Focus on quality of food to shed flab

Researchers from Harvard School of Public Health found that the more good food in one’s diet, the more weight one loses over the long term.

To maintain a slim figure, the researchers said, it is much more important to concentrate on eating healthy food rather than fixating on how much one consumes, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Their study of almost 1,20,000 people, five-sixths of whom were women, discovered that extra helpings of yoghurt, nuts, fruit, whole grains and vegetables were all linked to weight loss.

The team quantified the effect that eating particular types of food daily had on weight gain or loss. Perhaps surprisingly, eating more yoghurt and nuts every day had a bigger effect on losing weight than fruits and vegetables — probably because they keep people fuller for longer.

They found that people who ate an extra portion of yoghurt daily, compared to the study group as a whole, lost on average 0.37kg every four years, over a 20 year period.
For nuts the comparable figure was 0.26kg, for fruits 0.22kg, for whole grains 0.17kg and for vegetables 0.1kg.

The authors, led by Prof Dariush Mozaffarian, noted that this did not mean people could simply eat large amounts of these foods and lose weight.