Diet trick: this is how obese people stay healthy

Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.

More posts by Christiane Fux All content is checked by medical journalists.

Being overweight puts a strain on the body. Consequences such as heart attacks and diabetes are particularly feared. They are promoted by inflammatory processes that stimulate the fatty tissue. A simple nutritional strategy could counteract this - even if it doesn't break down fat.

Most people find it difficult to lose weight. And especially if you are very overweight, the chances are bad that you will ever get back into the normal range. Because the body tries evolutionary to counteract permanent weight loss with all means.

In order to keep the risk of inflammation-related consequential damage as low as possible, overweight people should eat a “plant-based” diet as far as possible, recommend researchers from the German Institute for Nutritional Research (DIfE). "A plant-based diet is mainly based on foods such as vegetables, grains, legumes and fruit," explains Fabian Eichelmann, who, together with colleagues, prepared an overview study on the subject. In addition, such a diet contains no or very little meat, but can include moderate amounts of eggs, dairy products and fish.

Less inflammatory processes

An evaluation of various studies had shown that in the course of a plant-rich diet, the values ​​of two important indicators of inflammatory processes in the blood of the participants, so-called inflammation markers, fell: Compared to overweight people who had consumed a control diet, the C-reactive protein (CRP ) by an average of 0.55 mg / l and the values ​​for interleukin-6 by 0.25 mg / l.

Studies have long provided evidence that a plant-rich diet can have a positive effect on the inflammation levels in overweight people. But the effect was not always as clear as the current meta-analysis shows.

Meaningful data

Eichelman and his colleagues specifically only considered scientific articles based on so-called intervention studies. This either meant that the participants' blood values ​​had been measured before and after they had a diet rich in plants and compared with those of a control group. Or the participants were randomly assigned one of the two diets, which they switched halfway through the study period.

In comparison to so-called observational studies, intervention studies have the great advantage that many adverse influences can be reliably excluded from the result from the outset. Such had apparently diluted the informative value of many other studies on the subject, or the number of participants was too small. Of the more than 2,500 studies on the subject that had appeared since 1964, only 29 were included in the meta-analysis.

Overweight in Germany

The Germans are also getting fatter. According to the Federal Statistical Office, 52 percent of adults were overweight in 2013. Eight years earlier it was a little less than 50 percent. Men in particular are too fat: in 2013 it was 62 percent, while the proportion of overweight women was 43 percent.

Mathematically, obesity begins with a body mass index (BMI) of over 25, obesity with a BMI of over 30. Accordingly, men who are 1.80 meters tall and weigh 83 kilograms or more are overweight. From a weight of 96 kilograms he is considered obese.

Source: F. Eichelmannet a .: Effect of plant-based diets on obesity-related inflammatory profiles: a systematic review and meta-analysis of intervention trials; Obesity Reviews 2016; DOI: 10.1111 / obr.12439

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