| A
little of the “green stuff” before dinner
could help you drop a few pounds.
In
a new study, researchers recruited 76 overweight volunteers
who ate 400 fewer calories than they burned per day.
In addition, half of them ate a pre-dinner “appetizer”
of 180g of agar-agar, a flavorless compound made from
seaweed.
At
the end of 12 weeks, those test subjects who ate the
agar-agar lost nearly 4 1/2 percent of their body weight
and were inclined to eat a dinner consisting of 300
calories, on average. Those who didn’t eat the
agar-agar lost only 2 percent of their body weight,
and their dinner was more than double in size—more
than 600 calories.
The
researchers speculate that the agar-agar helps people
lose weight because it has no calories and, as it’s
basically a fiber, it swells in the stomach, causing
a feeling of fullness, which makes you eat less.
Nutrition
experts say many fruits or vegetables, when eaten before
a meal, can do the same thing, and those who eat more
of these have a better time maintaining a weight loss.
Here’s
the agar-agar recipe: Combine a quarter cup of seaweed
with two cups of apple juice and two cups of water.
Heat it until the seaweed is dissolved, then pour it
into a flat pan and refrigerate it until it gels, which
usually takes about an hour. Eat half a cup of this
mixture half an hour before dinner.
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