The African study involved 544 children in Kenya, typically aged around seven, whose diet mainly consisted of starchy, low-nutrition corn and bean staples lacking these micronutrients. Over a period of two years, one group of the children was given a daily supplement of two ounces of meat - equivalent to roughly two spoonfuls of mince. Two other groups received either a cup of milk a day or an oil supplement containing the same amount of energy. The diet of a fourth group was left unaltered. The changes seen in the children given the meat, and to a lesser extent the milk or oil, were dramatic. Prof Allen, the director of the US Agricultural Research Service's Western Human Nutrition Research Centre at Davis, said: "It was found that, compared with controls that had no intervention, the meat group had 80% more increase in muscle mass over the two years of the study, and the milk and energy group had 40% more increase in muscle mass.
