Health News
Vegetarian Diet Effective for Weight Loss
April 4, 2006
A scientific review in Nutrition Reviews suggests that a vegetarian diet is highly effective for weight loss. Vegetarian populations tend to be slimmer than meat-eaters. Vegetarians also experience lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and other life-threatening conditions linked to obesity. The new review, compiling data from 87 previous studies, shows the weight-loss effect does not depend on exercise or calorie-counting, and it occurs at a rate of approximately 1 pound per week.
The authors found that the body weight of both male and female vegetarians is, on average, 3 percent to 20 percent lower than that of meat-eaters. Vegetarian and vegan diets have also been put to the test in clinical studies, as the review notes. The best of these clinical studies isolated the effects of diet by keeping exercise constant. The researchers found that a low-fat vegan diet leads to weight loss of about 1 pound per week, even without additional exercise or limits on portion sizes, calories, or carbohydrates.