Tom, as much as I'm looking forward to meeting you in real life and perhaps even seeing you venture out to one of the jams, I want to express in as friendly a way as I can that having you on the forums is as much a blessing as it is an annoyance.
There is no blunting in PWO, and a mixture is suboptimal compared to just fast-acting proteins.
Blunted was the wrong word. But you are mistaken and confused in that fast-acting proteins are more optimal in the pre and during workout stages but not in the post workout. I did provide you with the reference for this and you merrily ignored it. Here is a link to the "about" page for the IWC. A conference that boasts, "At the IWC 2008 you will be able to see how the expanding science platform is facilitating the evolution of whey into the most important and versatile component of milk." Yet, at this very conference, it was presented that a MIXTURE of BOTH whey and casein is more optimal for lean body mass gains WITH TRAINING.
Here is a study that examined the impact of either 20grams of casein or whey after training. By your stance, you would expect to see whey foster a much higher response in protein synthesis because of its fast acting nature. Yet, the data found identical results for both.
Tipton KD et. al. Ingestion of casein and whey proteins result in muscle anabolism after resistance exercise. Med Sci Sports Exerc. (2004) 36(12):2073-81.
Or take this one that found a superior anabolic response when subjects were given skin milk proteins (3.6g whey, 14.4g casein, 24g carbs, 1.5g fat) when compared to a soy based drink with identical nutrients and calories following resistance exercise.
Wilkinson SB et. al. Consumption of fluid skin-milk promotes greater muscle protein accretion after resistance exercise than does consumption of an isonitrogenous and isoenergetic soy-protein beverage. Am J Clin Nutr. (2007) 85(4):1031-40.
And then they did what most don't and continued to study the long-term effects regarding LBM gains.
Hartman JW et. al. Consumption of fat-free fluid milk after resistance exercise promotes greater lean mass accretion than does consumption of soy or carbohydrate in young, novice, make weightlifters. Am J Clin Nutr. (2007) 86: 373-381.
I offered you a piece of literature to read and for some reason you neglected it. To be honest, we're debating extremely negligible differences for most of this audience. If this were a bodybuilding forum, this may have some actual value. Seeing as this isn't, I find it hard to justify why I needed to spend 2 hours dishing through references to satisfy you. I said what needed to be said and then offered you a viable solution which would help you better know and understand mine and chris' argument as well as learning a little bit more about the world of protein which wasn't discussed here. The book I suggested would take a person of your stature a couple of lazy days to finish. I apologize if I'm being harsh, but I don't see how nit-picking and reference battling this one point (which will be extremely less of a help as will the idea that protein + carb after training is beneficial) is helping either you, myself, or others become more knowledgeable in regards to pwo nutrition.
(bolded just because it's a long post and hard to scan otherwise):
Charles, there is value in being able to check back on the evidence that supports your current views, and you shouldn't think of checking references for my benefit but rather for yours. When I check references after a particular view has been put into question, I view it as something I want to verify for my own sake. And even if you were already sure that you were right (which is never a guarantee that we actually are), it would be a good practice in figuring out which study most clearly supports your point (not like the unrelated ones mentioned in the previous posts for example).
Now, the references you listed in this post are instead exactly right, they are about post-exercise and relevant. Looking at
Tipton 2004 I have to scale down my claim, because yes I would have expected casein to do worse than whey while after averaging over several hours they did equally well on protein synthesis.
But that's an important detail, averaged over time until you completely absorbed the mere 20g of protein they might look the same in terms of intake (all 20g in both cases).
But if you look at the data, whey does much better for the first 2 hours after exercise (or 1hr after ingestion), in AAs uptake, insulin levels etc. Yet the post-workout window is when you can try to cram as much protein as you can in that window for maximum effectiveness compared to other times outside of the window when muscles won't be so willing to use it for protein synthesis.
I would still expect that if they added also carbs (so that AAs like leucine didn't end up getting used up for energy), larger amounts, and considered administration of protein at two times, immediately after and then again after two hours, they would have better results using whey for the first one compared to casein.
That's actually a pretty realistic situation I think since that's what I usually end up doing; during and immediately after lifting I usually have whey+carbs, and then have a meal usually an hour or two after that.
But aside from these hypotheticals, you should consider that
that same study is also opposite to your initial claim, remember that you were stating that casein should be better (based on those unrelated meal studies), and that's clearly not the case.
The other pair of studies
Wilkinson and Hartman you mention are also post-exercise, so again exactly the kind of study to look at for this type of question. But they are comparing soy protein vs whey+casein. Now the results are useful, and they have the right conditions to compare them, but that's not related at all to what we are discussing, it would be if they were comparing whey+casein vs whey for example, or the same proteins with and without fat. But since they don't, all you would derive is that something like soymilk is not as good as milk as a post-workout drink, which was never in question.
Now, a final point about the 'reference that I just merrily ignored',
Phillips 2005 (whey conference presentation). I actually had written some text in my reply about it, but decided not include it until you actually posted again perhaps with specific details, to avoid discussing everything in the hypothetical.
All you said was that you think there is a paper or poster in a conference that proves your point but I have no easy way to get the conference proceedings to see the actual data and details, and from the title it's not even clear that it's post-exercise and without at least the experimental setup there's no way to tell. They don't seem to have published those results in a journal so I would expect that if you have the actual data rather than just guessing it might be related based only on the title that you would report it here or point me to an actual link with it.
On a side note, there are several assumptions you make that seem unnecessary and
uncalled-for. For example suggesting that I might choose to ignore a point on purpose or maliciously, or subjectively choose to disregard all postprandial-related papers just because (rather than because they are objectively unrelated) are both shifting to ad-hominem rather than staying focused on the actual discussion.
Similarly, you can always make more progress by keeping the conversation to fact X,Y,Z rather than claiming "you are confused about X, you don't know/understand Y, or you are wrong about Z". After all the discussion is not about trying to determine if someone is confused or wrong, it's about determining which facts and explanations are correct (about science not about people).
Even this far in the discussion,
there is still no evidence presented here to support your claim that post-exercise using slow-absorption proteins would be better than fast-absorption proteins or AAs, or that adding fat rather than carbs would be better.
While I appreciate your suggestion to read lyle's book and I will take it into account as I am sure it's a good reference, it would have been more welcome if it didn't appear to come attached with a tone or implication on some presumed lack of fundamental knowledge about 'the world of proteins'...
Also as related to the specific questions of post-exercise it is a bit too generic so I think a
much more to the point reference would be this, the official position of the society of sports nutrition (and in fact also cites all the references you quoted in your previous post, without reading past what the evidence supports in each):
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=18834505It's also much shorter and to the point, as you can see already from the abstract:
Position Statement: The position of the Society regarding nutrient timing and the intake of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats in reference to healthy, exercising individuals is summarized by the following eight points:
1.) Maximal endogenous glycogen stores are best promoted by following a high-glycemic, high-carbohydrate (CHO) diet (600 – 1000 grams CHO or ~8 – 10 g CHO/kg/d), and ingestion of free amino acids and protein (PRO) alone or in combination with CHO before resistance exercise can maximally stimulate protein synthesis.
2.) During exercise, CHO should be consumed at a rate of 30 – 60 grams of CHO/hour in a 6 – 8% CHO solution (8 – 16 fluid ounces) every 10 – 15 minutes. Adding PRO to create a CHO:PRO ratio of 3 – 4:1 may increase endurance performance and maximally promotes glycogen re-synthesis during acute and subsequent bouts of endurance exercise.
3.) Ingesting CHO alone or in combination with PRO during resistance exercise increases muscle glycogen, offsets muscle damage, and facilitates greater training adaptations after either acute or prolonged periods of supplementation with resistance training.
4.) Post-exercise (within 30 minutes) consumption of CHO at high dosages (8 – 10 g CHO/kg/day) have been shown to stimulate muscle glycogen re-synthesis, while adding PRO (0.2 g – 0.5 g PRO/kg/day) to CHO at a ratio of 3 – 4:1 (CHO: PRO) may further enhance glycogen re-synthesis.
5.) Post-exercise ingestion (immediately to 3 h post) of amino acids, primarily essential amino acids, has been shown to stimulate robust increases in muscle protein synthesis, while the addition of CHO may stimulate even greater levels of protein synthesis. Additionally, pre-exercise consumption of a CHO + PRO supplement may result in peak levels of protein synthesis.
6.) During consistent, prolonged resistance training, post-exercise consumption of varying doses of CHO + PRO supplements in varying dosages have been shown to stimulate improvements in strength and body composition when compared to control or placebo conditions.
7.) The addition of creatine (Cr) (0.1 g Cr/kg/day) to a CHO + PRO supplement may facilitate even greater adaptations to resistance training.
8.) Nutrient timing incorporates the use of methodical planning and eating of whole foods, nutrients extracted from food, and other sources. The timing of the energy intake and the ratio of certain ingested macronutrients are likely the attributes which allow for enhanced recovery and tissue repair following high-volume exercise, augmented muscle protein synthesis, and improved mood states when compared with unplanned or traditional strategies of nutrient intake.
