Eating low-fat foods is clearly an intelligent way to keep slim and healthy, but new research shows that they can also help in weight loss.
Researchers from the University of Tennessee looked at the weight loss of obese mice following low-calcium and calcium-rich diets. Low-fat yoghurt was the source of calcium in one diet, while calcium carbonate - the calcium found in some dietary supplements - was used to fortify the other diet. A third group was fed a diet which was low in calories but had little calcium content.
The results showed that the mice which were fed with low-fat yoghurt lost the most weight, more than twice as much as those on the low-calorie and low-calcium 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 yoghurt.
"This study supported our earlier findings that low-fat dairy foods affect how fat cells do their job," said Michael Zemel, chairman of the department of nutrition and director of the Nutrition Institute, University of Tennessee. "The calcium in low-fat dairy foods causes fat cells to make less fat and turns on the machinery to break down fat."
Zemel also analysed the likely effect of these findings on humans, and found that people who consumed more than three servings of dairy products each day were less likely to be obese.
Zemel's study, which was presented at the North American Association for the Study of Obesity (NAASO) annual meeting in Quebec, was funded in part by Yoplait yoghurt.