The National Kidney Foundation Clinical Practice Dialysis Outcomes Quality Initiative (DOQI) guidelines recently recommended dietary protein intake for patients with chronic renal failure as follows: predialysis patients should receive 0.60 g/kg/day of protein and increase intake to 0.75 g/kg/day for subjects who cannot follow such a diet. For stable maintenance hemodialysis patients, the recommended protein intake is 1.2 g/kg/day, and for chronic peritoneal dialysis patients, 1.2-1.3 g/kg/day. We differ with these recommendations and believe that a dietary protein intake of 0.8 g/kg/day is appropriate for the predialysis population; an intake of 0.9-1.0 g/kg/day and 1.0-1.1 g/kg/day for maintenance hemodialysis patients and peritoneal dialysis patients, respectively, should be adequate. The rationale and the evidence supporting our arguments are outlined and discussed.