You can best fight your excess pounds with a vegan diet. The Guardian reports this in response to new research.
Vegetarianism - veganism
The vegetable menu has two variants. The most common form is the lacto-ovo vegetarianism, where people eat neither meat nor fish, but dairy products and eggs. In popular speech, we call such people 'ordinary' vegetarians. Vegans go a step further. They do not eat any product of animal origin.
Vegetarianism and veganism are a conviction, not a way to lose weight. A group of Taiwanese and American researchers wanted to know if a vegetable menu would be suitable to help people rid themselves of their surplus kilos.
Meta-analysis
To compare the lose weight of different diets with a predominantly vegetal menu, they performed a meta-analysis on 12 randomized controls with the control group. The total number of subjects was 1151. The different studies lasted between 9 and 96 weeks; the average duration was 18 weeks.
First author Ru-Yi Huang claims that it is the first study to compare plant and 'normal' diets on the basis of various independent studies. The study is published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Fibers make the difference
A clear difference emerged from the analysis. Especially the vegan diet shows a positive effect on lose weight. Vegans lost 2.52 kilos more than non-vegetarian dieters. People who eat vegetarian, stuck to a positive difference of 1.48 kilos.
Huang thinks the success of plant diets lies in their richness of fiber. Vegetarian and vegan menus contain, in addition to more fruit and vegetables, more fiber-rich wholegrain products. Fibers cause a slow emptying of the stomach and therefore a longer feeling of satiety and postponement of hunger.
0 comments