Sunday, January 8, 2012

Too little protein may equal too much body fat

People who consistently consume more calories than they burn each day will lose lean muscle and accumulate body fat more easily if their diets contain too little protein and too much fat and carbohydrates, suggests a study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study included 25 people who lived in a carefully controlled research facility for up to three months, exercising very little. For two of those months, all of the men and women intentionally ate about 1,000 calories per day more than they needed to maintain their weight, but they consumed different amounts of protein.

People assigned to a low-protein diet gained roughly half as much weight during the experiment as those assigned to a standard or high-protein diet, but body fat—rather than lean body mass, which includes muscle—accounted for a much higher percentage of their weight gain.

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