Manipulating Foods Won't "Burn Fat"
Debra Basore
OSU Comm. Services
Phone (405) 744-6260
No matter what those ads say, manipulating the foods you eat or taking pills won't "burn fat," says an OSU nutritional sciences assistant professor.
Diet pills, gimmicks and liquid diet drinks promise quick results, but Dr. Kathryn Keim's advice is to eat healthy foods, exercise and find a weight with which you feel comfortable.
She says consumers are constantly bombarded with weight-loss commercials on television, radio and the Internet.Everyone's looking for the easy way out. But Keim says, "it's not easy."
For example, one diet plan claims you can burn fat by combining certain foods.
The diet claims that meat, certain vegetables and grapefruit, eaten in combinations, will burn fat. It also claims that grapefruit is important because it acts as the catalyst that starts the fat burning process.
"There's no food that can burn fat, preferentially," Keim says. "The grapefruit juice really doesn't help the diet except that you absorb it, use a little of the glucose that's there, the Vitamin C and some other molecules. By the time the body has processed it, all the body is getting is just carbons, and carbons don't burn fat. Carbons are used either for energy or to build other molecules. The only way to lose fat is to decrease your caloric intake and increase your activity level."
She also says it's not healthy to eliminate certain foods from our diet and cut calories too drastically.
"You don't want to cut your calories too drastically because you run into problems of losing lean muscle mass and water, and you're not really losing lipid, which is the fat you want to lose, she says.
"The body wants to conserve itself as much as possible and there are certain things we need," says Keim. "If you cut back your calories too drastically, your body will use lean muscle mass to get those molecules and that's not good---you want to maintain that (lean muscle mass) as much as possible."
Keim says you also need to consume a certain amount of carbohydrates. "The kind of carbohydrates the body deals with are glucose, which we need to keep metabolism running. Some of our brain cells also require glucose."
She says if you're having difficulties evaluating a special diet plan, pills or drinks, Tufts University has a website that evaluates other websites for their nutritional accuracy. The address is: http://navigator.tufts.edu
Keim says sensible weight control is a combination of healthy eating and exercise. A good guide for making food choices is the food pyramid.
"You can have crunch, color and taste by eating plenty of fresh vegetables and fruits, whole grains and low-fat meat and dairy products," she says.
Besides, diets, pills and drinks get boring after a while, and they don't change your lifestyle. Even if weight loss occurs, many people soon return to their same old eating habits and regain everything or more than they lost.
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Debra Basore.
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