Study Recommends Low-Fat Diets To Maintain Weight Loss
Posted on: Thursday, 23 April 2009, 13:37 CDT
A new study suggests that Atkins-style diets may help people lose weight, but diets low in saturated fat are the recommended healthy choice once the pounds have been shed, Reuters reported.
Researchers looked at three popular diets: Atkins, South Beach and the Ornish plan.
The study showed that the Atkins diet slashes carbohydrates while allowing foods high in saturated fat, like butter and red meat, while South Beach emphasizes moderate amounts of unsaturated fat, like olive oil, and "good" carbohydrates like vegetables and beans.
The Ornish plan is a diet intended to prevent and treat heart disease by employing a vegetarian diet that is very low in fat overall.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, followed 26 healthy, non-obese adults through each of the diets for one month apiece.
Researchers wanted to study the biological effects on cholesterol, blood vessel function and inflammation for each eating plan.
The study calculated each user’s diet to provide enough calories for weight maintenance.
The study found that after one month, the Atkins diet had caused participants' "bad" LDL cholesterol to tick upward, on average. The South Beach and Ornish plans led to a nearly 12 percent and 17 percent reduction, by contrast.
The team also found that the Ornish diet appeared to have the best impact on blood vessel function—which also correlated with the amount of saturated fat participants had been eating, thereby improving as saturated fat intake declined.
It concluded that an overweight person who successfully drops weight on any diet would likely see improvements in LDL and blood vessel function.
"We were more interested in evaluating extreme diets after the acute phase -- reasoning that these dietary regimens often become habitual," said lead researcher Dr. Michael Miller, of the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.
He told Reuters Health the bottom line is that once weight loss has been attained, a diet low in saturated fat represents an excellent prescription for a healthy heart.
Studies in the past have shown that diets should be conducted in people who have risk factors for heart disease, to see how various popular diets may affect their cardiovascular health over a period of time.
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Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
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