Even though people still ate more calories than they burned, eating high-protein, low-carb ultra-processed foods made them much less likely to store excess energy as fat compared to normal-protein...

When healthy young people eat ultra-processed foods that are high in protein and low in carbs, they naturally eat about 200 fewer calories per day than when they eat ultra-processed foods with normal protein and carbs—even if both meals taste the same.

Eating ultra-processed foods with more protein and fewer carbs makes your body burn about 130 extra calories per day just to digest and process the food, even if you’re not moving more.

Whether you eat a high-protein diet with carbs or without carbs, your body burns about the same number of calories — carbs don’t make you burn more energy.

When lean adults increase their protein intake from 15% to 25% of daily calories, they do not eat fewer total calories over four days, indicating that the body adjusts energy intake when protein is too low but not when protein is too high.

People who eat more ultra-processed foods tend to consume a smaller proportion of their calories from protein and more from fats and carbohydrates, even though their total amount of protein stays the same, and they end up consuming more total calories.