the sneaky ways that diet mentality might be showing up how to think about protein, if you're a vegetarian or if you're plant based or even just trying to eat more plants, and whether collagen is really the holy grail or just hype. So let's dive into it. So I'm going to read out the first question. Hi, jen, I don't regularly track my food anymore, but do log a few days here and there just to see how I'm doing. After reading your article on Substack which we'll link to in the show notes, by the way I'm now wondering if this is still part of the diet cycle that you mentioned or if it's just good maintenance practice and maintenance is in quotation marks. So this is a great question and there is some nuance to it. So first, thank you for reading. I'm relatively new to Substack and I'm really enjoying kind of the longer form content, and so I appreciate all the comments that have come in with that kind of the longer form content, and so I appreciate all the comments that have come in with that.

Jenn Salib Huber:

So, but tracking can be a challenge to say good or bad, and I definitely break it down in that article, but essentially a lot of it comes down to what are you going to use that information for? So what is the intention behind it? Are you logging with curiosity or with a bit of judgment or pressure? Is it reinforcing the idea that you can't trust yourself unless you're checking in on your body or checking in on your diet? And the reason why the intention is really important is because in intuitive eating we talk about something called interoceptive awareness or attunement, which is your ability to tune into your internal cues hunger, fullness, satisfaction. You can apply it to other things as well. But when we're talking about food, that's generally what we're talking about, and when people are tracking, whether it's short term or long term, that tends to pull us away from that, because we're basically outsourcing our decisions about food and the estimates that you're putting into your tracker are just estimates, and so there's anywhere from a 10 to 20% you know range of errors that can happen when you are reading off of a food label, when you're estimating how much you're putting in. So we want to remember that those numbers are just estimates and we have to ask ourselves what do I hope to get from this information?

Jenn Salib Huber:

So, for example, sometimes people are wanting to track their fiber intake. Let's use fiber as an example. So somebody is trying to increase their fiber. Maybe it's for digestive concerns like IBS. Maybe it's because they're trying to lower their cholesterol or support their blood sugar and they want to see if what they're eating on a typical day is meeting their goal. Let's just say their goal is 25 grams.

Jenn Salib Huber:

It can be helpful in those instances to be tracking to see how much you're getting at breakfast, what meals you regularly eat that would be considered high fiber, and if the intention is to see what you can add to it and not judge the meal whether it's good or bad, that can be helpful. But usually we would want to do that in the short term. I don't think anybody needs to be tracking their food all the time and I think that we can actually learn the skills and the attunement needed to not have to track at all, and that's kind of where the gentle nutrition piece of the conversation comes in. So protein is another one where people will say well, if I'm not tracking how much I'm eating, even every now and then, I'm not sure if I'm getting enough protein. I like to teach people how to think about protein as main characters or starring roles, and if you can learn what the main characters are, you can think about adding those to your plate without needing to count, measure and track it.

Jenn Salib Huber:

So another question would be well, what happens if you don't track? Do you feel like you're lost at sea? Do you feel like you're, you know, on a journey without a roadmap, and are you using it to stay connected or compliant? And so this is where I see a lot of former entrepreneurs let's call them chronic dieters, professional dieters, people who used to track all the time which, by the way, I was part of that club too. I will often see people who did that for years and years and years, maybe even longer, who realize that it's not helpful, so they've stopped tracking, for whatever reason, but they've stopped tracking. They're trying to be more intuitive, but then something happens or a thought pops up where they start to worry that, well, maybe I don't know enough, maybe I can't trust myself, maybe I should track for just a few days. And in that example, it's more about compliance and not about connection. The connection can come in when we're trying to add balance, variety, adequacy. So we're trying to build our plates regularly in ways that nourish us, not just physically, but we're not using it to try and follow a set of rules or to try and punish ourselves, essentially. But here's the last question about this, and so, like I said, it's nuanced.

Jenn Salib Huber:

I definitely sometimes ask people to track. Now, the way that I ask people to do that when I'm working with them one-on-one is that I have the software that I use has a food journal function where people can put in what they're eating but they don't see the numbers, and even I can turn off the numbers if I don't want to see them. And so there are lots of ways that you can work with somebody to look at recording your food, journaling your food, with the intention of assessing it for adequacy, for balance, for variety, for nutrition, without it coming down to a number. So, getting back to the last question, what is happening that prompts you to think about it before you start tracking? Because when somebody sends me a message and says you know I hadn't been tracking for a while and then all of a sudden I tracked a few days and now I'm really worried about whatever I'll often ask. But what was happening in the days, hours or even like week before this thought popped into your head? And that's often where we can figure out what the trapdoor was. So these trapdoors are people, places, events, thoughts, things that happen, that kind of slip us back into the diet cycle without us even knowing. So that's probably the most important question. But to just kind of answer it, I don't think that anybody needs to track for maintenance. I think that you can use food logging, food journaling, as a source of information to help you as you're learning to eat intuitively and if you have specific nutrient or nutrition goals, it can be a useful tool, especially if you're working with a dietician or another nutrition professional, to kind of achieve those goals. But I always like to think of you know we're trying to get to normal eating island. So normal eating island, which I've referenced in a few other episodes, is where you're eating mostly for physical hunger, but not always. You're holding space for all of the other reasons that we eat. You eat a wide variety of foods that you enjoy and you don't count, measure and track every bite of food. So if that's our goal, then I don't think we need to track our food to stay there. So I hope that answers that question. It was a great one, so thanks for sending that one in.

Jenn Salib Huber:

Second question is I've been a vegetarian for 25 years and never really thought about the protein debate, but now that I'm in menopause. I'm seeing all kinds of stuff about protein, especially protein quality. Is this something I really need to be thinking about? So the short answer is yes-ish, but with some context and definitely without fear and panic. So we know that protein needs increase with age, not just menopause. So men, women, everybody as we get into our 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s, et cetera, our protein needs increase slightly because we don't use protein as efficiently. So that's not new news. But the menopause conversation has made it a bit more kind of top of mind because we're learning that as estrogen levels drop which is what happens as we go through menopause muscle maintenance so building, maintaining muscle might become a bit harder. But that doesn't mean that you have to overhaul everything, but it can be a good opportunity for a check-in.

Jenn Salib Huber:

So for vegetarians, especially so if you're not eating any meat, any dairy, any fish, really think about variety and adequacy. It doesn nuts, seeds, dairy. If you eat it, fish, if you eat it which I realize are not strictly vegetarian then chances are you're getting lots of the amino acids that your body needs, especially if you're eating that with other grains in particular. So we don't really talk about kind of food combining anymore with vegetarian diets, like we used to, as long as somebody is eating a wide variety of grains and or plant based proteins, because they're complementary to each other. So, when we eat protein, our body breaks it down, dumps all of the amino acids into this big pool, and then, over the course of a day or so, we'll take kind of what it needs, and so now we talk about protein adequacy over a day versus per meal. So it doesn't that means that as long as you're eating a wide variety of foods and including grains, including plant-based proteins, then you're probably fine.

Jenn Salib Huber:

The protein quality conversation is slightly more nuanced, because protein quality is usually referring to whether or not a protein source has all of the amino acids that we need, and so some of the plant-based proteins, so lentils and beans, for example are considered quote incomplete, but that just means that they don't have all of the amino acids that we need on their own, which is why we pair them with other foods like grains, that do so. The protein quality conversation, though, is often getting hijacked by supplement marketing, fear mongering, but the science doesn't say you have to eat a complete protein. It just means that you need to think about it, and most people who have been a vegetarian for 25 you know 25 years I would say most of your life. I don't know how old you are, but you know most of your life are a good chunk of your life. Probably have seen this information before, but with the menopause conversation, especially around carbohydrates and the fear mongering around carbohydrates, I am and have seen more people over the last few years who need a little bit of support in making that plant-based kind of way of eating more nutritionally complete. So in other words, don't be plant-based and keto, or don't be plant-based and keto. Don't be plant-based and no carb. You definitely want to have those carbohydrates because that helps with contributing to that complete pool of amino acids that our body needs to not only make muscle but to make things like neurotransmitters and enzymes and all of the other reasons why our body needs protein. So to kind of just wrap that up no, you don't need to worry about it, but I think thinking about it, learning about it, maybe working with someone who can help you kind of assess if what you're eating is still adequate for this season of life, is a good plan moving forward, okay, third question and this is one I get probably every week it's about collagen.

Jenn Salib Huber:

So the question was just thoughts on collagen versus protein powder, and I am glad that somebody asked this question because I've wanted to talk about the difference between collagen and protein powder for a while, because they're often used interchangeably, most recently with, like protein coffee. So collagen and protein powder serve really different roles and it's not a one or the other situation. So collagen is not technically a complete protein. So in the question I just answered we talked a little bit about complete proteins and incomplete proteins. Collagen is rich in certain amino acids like glycine and proline, and these support potentially skin joints, connective tissue. It's really more of a supplement than a protein replacement. Protein powders, on the other hand, and especially if they're coming from things like whey or soy, are meant to boost your overall protein intake, and these ones in particular have a complete amino acid profile. So if somebody is trying to increase their overall protein, then a protein powder would be a more appropriate choice.

Jenn Salib Huber:

Collagen is very trendy, very popular. The evidence is lukewarm for skin and certain connective tissues, like you know, tendons and ligaments. It is less convincing, at least in the data for joint and joint pain in particular. Some people swear by it. I don't think there's any harm in it, but it's an expensive protein supplement. So people are often using it as a source of protein. And this is kind of where the what are you using it for? Question becomes really important. Because if you're just taking it just because and you think, well, it's not doing any harm because it's just a source of protein, there are more efficient, less expensive sources of protein.

Jenn Salib Huber:

I guess is kind of what I'm trying to say with that. And you know, a lot of marketing is put into collagen being some kind of like miracle supplement. I'm not convinced of that. So I often say that collagen falls into that overhyped, underwhelming group of supplements. But I don't think there's any harm that we've seen so far and it is tasteless. So some people really enjoy that. So if you enjoy it, you can afford it, then I'm sure it's fine. But just don't think of it as an equivalent protein supplement. If your goal is to boost your overall protein intake, so use it if you feel like you want it. But don't feel like you need it, I guess is kind of the take home for that.

Jenn Salib Huber:

So I want to thank you for sending in all these questions. Like I said, the link to submit your question is below, and if you're looking for support in how to manage menopause without diets and food rules, including answering questions like how much protein do I need? How do I add it in without counting, measuring or tracking or any other aspect of nutrition, I would love for you to take advantage of the seven day free trial in the midlife feast community, where you can learn how I can support you, along with a community of people who get it. Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the midlife feast For morediet, health, hormone and general midlife support. Click the link in the show notes to learn how you can work and learn from me. And if you enjoyed this episode and found it helpful, please consider leaving a review or subscribing, because it helps other women just like you find us and feel supported in midlife.

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Dr. Jenn Salib Huber RD ND

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