Reduce your calorie intake by drinking Skimmed Milk

Skimmed milk can facilitate people to feel fuller because of its high protein content, lactose sugar and its thickness.

Researchers have discovered that drinking fat free milk in the morning has helped people in gaining higher levels of satiety and hence lead to reduced calorie intake at the next meal, when compared to a fruit drink. Those who drank milk ate about 50 fewer calories (or nearly nine percent less food) at lunch.

In the study, 34 overweight but otherwise healthy men and women participated in two testing sessions, one in which they were served about 20 ounces of fat free milk, and one in which they were served the same quantity of a fruit drink (each contributing 250 calories to their breakfast).

During the four hours between breakfast and lunch, the men and women gauged their feelings of fullness and were allowed to eat until they were comfortably full at lunch.

The researchers discovered that the milk-drinking adults reported feeling fuller and more satisfied and therefore ate fewer calories at lunch.

The researchers suspect that milk's protein content (providing 16 percent of the daily value per cup), the lactose (the natural sugar in milk) or simply the thickness of the beverage may play a role in the satiety benefits.

And, research suggests choosing foods that can help enhance satiety is an important success factor in any weight management plan, according to a Eurekalert release.

These results are slated for publication in the July issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Now Reduce your Calorie Intake by Chewing Gum

According to a nutrition professor at the University of Rhode Island - Chewing sugar-free gum can abridge calorie intake and accentuate energy expenditure.

Kathleen Melanson, the URI associate professor of nutrition and food sciences, reached to this conclusion by comparing gum chewing to non-gum chewing in healthy adult volunteers, who came to her lab for two standardized tests in random order.

When the research subjects chewed gum for a total of one hour in the morning (three 20-minute gum-chewing sessions), they consumed 67 fewer calories at lunch and did not compensate by eating more later in the day. Male participants also reported feeling significantly less hungry after chewing gum.

It was also discovered that when her subjects chewed gum before and after eating, they spent around 5 percent more energy than when they did not chew gum. Apart from this, her subjects reported feeling more energetic after chewing gum.
Based on these results,Melanson concluded that gum chewing integrates energy expenditure and energy intake, and that is what energy balance is about. She further elaborated that the nerves in the muscles of the jaw are stimulated by the motion of chewing and then send signals to the appetite section of the brain that is linked to satiety, which may explain why the act of chewing might help to reduce hunger.

Melanson said that she expected that chewing would increase the amount of energy her subjects expended.

"However, what makes the energy expenditure data particularly interesting is that this study simulated real-life gum chewing, with the subjects chewing at their own relaxed, natural pace and for realistic time periods," she said.

In her study, 35 male and female subjects made two visits to the URI Energy Metabolism Lab after having fasted over night. During one visit, they chewed gum for 20 minutes before consuming a breakfast shake and twice more during the three hours before lunch. During both visits, participants remained as still as possible as measurements were conducted of their resting metabolism rates and blood glucose levels at regular intervals before and after breakfast and lunch. They also conducted periodic self-assessments of their feelings of hunger, energy and other factors during both visits.

"This was a short term study, so the next step is to do a longer study and to use subjects who need to lose weight.But based on these initial results, one could hypothesize that gum chewing may be a useful adjunct to a weight management program," said Melanson.

How Can Calorie Intake impact Cancer Development?

Restricting consumption of glucose can extend the life of healthy human-lung cells and speed the death of precancerous human-lung cells, reducing cancer's spread and growth rate, say researchers.

Boffins from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) conducted tests by growing both healthy human-lung cells and precancerous human-lung cells in laboratory flasks. The flasks were provided either normal levels of glucose or significantly reduced amounts of the sugar compound, and the cells then were allowed to grow for a period of weeks.
Principal investigator Trygve Tollefsbol, Ph.D., D.O., a professor in the Department of Biology, said: "In that time, we were able to track the cells' ability to divide while also monitoring the number of surviving cells. The pattern that was revealed to us showed that restricted glucose levels led the healthy cells to grow longer than is typical and caused the precancerous cells to die off in large numbers."

The expert added: "These results further verify the potential health benefits of controlling calorie intake.

"Our research indicates that calorie reduction extends the lifespan of healthy human cells and aids the body's natural ability to kill off cancer-forming cells."

Do Fruit Juices Come with Low Calories?

Breakfast is usually considered to be the most important meal of the day. At breakfast time, most of us put some calories in our bodies, and then we prepare to begin with the most active part of our day.
But, the always-famous combination of breakfast cereals with fruit juice and toast has now become a taboo with the nutritional inventions. With the 'low-carb, low-glycemic index' food choices, cereals as wheat flakes are preferred more over cornflakes, white bread is replaced by the whole wheat bread with low-cal butter, and fruit juices by whole fruits.


So what happens to our all-time favorite breakfast?


Well, it may just have to get little healthy. The logical answer for the consumption of a couple of glasses of fruit juice is that fruits are healthy, therefore fruit juices are healthy. But, the logic doesn't apply to nutrition. 


Even with no sugar added, zero preservatives, unstrained fruit juice would have the same amount of sugar as a cola beverage, because fruit is full of sugar!


The sugar is from fructose, which is naturally present in fruits; if it is '10 per cent juice', most of the sugar is in the form of high-fructose corn syrup. When a fruit juice is 'without added sugar', it means sucrose or table sugar is not added. But, the sugar of the fruit obviously remains. Sugar in 340 ml of fruit juice (no added sugar) is equivalent to calories in 340 ml (one can) of Coca-Cola.


All the above essentially, tells us that no matter which juice you choose, they all have more calories than the same amount of Coke. It tells us that juice - 100 per cent juice, no sugar added - contains about the same amount of sugar (or even more - 50 per cent more for grape juice) as the same volume of Coke. It tells us that, freshly-squeezed fruit juice without straining, is no different in calories (would be slightly higher in fibre).


With the promotion of fruit juices as a health drink, one has to figure out that...


- All that is healthy is not low-calorie.
- Fruit juices are caloric dense; also they are restricted for medical conditions like diabetes.
- A glass of juice a day is not complete nutrition. Also, its introduction in your diet should be well understood. If an individual is aiming at fat loss, fruit juice is definitely not the answer.
- Substitution of fruit juice with a whole fruit has lot more benefits.
- It's good to be health-conscious, but with the right advice. Half knowledge is worst than no knowledge.


(Inputs from Kinita S Kadakia, Mumbai-based diet consultant)