Hi everybody this is Monica Reinagle the nutrition diva here with your quick and dirty

tips for eating well and feeling fabulous so I'm afraid there's been another outbreak of misleading nutrition headlines or

MNH, a dangerous condition that seems to have reached epidemic proportions. See for example my recent episode on red wine and

cholesterol. If you follow health and nutrition news I bet you saw some variation on

the following last week. Double your protein to prevent muscle loss.

Now I'm a big fan of protein for reasons I explained in my episode how much protein

should you eat. But before you order that 16 egg omelet, let's take a

closer look at the study behind the recent headlines and figure out what, if anything, it really

means for you.

When we try to lose weight we want to lose the extra fat on our bodies.

Unfortunately dieters often lose a lot of muscle tissue as well, which is not desirable.

Researchers wanted to see if increasing the amount of protein in the diet might protect against muscle loss during weight loss and it turns out it does.

So what exactly did this study find?

Well they divided a bunch of overweight people into three groups.

One group ate the recommended daily allowance for protein,

which amounts to about 10% of your calories,

or about 50 grams of protein per day.

The second group ate twice that much,

and a third group ate three times that much.

All of these diets, by the way, fall within the Institute of Medicine's acceptable range of 10 to 35 percent

of your calories from protein.

Then the researchers put all three groups on a calorie restricted diet during which everyone lost about the same amount of

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