Flat stomach: eating an avocado a day reduces your abdominal fat

We now know the miracle food to lose belly. According to a new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA, eating an avocado a day may help redistribute belly fat in women. The researchers studied 105 overweight and obese adults for a period of twelve weeks by providing them with one meal a day.

Read also :

As a result, women who ate avocado as part of their daily meal saw a reduction in deeper visceral abdominal fat. This work, funded by the Hass Avocado Board, was published in the Journal of Nutrition.

Impact on how individuals store fat

"What we learned was that a diet that included an avocado every day had an impact on how well individuals store body fat in a way that was beneficial to their health, but the benefits were primarily in women. “, explains one of the researchers. Naiman Khan, professor of kinesiology and health in Illinois who led the study, specifies that "the objective was not to lose weight", but to "understand what eating avocado does in the way which individuals store their body fat". "The location of fat in the body plays an important role in health," says the researcher.

Went out on the town today with the family for a bit. Every person I talked to today was from New York and had ju… https://t.co/5VxfnRQwKP

— Bubba Sun May 16 20:15:28 +0000 2021

The author of the study specifies that there are two types of fat in the abdomen: "fat that accumulates just under the skin, called subcutaneous fat, and fat that accumulates deeper in the abdomen, called visceral fat, which surrounds the internal organs". However, "people with a higher proportion of deeper visceral fat tend to have a higher risk of developing diabetes".

"We therefore wanted to determine whether the ratio of subcutaneous fat to visceral fat changed with avocado consumption," says the researcher. In practice, the study participants were divided into two groups. The first received meals containing fresh avocado, while the other group received a meal containing almost identical ingredients with similar calories, but containing no avocado."

A reduction in abdominal fat in women

The researchers measured the participants' abdominal fat and glucose tolerance. As a result, after twelve weeks, participants who consumed an avocado a day had a reduction in abdominal visceral fat and a reduction in the ratio of visceral fat to subcutaneous fat, indicating a redistribution of fat away from the organs.

"However, fat distribution in men did not change, and neither men nor women showed improved glucose tolerance," the study said. "Although daily consumption of avocados did not alter glucose tolerance, what we learned is that a diet that includes an avocado daily impacts how individuals store glucose. body fat in a way beneficial to their health, but the benefits were mainly seen in women", summarizes Naiman Khan.

This study demonstrates the impact of diet on the reduction of abdominal fat. “Our research not only sheds valuable light on the benefits of daily avocado consumption on different types of gender distribution of fat, it provides us with a foundation to conduct further work to understand the full impact of avocados on body fat and health," said study co-author Richard Mackenzie, professor of human metabolism at the University of Roehampton in London. The researchers plan to conduct additional studies to get "a clearer picture of the types of people who would benefit the most from incorporating avocados into their diet."