How to eat and not get fat: scientists have named the ideal diet

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The Mediterranean diet will help people maintain a normal weight, practically without limiting themselves in the amount of food. American researchers came to this conclusion after conducting tests on monkeys.

Crab-eating macaques are omnivorous, making them ideal test animals for a study conducted by the Wake Forest School of Medicine in the United States.

“18 monkeys were fed a Mediterranean diet with plenty of fruits, vegetables, olive oil, chopped nuts, and small amounts of fish and low-fat dairy products. The remaining 18 animals received a “Western diet” with protein, fats (mainly unsaturated fatty acids) from products of mainly animal origin. The amount of fat, protein and carbohydrates per serving was similar. Both groups could eat as much food as they wanted,” the article says.

“After 38 months, the scientists came to the conclusion: the monkeys that ate a Mediterranean diet consumed fewer calories in the long term, were leaner and had lower blood lipids. Animals from the other group, on the contrary, gained excess weight, developed insulin resistance (pre-diabetes) and increased fat mass in the liver.”

For scientists, these results of the study became evidence that the Mediterranean diet can protect against overeating, excess weight and diabetes. “According to scientists, lower calorie intake is probably also associated with a higher fiber content, which keeps you feeling full longer. Fast carbohydrates, on the other hand, are processed faster, and hunger returns earlier,” the publication explains.

“There is a hypothesis that the body is able to recognize valuable nutrients,” says Hermann Toplak, a metabolism expert at the Medical University of Graz. Thus, starting from a certain amount of consumed nutrients, the need for them can decrease, and eating behavior can be more easily controlled. “I see this in my patients. Those who manage to eat more nutritiously tend to eat less – if they do it consciously,” says the expert.

“Of course, experts emphasize, the results of studies conducted on animals are not so easy to transfer to humans. “These monkeys were not stressed – everyone knows that a conscious attitude towards healthy food manifests itself better when you are not stressed,” Toplak notes.

“This was also shown by an Australian study on mice,” Kurier points out. “Under the influence of stress, their body produced a molecule that stimulates appetite more intensively. Chronic stress and a diet rich in fat led to the body further stimulating the production of this molecule – since the “braking mechanism” in the brain was no longer functioning. “It's a vicious circle,” said the head of the study, Herbert Herzog.