A small study suggests that cutting calories isn’t necessary when dieters with obesity, diabetes, or high blood pressure are reducing their protein intake. Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute
21 September (UPI) — Dieting by reducing protein intake may be just as effective as calorie restriction for people trying to fight obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure, a small study finds.
So that means putting the steak aside but passing the mashed potatoes.
The study by researchers in Brazil and Denmark, which compared the effects of low-protein and low-calorie diets in patients with metabolic syndrome, was published in the journal Nutrients.
They said their results corroborated previous studies using experiments on mice.
According to the Mayo Clinic, up to one in three Americans has metabolic syndrome, defined as a cluster of conditions that occur together and increase the risk of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes.
These conditions include elevated blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels.
“The study showed that reducing protein intake to 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight was sufficient to produce almost the same clinical outcomes as calorie restriction, but without the need to reduce calorie intake,” said Rafael Ferraz-Bannitz, who Lead author of the study.
Ferraz-Bannitz, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School’s Joslin Diabetes Center, said in a press release that by restricting the amount of protein you eat, dieting may be “a more attractive nutritional strategy and easier for people with metabolic syndrome to follow.”
The study was conducted by a multidisciplinary team of scientists, including scientists from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, the University of São Paulo and the National Cancer Institute in Brazil.
It included 21 volunteers with metabolic syndrome who were analyzed for 27 days while researchers monitored their diet. Throughout the period, they were hospitalized at the Ribeirão Preto Medical School’s teaching hospital in São Paulo, the Hospital das Clínicas in Ribeirão Preto.
Each volunteer’s daily caloric intake was calculated as a function of basal metabolism, considering resting energy expenditure, the press release said.
One group ate what the researchers called a standard western diet: 50% carbohydrates, 20% protein and 30% fat, but with 25% fewer calories.
The second group’s protein intake was reduced to 10% and caloric intake was tailored to each volunteer’s baseline energy expenditure.
After the 27 days of monitoring, both groups had similar results in terms of lower blood sugar, weight loss, controlled blood pressure, and lower triglyceride and cholesterol levels, the researchers said.
Both diets improved insulin sensitivity after treatment. Body fat decreased, as did waist and hip circumference, but without loss of muscle mass,” said Maria Cristina Foss de Freitas, study co-author and professor at the Brazilian School of Medicine, in the press release.
The scientists found that reduced body fat is known to be associated with reduced blood sugar and more normal lipid and blood pressure levels.
Despite the promising results of their research, they found that participants’ diets were personalised. And they focused on a specific population of patients with metabolic syndrome: obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and abnormal cholesterol levels.
However, the researchers said it was tempting to extrapolate the results, noting that research has shown that vegan diets benefit people with metabolic syndrome and that the excessive protein intake common in the standard Western diet can be a problem .