We often get contacted by concerned parents about whether they should let their children use whey protein. It’s usually the parents of teenagers who are starting to take their sport a bit more seriously and want to get a bit bigger.

Often the concern is that whey protein is the thin end of the wedge and before you know it they will be injecting steroids.

Here is a recent email we received…

Hi Matt,
……

He is a skinny 16 year old and has been going to the gym for about the last 6 months doing a mixture of cardio and weight training.

His strength has improved by about 50% from the weights and he wants to take protein supplements to help build muscle and his shape.

Do you think that is a good idea ?

If so how often and when should he take it.

Any advice appreciated. My wife is dead against it and said he will be taking steroids next !

I don’t think so and feel some protein would not harm.

I would welcome a professional opinion though if you don’t mind giving me a bit of advice

If your child is asking, pestering you to buy supplements for him you can use it to your advantage.

I would insist that you are only going to pay for it if they are eating well in all other areas and training properly.

This means they are eating

Plenty of Vegetables

Fruit

Good quality proteins and

Healthy Fats

It also means severely restricting/ eliminating

Crisps, biscuits, chocolate bars, chips, pizza, muffins, doughnuts and a lot of the other junk food that a lot of teenagers eat. There is not much point buying whey protein if they are eating a lot of rubbish to begin with.

So if your teenagers diet is not that great then you can say to them

‘ look it’s great that you want to improve your self and have noticed that nutrition is important, I’m happy to support you but lets look at cleaning up the rest of your diet first, having whey protein won’t make up for ……….. ( insert the areas they are making mistakes in).

One of the keys to sticking to and maintaining a healthy dieting regime is to remove the rubbish from your house.

Gavin and I don’t have any of the snacky type food stuff in our house, sure our kids might have something like that occasionally if we are out and about and have a coffee somewhere or the kids go to a party. That’s the point it is occasional. It is not readily available in the house for them to grab if they are hungry or worse still if we are hungry too.

The second point which we won’t discuss here is about your attitude to food and what you have been teaching and modelling to your children.

Here is a reply that we sent to our client.

Hi,

There is no reason why he should not be taking whey protein shakes to aid his recovery from exercise and to help build new muscle and repair any damage.

It seems to me that he has been training consistently for a period of time and is not looking for a quick fix or help at the bottom of a box of pills.

Protein will help him recover from any training so he has less muscle soreness, it will reduce any risk of overtraining and will also help boost his immune system.

I presume your wife would have no problem with him drinking lucozade after training. Whey protein is the liquid part of milk protein, they make cheese from the solid part (curds).

After training a whey protein and carb mix like Kinetica Lean Gain would be a good idea.

A protein smoothie made with plain whey (no carbs)could be had on days when he does not train, blend plain whey, cottage cheese, oats and fruits to make a delicious snack or meal replacement.

If this is still not going to convince your wife then you can create the protein component yourself my mixing skim milk powder, cottage cheese, natural yoghurt to replace the whey protein component.

You could also look at plant based protein powders like pea and hemp if there is any inkling of milk (lactose) intolerance.

Hope this helps

When children are going through adolescence there are a lot of changes going on:

They are growing at a rapid rate
Hormones are changing
Working as hard as they probably ever will at school.
Often they will be playing more sport than at any time in their lives as they won’t have the responsibilities of paying a mortgage.

We believe that this is a really important time in a young persons development and having a great diet is VERY important. I imagine that there are not many people reading this who know teenagers who have a tip top diet. If you do know them they are probably your kids and you are setting a proper example.

Even if your teenager has a really good diet we would argue that some form of nutritional support even would be beneficail particularly at this important developmental time.

Let us know what you think.

Matt and Gavin

Let us know what your thoughts are and what you recommned to your children and young athletes.