The Breakfast Club | New Study Unveils 70% Of Tested Supplements In India Have Inaccurate Protein

Alright, let’s start with some food for thought this morning. What is exactly going inside your protein powder? Well, doctors and researchers from the Rajagiri Hospital in Kerala and some US based tech entrepreneurs, they went into understanding this a little bit more. They analyzed 36 different protein powders and what they found is that a staggering 70% of those 36 samples that they picked up did not reveal the right protein information. In some cases, the protein content was only half of what was advertised on the pack. And what is even worse is that 14% of the samples contained harmful fungal aflatoxins. We will breakdown what that is for you in a little 8% showed traces of pesticide residue and obviously all of these findings raised very serious concerns about the quality, the safety of protein powders that are readily available for you and me in the Indian market. So what should you buy? What should you not buy? Let’s hear it. We decided as we do on TBC to bring on an expert. This is Doctor Ahmoog joining us from the Yatharth Hospital. Let’s go over to doctor and understand more. So Doctor thanks for joining us early in the morning Doctor. Question #1A. Majority of protein powders we are learning are doing more harm than good. So for average consumers who want to start taking powders what should we look for? So basically we will all we we have to look out at the protein content, how much is, how much is that 100 gram of powder is given, how much protein it is given that is the main thing. Can also see for the essential amino acid content like we need atleast there are 8 essential amino acids and two semi essential amino acids. So that is a very important thing to be checked when you are buying the protein powder and you also check on whether it is containing how much of sugars and all whether that content is less or not. So basically these three things you should look when you are buying the protein, the protein content, the amino acid content, and the sugar. Yeah, those are three things to keep in mind. But Doctor Amot, the problem with this story seems to be that it’s not just what is on the label. The fact is, you can’t trust what’s put on the label either. Isn’t that a bigger problem? That is what the survey shows. Even if they claim that the label has got so and so much, the label says that it contains so much protein, it actually does not have that that much. That is and and the companies may actually, if a legal action is taken, the company may get a serious they they they may have serious issues because they are claiming what they are putting but they are actually not putting. Yeah but doctor, I just want to get this straight here. You know the issue with all these packaging is that the agency that gives them certificates, FSSAI, isn’t the problem that they basically don’t check if what’s in the product is actually beneficial or not what’s in the bag. Their job is basically to check if that is harmful or not. Isn’t that the crux of the matter? FSSI is a regulatory board. It can only save. It can only form guidelines to say that this thing should be consumed. This thing should not be consumed up to that much. It should not. It should be marked as an harmful ingredient. It should be labeled properly that this this product has got this content which is potentially harmful, so it should not be consumed. FFSI may only come up with these regulatory Now the the the companies which forms this products, they take this and they label it also. But sometimes the labeling is also very small. They put it in a very small place so that people generally they don’t read all those things #2 and the question which you asked earlier that like FSSI will not tell us. They will not blame the company if they are not giving the actual ingredients what they are claiming. Effectively only it will produce the regulatory thing, whether as you told, whether it is harmful or whether it is beneficial. Doctor, if we just come to you with a slightly more basic question, can you just tell us, tell our family who should be having the protein powders, Who’s it right for? Who’s it wrong for? See protein powders. See I’m being a doctor. Protein powders are actually required. Most of our patients are real. Most of the patients are recovering from a disease. Liver patients needs extra protein. So all these protein is very much essential for everyone and seeing our normal, seeing the diet of normal people. Nowadays we consume lot of carbohydrates, so if it is replaced with some amount of protein, it does good for everyone. So I’m not saying that all protein powders are bad protein powders. They are most some of them and most of them are good protein powders. The intention to have proteins are good only. It decreases your fat content, it decreases your carbohydrate content, it gives you good building blocks materials. So it is a very good thing to eat. The only thing is it’s packaged wrong in sometimes that is that is wrong. You can have natural proteins, you can have plant based proteins, you can have animal based proteins. The only thing is when it is processed and packaged in a container, which sometimes can deceive you. That is an issue because they can contain contaminants, they can contain some added things also which is not required. OK, so doctor, you’ve actually touched on it right now. I don’t want to scare our TBC family, but this question of contamination with heavy metals, what can this do to our bodies? So the the powder is they are contaminated with heavy metals. These heavy metals, whatever we are consuming, it comes out through our body either through liver or through kidney and most of the things comes out through a liver wound. And these heavy metals can actually cause so much issues with the liver. They can lead to liver diseases, liver failure. They’re also in few cases. Drug induced liver injury is a very, very normal and common thing nowadays. Previously we used to see with only some few drugs like tuberculosis drugs, HIV drugs. But nowadays these supplements either herbal supplements or any other diseases or protein supplements, sometimes Chinese supplements. These all are very known causes of liver diseases. Sometimes they can lead to chronic liver diseases. Too much of proteins again definitely leads to increase in uric acid. So people who are having too much of proteins may have hyperuricemia. The other thing is too much protein may lead to stone formation in some patients and again it can Causeway some nephritis. So all this acute problem can be solved OK, but again it can lead to chronic kidney disease. Once anything becomes chronic, you have to live at it for your lifelong thing. That is true. But doctor, what I really want to understand is that who do you trust then? You can’t trust the label because it’s not giving you the right ingredients, because it doesn’t give you what it promises. You can’t trust your Jim bhaiya because he’s obviously out there to sell you his own product. So who do you trust? Where do you go and find the right product? So that is that the question you have asked. Even we don’t have answers to that. Generally what I do is I always say that try to have more of natural proteins, try to have more of proteins which you can easily prepare yourself at your home, eating more of eggs, eating more of paneer tofu, eating more of soya chunks, soya beans lean. So that is what we generally tell to our patients to have more of natural proteins, the proteins which you can consume on, which can prepare on your. But sometimes we do, we do have to tell them to take extra protein powders. Also we do recommend few medical medicated protein powders. But actually speaking after going through the survey, we are also not very sure whether that these medication powder which are marketed by so many companies, whether they are actually genuine or not. So I also think that whether I should also go and get it tested or not before prescribing it to my patients. So I stick it to my old thing, old things now. OK, you take natural proteins, eat 4 eggs, bring 2 glass of milk, at least take four pieces or five pieces of paneer every day. That is what I tell nowadays. OK, Alright then. Thanks so much for joining us, doctor. But it’s troubling when even the doctors are saying they don’t know what to really trust right now. So clearly there’s a lot of policy and regulation required on this story, but let’s move on from that a little bit. Like we said, protein powders, the sense that you want to bring out from the stories that they’re not all bad, they don’t all cause cancer, that some of the headlines will tell you there is the good, there’s the bad, there’s the ugly, the protein powder. And our job here is to sort of bring that out really for you. But let’s move on from this for a little bit. And I’m sure one of the other takeaways from this story has been about how troubling it is to actually read labels. The truth we told, how many of us really toya understand what labels are? How do we even know what these labels tell us, How many of us actually read them? So we thought, well, bring somebody in the studio who’s made a career out of decoding labels and understanding what these labels really mean. He is very famous with the Janta, very infamous with some brands. Sometimes they say that a person doesn’t need an introduction. And you are right, Sonal. Our audience is possibly already know him, especially those of you that are active on Instagram. We have with us today in the studios Revanth, Himat, Sinka. He goes by the name Food Farmer. That’s possibly how you know him. Sonal, do you want to take the first question to him? Yes. Revanth, thanks for speaking with us. I’m sure you will have a lot to say about food labels, but without getting into any controversy, since you are somebody who understands labels well, can you share tips with our viewers on what can be done? What is the right way to read the label? Is there some playbook that you have? So I’ll give a First of all, thanks for having me here. I’ll give a few pointers. So the mistake most people make is they just look at the front of the package. The front of the package is purely marketing. It is like a resume. You would just say the best qualities you have not all your qualities. So always turn around the pack and start reading the back of the label as well. The problem is when we turn around the food package and read the back, Most of Indians they just look at the MRP or the expiry date and there is a funny line saying that the longer the expiry date the longer hour expiry date. So the like, you know, if the shorter are expiry date, sorry, yeah, yeah. So if the product has a very long expiry date, it just has too much preservatives. And as a result exactly the shorter the longer the shelf life, shorter our shelf life. That’s that’s the play. The most important thing I would ask all viewers is to start reading the ingredient list. And the way to do that is ingredient lists are listed in order of weight. So the first ingredient is the ingredient which is highest by volume, followed by the 2nd, followed by the 3rd. So if sugar or metha is in the first three to five ingredients, you probably should not have it too often. The problem is that most of our biscuits today, they are all filled with sugar and metha and even the biscuits which call themselves oat biscuits. They are also filled with metha. They have more metha and oats so that is the thing. So always read the go in order and try to find out that. So that’s like one quick pointer. Yeah, I can keep going on. But yeah, Revan can really keep going on. But that’s a good tip to look at the shelf life, to look at ingredients and also to sort of have some focus on some of the names. I remember that you can’t pronounce a lot of them. We don’t know what they mean really, right. So it’s probably a chemical then. Yeah? So another pointer is if you cannot pronounce the ingredient or if you do not understand what it means, in most cases it is not good for you. And also another thing is the shorter the ingredient list usually the better. For example, a peanut butter, the best peanut butters have only one ingredient. Peanuts and orange juice should have only one ingredient. Oranges like it should not have sugar and like, you know, five other preservatives mixed. So Revanth, you’re basically breaking our hearts. We’re sitting here in Delhi also and hearing you and we’re getting our heart broken. You’re essentially saying stay away from anything yummy. But Revanth, tell our audiences, what’s the experience that got you started down this journey, this this label reading journey? So I was trying to brainstorm also what is the fastest way to get the bulk of India to become healthier. And I just feel like, you know, if you want to try and quick approach to get both the rich as well as the poor to become healthier because all of us are consuming packaged food. And in the thousands of years of human history, we’ve been eating packaged food only for the last 50 to 100 years. So I wanted to. And the amount of packaged food we’ve been eating in the last 50 to 100 years has only been increasing day by day. Yeah, This is why I thought that I’ll focus on this. And most people, even the health conscious people, the people who go to the gyms, even they themselves don’t know what to eat, what not to eat. So I thought this is a very important area to focus on and very glad you’re doing it. Thanks so much Revanth, for being here and sharing such useful tips with our viewers. So that’s something for everybody to do as the weekend approaches. If you go out shopping, keep all these things in mind before you pick up the next product.