It’s not just how many calories, but what kind, study finds
A calorie is a calorie is a calorie — or is it?
Maybe not, a small study has found. Once the pounds are shed, the proportions of carbohydrates, proteins and fats you chow down on may determine whether you keep the weight off — or slowly but surely pack on pounds again.
In an intensive, seven-month experiment during which 21overweight men and women had their diets strictly controlled down to each last morsel, researchers showed that a traditional low-fat diet seemed to make the metabolismmore sluggish than a high-protein one during the most difficult part of weight loss: keeping fat off once it’s shed.
The preliminary work, which was published Tuesday in the Journal of theAmerican Medical Assn., provides support for a growing group of scientists who argue that what people eat may be just as key as how much they eat.
In a nutshell, “from a metabolic perspective, all calories are not alike,” said study senior author Dr. David Ludwig, director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Children’s Hospital Boston. “The quality of the calories going in affects the quantity of the calories going out.”
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