Pork producers are always trying to develop faster growing, leaner pigs with good meat quality. Restrictive feeding followed by compensatory growth can achieve targeted slaughter weights while increasing feed efficiency. This project attempts to find a restrictive diet that also improves meat quality. To achieve higher tenderness the researchers tested that if limiting a diet and dietary protein would result in significant compensatory growth in the finishing phase when the restrictions were removed. Restriction of protein levels in the diet did not actually have a major effect on growth rate in this trial. Restricted feed intake did reduce growth rate in the grower phase, and there was moderate compensatory growth following this. However, the limit fed animals did not catch up to the ad libitum fed animals resulting in an overall slower trial growth rate. The compensatory growth that was moderate did not result in a difference in tenderness, water-holding, cooking loss or colour of the pork. The results suggest that it is not practical to implement a feeding regime to increase meat tenderness by accelerating pig growth rate before slaughter.