Comment by Lyle McDonald (lyle-mcdonald) on Bigger Livers? · 2024-12-17T23:39:36.162Z · LW · GW

So the American football study in question cannot draw causality.  There was weight gain, exercise, high protein and we all know that there is rampant anabolic steroid use.  That's 4 independent variables.

Every paper it cites on protein and liver size is on mice and, sorry, in 30 years I've never seen a single mouse study translate to humans in this regard.

The only paper they cite is Skov (1999) which was on the kidney.  You can't infer from that that protein intake affects liver size.

Even if true, the increase was 0.2 kg for the liver.  At 200 kcal/kg/day for liver, that's 40 calories extra.

I will have burned more calories pulling the papers you cited to check what they actually said.