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Green Mediterranean diet reduces more fat than traditional Med or healthy diet
Researchers in Israel have shown that the green Mediterranean diet significantly reduces visceral adipose tissue, a type of fat around internal organs that is much more dangerous than the extra “tyre” around your waist.
Their study showed that the green Med diet reduced visceral fat by 14%, the Med diet by 7% and the healthy diet by 4.5%.
Reducing visceral fat is considered the true goal of weight loss as it is a more important indicator than a person’s weight or the circumference of their waist. Visceral fat aggregates over time between organs and produces hormones and poisons linked to heart disease, diabetes, dementia and premature death.
The research was led by Prof. Iris Shai of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, an adjunct Professor from the Harvard School of Public Health, and an Honorary Professor,
University of Leipzig, Germany, together with her doctoral student Dr. Hila Zelicha and Italian, German, and American colleagues.
The research team was the first to introduce the concept of the green-Med diet that is further enriched with dietary polyphenols and lower in red/processed meat than the traditional healthy MED diet. On top of a daily intake of walnuts (28 grams), the participants consumed 3-4 cups of green tea/day and 100 grams (frozen cubes) of duckweed green shake/day. The aquatic green plant duckweed is high in bioavailable protein, iron, B12, vitamins, minerals, and polyphenols and substituted meat intake.
The team has shown in previous studies that the green MED diet has a variety of beneficial effects ranging from the microbiome to age-related degenerative diseases.
Two hundred and ninety four participants took part in the 18-month long trial.
“A healthy lifestyle is a strong basis for any weight loss program. We learned from the results of our experiment that the quality of food is no less important than the number of calories consumed and the goal today is to understand the mechanisms of various nutrients, for example, positive ones such as the polyphenols, and negative ones such as empty carbohydrates and processed red meat, on the pace of fat cell differentiation and their aggregation in the viscera,” says Prof. Shai.
“A 14% reduction in visceral fat is a dramatic achievement for making simple changes to your diet and lifestyle. Weight loss is an important goal only if it is accompanied by impressive results in reducing adipose tissue,” notes Dr. Hila Zelicha.
Rosetrees was a major co-funder of the aforementioned research.