Live Well, Age Well

Blood sugar is having a moment. Continuous glucose monitors have moved from hospitals to healthy people’s arms. Spike this, flatten that, eat your vegetables first. A lot of it is useful. Some of it is noise. But nearly all of it shares one assumption — that your blood sugar response is a function of what you put in your mouth. That is roughly half the story. The other half is already living inside you. What actually changes as our bodies change Start with the honest version of the aging part, because it is more nuanced than the headlines. Researchers comparing glucose handling in older and younger adults found two things moving at once. Insulin secretion declined — after accounting for insulin resistance, every measure of insulin output was lower in the older group, pointing to the pancreas working less efficiently. And insulin sensitivity declined too. But the second finding came with a caveat worth sitting with. When the researchers adjusted for body fat and visceral fat, the insulin sensitivity difference between the age groups largely disappeared. Body composition explained it better than age did. That is a more hopeful finding than it first sounds. Part of what we file under “getting older” is actually a description of what tends to happen to body composition over decades — and body composition is something you have some say over. The pancreatic side is harder to argue with. The sensitivity side is not fixed. Which raises the obvious question: what moves insulin sensitivity? Diet. Movement. Sleep. Body composition. All true, all well covered elsewhere. And something that rarely makes the list. Your gut bacteria are part of your metabolic system In Part 4 we worked through what fermentable fiber does in the colon — your gut bacteria break down what you cannot digest, and produce short-chain fatty acids as a byproduct. Butyrate is the one worth knowing by name. It fuels the cells lining your colon and helps hold the intestinal barrier together. That post treated it as a gut story. It turns out not to stop at the gut. Short-chain fatty acids do not stay in the colon. They enter circulation. And once they are circulating, they show up in places that have nothing obviously to do with digestion — influencing how fat tissue behaves, how the liver handles glucose, and how sensitive your tissues are to insulin. So the bacteria fermenting your fiber are not running a separate operation down there. They are participating in your metabolism. Which means the question stops being only “what did you eat” and becomes partly “what did you feed them, and what did they make out of it.” What a 2025 trial actually found This has been a plausible theory for a while. What changed recently is that someone tested it properly, with the specific fiber this is all about. Researchers ran a 12-week randomized, placebo-controlled trial in adults at elevated risk for type 2 diabetes. The intervention was an intrinsic chicory root fiber — fiber still inside the intact plant cells of the root, rather than an isolated extract. The results were published in Cell Reports Medicine in 2025. What they measured, and what they found: Outcome Result Whole-body insulin sensitivity Improved (p = 0.032) Peripheral insulin sensitivity Trended toward improvement (p = 0.085) Circulating triglycerides Decreased (p = 0.049) Liver fat content Trended toward a decrease (p = 0.063) Proportion of small fat cells Increased (p = 0.008) And the microbial half: the metabolic changes coincided with higher levels of fiber-degrading Bifidobacterium and butyrate-producing Anaerostipes, along with a functional shift in the gut toward butyrate production. The bacteria changed. The metabolism changed. In the same people, over the same twelve weeks, from one dietary change. How to read those numbers honestly Two of the five outcomes “trended” rather than reached significance. That is the paper’s own language and it matters — a trend is a reason for another trial, not a finding you can bank. This was also a specific population: adults at elevated metabolic risk. People who start with room to improve generally show larger changes than people who do not. Whether the same effect appears in metabolically healthy adults is an open question. What makes it compelling is not any single number. It is that the microbial shift and the metabolic shift moved together, in the direction the mechanism predicts. Why the form of the fiber mattered here One detail in that trial is easy to skim past and worth slowing down for. The fiber was intrinsic — still held inside the structure of the chicory root’s plant cells, rather than extracted and purified into a powder. That structure changes where fermentation happens. Fiber locked inside intact plant cells ferments more slowly, which means it survives further along the colon before the bacteria get to it. The researchers specifically noted a shift toward a distal butyrogenic chain — butyrate production happening deeper in the gut, where it may matter more. This is the same lesson as the antioxidant post, arriving from a different direction. Isolate a compound from its food structure and you often change what it does. The matrix is not packaging around the active ingredient. Frequently, the matrix is part of the mechanism. If that argument interests you, Part 5 makes it at length — including why concentrated antioxidant supplements failed in trials while the foods they came from did not. Fiber and protein are better together here too There is a more immediate mechanism alongside the bacterial one, and it works on a timescale of hours rather than weeks. Protein and viscous fiber both slow gastric emptying. Food leaves the stomach more gradually, glucose enters the bloodstream more gradually, and the curve that follows a meal is flatter and longer instead of sharp and short. That is the difference between an afternoon that holds and an afternoon that collapses at three o’clock. Not willpower. Gastric emptying. So the two mechanisms stack. In the short run, fiber and protein together shape the glucose curve of the meal you just ate. In the long run, fermentable fiber feeds the bacteria whose output appears to influence how sensitive you are to insulin in the first place. One works today. The other works over months. They are not alternatives. Where our bars sit in this, precisely Here is the careful version, and I want to be exact about the limits. The 8 to 9 grams of fiber on our panel is chicory root inulin — the same fiber that trial studied. That is not a coincidence of ingredient sourcing. It is on the FDA’s recognized dietary fiber list, which is why it can be counted on the panel at all. What our bars are not is that trial. The researchers used a specific intrinsic fiber preparation, at a controlled dose, for twelve weeks, in a population selected for metabolic risk. A bar is food. It is not a clinical intervention and I am not going to dress it up as one. What it is: a reliable way to get a meaningful amount of the fiber that research keeps pointing at, alongside twelve grams of protein, in a form you will actually eat on a Tuesday afternoon when the alternative is whatever is in the break room. That last part is not a small thing. The trial ran twelve weeks because that is how long this kind of change takes. Mechanisms that work over months require something you can repeat. What to actually do with this Four things, in order of how much they matter. Do this Why it works Eat fermentable fiber most days, not perfectly The bacterial shift took twelve weeks. Consistency beats intensity here. Pair fiber with protein in the same sitting Two different mechanisms, one meal — the immediate curve and the long-term adaptation Favor fiber still inside its food Beans, oats, whole fruit, intact plants. Structure appears to change where fermentation happens. Give it a week when you increase Coming from a low-fiber diet, your microbiome needs time to reorganize. That adjustment is normal. None of that requires a monitor on your arm. It requires beans, oats, vegetables, and the patience to let a twelve-week mechanism take twelve weeks. The part that surprised me I came to fiber the way most people do — as a digestion topic. Something you handle when something is wrong. A pharmacy-aisle nutrient. Four posts into writing this series, it keeps turning out to be the other thing. The barrier that holds. The bacteria that make the compounds. And now, apparently, a lever on how your body handles the food you eat for the rest of the day. We spent a lot of years treating the gut as a processing plant — input here, output there, no further involvement. That turns out to be badly incomplete. The population living down there is participating in decisions you thought were being made somewhere else entirely. You can feed them well or you can feed them poorly. They respond either way, and the research suggests they respond fairly quickly. That is a better deal than most things on offer for aging well. This post is part of the Resetting Normal Series. Read the full series: Part 1: Resetting Normal · Part 2: What’s Actually in Your Protein Bar · Part 3: Protein and Muscle as We Age · Part 4: Fiber, Your Gut, and Aging Well · Part 5: The Most Overused Word on a Health Label · Part 6: Your Blood Sugar Has a Gut Problem Here’s to aging well… Cheers! Joel J. MontesanoFounder, Five Plus Protein References Omary L, Canfora EE, Puhlmann ML, Gavriilidou A, Rijnaarts I, Holst JJ, Op den Kamp-Bruls YMH, de Vos WM, Blaak EE. Intrinsic chicory root fibers modulate colonic microbial butyrate-producing pathways and improve insulin sensitivity in individuals with obesity. Cell Reports Medicine. 2025;6(7):102237. Basu R, Dalla Man C, Campioni M, et al. Effects of age and sex on postprandial glucose metabolism. Diabetes. 2006;55(7):2001–2014. Basu R, Breda E, Oberg AL, et al. Mechanisms of the age-associated deterioration in glucose tolerance. Diabetes. 2003;52(7):1738–1748. Dried chicory root improves bowel function and increases faecal and circulating short chain fatty acids in subjects at risk for type 2 diabetes. Gut Microbiome. 2022. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Guidance, science review, and citizen petition responses on dietary fiber. June 14, 2018.

Walk down any aisle in any grocery store and count how many packages say the word antioxidant. Juice. Tea. Chocolate. Cereal. Trail mix. Bottled water, somehow. The word has been doing marketing work for about thirty years, and it has been doing it so successfully that a lot of us have stopped asking what it means. I want to ask. Because the honest answer turned out to be considerably more interesting than I expected — and considerably less flattering to the industry that put the word on everything. Here is the short version. Oxidative stress is real, it matters a great deal as our bodies change, and the foods people call antioxidant foods do appear to help. But a lot of what we were taught about why they help does not hold up, the scoring system brands used to prove it was retired by the USDA more than a decade ago, and the pill version of the idea failed badly enough in clinical trials that researchers started warning people off it. That is a lot to unpack. Let us go in order. What oxidative stress actually is Every cell in your body runs on a controlled burn. You take in oxygen and fuel, your mitochondria convert them into usable energy, and like any combustion process, that reaction throws off byproducts. Some of those byproducts are molecules with an unpaired electron. They are unstable, they are reactive, and they will take an electron from whatever is nearest — a cell membrane, a protein, a strand of DNA. Those are free radicals. The damage they do is called oxidative damage, and the state of having more of them than your body can comfortably manage is oxidative stress. Your body is not defenseless here. It produces its own antioxidant enzymes, and it repairs oxidative damage constantly, all day, without being asked. This is normal maintenance, not an emergency. What changes as we age is the balance. Mitochondrial function shifts. Repair capacity declines. The maintenance crew is still working, but it falls a little further behind each year. Oxidative stress is one of the mechanisms researchers point to when they describe why tissue ages the way it does. So the logic seems obvious. More antioxidants, less damage, better aging. That logic is where things went sideways. Free radicals are not only the enemy In the 1990s and 2000s, researchers ran the obvious experiment. Take the antioxidants found in healthy diets, concentrate them into pills, give them to a lot of people for a long time, and measure what happens. It did not go the way anyone expected. A 2007 meta-analysis in JAMA pooled 68 randomized trials covering 232,606 participants. Among the trials with the lowest risk of bias, beta-carotene supplementation was associated with a 7% increase in mortality. Vitamin A, 16%. Vitamin E, 4%. Taken together, antioxidant supplementation was associated with a 5% increase. Not no benefit. Worse than no benefit. The authors offered a theory for why, and it is the single most useful idea in this entire post: by eliminating free radicals wholesale, high-dose supplements may interfere with defensive mechanisms the body actually needs. Free radicals are not purely damage. They are also signals. Your body uses them to communicate that a cell is under stress, which is what triggers the repair and defense machinery to switch on in the first place. Exercise generates free radicals. That is part of how exercise makes you stronger. Flood the system with enough concentrated antioxidant to mop up the signal, and you may quiet the alarm without addressing the fire.   The distinction that matters A megadose of an isolated compound and a normal serving of a whole food are not the same intervention, even when the compound came from the food. This is the single most common error in nutrition marketing: find a beneficial compound in a food, concentrate it, sell it, and assume the benefit concentrates with it. The evidence says it frequently does not — and sometimes reverses. The scoreboard the USDA threw out If you have shopped for antioxidant anything, you have probably seen an ORAC score — Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity. For years it was the number brands used to rank foods. Higher ORAC, more antioxidant, better for you. The USDA maintained a public database of ORAC values and the industry built a great deal of marketing on top of it. In 2012 the USDA withdrew that database entirely. Their stated reasoning is worth reading closely. The agency cited mounting evidence that antioxidant capacity values have no relevance to the effects of specific bioactive compounds, noted that results from a test tube cannot be extrapolated to effects in a human body, and said directly that ORAC values were being routinely misused by food and supplement manufacturers to promote their products. They went further than that. The USDA stated there is no evidence that the beneficial effects of polyphenol-rich foods can be attributed to the antioxidant properties of those foods. Read that twice. The agency was not saying these foods do not help. It was saying the antioxidant explanation for why they help does not hold up. That was fourteen years ago. ORAC scores are still printed on packaging and still cited in marketing copy today.   What to do with this in a store aisle An ORAC number on a package is not a lie, exactly. It is a real measurement of how a substance behaves in a test tube. It is simply not a measurement of what that substance does inside a person — which is the thing you were trying to find out. Treat it the way you would treat any number a brand chose to print because it flattered them. So why do these foods keep showing up in the outcomes? Here is the part that took researchers another decade to work out, and it reframes everything above. Polyphenols — the large family of plant compounds in cacao, coffee, tea, berries, turmeric, olive oil, red onion, and most deeply pigmented plants — turn out to be fairly mediocre direct antioxidants inside the body. They are poorly absorbed. Most of what you eat never reaches your bloodstream intact. On paper, they should not do much. And yet the population data keeps pointing the same direction. The current explanation is called hormesis, and it inverts the usual story. A 2025 review in Food Chemistry Advances describes polyphenols as compounds with relatively modest direct antioxidant activity that are nonetheless powerful inducers of hormetic responses — acting as mild stressors that stimulate the body’s own cellular defense systems rather than doing the defending themselves. In plain terms: a polyphenol is not a bucket of water thrown on the fire. It is a small, controlled poke at the system that prompts your own defenses to turn up. Which explains the supplement failures cleanly. If the benefit comes from a mild signal, a megadose is not a stronger signal — it is a different intervention entirely. The same review notes that at high enough concentrations, these compounds stop behaving protectively and start behaving the other way. Dose is not a detail here. Dose is the whole mechanism. What the best cacao study actually found The largest test of this idea deserves an honest accounting, including the part that did not work. COSMOS — the Cocoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study — followed more than 21,000 adults aged 60 and older for about five years. Half received a daily cocoa extract delivering 500 mg of cocoa flavanols, including 80 mg of epicatechin. Half received placebo. The primary endpoint was total cardiovascular events. The cocoa group saw roughly a 10% reduction. That result was not statistically significant. By the standard the trial set for itself before it began, the primary endpoint did not hit. A secondary endpoint did. Cardiovascular death fell 27% in the cocoa group, and that result was statistically significant. Among participants who actually took the capsules consistently, it was 39%. What should you do with that? Carefully, is the answer. A secondary endpoint that hits after a primary endpoint misses is a reason to run another trial, not a reason to declare the question settled. Any brand quoting you the 27% without mentioning the primary endpoint is telling you half of a story they know the other half of. It is still a real signal from a very large, very well-run study, and it points the same direction as decades of population data. It is just not proof, and I would rather hand you the whole thing than the flattering half. Where our bars actually sit in this Let me be precise, because this is exactly the kind of section where food brands get loose. Every LAST bar is built on cinnamon and turmeric plus one more botanical — cacao in PB Cacao and Café Mocha, ginger in Lemon Ginger. Those are not decorative. They are among the more polyphenol-dense ingredients in an ordinary kitchen, and they are in there at food amounts, in a food matrix, alongside protein and fiber. A bar is not a 500 mg flavanol capsule, and I am not going to suggest it is. COSMOS tested a concentrated extract at a specific dose. Our bars are food. What they offer is the thing the research actually keeps supporting — polyphenol-rich plants in normal amounts, eaten regularly, as part of a diet — rather than the thing it keeps failing to support, which is a concentrated dose of an isolated compound. And you will not find an ORAC score anywhere on our packaging. Now you know why.   The one nobody orders Café Mocha Latte with Cacao Nibs is our least-ordered flavor. By ingredient, it is also the most polyphenol-dense bar we make: cacao nibs, cocoa powder, coffee powder, coffee fruit extract, cinnamon, and turmeric, all in one wrapper. Cacao and coffee are two of the most-studied polyphenol sources in the human diet, and that bar is the only place we put both together. If you have been ordering around it, this is the post where I ask you to reconsider. How to actually eat for this No scoring system required. The practical version is almost boringly simple.   Instead of Do this Why Chasing a high ORAC number Eating deeply pigmented plants Color tracks polyphenol content better than any printed score A megadose antioxidant pill Food amounts, most days The mechanism depends on modest, repeated exposure One "superfood" Variety across many plants Different polyphenol families trigger different pathways Thinking of it as damage control Thinking of it as training You are prompting your own defenses, not substituting for them   Berries, dark chocolate, coffee, green tea, olive oil, red onion, herbs and spices, anything deep purple or deep red or deep green. That is the list. It has not changed in twenty years and it does not require a subscription. The same rule that governs the rest of this series applies here: read the ingredient list, not the front of the package. If you want the method for that, it is in Part 2 — and the fiber version of this same argument is in Part 4. What I changed my mind about I came into this believing roughly what the packaging told me. Antioxidants neutralize free radicals, free radicals cause aging, therefore more antioxidants is better, therefore the number on the label means something. Three of those four turned out to be wrong or badly incomplete. Free radicals are not simply villains — they are part of how your body knows to defend itself. More is not better, and the trials that tested more found worse. The number on the label was retired by the agency that created it, for the specific reason that companies were using it the way I was reading it. What survived is the part that was never really about antioxidants at all. Eat a lot of different plants, including the darkly colored ones, in ordinary amounts, most days, for years. Your body does the rest, and it does it better when you give it something to respond to rather than something to replace it. That is a less exciting claim than the front of a juice bottle. It is also the one that holds up.   Cinnamon, turmeric, and cacao in every bite. Twelve grams of plant protein. No ORAC score, because it would not mean anything. Try Café Mocha Latte This post is part of the Resetting Normal Series. Read the full series: Part 1: Resetting Normal · Part 2: What's Actually in Your Protein Bar · Part 3: Protein and Muscle as We Age · Part 4: Fiber, Your Gut, and Aging Well · Part 5: The Most Overused Word on a Health Label   Here’s to aging well… Cheers!   Joel J. Montesano Founder, Five Plus Protein     References Bjelakovic G, Nikolova D, Gluud LL, Simonetti RG, Gluud C. Mortality in randomized trials of antioxidant supplements for primary and secondary prevention: systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA. 2007;297(8):842–857. 68 trials, 232,606 participants. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. Withdrawal of the USDA ORAC Database for Selected Foods, 2012 — antioxidant capacity values have no demonstrated relevance to the effects of specific bioactive compounds and were being routinely misused in product promotion. Perrone P, D’Angelo S. Hormesis and health: molecular mechanisms and the key role of polyphenols. Food Chemistry Advances. 2025;7:101030. Sesso HD, Manson JE, et al. Effect of cocoa flavanol supplementation for the prevention of cardiovascular disease events: the Cocoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS) randomized clinical trial. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2022. n > 21,000 adults aged 60+, 500 mg cocoa flavanols daily. Baker LD, et al. Effects of cocoa extract and a multivitamin on cognitive function: a randomized clinical trial. Alzheimer’s & Dementia. 2023 — the COSMOS-Mind cognitive arm.

For most of my life I thought of protein as a young man's concern. I started training at twelve. Through my twenties and thirties, protein was about building something — putting on size, recovering from hard sessions, chasing a number in the gym. I naturally thought that as I got older and trained less aggressively, I'd need less of it. That turns out to be backwards. And it's one of the more consequential things I got wrong. The Number Most of Us Are Using Is a Floor, Not a Target If you've ever looked up how much protein you need, you probably found the RDA: 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. For someone at 170 pounds, that's about 62 grams a day. Here's what that number actually means. The RDA was established as the minimum required to prevent deficiency in most healthy adults. It answers the question "how little can I get away with?" — not "how much do I need to thrive?" Those are different questions, and the gap between them widens as our bodies change. What Actually Changes Two things shift, and they compound. Muscle becomes something you maintain Starting somewhere in the fourth decade, adults lose muscle mass gradually and continuously. The decline is slow enough that many people don't notice it happening — they notice the result. The suitcase feels heavier. Getting up off the floor takes a hand on the coffee table. Recovery from a long day takes longer than it used to. This progressive loss of muscle mass and strength has a name — sarcopenia — and it isn't a disease you catch. It's the default trajectory in the absence of enough stimulus and enough protein. Your muscles respond less efficiently to the same protein This is the part I'd never heard of, and it changes what you do about the first one. When you eat protein, your body uses it to build and repair muscle tissue. As we age, that response becomes blunted — the same amount of protein produces less of a building signal than it did twenty years earlier. Researchers call this anabolic resistance. The practical consequence is uncomfortable: at exactly the point where you're losing muscle, your body gets worse at using the raw material to replace it. The counterintuitive part Many of us quietly eat less protein as we get older. Appetite softens, meals get smaller, meat feels heavier than it used to. Meanwhile the requirement is going up. So How Much Do You Actually Need? Expert groups that have looked specifically at protein needs in later life — among them the PROT-AGE study group — recommend intakes meaningfully above the RDA. Generally in the range of 1.0 to 1.2 grams per kilogram of body weight per day for healthy adults, and higher for those training hard or recovering from illness. Those recommendations were written with older adults in mind. But the shift they are responding to does not switch on at sixty-five. It is gradual, and it begins decades earlier — which makes this less a line to cross than a direction to start moving in. Translated into pounds, that's roughly 0.45 to 0.55 grams per pound. Body weight RDA minimum Recommended range as we age 140 lb ~51g ~63–77g 170 lb ~62g ~77–94g 200 lb ~90–110g ~90–110g The gap between those two columns is the thing worth noticing. For a lot of people it's twenty to thirty grams a day — not a wholesale diet change, but not nothing either. One note before we go further: if you have kidney disease or any condition where protein intake is medically managed, these general figures don't apply to you. That's a conversation for your doctor, not a blog post. The Part Almost Nobody Gets Right Here's where the advice usually stops — hit your daily number. But total intake is only half the story. Your body doesn't bank protein. It can't take a large evening intake and apply it retroactively to a morning that had none. Muscle protein synthesis is triggered meal by meal, and each meal needs to clear a threshold to trigger it at all. Which means how you distribute protein across the day matters as much as the total. Many of us eat backwards. Toast or coffee for breakfast. Something light at lunch. Then most of the day's protein arrives at dinner, when the body can only use so much at once. A more useful pattern is roughly even distribution — a meaningful amount of protein at each of three or four points in the day, rather than one large delivery at the end of it. Because of anabolic resistance, the per-meal threshold also rises as we age. A serving that would have triggered a full response at thirty may not at sixty. That's an argument for a bit more at each meal, not just more overall. Quality: Not All Protein Signals Equally Protein is made of amino acids. Nine of them are essential — your body can't make them, so they have to come from food. One in particular, leucine, acts as something close to a switch. It's the amino acid most directly associated with triggering muscle protein synthesis. A protein source rich in leucine sends a stronger signal than one that isn't. This is where plant protein gets unfairly dismissed, and where the picture is more interesting than the usual argument allows. Pea protein contains all nine essential amino acids — it's a complete protein, which many plant sources aren't. And in a twelve-week randomized controlled trial comparing pea protein to whey during resistance training, muscle thickness gains were statistically equivalent between the two groups. The researchers concluded that pea protein could serve as an alternative to whey-based products. That doesn't make them identical. Whey is somewhat higher in leucine per gram and digests faster. But the outcome data over a real training period is closer than many people assume, and the gap narrows further at adequate doses. We'll take that comparison apart properly later in the series. For now, the useful conclusion is simpler than the debate: complete plant protein works. Where This Gets Practical Twenty to thirty extra grams a day sounds like a lot until you break it down. It's one additional protein-forward moment in your day, most days. Some ways that looks in practice: Add protein to breakfast if it's currently coffee and something beige. For many of us this is the highest-leverage change available. Make the mid-morning or mid-afternoon gap a protein moment rather than a carbohydrate one. Same calories, different signal. Anchor each meal around a protein source before deciding what goes with it. Around training, protein before or after the session supports recovery. The total across the day still matters more than hitting a precise window. What We Made, and Why 12 Grams Every LAST Bar has twelve grams of complete plant protein, led by pea protein — all nine essential amino acids, plus iron and arginine. Twelve isn't an accident, and it isn't a maximum. It's the amount that fits into a bar that still tastes like food rather than a supplement, alongside eight to nine grams of prebiotic fiber and zero added sugar. We could have pushed the protein number higher. The bar would have been drier, chalkier, and harder to want. The point isn't that one bar meets your daily requirement. It doesn't. The point is that it closes the gaps — mid-morning, mid-afternoon, before or after a workout, the drive home, the airport — that many of us fill with something offering no protein at all. That's the whole design philosophy: not a meal replacement, but a better version of a moment you're already having. Whichever gap you're trying to close, a box of twelve is the practical way to do it — one decision, ready whenever the moment shows up. Shop LAST Bars The Short Version The RDA is a floor to prevent deficiency, not a target for aging well. Muscle declines gradually from midlife, and your body gets less efficient at using protein at the same time. Recommended intake for healthy adults as we age runs meaningfully above the RDA — roughly 0.45 to 0.55 grams per pound. Distribution matters. Three or four protein moments beat one large dinner. Breakfast is where many of us have the most room to improve. Complete plant protein works. Pea protein contains all nine essential amino acids. Next in the series: the nutrient almost everyone under-eats — fiber, your gut, and why the source matters more than the number. Sources Bauer et al., PROT-AGE Study Group — Evidence-Based Recommendations for Optimal Dietary Protein Intake in Older People, Journal of the American Medical Directors Association Babault et al. — Pea proteins oral supplementation promotes muscle thickness gains during resistance training, Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition National Institute on Aging — Age-related muscle loss and physical function (nia.nih.gov) Institute of Medicine — Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy, Carbohydrate, Fiber, Fat, Fatty Acids, Cholesterol, Protein, and Amino Acids Wall et al. — Anabolic resistance of muscle protein synthesis with aging, Nutrition Reviews Banaszek et al. — The Effects of Whey vs. Pea Protein on Physical Adaptations Following 8 Weeks of High-Intensity Functional Training, Sports This article is general information, not medical or dietary advice. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This post is part of the Resetting Normal Series. Read the full series: Part 1: Resetting Normal · Part 2: What's Actually in Your Protein Bar · Part 3: Protein and Muscle as We Age · Part 4: Fiber, Your Gut, and Aging Well · Part 5: The Most Overused Word on a Health Label Here's to aging well… Cheers! — JoelFounder, Five Plus Protein

There's a moment most of us have had without ever noticing it. You're standing in a grocery aisle. You pick something up, turn it over, and read the back. And something in you quietly goes: this is fine. Not good. Fine. You put it in the cart anyway. I did that for years. How "Good Enough" Became Normal I started exercising as a teenager. I've been using protein products since the nineties. Bars, powders, shakes, whatever was on the shelf that had lots of protein in it. And for almost 3 decades, I accepted the same trade every single time. Sugar crashes an hour later. A stomach that felt worse than before I ate. Ingredient lists I couldn't pronounce, on packages that said "healthy" in big letters on the front. I didn't complain. I just bought the next one. That's what settling actually looks like. It isn't dramatic. Nobody decides to lower their standard. You just accept the same compromise enough times that it stops registering as a compromise at all. Then Two Things Happened at Once My frustration finally peaked — the point where I stopped settling for the "trade-off". At the same time, my wife Lynda was diagnosed with lupus. Overnight, ingredient quality stopped being a preference in our house. It became the whole thing. Lynda started reading every label on every package, and she didn't stop. Not because it was a wellness habit, but because it mattered. Two very different problems, arriving at the same moment. My ongoing, frustrating search for clean fuel. Her new need for food she could actually eat without getting sick. Those two things met in our kitchen. Through frustration and necessity, we built the bar we couldn't find. But the bar isn't really the point of this post. The standard is. Why "Good Enough" Stops Working as Our Bodies Change Here's the part I wish someone had told me at thirty-five. A body that's twenty-five can absorb a lot of "fine." A body that's changing cannot — not because anything has gone wrong, but because the margin narrows and the same choices start costing more. Four things shift at once. Muscle becomes something you maintain, not something you have Muscle mass begins declining gradually from midlife onward. What surprises most people is that protein needs go up during that window, not down. As we age muscle responds less efficiently to the same amount of protein, so the requirement rises just as most people's intake starts drifting lower. Fiber becomes the nutrient you're quietly missing Roughly ninety-five percent of adults don't meet daily fiber recommendations. Fiber does more than most people give it credit for — it feeds the beneficial bacteria in your gut, and those bacteria produce compounds that support the gut barrier itself. This is foundational, and almost nobody is getting enough. Blood sugar swings stop being harmless The spike-and-crash cycle isn't just an energy problem. Over years, repeated glucose spikes contribute to glycation — a process where sugar molecules bind to proteins in the body and gradually stiffen tissue. One afternoon crash is nothing. Twenty years of them is a pattern. Oxidative stress accumulates This one is worth understanding, because it sits underneath everything else in this series. Your body produces free radicals — unstable molecules — as a normal byproduct of being alive. Stress, poor sleep, alcohol, pollution, and heavily processed food all increase the load. When free radicals outpace your body's ability to neutralize them, that imbalance is called oxidative stress, and it's recognized as one of the hallmarks of biological aging. Antioxidants are what help tip that balance back. Which means the food you eat every day isn't neutral. It's either adding to the load or helping offset it. Aging well isn't about time passing. It's about what accumulates while it does. Resetting Normal So here's the reframe, and it's the reason this series exists. We've been taught to think of premium as the upgrade. The nicer option. The one you choose when you're feeling generous with yourself. I think that's backwards. Clean, functional, honestly-made food isn't the upgrade. It's the baseline — the standard your body was always meant to work from. The cheaper, over-processed version isn't the affordable option long-term. It's the one that falls below the line. That's what we mean by resetting normal. Not spending more for the sake of it. Moving the line back to where it should have been all along. Because what you put in your body today, impacts your health tomorrow. What Resetting Normal Actually Looks Like It isn't an overhaul. It's a handful of questions you start asking, until asking them becomes automatic. •    Does the ingredient list match the front of the package? The front is marketing. The back is the truth. •    Check both sugar lines, not one. Added sugar and total sugar are separate numbers on the panel. A bar can show zero added sugar and still carry fifteen grams of total sugar from concentrated fruit — and your bloodstream doesn't know the difference. •    Is there fiber, or just protein? Protein alone is half the job. •    Is anything in here doing more than one thing? Ingredients can carry flavor and function at the same time. •    How do I actually feel two hours later? This is the one that matters most, and no label can answer it. That last question is what took me thirty years to start asking honestly. This Is What We Built Toward When Lynda and I finally made our own bar, we weren't trying to build a better snack. We were trying to meet a standard we couldn't find anywhere else. Twelve grams of complete plant protein. Eight to nine grams of fiber, led by prebiotic chicory root. Zero added sugar — and two to three grams of total sugar. Both numbers, not just the convenient one. And real botanicals: cinnamon and turmeric in every bar, plus cacao or ginger depending on the flavor, each studied for antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. If you're curious what a reset standard tastes like, the Sampler Box is the easiest place to start — three flavors, no commitment. Read the panel first. That's the whole point. Try the Sampler Box  →   Where This Series Goes Next Over the next eleven posts, we're going to take this apart piece by piece. How to actually read a protein bar label. How much protein you really need as your body changes. Why fiber matters more than almost anyone tells you. What antioxidants are doing at the cellular level. What added sugar costs over decades. Why some bars leave you bloated. What your brain needs. What your bones need. Not to convince you of anything. To give you enough to judge for yourself — including judging us. That's the standard we'd want as customers. So it's the one we'll hold as a company. Sources •    National Institute on Aging — Age-related muscle loss and physical function (nia.nih.gov) •    Bauer et al., PROT-AGE Study Group — Protein intake recommendations for older adults, Journal of the American Medical Directors Association •    Quagliani & Felt-Gunderson — Closing America's Fiber Intake Gap, American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine •    Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health — Fiber and the microbiome (hsph.harvard.edu) •    López-Otín et al. — The Hallmarks of Aging, Cell •    National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health — Turmeric and curcumin research overview (nccih.nih.gov) These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This post is part of the Resetting Normal Series. Read the full series: Part 1: Resetting Normal · Part 2: What's Actually in Your Protein Bar · Part 3: Protein and Muscle as We Age · Part 4: Fiber, Your Gut, and Aging Well · Part 5: The Most Overused Word on a Health Label Here's to aging well… Cheers! — Joel Founder, Five Plus Protein

I used to struggle with staying fit. Not the doing of it. The thinking about it. I have always had a desire to live a healthy and fit life, but my mind would go to the same place: Can I really keep this up for the rest of my life? Decades of workouts. Years of discipline. A lifetime of showing up even when I didn't feel like it. It felt impossible. Like I was carrying the weight of every future workout on my back before I'd finished the first one. Then something shifted. I realized I wasn't asking myself to exercise for the rest of my life. I was only asking for today. That was it. That was the whole thing. The Weight We Carry That We Don't Have To Many people don't fail at building healthy habits because they lack discipline. They fail because they're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist yet. When you look at a lifetime of clean eating, consistent movement, and intentional recovery all at once — it's overwhelming. The mind recoils. It calculates the effort, multiplies it by decades, and concludes: I can't do that. And it's right. Nobody can do that. But nobody is being asked to. You are only ever being asked to do today. Tomorrow is not your problem right now. Next year is not your problem right now. The version of you who is 70 is not your problem right now. Today is your problem. And today is manageable. Give Yourself Grace Here's something the wellness world doesn't say often enough: You are going to have bad days. Missed workouts. Meals that weren't what you planned. Weeks where life got loud and your routine fell apart. That's not failure. That's being human. The goal isn't a perfect record. The goal is to not quit. Give yourself grace when you need it. A missed day doesn't erase the ones before it. A hard week doesn't cancel the habit you've been building. The only thing that ends the journey is the decision to stop — and that decision is always yours. Each day is a new opportunity. Not a continuation of yesterday's failures. Not a preview of tomorrow's challenges. A clean start. A new chance to do the one thing being asked of you: Show up today. The Plan Is Still Essential One day at a time doesn't mean without structure. It means you build the structure — and then you execute it one day at a time. You still make the plan. You still schedule the movement. You still decide in advance what intentional eating looks like this week. The plan is what removes the daily negotiation. It tells you what to do so you don't have to figure it out when you're tired, busy, or unmotivated. But once the plan exists, you don't look at all of it at once. You look at today. Just today. Some days you execute perfectly. Some days you do what you can and that has to be enough. Both of those days count. Both of them move you forward. The only day that doesn't count is the one where you quit entirely. And we don't do that. What This Looks Like in Practice Wake up. Look at what's scheduled for today. Not the week. Not the month. Not the year. Today. Do what's on the plan. Move the way you planned to move. Fuel the way you planned to fuel. Rest the way your body needs to rest. Then tomorrow, do it again. That's longevity. Not a grand commitment made once. A small commitment renewed daily. The people who age well aren't the ones who made the biggest promises to themselves. They're the ones who kept showing up — imperfectly, consistently, one day at a time. Where Nutrition Fits Into Today Every day has a nutrition decision in it. And one of the easiest ways to honor the one-day-at-a-time philosophy is to make that decision simple. Not perfect. Not complicated. Just intentional. Five Plus Protein exists for exactly this moment — the moment in your day when you need clean, reliable fuel and you don't have time to overthink it. Grab it after your walk. Between meetings. On the days when everything else fell apart but this one thing didn't. It's not a lifetime commitment. It's today's decision. Clean protein. No crash. No bloat. Just one good choice — made today. ► Try the sampler — one good decision, starting today. Final Thought You don't have to be healthy for the rest of your life. You only have to be healthy today. The lifetime takes care of itself — one day at a time. So don't carry tomorrow. Don't drag yesterday. Just show up for today, do what you planned, give yourself grace when you need it, and then do it again tomorrow. That's the whole system. That's how longevity is built. This post is part of the No Excuses Series. Read the full series: Part 1: Start Where You Are · Part 2: Stop Negotiating With Yourself · Part 3: The Identity Shift · Part 4: Consistency Builds Strength · Part 5: Focus on What You Can Do · Part 6: Do What You Enjoy · Part 7: Why Movement Matters More Than You Think · Part 8: How We Fuel Our Lives · Part 9: Is Eating Healthy Worth the Cost?· Part 10: One Day at a Time · Part 11: You Don't Have to Do This Alone Here's to aging well. Cheers. Joel J. Montesano Founder, Five Plus Protein

At some point, most of us realize that what worked in our twenties doesn't work anymore. The late dinners. The skipped breakfasts. The whatever's-convenient approach to eating. It's not that those things were ever ideal. It's that our bodies were more forgiving then. They absorbed the inconsistency and kept going. As we age, that forgiveness narrows. Not as a punishment. As a signal. Your body is asking for something more intentional — and when you give it that, the difference is hard to ignore. What "Intentional" Actually Means Intentional eating isn't a diet. It's not a protocol, a point system, or a list of foods you're no longer allowed to enjoy. It's a shift in how you think about food — from something you consume out of habit or convenience to something you choose with awareness. Awareness of how it makes you feel. How it affects your energy. How it supports — or undermines — the way you want to live. That shift sounds simple. But for most people it's a meaningful change. Because most of us were never taught to think about food that way. We were taught to think about calories. About macros. About good foods and bad foods. Intentional eating is different. It asks a quieter question: does this fuel the life I'm trying to build? How Nutritional Needs Shift as We Age This is the part most people don't talk about enough. As our bodies change, so does the way we process and respond to what we eat. Protein metabolism shifts — meaning we need more dietary protein to maintain the same muscle mass we could preserve more easily in our thirties. Gut microbiome diversity tends to decrease with age, making digestive comfort and fiber intake more important. Inflammation becomes easier to trigger and harder to resolve, making food choices a more powerful lever than most people realize. (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 2024) None of this means food becomes the enemy. It means food becomes more important — not less. The people who age well tend to be the people who figured this out and adjusted. Not perfectly. Not with obsession. Just with more intention than before. Protein — The Most Underestimated Piece If there's one nutritional shift that matters most as we age, it's protein. Muscle mass naturally declines with age — a process called sarcopenia — and the consequences reach further than most people realize. Loss of muscle affects metabolism, mobility, bone density, balance, and even cognitive function. It's one of the primary drivers of the physical decline we associate with getting older. (Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle, 2023) The good news: it's largely preventable. Consistent resistance movement and adequate protein intake are the two most evidence-backed tools for preserving muscle as we age. But here's where most people fall short — not on movement, but on protein. Studies suggest that adults over 40 consistently underestimate how much protein they actually need, and that the recommended daily allowance may itself be too low for active, aging adults. Many researchers now suggest a target closer to 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight for those focused on maintaining muscle and metabolic health. (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2024) That's more than most people are getting. And it's harder to hit than it sounds — especially without intentional choices at every meal and snack. The Gut Health Connection What you eat doesn't just affect your energy and your waistline. It directly shapes your gut microbiome — the ecosystem of bacteria that governs digestion, immune function, inflammation, and even mood. As we age, microbiome diversity naturally decreases. A less diverse gut is more prone to inflammation, digestive discomfort, and immune dysregulation. The foods you choose either support that diversity or accelerate its decline. (Nature Medicine, 2024) Fiber-rich whole foods, fermented foods, and clean protein sources support a healthy microbiome. Ultra-processed foods, excess sugar, and artificial additives tend to disrupt it. This is why ingredient quality matters — not as a wellness trend, but as a genuine health strategy. What's in your food is doing something inside your body. The question is whether it's working for you or against you. Eating for Steady Energy — Not Just Fuel One of the most immediate benefits of intentional eating is what happens to your energy throughout the day. Most people accept energy crashes as normal. The mid-morning slump. The post-lunch fog. The 3pm reach for caffeine or sugar. None of that is inevitable. Blood sugar stability — achieved largely through what and when you eat — is one of the most powerful determinants of daily energy, mental clarity, and mood. Foods that spike glucose sharply tend to crash it just as hard. Foods that release energy slowly and steadily keep you level, focused, and functional throughout the day. (Funky Fat Foods, 2023) Intentional eating isn't about eating less. It's about eating in a way that keeps your body — and your mind — running the way you need them to. What This Looks Like in Practice It doesn't have to be complicated. A protein-forward breakfast instead of skipping it. A clean snack between meetings instead of waiting until you're ravenous. A dinner built around vegetables and quality protein instead of whatever's fastest. Small, consistent choices. Made with awareness. Applied over time. That's it. That's intentional eating. It's not perfection. It's not restriction. It's just choosing — deliberately — to give your body what it actually needs to perform, recover, and age well. Where Five Plus Protein Fits We built Five Plus Protein because intentional eating is hardest in the gaps. The moments between meals. The long workdays. The travel days. The times when a good choice isn't obvious and a bad one is right in front of you. A clean, plant-based protein bar that digests easily, doesn't spike your blood sugar, and doesn't contain ingredients you have to look up — that's not a supplement. That's a tool. A practical, portable way to stay intentional when life makes it difficult. This is how we fuel our lives. Not perfectly. But consistently. With awareness and quality. If you're ready to make clean protein a non-negotiable part of your routine — not a one-time purchase — a subscription is the simplest way to do it. It's always there when you need it. No second-guessing. No running out. ► Subscribe and make intentional nutrition part of your daily routine. Final Thought Food is not the enemy. It's not a reward system, a punishment, or a moral statement about who you are. It's fuel. For the body you're living in. For the life you're trying to build. As we age, the relationship between what we eat and how we feel becomes harder to ignore. That's not a burden — it's an opportunity. An invitation to be more intentional about something that was always important, even when we could get away with not thinking about it. Eat with awareness. Choose with intention. Fuel the life you actually want. This post is part of the No Excuses Series. Read the full series: Part 1: Start Where You Are · Part 2: Stop Negotiating With Yourself · Part 3: The Identity Shift · Part 4: Consistency Builds Strength · Part 5: Focus on What You Can Do · Part 6: Do What You Enjoy · Part 7: Why Movement Matters More Than You Think · Part 8: How We Fuel Our Lives · Part 9: Is Eating Healthy Worth the Cost?· Part 10: One Day at a Time · Part 11: You Don't Have to Do This Alone Here's to aging well… Cheers! Joel J. Montesano Founder, Five Plus Protein Sources: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health — Nutrition and Healthy Aging (hsph.harvard.edu, 2024) Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle — Sarcopenia and Protein Intake in Aging Adults (2023) American Journal of Clinical Nutrition — Protein Requirements for Active Aging Adults (2024) Nature Medicine — Gut Microbiome Diversity and Aging (nature.com, 2024) Funky Fat Foods — Blood Sugar and Longevity (funkyfatfoods.com, 2023)

Many people think about exercise in terms of what they can see. The number on the scale. The muscle in the mirror. The pace on the watch. But the most important things movement does for your body are almost entirely invisible. They happen at the cellular level. In your bloodstream. In your immune system. In the biological processes that determine not just how long you live — but how well. This post is about those things. Your Body Is Always Keeping Score Every time you move — a walk, a swim, a set of bodyweight squats in your living room — your body responds. Hormones shift. Cells activate. Processes that govern your long-term health are either supported or left to drift. Most of us don't think about this. We think about exercise as something we do for our appearance or our fitness level. But the research tells a different story. Consistent physical activity is one of the most powerful interventions known to slow the biological processes associated with aging — not just weight gain, but cellular aging itself. (ScienceDirect, 2025) That's not a small thing. That's worth understanding. The Blood Sugar Connection As our bodies change with age, blood sugar regulation becomes one of the most important — and most overlooked — aspects of daily health. Here's why it matters: glucose is your body's primary fuel source. When it stays stable, you feel energized, clear-headed, and even-keeled. When it spikes and crashes — from processed foods, long gaps between meals, or a sedentary day — the effects ripple through everything. Energy. Mood. Sleep. Inflammation. Long-term disease risk. Chronic blood sugar instability is linked to increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline, and accelerated biological aging. (American Diabetes Association, 2024) Movement is one of the most effective tools we have for keeping glucose stable — and it works in ways most people don't realize. When your muscles contract during physical activity, they pull glucose directly from the bloodstream — independent of insulin. This means even a 20-minute walk after a meal can meaningfully reduce a post-meal glucose spike. You don't need an intense workout. You need consistent movement throughout your day. This is one of the most underappreciated benefits of staying active as we age. It's not about burning calories. It's about keeping your internal environment stable. The Inflammation Problem Chronic inflammation is one of the defining health challenges of midlife and beyond. Unlike the acute inflammation that helps you heal a cut or fight an infection, chronic low-grade inflammation operates silently in the background — contributing to joint pain, fatigue, cognitive fog, cardiovascular risk, and nearly every major age-related disease. Researchers now refer to this phenomenon as "inflammaging" — the gradual inflammatory drift that accompanies aging when left unchecked. (Nature Reviews Immunology, 2023) Exercise is one of the most effective anti-inflammatory tools available — and it doesn't require a prescription. Moderate, consistent physical activity reduces circulating inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein and interleukin-6. It supports immune cell circulation, helping your body identify and repair damage more efficiently. And it helps regulate cortisol — the stress hormone that, when chronically elevated, drives inflammation higher. (Frontiers in Aging, 2024) The key word is consistent. A single workout doesn't move the needle much. But movement done regularly — even at moderate intensity — creates a cumulative anti-inflammatory effect that compounds over time. Your body doesn't need you to go harder. It needs you to keep showing up. What Healthspan Actually Means We talk about longevity a lot in this series. But there's an important distinction worth making. Lifespan is how long you live. Healthspan is how well you live during those years — the decades spent with energy, mobility, mental clarity, and independence rather than managing disease and decline. Movement is the single most evidence-backed tool for extending healthspan. Not supplements. Not biohacking protocols. Consistent physical activity — walking, swimming, resistance training, pickleball, whatever you'll actually do — applied regularly over years. Research shows that people who maintain moderate fitness levels throughout midlife experience significantly lower rates of cardiovascular disease, metabolic dysfunction, cognitive decline, and mobility loss later in life. (Research for Life, 2025) The choices you make in your forties and fifties don't just affect how you feel next week. They shape the decade you'll live in your seventies. This Is Why the Small Stuff Matters A walk after dinner. A swim on Saturday morning. Ten minutes of stretching before work. None of it looks dramatic. All of it is doing exactly what we just described — stabilizing blood sugar, reducing inflammation, slowing cellular aging, extending healthspan. The gap between people who age well and people who don't is rarely explained by genetics or luck. It's explained largely by whether they kept moving. Consistently. Over time. You don't have to be an athlete. You just have to stay in the game. Even the movement between workouts matters. Here's how everyday activity adds up to 300+ calories a day. Fueling What You're Building If you're showing up for your body consistently — and now you know exactly why that matters — the fuel you choose afterward deserves the same intention. Post-movement nutrition is where a lot of people quietly undermine the work they just did. A sugar-heavy snack. A processed bar full of ingredients you can't pronounce. A crash that leaves you tired an hour later. Your body just did something remarkable. It regulated your blood sugar, activated your immune system, and pushed back against the biological processes of aging. Give it something that supports that — not something that reverses it. Five Plus Protein was built for exactly this moment. Clean, plant-based protein. No bloating. No sugar crash. Steady energy that works with your body, not against it. Grab it after your walk. After your workout. After the pickleball game. Make it the refuel your routine actually deserves. ► Order a full box — and subscribe so you never run out. Final Thought Movement is not just exercise. It's blood sugar regulation. It's inflammation control. It's cellular repair. It's the most powerful aging intervention available to you — and it doesn't require a gym membership or a complicated protocol. It just requires consistency. Show up for your body. Understand what it's doing for you when you do. And fuel it like it matters. Because it does. This post is part of the No Excuses Series. Read the full series: Part 1: Start Where You Are · Part 2: Stop Negotiating With Yourself · Part 3: The Identity Shift · Part 4: Consistency Builds Strength · Part 5: Focus on What You Can Do · Part 6: Do What You Enjoy · Part 7: Why Movement Matters More Than You Think · Part 8: How We Fuel Our Lives · Part 9: Is Eating Healthy Worth the Cost?· Part 10: One Day at a Time · Part 11: You Don't Have to Do This Alone Here's to aging well… Cheers! Joel J. Montesano Founder, Five Plus Protein Sources: ScienceDirect — Exercise Attenuates the Hallmarks of Aging (sciencedirect.com, 2025) American Diabetes Association — Blood Sugar Regulation and Metabolic Health (diabetes.org, 2024) Nature Reviews Immunology — Inflammaging and Chronic Inflammation in Aging (nature.com, 2023) Frontiers in Aging — Exercise as an Anti-Inflammatory Intervention (frontiersin.org, 2024) Research for Life — Does Exercise Support Longevity? (researchforlife.org, 2025)

Protein Needs After 40: Why Protein Matters More as You Age Most people don’t think about protein until they start exercising more or trying to build muscle. But protein becomes increasingly important as we get older, even if your goal is simply to stay healthy and active. Around age 40, the body begins to gradually lose muscle mass in a process called sarcopenia. Without enough protein and physical activity, this muscle loss can accelerate over time. Maintaining muscle is important not just for strength, but also for metabolism, mobility, and long-term health. Why Protein Becomes More Important With Age As we age, the body becomes less efficient at using protein to build and maintain muscle. Researchers call this anabolic resistance. Because of this change, adults over 40 often benefit from slightly higher protein intake compared with younger adults. Protein supports: • muscle maintenance• metabolic health• strength and mobility• bone health• energy and recovery Research from the National Institutes of Health highlights the role of adequate protein intake in preserving muscle and functional health as we age. How Much Protein Do Adults Over 40 Need? Many experts recommend: 1.0–1.4 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight depending on activity level. For example: Body Weight Protein Per Day 140 lb 64–90 g 160 lb 73–102 g 180 lb 82–115 g If you want a simple way to calculate your needs, see our guide on Daily Protein Intake. The Most Common Protein Gap Many people consume the majority of their protein at dinner. Breakfast and lunch are often protein-light, which leaves people short of their daily goal. Simple additions can help: • eggs or yogurt at breakfast• legumes or tofu at lunch• a clean plant-based protein bar between meals Consistency matters more than perfection. The Bottom Line Protein isn’t just about building muscle. It’s about maintaining strength, metabolism, and independence as we age. For many adults over 40, aiming for 1.0–1.4 g/kg per day can help support long-term health and vitality. You can view our guide on Daily Protein Intake here. Many people find they fall short of their daily protein goal. A clean plant-based protein bar can be a convenient way to close that gap between meals. Looking for more? Explore our nutrition guides: Daily Protein Intake · How to Increase Protein Intake · Best Plant-Based Protein Sources · Protein Timing · How Much Protein to Build Muscle

Start the Year With Better Fuel As we age, our protein needs go up — not down. From energy and recovery to muscle preservation and gut health, the right protein can make all the difference in how we feel every day. And to ensure we are getting enough protein, many of us supplement our diets with protein bars. But, buyer beware, not all protein bars are created equal. Many on the market use low-quality protein sources or fillers that can leave you bloated, sluggish, or worse. If you’ve ever experienced digestive discomfort from your “healthy” bar, you know exactly what we mean. That’s why at Five Plus Protein, we take a different approach. Why Pea Protein Is the Star of Our Bars We believe the best vegan protein bar starts with clean, complete nutrition — and that’s why we use premium pea protein as our base. Here’s what makes pea protein stand out: Complete protein: all nine essential amino acids for full-body repair and strength. Gut-friendly: pea protein is gentle, easy to digest, and perfect for sensitive stomachs. Anti-inflammatory fit: supports recovery and steady energy without stress on the body. Planet-friendly: pea protein has a lower environmental footprint than animal-based sources. These are the kind of pea protein benefits that support a lifestyle built on aging well — and feeling great while you do it. What Makes Five Plus the Best Plant-Based Protein Bar We hold every ingredient to a higher standard. It’s why Five Plus Protein Bars are: No added sugar Non-GMO Vegan Gluten-free High in fiber And always, tastes good We call these our non-negotiables — the promises we’ll never compromise on. Because better health should always taste like something you actually look forward to. Fuel Your Routine with the Right Protein If you’re ready to experience a gut-friendly protein bar that supports your health goals, start with our 6-Bar Sampler Box. Try each flavor and find your favorite. Then, upgrade to the 12-Bar Full Box for the best value — perfect for keeping your routine simple, steady, and fueled for the year ahead. 2026 starts with better fuel for a better year. 👉 Shop the 6-Bar & 12-Bar Variety Boxes 

The desire for a long, healthy life is universal. But beyond wishing for longevity, what tangible steps can we take to not only live longer—but to thrive as we age? Part of the answer lies in the fascinating concept of Blue Zones.

As a physician assistant with over 25 years of experience, I’ve witnessed major shifts in medicine—epidemics, pandemics, evolving standards of care, and a growing recognition of the role chronic inflammation plays in long-term health. Unlike the acute inflammation we typically associate with an injury—like when I recently sprained my ankle—chronic inflammation is a silent disruptor. It doesn’t cause visible swelling or pain right away, but instead simmers under the surface, quietly damaging tissues and DNA over time. This type of low-grade, persistent immune activation has been linked to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and a host of autoimmune conditions. What causes it? The list is long: poor sleep, stress, obesity, environmental toxins, and even lingering infections or trauma. Unfortunately, it's not going anywhere—and neither should our focus on it. That’s why I started paying attention. And it’s why Five Plus Protein was born. In my personal journey toward better health and as a healthcare provider committed to longevity and wellness, I’ve become passionate about what we put on our plates. Certain spices—like turmeric and cinnamon—have been studied for their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. They’re not magic bullets, but they’re worth including in a consistent, healthy lifestyle. At Five Plus, we’ve worked hard to create a protein bar that’s more than just a snack. It’s a purposeful habit. Each bar includes ingredients studied for their anti-inflammatory properties along with balanced plant-based nutrition, designed to support people who want to feel better, move better, and age well. But make no mistake: Five Plus isn’t just about convenience. It’s about helping people invest in their health, one bite at a time. Bridget Grover PA-C, MA-law