Shakes versus food: a pragmatic assessment Writing it up because I had to work it out twice and would rather nobody else did.
I would like to know what people here actually do about shakes versus food, as distinct from what is usually recommended. Those have diverged in every other subject I have looked at closely.
Mine is below, with the reasoning, including the parts I am not confident about.
The opening post is right about the mechanism and I think understates the practical bit.
I would put moderate confidence on the mainstream reading of shakes versus food and no more. That is not scepticism for its own sake; it is where the sourcing actually stops.
That reframing is the whole thing. The facts I already had.
Micronutrition alongside protein: eating protein foods that are also good sources of micronutrients (iron, B vitamins, zinc) solves two problems at once.
It is a small point and it changes the answer, which is an awkward combination.
I read the opening post twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
Worth separating shakes versus food as a question about the compound from shakes versus food as a question about the documentation. They get answered by different people and only one of them is answerable here.
Post #5 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.
Where I have landed on shakes versus food, having got it wrong once in public: the direction is clear, the magnitude is not, and anyone quoting a precise magnitude has borrowed it from somewhere that did not measure it.
Renal considerations around higher protein intake apply to people with existing renal impairment and are frequently generalised beyond that population.
Not the answer, but possibly the question that gets there.
Small correction to my own earlier position on shakes versus food. I had the units the wrong way round, which changes the conclusion by an order of magnitude and therefore changes it entirely.
Everything in post #5 holds. The case it does not cover is the one I have.
Taking shakes versus food seriously for a moment rather than deflecting: the honest position is that the community has observations and no controlled comparison, and those two things support very different sentences.
Nothing here is medical or dietetic advice, and a dietitian is the professional this subcategory most often recommends.
Worth checking against a second source before it gets quoted onward.
The arithmetic in post #10 is right; the assumption feeding it is the part to check.
Where I would push back on the shakes versus food consensus is the confidence, not the direction. The direction looks right. The confidence is borrowed.
An honest declaration on shakes versus food: I have a prior here and it is strong enough that you should weight what I say downward. Stating it rather than hiding it.
Post #12 put the caveat in the right place and I want to underline it.
Shakes versus food is worth one more sentence than it usually gets, and the sentence is the one about how the number was arrived at.
Narrowing post #14, because the general version has more than one answer.
Liquid sources are tolerated better than solid ones by many people here, and that is a practical observation rather than a nutritional principle.
The claim is narrower than it sounds, and deliberately so.
Everything in post #12 holds. The case it does not cover is the one I have.
I would keep shakes versus food and the decision it usually gets used for separate in this thread. They are related and they are not the same question, and merging them is why the last one went badly.
That is the distinction I keep failing to hold on to. Written down now.
Temperature and texture change what is tolerable for a lot of people during the first weeks, and that is worth experimenting with before concluding nothing works.
I have written this out at length because the short version keeps being misread.
Post #18 describes the usual case. This is about the unusual one.
Careful with the language on shakes versus food. "Not detected" and "not present" are different findings and the first is a statement about the method.
This follows post #21 rather than contradicting it.
Published guidance on protein during weight loss is reasonably consistent and is easy to find, which makes this one of the better-evidenced practical questions here.
I am confident about the direction and much less about the magnitude.
Post #21 and I disagree about the size of the effect, not about the direction.
Where somebody reports losing strength, intake and training stimulus are the first two things to look at rather than the compound.
Genuinely open to being wrong about this one.
Taking post #25 at face value and following it one step further.
I have been on both sides of the shakes versus food argument in this category within eighteen months, which should tell you how strong the evidence for either side is.
Noted, and I have changed what I was going to do on the strength of it.
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