Aiming to drop a couple notches on your belt buckle? A new study has uncovered a beverage that may help quite a bit in those aspirations.
Researchers in Israel found that dieters who consumed milk or milk products dropped more pounds on average than those who consumed little to no milk products. It does do a body good, it would seem.
It didn’t matter what sort of diet they were following, the results were the same. People who took in the most calcium from dairy products — equal to 12 oz of milk or 580 mg of dairy calcium — lost about 12 pounds at the end of the two years. In comparison, those with the lowest dairy calcium intake (average: 150 mg or half of a glass of milk) lost just seven pounds on average.
That is five pounds of help, just by gulping a little milk. The study was published in the current issue of the “American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.”
Beyond calcium, the researchers also found that blood levels of vitamin D affected dietary success. Those who dropped more pounds tended to have increasing vitamin D levels over the course of the study. This vitamin goes hand-in-hand with calcium in many other ways, and is needed for the proper absorption of calcium.
Overall, the study took more than 300 overweight men and women, aged 40 to 65, and evaluated the effects of low-fat, Mediterranean or low-carbohydrate diets for two years. While it was previously known that overweight people had lower levels of vitamin D, this is believed to be the first study that actually shows that vitamin D levels rose among people who lost weight.
This result lasted throughout the two years that the study was conducted, regardless of whether they were on a low-carb, low-fat or Mediterranean diet.
Vitamin D increases calcium absorption in the bloodstream and, in addition to sun exposure, can be obtained from fortified milk, fatty fish and eggs. Americans generally consume less than the recommended daily requirement of vitamin D, which is found in four glasses of milk (400 international units).
Thus, it seems the power of the calcium-vitamin D connection goes beyond the bones, and into the fat that accumulates in our bodies.
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