> In total, there were 3.1 pounds of beef—a graphic visualization of the muscle lost in just one week by subjects of a bed-rest study the student had just completed.
This is significantly out of line with other research I've seen. Marusic et al. (2021) meta-analysis[1] found an average muscle loss of ~2% after 5 days. It did not report average absolute muscle loss, but the average person has about 1/3 of bodyweight as muscle, so at an average weight of ~180 pounds, that would represent 1.2 pounds of muscle loss in a ~week, not 3.1 pounds.
After 1 week of bed rest, participants lost 1.4 ± 0.2 kg (range: 0.6 to 2.8 kg) lean tissue mass (Fig. 1A) (P < 0.01), representing a 2.5 ± 0.4% loss of lean tissue mass.
This is significantly out of line with other research I've seen. Marusic et al. (2021) meta-analysis[1] found an average muscle loss of ~2% after 5 days. It did not report average absolute muscle loss, but the average person has about 1/3 of bodyweight as muscle, so at an average weight of ~180 pounds, that would represent 1.2 pounds of muscle loss in a ~week, not 3.1 pounds.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8325614/