Americans love gorging on protein come dinnertime, but parceling it out over the day is a better bet, finds a recent study in the Journal of Nutrition. People who ate about 30 grams of protein at each meal — breakfast, lunch and dinner — had a 25 percent boost in muscle building, compared with those who ate the same total amount but skimped in the morning and loaded up at night. “Balancing out your protein intake optimizes muscle protein synthesis at more points throughout the day, not just at night,” says lead study author Doug Paddon-Jones, a professor at UTMB. That can help you retain muscle you might otherwise forfeit to age, so spread the protein love around.