American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol 5, 591-596, Copyright © 1957 by The American Society for Clinical Nutrition, Inc.

The Role of Protein in Diets for Weight Reduction

¹ From the Hospital of The Rockefeller Institute, New York, New York

The published evidence indicates that obese patients can safely lose nitrogen during weight reduction. It suggests that some loss of nitrogen may be a proper part of reduction, since the obese subject probably has more than a normal amount of nitrogen in his body. Although in principle it is clear that the aim of a reduction diet should be a normal body composition, as well as a normal weight, there are no reported studies that relate the proportions of different reduction diets to changes in body composition. As an empirical measure for causing weight loss, a high-protein diet has no proven advantage over simple quantitative limitation of a diet containing a normal proportion of protein.