“Eating a diet that is low in calorie density allows people to eat satisfying portions of food, and this may decrease feelings of hunger and deprivation while reducing calories” said Dr. Julia A. Ello-Martin, who conducted the study as part of her doctoral dissertation in the College of Health and Human Development at Penn State. Previously, little was known about the influence of diets low in calorie density on body weight.

“Such diets are known to reduce the intake of calories in the short term, but their role in promoting weight loss over the long term was not clear,” said Dr. Barbara J. Rolls, who directed the study and who holds the Helen A. Guthrie Chair of Nutritional Sciences at Penn State.

“We have now shown that choosing foods that are low in calorie density helps in losing weight, without the restrictive messages of other weight loss diets,” explained Ello-Martin, whose findings appear in the June 2007 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

As always, the bottomline is: eat right for a healthier you. Of course, that’s assuming you’re not eating too much in excess of the normal daily allowance.

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Low Calorie Dense Diet May Aid Weight Loss

Recent studies show that this seaweed is not only a good souce of iodine which can help prevent goiter, it is also high in fucoxanthin, a pigment compound that seems to help fight obesity by stimulating a protein called UCP1, which in turn causes fat oxidation and conversion of energy to heat. Additionally, fucoxanthin also appear to stimulate the liver to produce DHA, a type of omega-3 fatty acid, which subsequently reduce ‘bad cholesterol’ (low density lipoprotein) which contribute to obesity and heart disease.

[As seen in The Biotech Weblog]

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Eat Wakame and Lose Weight

Scientists have discovered the scientific evidence of such diets. Based on their studies involving normal-weight and obese people as well as knockout mice, incorporating high amounts of protein in your diet staves off hunger by triggering the production of a hunger-fighting hormone called peptide YY (PYY).

Pyy null mice (photo, right), genetically modified such that it is unable to produce the PYY hormone, showed to be selectively resistant to the satiating and weight-reducing effects of protein.

The findings show that PYY deficiency can cause obesity and that PYY appears to mediate the beneficial effects of increased-protein content diets,” Batterham said. “One potential weight loss strategy is therefore to increase the satiating power of the diet and promote weight loss through the addition of dietary protein–harnessing our own satiety system.

“Such a diet is perhaps more typical to that of our hunter-gatherer ancestors,” she added.

She issues a caveat, however, that extensive, long-term clinical trials will have to be done before any particular diet could be recommended. Also note that such a diet would be different to the Atkins Diet, which is typically high in both saturated fat and protein.

For further reading, you may want to take a look at the published manuscript in Cell Metabolism or the BBC report.

[Photo: Cell Metabolism]

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Why High Protein Diets Help Lose Weight