High Protein and Bone Loss

A new study from Purdue, published in the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences, links diets that are high in protein, especially protein from lean meats, to bone-density loss and a greater risk of osteoporosis. The study focused on post-menopausal women for nine weeks with controlled diets varying from vegetarian to daily beef consumption. The researchers found that the women with high-protein diets were more likely to lose bone-mineral density, which directly leads to osteoporosis. This comes at a time when protein-rich weight-loss diets are popular, and though it is acknowledged in the study that those women who followed the meat-eating diets did lose weight, the ramifications were seen in their bones.