Maybe I'm off here Marshall, but its seems to me that you're letting your old school views blind you in ways that's keeping you from accepting great advances in our sport. At first I agreed with you, mostly with issues revolving around the excessive desire to use the latest and greatest supplement dished out by massive corporation 'X'.
I agree the hype around most products out there is ridiculous and the research behind them is almost always funded by the company producing the product. Doing research, when searching for an explicit goal and conducting it in a way to achieve that goal will almost never fail. Thats why I take your milk study with a grain of salt.
But, back to my point. You seem to think the proof of burden lies on everyone else, but you forget that the things you are bashing have been shown to work extremely well time and time again, not what you spew and expect us to accept unquestionably. You use science only when it furthers your argument and deny and ignore it when it contradicts you. You preach and say its to the amateur, but then you say you speak to the advanced. For the former I think you are right on, for the latter you are way off base. Concentrate on who you speak to and let the rest of us live in the present.
Here is a little analogy for you that might clarify my stance. Lets look at the stock 1970 Chevelle SS 454. A beautiful machine, some might say a preferred beauty when compared to cars of today. Lets also look at the Ferrari Modena 360. A car that is basically a wet dream of sleekness and engineering marvel. Looking at their performance the SS runs the 1/4 mile in about ~13.6 sec. and the Modena in ~13.0 sec. They are both roughly the same in a straight short distance shot, nothing the human eye could detect without the aid of digital equipment. Its when the machines are pushed to their limit that one comes out ahead. The SS, when compared to the Modena, falls short in its top end speed and handling. This is directly related to the advances in science and engineering that has allowed the Modena to achieve a new level that was never before possible. True, they both cover the same amount of short distance in almost indistinguishable times, but its when things are pushed to the max that the two different design philosophies produce very different outcomes.
So, to summarize, you can bring someone up and make great advances using what you've proposed, but its when those things stop working, when you reach your personal barrier, that new advances in our methods will bring someone in leaner, stronger, and bigger. Currently we can't bioengineer food to contain exactly what we need for what we are seeking to do with are bodies, nor should we for various reasons, but we can mimic those desired outcomes while mitigating those that we don't want through supplementation.
Again, I'm not talking about super-blow-you-f'ing-up-in-3-weeks powder just released by GNC, I'm talking about carbs, protein, and creatine. And to digress a bit, you're statement about creatine couldn't be more off. I've discussed creatine with professors of pharmacology and other researches of the like, and the answer every time is yes its beneficial. I've read independent study after study verifying these claims. It was the last supplement I added before making the jump to AAS, and yes it made a large noticeable difference.
And I'm back, and I'd like to continue with your window of opportunity claims you make. I agree, running around with protein shakers attached to a beer helmet, slurping down protein the very second you finish your last set is ridiculous to me, but its definitely not detrimental. A don't view this "window" as that, its more like a large door. The thing that most impacts anything is what you choose to be carrying as you first step through that door and in my first step I want to be carrying only the very best in its best form. As that large door slowly starts closing I'm less inclined to be so picky.
Beyond that I agree with a lot of which you say, just not in the way you say it. I've stood on both sides of the fences Marshall, and I can tell that once I started hitting my barriers, changing things up, adding in supplementation in CONJUNCTION with whole foods made a noticeable difference.
For those of you that have made it here, congratulations to you, I would have ditched out a long time ago
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