Dr. Donald Layman

And then also, how much protein from a nutrient density standpoint?

So we really looked at two main questions as we came to the conclusion about the protein data.

That's a great question.

And so there's a lot of different ways you could do it.

Most people like what we would call more hard outcomes.

So death or anthropometric measurements or whatever.

So we actually used a lot of the weight management data.

Since 75% of adults are overweight, we thought that

weight management was a good target.

So we looked at things like changes in body weight, changes in body fat, changes in lean mass, and things like that as our main outcome measures.

And what we found was that in basically all the studies out there, and there are quite a few, somewhere in the 40s, most of them

Pretty much all of them show one of those factors that the higher protein is a better outcome, whether it's total weight management, weight loss, body fat loss, lean mass stability, all of those types of things.

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the great things about the dietary guidelines and the way we've written them is we have allowed for those different opinions.

We have tried to put the best science as to where we think the optimum target is, but we've then allowed for if someone is a vegetarian,

What does this mean?

What's the liability to that?

What nutrients are they likely to be low on?

So the idea that there's too much protein, there's a lot of research that has shown that higher levels are perfectly safe.

Lower levels, we know that there's risk to it.

And food choices may be even the bigger risk.