Are you overweight and want to get back into your ideal weight? Eat bread ... but prepared with whole grain rye! In fact, replacing white wheat flour products with products made from whole grain rye flour has been shown to allow to lose more weight and fat mass in overweight or obese people. This is what emerges from a very recent scientific research that appeared in the journal Clinical Nutrition and published by a group of Swedish scientists (Iversen, Clinical Nutrition, 2021).
Whole grains, diet and overweight
One of the biggest challenges nowadays is certainly to combat conditions such as obesity, which, in the long term, can lead to chronic diseases that, on their own, can cause more than 60% of deaths globally. Diet and lifestyle can become the key to preventing and countering excessive accumulation of fat and overweight. In particular, preferring whole grains to refined ones has significant health benefits, helping to keep body mass index and fat mass under control. Among the different types of cereals, rye is the one with the highest fiber content. Fiber helps you feel full for longer but also helps reduce postprandial insulin, cholesterol and inflammation. Together, these effects can help fight overweight and obesity.
Whole grain rye or refined wheat, the experiment
Just to understand the action of whole grain rye on body weight, the Swedish researchers have developed a study. 242 people, aged between 30 and 70 and overweight, were recruited. All volunteers were equally instructed by a dietician so that, during the study, they followed a healthy, varied and low-calorie diet. Then, the participants were divided into two groups. The first group was asked, with regard to cereal-based products, to prefer bread and bakery products prepared with white wheat flour. The second group, on the other hand, replaced products prepared with white flour with others prepared with whole grain rye. The guidelines indicated that cereal-based products should have the same content in terms of calories, whether they were prepared with white flour or whole grain rye. The experiment lasted 3 months at the end of which the volunteers underwent medical examinations in order to verify any effects of cereals on body weight.
Whole grain rye is more effective in reducing fat mass
What emerged was that the healthy, low-calorie diet allowed all study participants to reduce body weight. However, the greatest effects in terms of weight and fat reduction were seen in the group that consumed whole grain rye products. In particular, the group that preferred whole grain rye products had, on average, a 0.54% more reduction in fat mass and had lost 1 kg more, after 3 months, than those who had consumed bread and pasta prepared with white wheat flour.
Conclusions
So, here is the proof that small changes within a healthy and balanced diet can help, in the case of overweight, to return to your ideal weight. Other studies will follow, to understand the exact action of rye that, at the moment, has not yet been fully clarified. Certainly, however, it can be interesting to introduce more whole grain rye products into your diet, which are also very tasty, to prevent or counteract overweight.
