Increase convenience and training effectiveness with overnight recovery
22 Sep 2017 | FrieslandCampina DMV
Timing protein intake is a crucial part of a nutrition strategy aimed at maximizing the result of a training effort. In this science driven webinar, Jorn Trommelen demonstrates recent research that shows that protein supplementation in the evening is an excellent and effective moment for protein intake.
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Welcome to all of you.
Actually, we've got viewers from all over the world.
Welcome to our webinar on how to increase convenience and training effectiveness with overnight recovery.
My name is Benno van Mersberger, and I will be your host for this webinar.
Today's webinar will center around the topic of how we can help athletes and consumers to improve their training effectiveness while also meeting the needs of today's demanding consumers on convenience.
During the webinar, you can ask questions at any time using the question box on your screen.
We'll end the webinar with a Q&A session where the speakers will answer some of the most interesting questions.
But don't be afraid.
All questions will be answered.
If they are not answered in the webinar, you'll receive an answer in writing, so don't hesitate to ask.
The overnight recovery concept that we'll be talking about today is actually a way of meeting consumer demands in a way that fits the latest trends.
Moreover, it's based on the latest scientific insights, and that's why I'm pleased to announce that our main speaker for today is Johan Tomelin.
Johan is part of the M3 research group at Maastricht University.
That aims to define the most effective exercise and nutritional interventions to improve health and functional performance with a focus on muscular tissue.
In short, it's about finding a way how we can improve our performance by optimizing our nutrition.
Jon's focused area of research is sports nutrition, especially the role of protein and muscle recovery.
He was awarded the Sports Nutrition Award from the American College of Sports Medicine in 2016, as as the nutrition award of the European College of Sports Science.
Bjorn wrote an overview article on pre-sleep protein ingestion that's definitely worth the read, and we'd love to share it with you.
So if you want to find it, go to DMV.nl, where you'll find a link to that article.
Bjorn will share with us today the latest scientific insights on how to increase training effectiveness with overnight recovery.
Thereafter, I will share our thoughts on how we can actually apply this research in a way that's appealing for today's consumers.
And if I say share our thoughts, then it's good to spend one minute actually on who we are.
This webinar is offered to you by Friesland Campina DMV, and we are part of Friesland Camppina, which is one of the largest dairy cooperatives in the world, and DMV is dedicated to protein ingredients.
Our special focus is on delivering nutritional proteins to the performance and active nutrition industry.
Going beyond just delivering protein, but also creating on trend and scientifically proven concepts that help the performance nutrition industry to innovate, and one of the trends today is that consumers are demanding a wider variety of product formats than just a classical shake, bar, or protein drink or what have you.
And that's why we are glad.
That we also have wide experience in serving the food industry with proteins because our multi-year experience in the wider food industry helps us actually to make new applications high in protein for performance nutrition.
But let's start talking performance.
The objective of all athletes, one can say, is to become better tomorrow.
That goes for Peter Van Ski, an Olympic rower that you actually see here on the picture.
He's using our proteins because he trusts them.
He knows that they come, come from a trusted source, and he also likes the taste.
But the idea of trying to become better tomorrow doesn't only go for professional or even Olympic athletes.
It also goes for recreational athletes.
Only becoming better and being better tomorrow might mean something completely different.
It might have to do with beating a personal record on a half marathon.
It might have to do with losing just the last pound of weight until you have the weight you want to have.
It might have to do with contributing to the team and having fun with your friends.
But anyhow, We want to be better tomorrow.
And we invest a lot in obtaining that goal, and we try to train the right way.
Maybe we hire a personal trainer or whatever.
We invest in the right gear.
We do a lot to optimize our training.
But actually when we are training, the only thing what we are doing is breaking down our muscles.
By training we might gain technique, but whether we actually physically gain by training is determined by the quality of our recovery.
And his recovery, of course, is determined by how we rest, but also by our nutrition.
And nutrition strategies with regards to protein quality and quantity have been developed, but lately there's a growing amount of attention to protein timing.
And I'm happy to give the word to Johan Tomelin, who will share with us the latest insight on that, especially focusing on the large opportunity we find in the evening.
So Jon, go ahead.
Thank you, Benno.
My talk will be on the latest research insights on protein timing, with a focus on pre-sleep protein ingestion.
There are 2 main anabolic stimuli for skeletal muscle.
Exercise And protein ingestion.
Protein not only provides the building blocks for skeletal muscle.
It's also a signal for muscle growth.
Protein directly stimulates muscle protein synthesis, and following the ingestion of a protein-rich meal, muscle protein synthesis will exceed muscle protein breakdown rates, resulting in a positive muscle protein balance represented by the green area in the graph, and this represents a net gain of muscle protein.
In contrast, while fasting muscle protein breakdown rates will exceed muscle protein synthesis rates, there's a negative muscle protein balance represented by the red area, and there's a net loss of muscle protein.
Now there's a variety of factors that impacts the effect of protein ingestion on muscle protein synthesis rates.
The first one is simply the amount of protein ingested, but also the type of protein ingested, and the distribution and the timing of the ingested protein are important.
In this slide, you see a protein dose response study, which simply means that various doses of protein are tested in a meal for their effect on muscle protein synthesis rates, and as little as 5 g of protein can already significantly stimulate muscle protein synthesis rates, but with increasing doses up to 20 g of protein, we see that muscle protein synthesis rates keep increasing.
However, doubling protein intake from 20 g to 40 g hardly has any additional effect on muscle protein synthesis rates, and therefore, we often say that 20 g of protein is the optimal amount in a meal.
But the type of protein is also an important consideration, because not all protein is created equally.
For example, in this study, either milk protein or soy protein was given directly after an exercise training bout, and the milk protein was more effective at stimulating post exercise muscle protein synthesis rates.
And the reason for this is that milk protein is an animal protein, and animal proteins are typically higher in essential amino acids, including the amino acid leucine, and leucine is the amino acid that is most potent at stimulating muscle protein synthesis rates.
For example, you can add just a little bit of leucine to a protein meal, and that alone is, enough to stimulate the muscle protein synthesis response to that meal.
And because milk is much higher in leucine than soy, milk is simply a more effective, protein source to build muscle.
But also the timing of protein ingestion is an important consideration.
We know that exercise, enhances the effect of protein ingestion.
Exercise makes your body more sensitive to the effects of protein ingestion.
You can utilize the protein you ingest more efficiently, more efficiently.
And therefore, for a long time, it has been hypothesized that if you take protein immediately after a training session, that is most effective.
However, more recently, we have learned that the synergy between exercise and protein ingestion lasts much longer, for at least 24 hours.
So this means that you don't necessarily have to take your protein immediately after exercise, but for at least one day after your training session, you will handle your protein more efficiently.
What's perhaps a more important consideration than the exact timing of protein, relative to exercise is how you distribute your daily protein throughout the whole day.
For example, in this study, three different, protein patternterns were compared.
In all three patterns, subjects, got the same total amount of protein, 80 g of protein, in a 12 hour period.
In the first pattern, the bolus pattern, the subject's got this 80 g of protein in two boluses of 40 g immediately after exercise and 6 hours later.
In the intermediate pattern, the subjects got the same amount of protein in 4, doses of 20 g of protein, so every 3 hours.
And in the pills pattern, the subjects got 10 g of protein every 90 minutes.
And as you can see, the intermediate pattern was most effective at stimulating muscle protein synthesis rates during this period.
So this suggests that too infrequent, meals, such as in the bolus pattern, is suboptimal to stimulate muscle protein synthesis rates, but also too frequent and thereby never hitting, a high enough protein content in each separate meal is also suboptimal.
So based on this, we were wondering, so how do athletes eat in practice.
So we characterized the protein habits of a large group of trained Dutch athletes competing either at national level or higher, and we saw that their total protein intake was in line with recommendations, and most of this protein was ingested in the three main meals breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
But what's interesting is when you look at this graph, you see that there's a relatively short period between breakfast and lunch, and between lunch and dinner, but then dinner is your last protein rich meal of the day.
So that means there's a very long period between dinner and your next protein rich meal, which is breakfast the next morning, and this period is easily 1011, 12 hours.
So Theoretically, this is how muscle protein synthesis rates look throughout the day.
During the waking hours, you're eating all day, and muscle protein synthesis rates will exceed muscle protein breakdown rates during most of the waking hours.
However, during the night, there is a prolonged period where muscle protein breakdown rates have the chance to exceed muscle protein synthesis rates.
So we hypothesized that the addition of a pre-sleep protein meal just before sleep would increase overnight muscle protein synthesis rates and thereby improve training recovery and improve training adaptations in athletes.
So we tested this hypothesis by recruiting subjects who had a normal day of eating, so, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then they did a session of resistance exercise in the evening.
We even gave them a protein shake immediately after training, and then about 2.5 hours later they went to sleep, and we either gave them a placebo or a protein shake, so pre-sleep protein.
And we saw that this priestly protein was effectively digested and absorbed and increased overnight muscle protein synthesis rates.
So this suggests that even after a normal day of eating, even if you already take one extra protein shake during the day, an additional protein shake just before sleep further improves overnight muscle protein synthesis rates.
So, in theory, if you do this, , daily, then this should result in an increase in muscle mass.
So we tested that.
We recruited subjects for a new study for which they trained, during a 12 week period, 3 sessions of resistance exercise per week.
Again, one group, got a placebo prior to sleep, and the other group ingested a pre-sleep protein supplement.
And, The group that ingested the protein supplement gained more muscle mass than the placebo group and also had a greater increase in strength, suggesting that the increase in muscle mass also has a functional benefit for the athlete.
Now, in this long term study, we gave priestly protein, basically every day, so on the training days, but also on the non-training days.
So we were wondering what is most effective, supplementing on the training days or the non-training days.
So we did a similar study again where subjects ate normally during the day.
And then one group did exercise at the beginning of the evening, and the other group simply stayed rested, and then both groups got presly protein again.
Now, in this graph, this is a different measurement than in previous graphs, so it's not muscle protein synthesis, but it's a special measurement we call de novo muscle protein synthesis, which is essentially how many of the amino acids from your drink, in this case, the pre-sleep drink, End up in muscle tissue during the night.
And you can see if you don't do any exercise, so the pro group, some of the amino acids from your pre-sleep drink are used to build new muscle mass during the night, but if you do exercise in the pro plus X group, simply more of the amino acids from your pre-sleep protein are incorporated into muscle tissue during the night.
So this suggests that the synergy between exercise and protein also happens at night and that you don't necessarily have to exercise immediately before, protein ingestion to get this effect, because in this study, subjects exercised a couple of hours earlier in the evening.
So, conceptually, this is how things work.
If you're rested, your muscle protein synthesis rates, during the night will be the lowest.
If you rest, but ingest protein prior to sleep, you increase your overnight muscle protein synthesis rates.
If you do exercise earlier during the day, you will increase your overnight muscle protein synthesis rates, but if you do exercise earlier during the day, And also ingest pre-sleep protein, you will maximize your overnight muscle protein synthesis rates.
Now, our next question was how much protein should you ingest prior to sleep?
Because in our first study where we showed that pre-sleep protein ingestion stimulates overnight muscle protein synthesis, we gave our subjects 40 g of protein, which is a lot more than 20 g I mentioned earlier, that is considered the optimal amount during the day.
So we did a new study in which we gave our subjects only 30 g of pres sleep protein, and we also had a third group where we added some leucine.
And remember that I mentioned earlier that the addition of leucine to protein can also increase the muscle protein synthetic response.
However, the 30 g, either with or without the additional leucine, did not appear to result in a significant increase in muscle protein synthesis, which is perhaps a little bit, surprising, but what we think is the case is that, that optimal amount of 20 g, that is, when you measure muscle protein synthesis during a relatively short period during the day, typically 4 hour, While we measure muscle protein synthesis during a 7 1/2 hour during the night, because the night is simply a much longer period.
So it appears that to significantly increase overnight muscle protein synthesis, you need, a much larger amount than what you would need during the day.
So this does not mean that, 30 g doesn't do anything.
However, to, Significantly improve it, you would need to ingest 40 g.
Now, another question we often get is what's the effect of pre-sleep protein on actual sleep quality, and we have basically found no effect of the pre-sleep supplement on any measurement of sleep quality, so it has no positive effect, but also no negative effect on sleep quality.
Now, so far I've mentioned data on young subjects who also do exercise, but we also have done a couple of studies in other populations for who pre-sleep protein ingestion might be an interesting dietary strategy.
For example, older adults slowly lose muscle mass as they age.
And they typically have a reduced appetite, so they have difficulty increasing their protein intake in their regular meals.
So therefore, we hypothesize that the introduction of an extra meal, a priestly protein meal, would increase their daily protein synthesis rates and is simply more convenient than trying to increase protein intake in one of their regular meals.
So, subjects either get a placebo, 20 g of protein, 20 g of protein with additional leucine, or 40 g of protein prior to sleep, and, while it appears that the 20 g of protein with or without additional leucine had a small effect, only the 40 g, resulted in a significant increase in overnight muscle protein synthesis.
So this is a similar result as with the young subjects, and we basically think that any amount of pre-sleep protein is beneficial and will do something, but, If you have smaller amounts of protein, it likely will only stimulate muscle protein synthesis in the first part of the night, but if you want to stimulate muscle protein synthesis during the whole night to really optimize recovery, you should probably aim for a 40 g dose.
Now we also did a similar study as we did with the young subjects.
We investigated that if you do exercise earlier in the day, whether you better utilize your pre-sleep protein.
And again, if subjects, in this case, older subjects.
Earlier in the day, in this case, early in the evening, more of the amino acids from the pre-sleep supplement were incorporated into muscle tissue earlier in the day.
So this again emphasizes that protein ingestion and training really works synergistically.
Of course, not all older adults can exercise.
Now I'm thinking more of clinical applications in the hospital where subjects basically stay in bed all day.
And we did a study where we tested the impact of neuromuscular electoral stimulation on, overnight muscle protein synthesis in combination with pre-sleep protein.
And neuromuscular electoral stimulation basically are electrodes that we attach to a lack of a subject, and these give a small electric current to the muscle that forces the muscle to contract and By doing this, you can essentially train a muscle while the, the patient can stay in bed.
And it is, of course, not the same as full on resistance training in a gym, but it is definitely a, a form of exercise.
And again, you see that, this exercise strategy is effective and increases the effect of pre-sleep protein on muscle protein synthesis.
So conclusions.
Protein ingested prior to sleep is effectively digested and absorbed.
At least 40 g of protein is required to robustly stimulate overnight muscle protein synthesis rates.
However, we do think that smaller amounts of protein stimulate muscle protein synthesis in the first part of the night.
Prior exercise enhances the muscle protein synthetic response to pre-sleep protein, or in other words, exercise simply makes your pre-sleep protein more efficient.
And protein ingestion prior to sleep augments the adaptive response to resistance type training, or in other words, if you take pre-sleep protein, you gain more muscle mass in combination with your training program, and, we observed this increase in muscle mass in a study where we gave 27.5 g of pre-sleep protein.
So this is our research group, the Muscle metabolismre Unit, and you'll see a lot of sleep deprived faces because this type of research requires us to stay up all night.
And that's all I have, and I will now hand over you to Benno.
Thank you, Jon, for this overview.
I want to take our viewers back to our athletes, and whether it's Peter here or whether you are thinking about your target customer that maybe doesn't have so Olympic ambitions, for all of them goes that they are motivated by progress, and this progress may mean many different things.
Bjorn has shown to us that an important factor in making this progress is actually our recovery, influenced by nutrition.
And from cyan neuron tries to help us find the optimal nutrition strategy to make progress.
But to realize, we also have to take things like motivation and behavior into account.
So whatever we are going to propose to our consumers, it needs to fit the lifestyle of them.
But how can we do that?
Let's start by summarizing what we have seen so far and let's build on that.
For a sound nutritional strategy, we need to start with protein quality.
A complete protein that delivers all the required amino acids is necessary, and dairy proteins are complete proteins.
Thereafter, let's have a look.
A protein quantity There's an optimum amount of protein per serving.
Taking more protein at once is not always optimal.
Has shown us that taking 80 g of protein can stimulate protein synthesis more when it's consumed in 4 servings of 20.
Than when it's consumed in smaller or larger servings.
And this is why protein timing all of a sudden becomes important, because if we have to spread 4 servings of 20 over the day.
How are we going to fit it into our day?
They were talking lifestyle.
And Jon has shown us that there's actually one moment in the day when there's plenty of room for protein.
And this moment in time is the night.
But most of us might not plan to wake up during the night to eat a bit.
It might not fit our lifestyle completely, so to say.
So we might consider taking some protein in the evening.
And it would make sense to choose a slow digesting protein that will drip feed our muscles during the night with amino acids.
Accelium casein protein is such a protein, and it's known for its slow digestion.
It was looked into how a casein protein actually digests during the night if it's consumed in the evening and if it's beneficial.
And it was shown that indeed consuming case prior to sleep is beneficial for muscle protein synthesis.
Casein was also proven beneficial over a longer time period.
In this case, 12 weeks.
It showed that consuming casein in the evening led to a greater muscle strength and muscle size, and it should be taken into account that actually both groups were given protein after their resistance exercise training.
And the insights on the benefits of case protein in the evening are actually gaining momentum even to such an extent that the ISSN in its latest position statement confirmed the opportunity.
They conclude in their statement that protein consumption in the evening might be an underutilized time to take advantage of a protein feeding opportunity and can potentially improve body composition and performance.
So what we did is take a look at our nutrition survey.
Together with our science partners, we monitored the dietary behavior of more than 400 elite athletes in more than 30 different sports.
Many of these athletes are at the Olympic level, and we wanted to know, are they actually doing this?
Are they taking advantage of the scientific opportunities that are being shown here?
Because usually the staff of these porters is closely following the nutritional science, and they are advising these porters on their menu.
So when we actually looked at the dietary intake, it was quite shocking for us to see.
That there's still ample room for improvement.
You see here 3 groups being depicted.
Number 1 is the strength athletes.
Number 2, the endurance athletes, and number 3, those playing team sports.
Behavior between those groups is actually not much different.
And most are OK with protein during their dinner.
But 58% doesn't reach a 20 g per serving in the breakfast.
And if you talk about the evening opportunity, Only a few supporters are using that.
So while Yon has shown that actually the evening opportunity really creates additional benefits on top of what is already done during the day, not many people are already using this.
This goes for professional athletes, but the same goes for your everyday consumer.
So why is that?
Why is it difficult for athletes to comply to the advice from their nutritionists?
We spoke to the athletes, and they told us a lot of different things.
One of the things that really stood out is that sporters like Peter said, I'm often struggling to take my protein shake immediately after the workout.
Often the advice is that people should do this within 30 minutes after their workout, but I don't know where you are 30 minutes after you did sports.
Imagine often a person like Peter has to put away his boat or if you're doing another sport, other gear, then you go, you have to take a shower, you have to get dressed.
So where are you 30 minutes?
If you really did everything fast, then maybe you find yourself dry.
With clean clothes in the locker room, you have to look for some water.
You have to struggle around with powder in order to get your protein shake.
And that's what the athletes said, and they are typically highly motivated because taking sports nutrition helps them to achieve their goal.
What about everyday consumers?
They also said to us, if I just consume or did a lot of sports.
I don't want to consume so much protein.
My stomach simply doesn't work if I have to take a big protein shake.
So couldn't I do this at a later time?
Isn't there a way to take protein in a more convenient way?
And actually there is.
Actually what Jorland has shown us with the opportunity in the evening takes us to a completely different setting.
I tried to look for a completely different setting for you, and this is what we found.
I couldn't make a bigger contrast with the previous picture.
But picture yourself in the evening at home on your couch.
And I don't know how about you, but typically if I'm at home, I'm watching my favorite Netflix series, then in the evening around 10 o'clock, I start to get these cravings.
My stomach is telling me, I would like to have some food.
I would like to have a snack.
So typically what do I do?
I go to the kitchen, but what if instead of taking this bag of crisps, I would take an overnight recovery product against these evening cravings.
I would take something which is high in caseium protein and which actually helps me recover from the activity that I did earlier in the day.
This will help consumers to keep their intentions, and it might actually lower the bar to sports nutrition for new consumers.
They might be health conscious snackers looking for a healthy alternative.
There might be fitness enthusiasts that simply don't like the hassle of a shake after sports, or that simply say, it's too much for me.
I can't digest so much protein directly after I've been active.
But in the evening on the couch.
That opens up a lot of new opportunities.
So what will happen if people consume an overnight recovery product in the evening?
What's going to happen is that Exelon protein will boost their muscle recovery during a night's sleep, while Axelion has a prolonged digestion and will nourish their muscles up to 7 hours after consumption.
But why work with Exelium?
First of all, because it has the prolonged digestion profile, but also I must say it's a pleasure for your colleagues working in product development.
It's an islet and it's low in carbs, so that's pleasant and nutritional information, but also it's easy to formulate and can work in many products.
And for today's consumer, that's really important that we can offer them really tasty and pleasant products that actually feel like a snack but meanwhile are nourishment to them.
So Exelion has the advantage of being Heat stable, being very dispersable, and having a neutral taste so it doesn't affect the flavor profile of your product.
What we love to do is also give you support with it, give you a head start in your formulation with our recipes, with our support, and with our experience in making a lot of different food products with Exelium protein.
That's basically why we like to say.
Accelium protein works day and night.
For athletes, but also for your business.
We are slowly reaching the end of our webinar now.
We will soon go to the Q&A part of it, and I hope that this opportunity that meets consumers' needs for more convenience and healthy snacking while profiting from sound scientific association is relevant for you.
If you want to continue the conversation, you can see the options on your screen to do so.
Maybe we can meet already next week on Supply Southwest, or otherwise, contact me and we'll sort something out.
But first, let's start answering some questions.
Questions.
Already a lot of interesting questions came in, and if you still have questions at the moment, feel free to type them in the Q&A box on your screen, and we'll pick them up as we go.
This first question that came in is from Tracy, and Tracy asks, Is eating prior to sleep not unhealthy and or makes you gain weight?
Actually an interesting question because I was asking myself the same question too.
I was brought up with that idea that, if I eat after 8 o'clock in the evening, it might actually make that I gain weight.
So Jon, is there anything known about that?
Yeah, so it's a, it's a very, yeah, I, I would even call it a myth.
It's a very popular myth, and I think the underlying logic is, in the evening, usually you're less active, so you're not really burning the nutrition you consume.
However, for weight gain, what really matters is your overall caloric balance.
So if you eat a lot of extra food, just before you go to sleep, then yes, you will put on some weight.
However, if you, If you consume food prior to sleep, but you compensate that earlier during the day, there's really no influence.
So what people have to keep in mind is we are suggesting strategic protein timing prior to sleep.
We don't suggest eat a big meal.
For example, the, the, the study we did, the twelve-week training study where one group supplemented with additional protein, we found absolutely no effect on body fat, for example, there was weight gain, but all that weight was muscle, so I guess that's a good thing.
That's how we want it, like weight gain, but only a muscle.
So, as long as you take into account the total calories over the day.
Yeah.
OK.
The next question coming in from Mark.
He's asking about the quantity, whether he understood correctly that you need at least 40 g of protein per serving to get an effect.
Yeah, I can understand why that might be a little bit confusing.
So what you have to keep in mind is that, protein intake and, muscle growth, so muscle protein synthesis, it doesn't work like an on-off switch.
So, I think it was Mark.
If you, remember one of the earlier, slides I showed you, there's what we call a protein dose response, and you see that very little amounts of protein can already stimulate muscle protein synthesis, but with bigger doses, you get a bigger effect.
So we think that essentially any amount of protein is useful, but.
Huh to get, the maximal effect over a long night, you need a pretty big dose, probably 40 g or maybe even a little bit more, but that doesn't mean that with lower doses that nothing is happening.
So we think if you say, take a little bit more convenient dose, say 20 g, then, yeah, definitely, at least the first part of the night, you're definitely stimulating muscle growth.
Again, we did that 12 week study and, where we showed that protein supplementation before sleep resulted in additional muscle growth, in combination with training, and in that study we used 27.5 g, so that's a lot less than 40, and we still clearly saw a beneficial effect.
That's a really positive message because I can imagine that indeed 40 g per serving might be quite a lot while 20 or 27.5 is much more convenient.
There's also another question regarding quantity that came in from Stefan, and Stefan asks if you could share a little bit about the total advice protein intake per day.
Yeah, so recently, just a couple of months ago, a meta-analysis was published.
So this is essentially a study that, combines all, separate studies on a certain topic, and, they concluded that a total daily protein intake of 1.6 g per kilogram body weight optimized muscle growth in strength athletes.
So let's do some math for a 50 kg athlete that's a little bit more than 100 g per day.
However, they concluded that because there's a lot of variation between people, obviously, they suggested that.
If your goal really is to do everything to get every competitive edge, you might want to take a safety margin up to 2.2 g per kilogram of body weight.
So on average, 1.6 should give really good results for most people, but if you really want to optimize everything, yeah, you can essentially go a little bit higher to have that safety margin.
OK.
So there's, yeah, room enough to up our protein during the day.
Yeah, yeah.
Yes, so we, the, the data you showed and that I also showed, most athletes are slightly below that 1.6.
We found on average 1.5 g.
So I would say perhaps your first priority is improve your protein distribution, but, yeah, going slightly higher, wouldn't hurt either.
OK.
On the distribution, Annie is asking a very interesting question.
She says, OK, if I want to take protein in the evening before sleep, should I then also do the training somewhere in the evening?
Yeah, good question.
So in the studies we did so far, we had our subjects exercising, in the beginning of the evening, and then, the priestly protein was ingested about 2.5 hours later, to be fair, it was exactly 2.5 hours later.
The reason we chose that time period was because that reflects what an habitual recreationally active athlete does.
So typically it's a student that goes to school or it's someone who has a 9 to 5 job, and then after dinner at the beginning of the evening, they go to the gym, for example, and then 2.5 hours later, they go to bed and hopefully have some pre-sleep protein.
However, perhaps, you remember the slide I showed earlier, where I showed that the beneficial effect of exercise on, the effect of protein ingestion, that synergy lasts for at least 24 hours and probably even 48 hours, which means if you did exercise earlier in the day or perhaps even, The day before, you still benefit from the synergy between the two.
OK, because indeed here a Christian is asking a similar question.
He says, what if I exercise early in the morning?
But so then still there is an effect if I take protein in the evening.
Yeah, for sure, if it's exercise the same day, we know for sure that, that, that exercise in the morning, Essentially, we used the technique where we showed that more of the amino acids from the protein are built in new muscle tissue during the night.
And that effect lasts for at least 24 hours.
OK.
That's convenient, because again, you can basically time your training and, your protein just how it fits your schedule, and you don't need to hassle around a lot to, to adapt.
I here have a question from Eliani.
On a totally different topic, she asks, this actually the type of PhD protein matter.
Yeah, I think that's a good question, very relevant question.
So far we've only used casein protein, in our studies.
The reason is casein is a, a very slowly digesting protein and at least in theory, that's a very beneficial.
Digestion pattern for the night because the night is, it's, it's the longest period where you cannot have a new meal.
So with breakfast, you know that 34 hours later you have lunch.
With lunch, 34 hours later you have dinner.
However, pre-sleep.
There's probably at least 8, at least 8 hours until you have your breakfast.
So if you have, slowly digesting proteins such as casein, you provide, your body or your muscles with the building blocks for muscle growth during that entire period.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, we're not sure whether, faster digesting protein would do the same.
We, we simply haven't tested it yet, but case, for sure, is effective.
OK, there are specific questions coming in, for example, regarding pea protein.
What would be your opinion there?
I think it can work, but it wouldn't be my preferred choice.
A lot of research is done on protein quality in general, and it's pretty clear that animal-based products are typically better than plant-based protein products for muscle growth.
Underlying reason is, for example, that the animal-based proteins are higher in leucine, which I covered in my, presentation, so the amino acid leucine, which is the main amino acid that stimulates muscle protein synthesis.
So I think, Yes, you can, you can benefit from pea protein before sleep, but likely you would need a higher dose than, when you compare it to an animal based protein source.
OK.
Because what would be the case if you would take whey protein before sleep?
That's a really interesting question, one that I would love to, to research, and I think I'll need to research at some point.
So whey protein is really interesting because it's essentially the opposite from casein protein.
Whey protein is very rapidly digesting.
Therefore, the amino acids appear into the circulation really fast, stimulate muscle protein, to a very high extent, but.
Because it's so rapidly digested, the amino acids in your blood also go down pretty quickly.
Now, during the day, we often think that whey protein is a, yeah, perhaps the most beneficial protein source because it comes back to what we mentioned earlier.
During the day, you can have your protein, benefit from it, and a couple of hours later have your next meal.
So rapidly digesting protein makes sense.
However, during the night, it's the opposite because you want the building blocks during the entire night.
So I wouldn't, I, I don't have the guts to gamble which of the two is the best.
I can see a rationale for both, but I think one of the two, so either the most rapidly digesting protein.
Way, which typically is considered, the best for muscle growth, or specifically for the night, a slowly digesting protein.
I wouldn't be surprised if casein is the preferred choice specifically for pre-sleep protein.
OK.
Yeah, so we'll have to find out, but, there's a reason why the, the tests so far have been done with casein protein.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Totally different question, that came in.
On the application side is what kind of applications would specifically be suitable for overnight recovery?
What would be attractive for consumers, and let me try to shine my light on that.
For this question, I wouldn't want to limit the options because there are so many things that we could provide to consumers during the evening, and I really want to stress that whatever we would position here, it's important to stay close to the existing habits of your consumer.
Savory snacks, for example, could be a great opportunity if you want to target a lifestyle consumer that's looking for a healthy snacking alternative, while, for example, if you're targeting today's athletes that trust their shake because they know it's a very lean formula and containing only those nutrients that they need, then a shake would still be perfect.
But across the board, I do see an increased desire for variation.
Every time the same snack or bar or shake can become boring, and today we have a society where people really are looking for experiences and consumers do want variation.
So anyone who would like to offer part of that variation by creating a new product format which is high in slow digesting protein, I think will receive a warm welcome in the market.
To continue to another question, I think it's the last question for the day, and that's also a very interesting question that came in from Ali, and Ali is asking whether free sleep protein is more effective than protein supplementation at a different time of the day.
Interesting question.
Difficult to answer.
We try to make it hard for you, your.
Let's put it like this, I think supplementing before sleep is.
For one, very convenient because before sleep you're always at home, so you don't have to bring a shaker to the gym or to work or wherever.
So I think it's convenient.
Whether it's more effective, I wouldn't be surprised if it is, and that is based on the data we showed that how you distribute protein throughout the day can influence muscle protein synthesis rates throughout that day.
And so the survey, the survey we did in the Dutch athletes, we clearly saw that they, they eat a lot of protein in the first part of the day, but then after dinner they ate very little.
So if you're going to take a shake somewhere.
During the day, why not do it on the moment that will best help you by optimizing your protein distribution.
So actually the question, is it more effective if it optimizes your distribution over the day, then it's more effective.
Yes, I don't think it's specifically that there's something magically going on during the night or that certain hormones are released, and that's why the protein is better used.
I simply think because it's the moment where most people don't have any protein and thus building blocks for the muscle, therefore, it's for most people the most beneficial.
Moments to supplement.
Now, unfortunately, I don't have any direct evidence.
No study has directly compared priestly protein to protein at other moments of the day, but what is quite surprising is that in the study we did where we gave priestly protein.
The results seem to be a little bit better than the average study where protein is supplemented at a different point of the day.
Of course it's always difficult to compare different studies directly together, but it's at least, an indication that it's, it should be at least as good, if not better.
So if I would, yeah, if I, yeah, if I would recommend protein, a protein supplement somewhere throughout the day, it would be.
Pree sleep for the reason that most people have a low pre-sleep protein intake.
And if I combine that with our observation from actually both consumers and athletes that they are struggling with what's a convenient moment, then also this evening would actually fit perfect because that's typically the moment of relaxation where there is time where they want to enjoy something nice, and which is much more convenient than taking something directly after training.
So with that, we are going to conclude our Q&A session.
I know we were not able to answer all the questions we received, but if your question was not answered, you will receive an answer in writing during the coming days.
And if you still want to ask a question, then do feel free to use one of the contact options that are available on your screen, including my personal email.
So what remains is thanking Johan for his invaluable contribution today.
Thank you, Johan.
It's really been informative and inspiring to see the great opportunity that we have here.
And I also want to thank all our viewers today and hope maybe I can meet some of you next week at Supply Side West or in November at FIE in Frankfurt or do reach out and we'll come and visit you.
So thank you so much for joining and we'll hope you'll join our next webinar next time again.
Director Product Strategy and Marketing
Assistant Professor at Maastricht University
Benno van Mersbergen
Director Product Strategy and Marketing
Jorn Trommelen
Assistant Professor at Maastricht University
