Yogurt & Weight Loss: Match Made in Heaven!

This was really interesting - I found the link on General Mills' website and it caught my eye since I love fruit yogurt. Granted, it was funded in part by Yoplait, but it's still interesting.

http://www.generalmills.com/corporate/media/news/story.asp?storyID=803
Minneapolis, MN
12/28/2003

People who resolve to lose weight at the start of the New Year need to know that sometimes adding certain foods to their diet, while cutting calories, can help them lose weight. New research has further linked eating lowfat dairy foods, such as yogurt and milk, to weight loss. Researchers from the University of Tennessee presented their most recent findings last fall at the North American Association for the Study of Obesity (NAASO) annual meeting in Quebec.

The research team conducted a study and analyzed weight loss from low- and rich-calcium diets, using lowfat yogurt as the calcium source. “This study supported our earlier findings that lowfat dairy foods affect how fat cells do their job,” said Michael Zemel, Ph.D., chairman of the department of nutrition and director of the Nutrition Institute, University of Tennessee. “The calcium in lowfat dairy foods causes fat cells to make less fat and turns on the machinery to break down fat.”

The University of Tennessee researchers conducted this study using overweight mice. The mice were fed calorie-restricted diets, differing only in the amount or source of calcium. One group of mice was fed a diet low in calcium. Two other groups were fed calcium-rich diets. Lowfat yogurt was the source of calcium in one diet, calcium carbonate - the calcium found in some dietary supplements - was used to fortify the other diet.

Results revealed that the mice fed the diet with yogurt had the greatest weight loss - more than twice as much as the mice fed the low-calorie, calcium-poor diet. The group fed the calcium carbonate diet also lost more weight than those fed the low-calorie, calcium-poor diet, but not as much as the mice who ate the diet with yogurt.

Zemel believes that these study results may be relevant to humans. In a separate analysis, he found that people who consumed more than three servings of dairy products each day were less likely to be obese. Zemel recommends that individuals consume 1200 to 1600 mg of calcium daily, which could be obtained by eating a healthy diet including three to four servings of lowfat yogurt, skim milk or lowfat cheese. This level of calcium intake is slightly higher than the recommended Daily Value for calcium (1000 mg).

Unfortunately, most women and men don't consume as much calcium as they need. On average, women typically consume about 600 mg of calcium per day and men consume a little more than 700 mg per day, according to a Dietary Intake Research Study conducted by the General Mills Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition.

“People who are trying to lose weight need to know that there are certain foods, such as lowfat dairy products, that may help them control their weight,” said Susan J. Crockett, Ph.D., R.D., director of the Bell Institute. “Adding three to four servings of lowfat dairy products to a healthy, reduced-calorie diet may improve weight loss efforts. Pouring milk on your breakfast cereal, drinking milk at lunch and dinner, and having a cup of Yoplait yogurt for snack can make a difference in calcium intake.”