Mediterranean diet pattern slows weight gain
Following a Mediterranean diet pattern slows weight gain that commonly occurs with age, as demonstrated by a study by the University of Navarra and Harvard.
The work resulting from the research of Dr. Juan Jose Beunza at Harvard School of Public Health through a grant from La Caixa, has just been published in one of the major journals in Nutrition, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. “
In particular, research, framed in the Red PREDIMED consisted of tracking 10,376 volunteers involved in the SUN (Follow University of Navarra). For six years, compared the weight change in college graduates who faithfully followed the traditional Mediterranean diet and those who did not.
Beunza explains that found in males, first gained less weight -128 grams per year on average, than those who did not wear a Mediterranean diet, which fatten more than double, 287 grams per year. The effect was less pronounced in women, where the data pointed to an increase of 242 grams per year if they followed a Mediterranean diet compared to 300 grams per year if they did not.
He was also a significant decrease in weight gain of those people who tended to gain weight. “Participants who had risen more than 3 kilos over the five years preceding the start of the study gained weight 48 grams per year with a Mediterranean diet and 261 grams if they opted for another type of food, both women and men,” says the researcher.
In this sense, Beunza warns that although the numbers look small, “if the projected long-term eg 20 years, represent significant differences from the clinical viewpoint of body weight control.”
Raise the weight with age is not “normal”
As for the idea that it is normal to gain weight with age, the author says that this is a false belief. “The reality is that the Mediterranean dietary pattern slows weight gain that normally suffer with age, but this increase should not be considered normal weight,” he said.
In addition, this analysis may be an effective tool to limit the spread concern of obesity, which already has a high prevalence in developed countries, “which is a major cause of illness and death, and seems resistant to any effort we can make from the field of public health. “
On the other hand, Dr. Stephanie Toledo, co-author of the work, highlights the role of Spain as privileged to address the problem of obesity and suggests that “the large number of people who follow this dietary pattern in our country offers valuable information on the Mediterranean dietary pattern, which does not happen in the U.S. or in northern Europe. ”
This is a work funded by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III for the SUN Project and the Red PREDIMED (Healthy Eating in Primary Prevention of Chronic Diseases), which also participated Frank Hu, Harvard School of Public Health, ” Miguel Ángel Martínez-González, director of the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Navarra, and Maira Bes-Rastrollo research, among others.
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