Protein Powder Panic? Let’s Talk Lead, Labels & What’s Actually Safe with Gianna Beasley RD

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Transcript

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All right. Welcome back to another actually special bonus episode, and I'm really excited today to have registered dietician Gianna Beasley on, and just to give you a little bit of background here, everybody, why we're recording this episode at a way different time than we normally would. It's because there was a recent consumer report that has really been making waves. They tested 23 different protein brands and they found. What I would consider alarmingly high levels of heavy metals like lead, particularly in plant-based proteins. Some of the levels were so high that they said don't even have a single serving a day. That was how the report came out. This is understandably causing a lot of concern for people because they rely on these products for nutrition, especially in my land, the GLP one land where someone might be more volume restricted. And I know for me Sometimes I'm having two scoops of a protein powder, you know, here and there. Maybe not every single day. But when I saw that, it really made me start to question things. Now I'm someone, I have a lot of familiarity with the supplement land. I know about third party testing and all of that, but I don't think that majority of people are thinking about this. Before we dive in, can you just share a little bit about who you are and how you help people navigate nutrition in the real world? Yes. So thank you for having me on. I'm excited to be here. Like you said, my name is Gianna. I am a registered dietician. I specialize in GLP one's, weight management that space of things here. As a dietician, I also have a bit of a functional background as well as the dietician. And so I'm working like day in and day, day in and day out. I like to say I eat, breathe, sleep GLP ones now because pretty much everybody that I work with, all my clients, everybody, almost everybody, not every single person is on a GLP one. I have some people that aren't, but we're on a different kind of weight management journey or performance journey. And so this conversation I think is really relevant'cause everybody talks about supplements. Should I take a supplement? Should I not take a supplement? What should I use? How should I use it? And so I'm very excited to chat about this today because I talk all the time about how important it is to get a good quality supplement and ensure that you know what you're taking. And I feel like we're really gonna dive into that. Yes. Today, which I'm so excited about. Okay. I totally can't wait.'cause you have the perfect background too.'cause I find if someone doesn't have some of that functional medicine background, they're not ever recommending any of these. Things and people think that they can just be like, oh, go take a multivitamin. It's like, Ooh, that's not really usually what I think is the case. So before we get into this, can we start out with really big picture how quote unquote, safe are levels of lead and other heavy metals actually determined, who is setting these standards and how do these exposure limits differ between different agencies?'cause when I was just Looking up things, there's a difference between the USDA versus Prop 65 in California. Can you just give us background on all of this? Yes. Oh my gosh. I would love to, I think this is a really big piece of what we've been seeing happen this week with people being like, oh my gosh, the sky is falling and it's not. I feel like as much as Sky is falling is probably the article made it feel like for a lot of things, but also it's important for people to understand where things come from. I think it's really important that people understand where things come from and so when we see big headlines and we see, and I'll give it to consumer reports, they laid out the different icons of things with the levels and they're telling you, recommendations how many times to have it. But what's important to know is there's, two different numbers, but three different categories. In this report specifically, you have the consumer reports numbers of telling you how many micrograms per day is safe for consumption, which is matching what the California Prop 65 numbers are. And if anybody lives in California or has visited California, when you go into a store. I heard someone say this week that their apartment building has a prop 16. Yes. It's on everything. It's on everything. And to me, that does make me giggle a little bit because, that feels crazy. But also I don't go around licking walls. I don't know, maybe we need to give that disclaimer to knock like the walls. So the California Prop 65 limit for that lead intake is that 0.5 micrograms per day. And so Consumer Reports is matching that Prop 65, but that does not match what the FDA says is our threshold for intake, so, mm-hmm. It's a little bit different where the FDA basically says for children it's 2.2 micrograms per day, which realistically, when we're talking about protein powder. Most kids aren't having a protein powder. I would say maybe, you know, I would say no, but kind of sometimes. Yes. Yeah. Because sometimes I make my son, if I'm eating something, he wants the same thing, so, I do like that. You're mentioning the levels for kids as well, because I do think it can be applicable, it can go both ways. Kids, I would say every single day, for the most part, are probably not having a protein shake of some sort. Right, right. But occasionally they might, you might give them part of your protein shake or like you might make them a smoothie and put some protein powder in it. I feel like that also goes closer to, as you're getting more into sports specific things. Yeah. And you're training in high school, I know every single day in high school.'cause I was on the varsity swim team, I had protein powder in my smoothie every single morning on the way to school. The other level that's established, so kids are children. What's qualified as children, 2.2 micrograms per day of basically safe intake of lead, which just to be clear, nobody's going and chomping on actual lead. I know it sounds scary. We're like, this is what is okay to have. Ideally we'd have none. Yes. Real, and I think that's important to say. And I can't even take credit for this. I don't even know who I heard it from. As I was scrolling through social media doom scrolling this week, as I'm sure many of us were, I heard somebody else say, in an ideal world we would have no heavy metals, but it's not actually possible to remove heavy metals because one of the biggest areas we find heavy metals or things like lead is in soil. Yeah. Yeah. So your vegetables also have lead in them, but that doesn't mean you're never going to eat a vegetable. But for women of childbearing age, that's how the FDA defines it. It's 8.8 micrograms per day, I know that there are many feelings in the world right now about, who do we trust, what do we listen to? I think what's important to understand about the FDA specifically and how they set these limits is they establish target blood levels that they want our target blood levels to stay below 3.5. That's basically going to help protect our brain from lead. Oh, okay. So they're working backwards. Yes. To assume that, okay. again, I'm not an FDA scientist, but from what I can tell you from what I know as a dietician, basically the FDA establishes that target blood level to stay below, and then they established the lead intake, reference levels for population risk. So they were 2022 is when they came out with the 2.2 micrograms for children and then 8.84 women of childbearing age. When we think of safety, we all wanna be safe. Yeah. There's a tenfold safety factor incorporated in with the FDA estimating. These reference levels would be correlated to that level in our blood or lower. And so it's still very precautionary. Now, some people might say, okay, well you're telling me that I could have this much, but I wanna have less. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Fine, then that's your choice. But. Again, like food has heavy metals in it. You're saying, that there's trace amounts in the soil, I'm assuming water,, things like that. Okay.'cause it's the runoff. But my question is, what's considered a typical, background level versus then when it becomes a pro? What actually are some of those levels that we're getting exposed to then with veggies and things like that? Yeah, so it's interesting actually, there have been some sweet potatoes, and this is not every sweet potato you eat, so nobody go throw all your sweet potatoes out in your house. I'm gonna go eat a sweet potato later. Actually, I've been excited for it all week at this one restaurant I go to for sweet potatoes specifically. So nobody threw out their sweet potatoes, but there was one time where they actually found 16 micrograms of lead in some sweet potatoes. Obviously that's on the high end of things, a lot of times it is, it's small amounts and I think something very important, if we could get one message across to everybody, if you don't listen to anything else, usually the poison is in the dose and in the frequency of which you're doing it. I think for the majority of us, unless you're licking walls or doing something really crazy or maybe live in a really high risk area where You're only eating food that you grow on your land. Yeah. You might wanna check your soil to make sure you're not accidentally putting tons of lead in your food on accident. But for the majority of people when we're looking at food sources and where things come from, fruits and veggies are not going to overdo it on lead. And honestly, in my opinion, for a lot of the protein powders that ended up on this list, we can see the plant-based protein powders were the highest right out of kind of that's. Is that'cause it's concentrated with the plant-based ones. Yeah, but mostly because it's made from plants that's what I'm saying is, the origin of it. So then when you're coming, yeah. When you look at a non plant-based protein, which I actually can only do plant-based'cause I'm allergic to cows and anything that comes from them. I am a plant. Protein connoisseur at this point. Hit me up For recommendations for plant-based protein.'cause it's all that I can have and it makes me sad because there are some really good non plant-based ones. So honestly, not even from a lead standpoint, but if you're someone who can tolerate non plant-based protein, because I feel like sometimes people are like, oh, plant-based protein is better for you. Honestly, if you like a protein powder and you can tolerate whey protein, half the whey protein, especially if then lead is something that you're worried about. You are going to find higher levels of, heavy metals and things like that in plant-based items. And there are some really good non plant-based protein shakes out there. I've given myself blinding migraines and made myself very sick trying them because, I have fomo. I wanna try them. What is it like to have protein? I know, I don't know. I know, I know. I'm on the flip side where I'm even a vegetarian and so, I always thought, oh, I should do the plant-based proteins. That just the taste is not there for me and I really wanna be behind it, but I just can't get behind the hemps of the world. Just, for me personally, and, because I can tolerate the weight based, I'm gonna do it. But I hear what you're saying. I have some people where their stomach just, they can't handle it. They're like that migraines, what you're talking about. I like that you're saying it's a discretionary thing. As far as looking at it, knowing this, are there third party testing labels or something that we should look for, USP or something on the label where we could feel more confident? Or is this a contact that company? What can people do if, let's say their product was not listed in those 23? Because that's very few ultimately with how many are out there. Yes. Yeah. Prepared to enter my soapbox. This is something I feel so strongly about, and I think as a dietician myself, something that really drove home for me was when I was in school. I have my bachelor's, I have my master's, worked for free for a year, then took my boards exam. It was a whole fun time. But what really was driven home for me is we have to remember as. A society, supplements feel very normal, right? Because we see them everywhere. There's a lot of marketing dollars into them, but they're not regulated. So it's actually on us as the purchaser, as the consumer, to determine what we feel comfortable doing. But for me as a dietician. I don't recommend supplements that are not third party tested breach. Yeah. And for people being like, wait, what is third party testing? Great question. We're so glad you asked. so basically companies, because it's not regulated. Really don't actually have any kind of responsibility to anyone to make sure that what is in your product is in your product. And I don't know if you saw this it was earlier this year, I think, I don't know honestly, the last five years have blurred together. There's been a lot of breaking news in the past few years. Right. With different companies and stuff. Yeah. Yes. Well, and I don't typically recommend buying supplements or vitamins from Amazon because, and we saw data on this earlier this year that, yeah. I don't remember the exact number, but I wanna say it was close to 70% of supplements that were purchased were not actually what they said they were. Yes. So if you were gonna purchase from somewhere like Amazon, you wanna make sure you go to the actual brand store on Amazon where you know it's coming from the brand itself and not like a. Middleman. But do you know even with that, okay, you're purchasing from, you think it's the brand, right? But if there's an Amazon fulfillment center, I only know this'cause I have a lot of patients that have worked., I live in Indianapolis and we have really big, fulfillment warehouses here. So when they do picking. They might be trying to go for the name of that product from that company, but then they get it from a third party seller. They don't even realize it, that they picked it from the wrong lot. So it can still be a problem. So I am a fan, like you said as well, of not using directly. Yeah, yeah. I don't I can't sway on it. And they're set on using Amazon'cause they want it the same day and I'm like. If you say so, but for me, I don't buy my supplements from Amazon. I smack my mom when I see her vitamins in the Amazon shopping cart and I initiate a return for her and then go buy it from the brand directly. Yeah. Love you mom. If you're listening to this. But. I think it's important that we know, because there's a lack of regulation, it's on brands to basically choose, do we take on that financial cost of testing everything that we're making and having that report available for people to see what we say is in this product, is in this product. And I know people are still really vi in with greens powders, but you could scroll through my Instagram to Two, three years ago, and I'm dressed in an avocado toast onesie, and I'm sitting there mean mugging the camera basically being like no. Because another supplement that has a lot of heavy metals found in it when it's tested are greens powders and. For me, I don't think a greens powder is worth any kind of heavy metal contaminant a lot of the time, but neither here nor there. We want a brand to be third party testing so that they can prove what they are saying is in their product, is actually in their product. And then you can go further than that. And there's two different certifications I feel like. The most commonly known one is actually the NSF certified for Sport. A lot of people have probably seen that NSF and then there is the USP, which I feel like people will probably recognize more from nature's made, maybe it has it on there, labels and stuff. But, so both of these are additional, basically testing verifications that. Each of them have different qualifications and standards. I lean more towards brands that have the NSF certified for sport, because I do work with teenage athletes. I do work with college athletes, things like that. And so the nice thing about NSF is basically they have to take certain steps to be certified, so they. First have to have their good manufacturing practice certification, which basically says that the product is being manufactured, packaged, and stored in a facility that's being audited annually or bi-annually. Yep. It's complying with federal regulations for supplements, functional foods, all that good stuff. And so they basically make sure that., That has to be there. You have to have the good manufacturing practice. And can I tell you what the GMP,'cause my parents they're part owners in a nutraceutical company, guys, it's intense. When they come in. If the scale is a half a centimeter to this direction that, I mean,, it's a lot of rules. This is not just oh, okay, you're good. It's very intense. Yeah. Very intense. And when you think about it for companies like this costs them money. Oh yeah. Money to take all these extra steps. And so that's just the first step to be NSF certified. So you have to get that first step done. And then the second step is that NSF experts actually evaluate the product contents. And so, everything is checked. The lab is tested, their, supplements are tested, everything is actually tested. They make sure that they, don't have anything terrible in it, that they're not like saying that they're having, and they're making sure that everything that's in it is actually what's in it. Assuming they pass step one and step two, then they actually get tested again. To make sure there's not the 290 band substances from NSF on there. And then anytime that they do introduce additional band substances that everything is tested to make sure it stays in compliance. So you're not gonna have anything that you shouldn't have in there basically, which is really important I think. If anybody's listening that does have a loved one in any kind of sport or any kind of. Situation where there could be any drug testing of any kind. I would never recommend someone take a supplement unless they have the NSF certification because that feels like a silly risk to me of well, hopefully this one supplement is fine. Because there are really great brands out there with really well dose supplements that have that NSF certification. And then there is the USP as well, and they also follow several rigorous steps to make sure that they have. That as well. So they have the good manufacturing practice as well. If you're gonna spend your hard-earned money,'cause you will also hear me say all the time, supplements are expensive. They add up if you have so many of them, before you spend your hard-earned money on supplements. I would say you gotta make sure the brand is third party testing at a minimum. Then you could go further and do a USP verified one or an NSF certified for Sport one. Those are typically where I go with that to make sure that we as consumers are staying safe with things. I think too, I wouldn't be a healthcare provider without saying this. I think it's. Important to chat with your healthcare providers, whether that be your physician, your dietician, honestly, they could be working together as well, but you should be talking with someone about what you want to take. And honestly, I have a lot of physicians that defer and they're like, talk to your dietician about this. I love my pregnant clients who have been taking some things and then they get pregnant. And I'm okay, so let's just double check With your doctor, some of them I'm like, no, you cannot take these in pregnancy. Stop these immediately. Yeah. And then others, I'm like, these should be safe, but let's talk with your doctor to make sure that they're safe during pregnancy. And my favorite has always, when doctors are like, well, if your dietician says so, and I'm like, can we collaborate here please? And thank you. I know that our data says that they're safe to take, but I wanna make sure that you are comfortable with them taking them. And so usually that's how it goes, but. You don't need a million different things, and what you might need is different than what your favorite influencer on social media needs. I know, I'm trying to think., There's only one company that I take myself and I've taken for many years that I've talked about, publicly on social media in a quote unquote influencer capacity with them. Yeah. But four years after working with them, did I do that because I genuinely enjoy them. I really think their products are great, but I, as a healthcare provider, look at brands and the dosing of things. Is this actually an effective dose? No. That gets me all the time. I just met with someone this week who had a list, a mile long of supplements and I was looking at them and I was like, I hate to tell you this, but several of them didn't even have clinically effective doses to do what it was saying it did. And I'm like, no, if you wanna spend the money on this, sure. But let's take one that's actually effective. And so that's where talking with me, with you, with a healthcare provider can be very helpful to actually make sure that it's the dose that you need for you. Totally. Yeah. I think people just get so taken advantage of.'cause they wanna feel better, they wanna get more muscle or whatever the case might be. Yes. And then they're taking random things and they don't ever check back. Is it doing what I think it's supposed to be doing. There's no checks ever. Yeah,, I do that all the time. I'm like, so did you notice? They're like, well, I started taking this because I saw somebody say that I could try it. And then my doctor said that they didn't care if I tried it. So I started it and I'm like, okay, and did you notice anything change? And they're like. Honestly, I don't know. Okay, well, do you wanna keep paying for it? And they're like, well, if it works. And I'm like, okay, so let's stop taking it and see if you notice a difference. I notice this specifically, in the realm of gut health a lot, where people will just take random probiotics or things like that in capsule form. And I'm like, I hate to break this to you, but a lot of these are not actually doing what they say that they're doing. So if you wanna take one or if you really feel like it's helping, great. But for a lot of people they're like, well, I don't know. I just started taking it and I'm like. Hmm. Do you want an not take it? If we stop taking it and you notice a difference, okay, for sure we can add it back in. Great. But if you stop taking it, you don't notice a difference. Do you wanna save your money? I would like to save you money. So what do you think, if people hearing this report that there are some products of higher levels than others, how are they supposed to navigate that? What are they supposed to do? Man, there's so much nuance to this, I was saying earlier, before we started recording this episode, I don't do clickbait titles because there's nuance to everything. And I think what this ultimately comes down to, because certain headlines are meant to instill very strong emotions, which it worked because everybody's talking about this right now. Yeah. My mom was texting me did you see this? And she was like. Are we gonna die? And I was like, no, we're not gonna die. We're fine. But I think when we think about the grand scheme of things is everybody has to assess their personal risk tolerance for things. And how much are you comfortable with? And then also we all need to look at our own individual kind of daily routine. Yeah. If you're someone who is taking a ton of supplements or if you're someone who's heavily relying. On supplements for whatever reason, or if you're someone who just generally is, I mean, we're both in the GLP one space, so I have seen this a lot where sometimes people are feeling really bad side effects and so they're living off protein shakes and so they're having five or six a day and I'm like, hold the phone. I know bigger problem here is we're on the we're not in the right spot on our GLP one if that's what we're relying on. The point of a GLP one is not to eliminate food. We shouldn't have to be relying long term on protein shakes to survive. So actually we need to roll that back before we even think about the potential lead in your protein powder. But looking at what is actually your exposure. Are you having multiple servings of supplements every single day? Are you having multiple exposures? Are you licking lead, paint off walls?'cause I mean, that's pretty high risk exposure there. Really, what does your life look like on a daily basis? I would say for me, I've never done the math on how much lead I probably consume in things.'cause I don't have a way to really. Test that we can look at, averages from vegetables and things like that. But I would say for the average person, I drink one protein shake per day. Right. And actually the plan that I drink plant-based was on that list and it was good. I think it was saying it was pretty solid. So I was like, you're safe. For me and my personal risk tolerance and my opinion, as a dietician, if my clients were to ask me, I would look at their overall daily intake. What really is our risk threshold? What is our exposure level? And if you're someone who's just having a protein shake per day, I don't really think anything terrible is going to happen to you. I like that you talk about looking at it overall. Because one of the things I think about is okay, so we're talking about lead right now. They talked about arsenic. There's microplastics, right? There's just cumulatively, I guess we could use the term endocrine disruptors and heavy metals, all these things. Everyone's life looks different. Some of us are gonna live in really polluted cities. I was talking to a friend of mine that does a lot in the clean tech space and she was saying, if you live within a mile of a highway, you have higher exposure to pollution. I was like, well, great. Check that my whole life. Right? So the point is that there's so many things that lead to this, and so I think if you already know, okay, I'm getting a lot of exposure in these other areas, yes, maybe I do change the protein brand because it was at the top of the list and I know I'm already. Doing a lot of other things that put me at risk. And so that could help me out long-term. I guess what I think about too is the long-term effect of this, let's say you did this for 40 years, I don't actually really care about one to three years, but these things really add up, if you're doing them decade after decades. So I think about that too is, and I know the whole dose makes the poison. But I like that we talked about how it's in everything. We have to look at everything and I like that we had the supplement conversation so do you think, it's unwise for someone to buy a supplement that doesn't have the different certifications on it? Nine times outta 10? Probably because there are so many good options. But I will say I find less actual things like protein powders that do have it, but there are brands that exist that do have it it's kind of like with organic food. So for someone to get the organic certified certification, it's a lot of money and, frankly, some of the smaller farms, they can't do it. They might be doing all the things right. And I just know I spent a lot of time in Wisconsin. There was a small farming community, and one of them, they were doing everything right, but they could not afford to get it physically put on the label. And so I think that there are reputable companies, but I wonder if it's like, can I see your certification of analysis, talking to the people. And I think that this is something that most people are not doing. We're kind of very divorced of where stuff's coming from and what's happening. And it's hard because life's busy enough and then we're like. Now you gotta verify everything in your life right now. Can you take the additional time to fill out the contact form on the supplement brand's website? I think that's it too, we are buying a product, so as a consumer we are allowed to ask the brand, Hey, can I see your last testing to show that there wasn't anything in here that you guys were saying. And realistically, I like to think about this from a business standpoint as well,. If a brand knows that their product is contaminated, they're not going to put it out on the shelves because that is a lawsuit waiting to happen. I know. To a company. I don't think there's malicious intent. If it comes back that there are high levels of lead in their product that pass the threshold of what's considered safe, they're not going to then put that pallet out. Or if somehow something happens to it and they find out about it, they'll pull it. Right? And so it's important too. We are living in a weird time with food safety and things like that right now. We are not seeing the same level of public awareness around, recalls for foods. And so we also need to be very aware of consumers to proactively keep tabs on. Is there a recall on this? Actually that goes for all food because the chicken that you buy, the fruit that you buy could be contaminated. It could have a pathogen that you don't wanna be eating and we aren't getting that news as publicly as we were a couple years ago. And so I think. We should be very comfortable as consumers. If someone were to come to me thinking about working with me and be like, can you show me your license? Can you show me your certifications? Right. I can. I can back it all up. I can give you all the info. Yeah, you can verify. You could call the university and verify that I went there if you really wanted to. Right. Could not show you where my, degree is because I lost that. I lost that actual piece of paper. But I have the transcripts and I have the license and all that good stuff. But it's the same thing, if someone was coming to me to invest their money in my service, it's the same thing as if I was going to purchase this product. I could ask them and they should be able to provide it. And I would say if a brand is not willing to provide their certification of testing to you, I'm not spend my money on them. I'm glad that you brought this up because I too have a certain company that I've really liked a lot of their stuff for years,, their protein powder and such. And I literally, when all this came out, I was like, I knew that they had been testing.'cause years ago I had already looked into it and what were the macros? Correct. Da da da. You know,'cause some people do nitrogen spiking and stuff. But then I recontacted her and she's like, here's the report Awesome. That was two seconds, right? Two seconds to find that out. So I like how You're giving people permission, just shoot the email I'll never forget, there was a company that was on Shark Tank and oh God, I won't say the name of it, but they had a better For You Donut thing. Nowhere on their website were the macros. And I was like, how is this possible now? It turned out, supposedly it was somewhere, but I was killing myself to try to find it. So I had emailed them and they let me know, but you just need to reach out Sometimes, like, yeah, it's not obvious what's happening. Yeah. No, and I will say I have noticed probably because more and more people have been saying and obviously I live more in my bubble of being a dietician and I see other dieticians saying, you should make sure things are third party tested. But I have seen brands now actually start to keep it in the footer maybe is official website? Mm-hmm. Where you can actually click and see the latest reports that they've done. I think it's great. Yeah. Publicly available. You don't even have to ask, but you guys ask. I mean, ask nicely. Don't be like, I demand you. Show me this in a mean way and be like, Hey, I'm thinking of inve, investing my money in your product. Could you provide me, with these tests to certify that what you're saying is in here, is in here. Completely. Because with these, supplement brands and stuff, it's very proprietary where they're getting their stuff sourced from. It's coming from different countries, different places. And again, if they're not testing all these things, I'm telling you knowing the back end of these things, they are random as can be. And so you wanna know this stuff. So do you think there's anything that we didn't talk about today that would be important kind of along these lines I know we covered a lot, which I'm very grateful for. Man, that's a good question. I think the one plug I will say as a dietician, I. We should aim to get the majority of our food from food, not supplements. Yay. Like I said earlier in this episode, I do drink a protein shake every day because I am currently someone who's throwing my body out of bed at 7:00 AM and starting work. Life is crazy right now. So I'm working 12 to 15 hours a day, and I literally, my eyes open. I get ready for the day in 10 to 12 minutes. Exactly. I've timed it at this point, and so for me. I start my day with a protein shake because I'm throwing my body into what I'm doing right now. That's not a forever thing. And so I also think too, just know that there are seasons of life where you might have to use a supplement a little bit more frequently. Yeah. But also, supplements are not meant to be long-term protein powder specifically. We want food. We want food. You guys When people ask me about greens powders, I'm not a huge fan of greens powders. Do I think it's going to take you out if you take one? No, I don't. But also, it's not replacing fruits and vegetables, so if that's why you're taking it, that's not actually going to do for you. What fruits and vegetables do I tell you? I'm so glad that you brought this up today because I've never been a fan of these greens. I don't understand it. I'm sorry., At many levels I don't get it. If you needed it. I can't think of any justification how you couldn't get it in another way, or even a multivitamin. It's like this random powder that you're sticking in things I just don't get it at all. It also just to me, tastes like dirt. Yes, that was the one time it kind of makes sense. I think I talked about this, but this was way back in the day. Some of them have always reached out to me to wanna be on the podcast or whatever, but I just can't get behind it. And so then I can't do it. Yeah. And like I said, I'll be so honest and I say this all the time and I also think that this is important when people are. When people are like, oh my gosh, well you said five years ago that you would never do this. And I'm like, right. Well then new data, new evidence, new science came out that I'm like, yes, I, I always say this. I say this to people. Yep., You listen to me today. When people say, I went back and listened to all the old podcasts. I'm like, ah. Because I don't know what I said years ago. Oh my gosh. I don't even remember what I said two months ago. At this point. Life is moving so fast, but I know that I as a dietician five years ago was like, absolutely nobody should ever touch like a greens powder, for example. And now I'm like, you know what? If it's something that you have the expendable income for, if it makes you feel good, I'm still going to tell you you need your fruits and vegetables. But also I think the biggest thing that I say all the time, I wanna put this on a t-shirt or a hat. Supplements are supplementary. They're not meant to completely replace things 99.9% of the time for them to do all the magic that they can do. Having a really well balanced diet is going to be key for that. So it's not, oh, take a multivitamin and never eat fruits and vegetables again. Totally take fiber powder and never eat fiber in any of the foods that you eat. It's like they're training wheels, so you might use some, you initially get on a GLP one, you're more suppressed. Okay, great. You throw in those 30 grams a day just because you're like, I wanna make sure that I'm not. I don't know, under 50, 60 grams a day, but with time, you can get the a hundred grams or whatever it is you're needing with hole based foods, but you have to learn how to cook again, maybe you never learned how to cook. So, it's a learning curve and I don't think people realize that the ramp is ultimately to hole based food. It's a tool in your toolbox and just like any tool, it can be misused. So you can misuse it in ways that are not serving you long term. I like to use the toolbox analogy'cause I have some clients that like track their food intake and then I have some clients that don't. But we're not tracking in a way that's unhealthy for us or that creates an unhealthy relationship with food. It's an educational tool to help us understand. The actual content of our foods, what does actually four, four ounces of protein look like? Things like that where like it's not, we're not meant to track our food every single day of our life, and we're not meant to. Use supplements to replace things forever and ever. There are some really great ones. There are some things that we've seen, and I don't want that to be taken from this where they're like, oh, well, no supplements ever. No. I have a lot of women with PCOS, for example, that I work with, and a lot of them really have benefited from using things like anatol regularly. And so there. Time and a place. But for protein powder specifically for kind of some of those bigger ones, I always like people to remember that companies put a lot of marketing money, a lot of marketing dollars into what you're seeing. And so if you feel like you're seeing a certain brand a lot,, you're getting targeted by ads, they're listening. I literally just said a brand to someone the other day and I was like, have you heard of this? And they're like, no. And I was like, well, sorry in advance.'cause it's all you're gonna see now. Yeah. And literally,, I got a text message two days later being like, I, every four things that I swipe through on Facebook, it's like an ad for this company. And I'm like, totally sorry. But we can use them responsibly. They can be good., I genuinely don't think that like people need to worry, even with the consumer reports, like the ones that they were saying had the most. Led in them are still technically below the FDA daily limit. Now they are higher up there for sure, but. Also, what is your overall threshold and how much of it are you having? Yeah. And if you're really worried, you should work with a doctor and a dietician to actually look at your overall threshold. If thinking about your overall intake and seeing where you land on that scale is really overwhelming to you. Have a professional do it for you. Yeah. I do analysis all the time and I'm like, let's look at this. Where are we at? You have no potassium in your body. We should really focus on fixing that. Potassium is always the one where I'm like, so we intake no dietary potassium. We should fix it. By far, the one thing I see the most across the board is we don't eat potassium. So PSA, everybody go eat some potassium. What would be some potassium rich things? What are people not eating? Okay. So I feel like every time someone is like, what has potassium? Or if I ask that people like bananas and I'm. I mean, you're not wrong, but that's actually not even one of the highest things that have potassium. So things like spinach, your avocados, sweet potatoes regular potatoes, apricots, oranges. A lot of those actually have leafy greens. Your dark leafy greens are gonna be good sources of potassium as well. This goes back to people not eating enough fruits and vegetables and fiber regularly, which is my current soap box in my daily life. This is actually so funny that we're talking about this because I've been orange obsessed recently, which is very abnormal for me because I am not an orange person. Okay? But I've been getting every week, 12 oranges at the store, which is again, crazy pants. But it's, but, and I do that and avocados, so I'm okay, but maybe I was low on some electrolyte. I'm a really big fan of your body tells you what you need. Not super, where like a hundred percent intuitive. Sometimes it's like, why is it that suddenly I'm wanting these oranges? You know? And so anyway, this is funny that you're bringing this up. Maybe it was potassium. Maybe your body was like, Hey. You wanna throw some potassium my way? Because honestly a lot of us do get enough dietary sodium in through our diet, naturally. And I am that dietician that could put salt on a plate and lick it off. I love salt. Yeah. Dunno why I actually didn't growing up, I haven't figured out why that changed for me and like the last three years, but. You can do micronutrient testing. I'm sure you've done that with some of your Yeah. Your clients as well. But when I look at, when I look at my micronutrients, I'm also that person that's like, oh my god. There's not enough potassium in my diet. I'm deficient and I am eating a lot of these things, but I just, with my body, and I think this is important, everybody, back to what I said earlier about what you need for supplements is based on you not other people. Because for me and my chronic illnesses that I have, plus I add in, I take a GLP one myself. I don't think I said that earlier, but I've been on a GLP one for three years now. So I've adapted and adjusted even in the last three years being on a GLP one based on side effects that I was experiencing.'cause I am a very sensitive girly Yeah. Which I talk about a lot on my podcast too, of I have an episode coming out soon of my like three year anniversary on Manjaro, and I literally talk about my last two updates I update every six months and I was like, not loving life would burn things down. Still glad I'm on it, but. I'm working with my doctor currently as somebody who knows a lot about these medications to figure out why is my body doing weird things? Yeah, yeah. Things really change over time, right?'cause people think they're just gonna get on it, they're gonna lose the weight or whatever they're gonna do. And that's gonna be same, same, same. And it's like, no, it actually does change over time. And one last thing I'm thinking here. I know that, thank you for having taken this time to talk to us. I think about. With protein. I follow,, body compositions a lot with my patients, and some people can get away with a lot lower protein intake compared to what we think would be needed for them based on the goals and all the places that they're at. And I just think they're better absorbers. And then other people need ridiculous amounts and they're still losing muscle and, we just can't figure it out between, the carb ratios and all the other things we're doing. And, I just think our physiology is also different and it's beautiful, but we can't compare, unfortunately. Nope. And I think that goes to my philosophy as a healthcare provider is what I do with one client is not what I do with the next, it might be similar because they may have similar goals, but their target numbers are different. Their protocols are different. How many times they're working out is different. We all have different social and environmental Lives. We have different genetics. We are very different. And so that's why, it's important that you're doing what's specific to you and your health and your body. Yeah. And if you're working with someone who's just giving you something very cookie cutter or not actually taking into account any of that information, Run doesn't work out. I know. I'll never forget, I had someone do a meet and greet with me for the clinic and this lady was like, well, do you have a protocol? Do you have like, everyone does this thing. And I was like, absolutely not. It's the opposite of that. And I remember this person just was not a good fit.'cause they wanted here's your meal plan and this is what it's gonna be. And everyone gets the same test but that's not a good medicine. That's not Us practicing in a good way, but, okay. Tell us where everybody can find you, everything a website online. Just tell us all of that so we can make sure to link afterwards. Everyone can find you. Amazing. So my primary platform is Instagram. I'm at Dietician dot Gianna, G-I-A-N-N-A, and it's dietician with a T. I know people really do confuse that, but in the United States it's with a T. Internationally it's with a C. Some people get really upset about that, but doesn't matter to me, but you will not find me if you type it in with a C if you spell dietician wrong. I factually will not show up on your social media. So it's dietician dot Gianna on Instagram. It's the same handle on TikTok. Maybe without a dot. I'm honestly not really sure I am on there, but I will be honest, I'm more fun on there of like, this is my life. Not this is good fun content. I have a book that's out in the world called the GLP one Solution. You can get it everywhere. You can do it. Paperback, audiobook, ebook, all those fun things. I'm listening on Audible. It's amazing guys. Go download it. It's awesome. Thank you. You know what's so funny? I didn't know it was gonna be an audio book. And then when they told me it was gonna be, and I got to rank the narrators, the person that ended up narrating it was my number one last night. I had to,, explain to my dad what audio book was. So we went over, just went over that literally last night. I was gonna ask you if you had to pick the person,'cause I saw that you didn't read it, which I know it's a whole can of worms to do that. And I was like, did she pick this person? Because I like it. Because I listen to everything on Audible. If I don't like the narrator, I can't do it. It's horrible. Yes. And honestly, what's funny is I love podcasts, but I am not an audiobook person. I need to really and I don't know why it's, and honestly it could be'cause what I'm reading is sports romance. It's not educational whatsoever. And I have voices for people in my head already. So then if I hear a voice that doesn't match, I'm like, oh no, I'm out. Well,, it's funny that you bring that up because for me, I can hear the stories and stuff, But if I need to learn, I need to read it. If I wanna remember the quotes, if I wanna take notes. Because I'll be listening when I'm walking at the track. I can't take notes at that time. Right. I mean, I can, but it's fragmented, right? So a lot of the time I will both listen and buy it. It's just like you have to, you know, my I feel like a lot of people like both of them, but, it's available in all those formats. On all the places, if you want an easy link to it. It's linked in my bio on all of my social profiles at the top. But my website is either gianna beasley.com or dietician gianna.com. Both will take you whatever you feel like figuring out how to spell will take you where you wanna go. But yeah, I feel like those are all the places. I do have my own podcast. It's currently called Game Changing Health, but we're rebranding, we're moving to your GLP one bestie. So that's where you can find me. If you can't find game Changing Health, it's your GLP one bestie next. I love it. Yeah. I thank you so much for having me. I love talking about supplements because I want us all to be informed consumers and also not have fear around things, because a lot of times it's just social media makes it kind of scary. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on. I know I learned a lot and everyone's going to gonna just be in a much better spot after listening to this. So thank you so much. Nobody go throw away your stuff on your counter. You're going to be okay. I.