How I approached a paper on protein

Executive summary

* This week's note looks at a paper about animal and vegetable protein intake and malnutrition in older adults.

* The paper claimed that "Higher animal and, especially, vegetable protein intake were associated with improvements in nutritional status in older adults. Replacing total animal protein, meat, or fish protein with vegetable protein may help improve malnutrition."

* The claim that vegetable protein is better than animal protein made no sense given that animal protein is superior nutritionally. This made me approach the paper looking for 'tricks.'

* In this note, I explain how these claims were made but instead of just presenting them I talk you through how I found the 'tricks' in the paper.

* This note, therefore, guides you through what you should look at (and not look at) to get to the bottom of a paper that doesn't make sense at first sight.