I read a news article this morning that really set me off. So into the Rants & Raves bit bucket this goes.

The three most important elements after gastric bypass surgery are to meet your daily protein, fluid and vitamin requirements. Food is secondary because your body is converting your stored fat into the energy that drives your body. Thus you lose weight.

Weight loss is achieved after surgery through meal volume control. You begin at 2 ounces (1/4 cup) per meal and gradually over the next year and a half increase the volume to 1 cup per meal. With this minuscule amount of food, it is next to impossible to meet your protein daily requirements by food alone, so therefore you need to rely on supplements such as protein shakes.

Without sufficient protein, your body will scavenge protein from other areas of your body, such as your muscles. Protein is extremely important after surgery as its job in the body is to build and maintain tissues including your body's major organs and skeletal muscles. Protein deficiency, when continued over a long period of time can cause a disease known as protein caloric malnutrition. Common symptoms are poor healing, fatigue, hair loss and muscle wasting. Immediate post op, protein promotes healing of the staple line and incisions.

The article that I read was titled "Protein powders may be damaging your health" at http://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/2018/03/01/protein-powders-may-be-damaging-your-health.html Sometimes you come across an article that was intended to unjustly scare you and this one fits the bill. Right below the Title was a picture of a young healthy man mixing up a protein shake. The captions below read "A new study showed 70 percent of protein powders tested had detectable levels of lead, 74 percent had cadmium and 55 percent had BPA, the chemical formula found in many plastics." The operative word here is detectable. Just because something is detectable doesn't mean it is harmful. Every year we make improvements to our instruments and their ability to measure substances. So today we can detect elements down to one-part-per-million or one-part-per-billion or one-part-per-trillions. And just because an element or substance can be detectable doesn't mean it is harmful, it is the amount of that element that is important. The poison is in the dose. So as far as I am concerned this article was nothing more than a hatchet job.

Consider for a moment water. Is water harmful? No, not really. It is very beneficial. But if you drink too much of it all at once you may likely die. Water intoxication, also known as water poisoning, hyperhydration, or water toxemia is a potentially fatal disturbance in brain functions that results when the normal balance of electrolytes in the body is pushed outside safe limits by overhydration (excessive water intake). The Poison is in the dose.

I didn't have to read past the "foxnews" part of the URL to know that the article would be devoid of any journalistic integrity.