Vegetable Juice For Weight Loss
Posted on May 18th 2009 1:00PM by Jonny BowdenFiled Under: Jonny's Take, Diet & Weight Loss
Jonny Bowden, author, nutritionist and weight loss coach cuts through all the misconceptions about diet and fitness to help you transform your body, your health and your life.
Drinking vegetable juice can help you lose weight. Vegetable juice? Yup. One study from the Baylor College of Medicine looked at 81 African-American and Hispanic adults -- groups that have a high incidence of metabolic syndrome, which is a cluster of symptoms that increases the risk for diabetes and heart disease -- and divided them into three groups. All subjects followed the DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension), which emphasizes low-fat diary, whole grains, fruit, vegetables and lean meat. But two of the groups were told to drink Low Sodium V-8 100 percent vegetable juice (either one or two cups a day), and the third group didn't drink juice.
The researchers found that those who drank at least eight ounces of the V-8 juice a day while following the DASH diet lost four pounds while those following the same diet without juice lost only one pound.
The researchers found that those who drank at least eight ounces of the V-8 juice a day while following the DASH diet lost four pounds while those following the same diet without juice lost only one pound.
Now granted, that's not a lot of weight lost over 12 weeks, but it's still four times what the non-juicers lost. And who knows how much more weight could have been lost if the participants had been exercising as well, plus maybe following a diet lower in carbs than the DASH program?
There could be several reasons why the vegetable juice helped these folks lose weight.
One, it might have cut appetite, causing those on the juice to eat a bit less even though "technically" they were following the same diet. (In these experiments, it's fiendishly difficult to track every calorie of every participant, so even though both the juice group and the no-juice group got the same instructions, the juice drinkers may have eaten less.)
Secondly, as we're finding more and more, fruits and vegetables (and their juices) might have an indirect effect on weight loss, simply by virtue of how anti-inflammatory they are. Inflammation is a component of obesity, and reducing inflammation always helps everything -- and might also help with weight loss.
In any case, I've been touting fresh-made vegetable (and some fruit) juice for as long as I've been writing books and columns. And if nothing else is around, a V-8 might be a very good way to get some (though not all) of the benefits of freshly-made juice. And regular consumption -- along with a reduced calorie, low-sugar eating program -- might even help you lose weight.
