A new study claims to have found a weight loss trick. A nutrient found in potatoes and pasta is said to help you lose weight.
What is resistant starch?
Resistant starch is a fiber that is mainly found in starchy foods. Exciting: Its proportion increases when, for example, potatoes and pasta cool down after cooking and are warmed up again the next day. Because compared to ordinary starch, it cannot be digested in the small intestine. Instead, it enters the large intestine undigested and is gradually broken down by active bacteria. This strengthens the intestinal flora and has a positive effect on digestion.
Resistant starch also prevents blood sugar levels from rising too high when eating carbohydrate-rich foods such as potatoes, pasta or white rice. The body then releases less insulin and thus prevents food cravings.
And scientists have been discussing another effect for a long time, as Antje Gahl from the German Nutrition Society explains to FOCUS online: After cooling, starchy foods have fewer calories than immediately after cooking. This is because the body cannot fully use them for energy due to the resistant starch.
However, it is not possible to say exactly how big the calorie difference is compared to foods that have been heated once. The expert explains: “There is currently a lot of research being done on the effects of resistant starch, but there is no exact data on calorie savings yet. According to initial studies, you save between ten and twenty percent of calories.”
New study: Resistant starch helps you lose weight
Chinese and German scientists now wanted to investigate this topic in more detail. In a study, they analyzed how resistant starch (RS) as a dietary supplement affects obesity and metabolism. They published their results in the journal “Nature Metabolism”.
They came to the following conclusion: If the 37 overweight participants consumed 40 grams of resistant starch daily over a period of eight weeks, then:
If the weight was reduced by an average of 2.8 kilograms, insulin sensitivity improved and the structure of the intestine and metabolism changed.
However, when RS intake was stopped, these effects diminished again.
Is resistant starch considered a new weight loss aid?
Does this mean that resistant starch is a practical weight loss aid? Siegfried Ussar from The Institute for Diabetes Research at the Helmholtz Center Munich is skeptical. It is already known that fiber such as resistant starch has a positive effect on health.
What is new in the study is the identification of individual bacteria that have a positive effect on weight regulation. “The main effect of weight loss appears to be a reduction in fat absorption into the body. This is a weight loss tool that has been around for years, although not very effective,” he points out.
He also considers the test subject’s height of only 37 to be too small to draw general conclusions from. But explains: “As the authors themselves write, the study represents an interesting starting point for further, larger and, above all, more ethnically diverse studies.”
And, there is another problem: “The 40 grams of RS per day used by the authors certainly cannot be obtained naturally through food, as this would require consuming significantly more than a kilogram of rice, potatoes or carrots per day.” The amount could But you can take it as a dietary supplement in the form of a shake or similar. However, it is still unclear how high the amount of RS actually has to be to achieve an effect.