Waistline-Slimming Food

You may remember this study from two years ago that had a really mysterious result. People fed the exact same diet, but just had the dairy protein replaced with soy, and there was a significant drop in abdominal fat. Same calories, but instead of the abdominal fat growing, it seemed to melt away. We’re finally understanding some of the biology behind this.

This year, in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, scientists found that soy helps prevent human fat cells from taking up fat in the first place. They put a layer of human fat cells in a Petri dish, and as the concentration of the soy isoflavone was increased, the fat accumulation within the fat cells dropped. And these are the kinds of blood levels we can get incorporating soy into our diet.

Here’s what it looked like under the microscope. These are the individual fat cells, and the fat inside is stained red here for better contrast. So, this is the control with no soy phytonutrients. Here’s what it looks like adding a tiny bit of soy—3 micrograms—then a little more, more, more, and finally 50 micrograms—where fat uptake was almost completely blocked.

In fact, these phytoestrogens are so amazing that the meat industry bragged this year in their trade journals that phytoestrogens have been found in animal products. Not a surprise, really, given that animals eat plants.

But should the meat industry really be bragging? Let’s look at the numbers. Beef or chicken have about 4 for these isoflavones. Veggie burgers have 4,000. Dairy milk has 6. But soy milk has 6,000. No contest, really.

To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by veganmontreal.

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• M. Rosell, P. Appleby, E. Spencer, & T. Key. Weight gain over 5 years in 21,966 meat-eating, fish-eating, vegetarian, and vegan men and women in EPIC-Oxford. Int J Obes (Lond), 30(9):1389-1396, 2006.
• H.J. Park, M.A. Della-Fera, D.B. Hausman, S. Rayalam, S. Ambati, & C.A. Baile. Genistein inhibits differentiation of primary human adipocytes. J Nutr Biochem, 20(2):140-148, 2009.

Image thanks to brownpau via Flickr.

• abdominal fat
• animal products
• beans
• beef
• body fat
• chicken
• cognition
• dementia
• fake meat
• isoflavones
• meat substitutes
• memory
• milk
• phytoestrogens
• processed foods
• soy
• soy milk
• tofu
• veggie burgers
• weight loss