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HowToPreventHeartDisease.com |
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Which Weight-Loss Approach Is Superior? When it comes to the topic of losing weight and cholesterol improvement, people will most probably hover around the 3 common techniques, low-fat, Atkins-like low-carbohydrate (low-carb), and Mediterranean diet. But, which one is superior? Perhaps a recent research may give you the answer. A team of researchers carried out a 2-year study, much longer than most, to compare these 3 techniques. The findings, which were published on July 17, 2008 in the New England Journal of Medicine, revealed that all 3 approaches could achieve weight loss and improve cholesterol. However, the low-carb and Mediterranean-style diet helped people lose more weight than a traditional low-fat diet, and the low-carb diet did improve cholesterol more than the other two. The research was conducted in an isolated nuclear research facility located in Israel. The 322 participants had their main meal of the day, lunch, at a central cafeteria. Most of the participants were men, and all men and women in the study were asked to get roughly equal amounts of exercise. These workers were not allowed to lunch outside. In the cafeteria, colored dots were used to identify 3 types of foods: low-fat diet (red), low-carb diet (blue) and Mediterranean diet (green). As regards breakfast and dinner, the participants were advised on how to stick to their eating plans and were asked to fill out questionnaires on what they actually ate.
After 2 year, the average weight loss for those in the low-carb group was 10.3 pounds (4.67 kilograms). Those in the Mediterranean diet lost 10 pounds (4.54 kilograms) while those on the low-fat diet dropped 6.5 pounds (2.95 kilograms). Meantime, the low-carb method achieved the most improvement in several cholesterol measures, including the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL (good cholesterol). The ratio did decline by 20 percent in people on the low-carb diet, as compared to 16 percent in those on the Mediterranean diet and 12 percent in low-fat diet. According to the American Heart Association, the optimal ratio is 3.5 to 1. Such ratio was regarded as an indication of a person’s risk of having hardening of the arteries. The findings surprised many health experts, who feared that low-carb diet may raise cholesterol because it allows more fat in the diet. In the study, the low-fat diet restricted calories (no more than 30 percent of calories from fat) and cholesterol and focused on low-fat grains, vegetables and fruits as options, while the Mediterranean diet had similar calorie, fat and cholesterol restrictions, but emphasizing on poultry, fish, olive oil and nuts. The low-carb diet limited the amount of carbohydrates intake, but none for calories or fat. Nevertheless, it urged dieters to choose vegetarian sources of fat and protein. As overweight and high cholesterol can easily put one on high risk of heart disease, the American Heart Association has long recommended low-fat diets to reduce heart risks. The low-fat diet recommended by the heart association is even more restrictive than the one in the study The heart association does not recommend the other 2 approaches, though some of its leaders have also found the Mediterranean diet safe and effective.
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