Why eating more of these foods can actually help you consume fewer calories
For those who have made a firm resolution to slim down their waistlines this new year, trying to figure out how to satisfy an empty stomach while keeping calories low can be challenging.
But experts have revealed how a single-food diet could encourage people to fill up on more fruits and vegetables and fewer high-energy options.
A new study has been published American Journal of Clinical Nutrition A study out Tuesday shows that participants eating an unprocessed diet naturally chose to eat more fruits and vegetables than high-calorie unprocessed food options like rice, meat and butter, which can help with weight loss.
The data showed that people on an unprocessed diet were able to eat more than 50 percent more food by mass, but consumed an average of 330 fewer calories per day than those on an ultra-processed diet.
“The argument that we’re moving towards higher-calorie foods has been around for a long time,” said study author Professor Jeff Brunstrom. Independent. “This could be considered a form of nutritional intelligence. But we can also argue that we demonstrate other forms of nutritional intelligence; we are not just eating for calories, and this paper suggests that micronutrients also play a role.”
Researchers reanalyzed data from a 2019 study that revealed for the first time how eating a diet rich in ultra-processed foods can lead to excess calorie intake and weight gain.
They found that people who followed a diet consisting solely of unprocessed foods consistently chose to eat fruits and vegetables over more calorie-dense options like pasta and cream.
Scientists have suggested that this is because our bodies have a built-in “nutritional intelligence” that encourages us to choose foods rich in micronutrients.
“When we consume a healthy, unprocessed diet, we are, in a sense, serving two systems,” Prof Brunstrom said. Independent. “We eat for calories, but we’re also likely attracted to high-micronutrient foods.”
He added that you may need to eat a calorific portion of processed foods to meet certain micronutrient requirements, but in a more natural diet there’s a “tension” between macronutrients and calories that puts a “brake” on how many calories we consume.
For example, those on ultraprocessed diets got most of their vitamin A from French toast and pancakes, while those on unprocessed diets got the vitamin from spinach and carrots.
“The paper attempts to address the hypothesis that there is something special about unprocessed diets that allows us to eat more food by mass but fewer calories due to this stretch,” Prof Brunstrom said.
“Overeating isn’t necessarily the main problem. In fact, our research clearly showed that consumers on whole-food diets actually eat much more than consumers on processed foods.
“But the nutritional makeup of food influences choices, and it appears that UPFs push people towards higher-calorie options, possibly leading to excess energy intake and therefore obesity, even in much lower amounts.”
