Resistant starch is not a miracle cure for weight loss, says nutritionist Reijo Laatikainen.
Resistentin adding starch to the diet can help reduce weight, according to a study published in the scientific journal Nature Metabolism on Monday evening research. The benefits may be based, at least in part, on changes in the gut microbiome.
In a recent study, the effects of resistant starch were investigated using a dietary supplement.
Resistant starch is also found in everyday foods, such as potatoes and pasta that have been cooled after cooking. In addition to chilled potato or pasta salads, resistant starch can be found in whole grains, legumes and green bananas.
Resistant starch is a prebiotic carbohydrate. It has been detected to increase the number of good bacteria and reducing the number of harmful microbes in the intestines.
Resistant starch gets its name from the fact that it is resistant to splitting. Like fibers, resistant to starch not digested in the small intestine but ends up in the large intestine as it is.
There, the bacteria are able to use it to their advantage, and metabolites are produced that are known to have beneficial effects.
The Chinese and in a recent study, a group of researchers from German universities recruited 37 people for a 20-week trial. The participants were overweight or obese according to their body mass index, and they were randomly divided into groups.
During one eight-week period, the participants received 40 grams of resistant starch daily, and during the second eight-week period, a placebo preparation.
The rest of the diet contained three meals a day, followed nutritional recommendations supporting weight control, and remained the same in terms of energy content throughout the study period.
Participants lost an average of 2.8 kilograms of weight during the period of the resistant starch dietary supplement.
Their insulin resistance also improved, that is, the effect of insulin in the cells improved.
When participants received a placebo, no such effects were observed.
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What matters is whether the weight loss is permanent.
Effects were connected to changes in the intestinal microbial composition. Resistant starch added Bifidobacterium adolescentis –number of bacteria.
The team continued the experiments with male mice and found that Bifidobacterium adolescentis -supplement reduced the weight gain that the high-fat diet had caused to the mice.
According to the researchers, the results may help develop weight loss methods based on health-promoting prebiotics. However, they stress that further research is needed.
A nutritionist Reijo Laatikainen considers a weight loss of almost three kilograms in a period of eight weeks quite large.
However, he points out that what matters is whether the weight loss is permanent. In short interventions, weight can be clearly lost in many other ways than with resistant starch, but after a year or two, the weight has often returned or even increased.
In addition, a daily dose of 40 grams of resistant starch is large, says Laatikainen.
“In my opinion, the amount of resistant starch of 40 grams is quite impossible for the average Finnish person to achieve.”
Laatikainen calculates that a typical chilled serving of pasta or potatoes has an average of about five grams of resistant starch. If you ate something like this twice a day, only ten grams of resistant starch would accumulate – a quarter of the amount used in the recent study.
Few also want to commit to the continuous consumption of a resistant starch supplement.
Laatikainen has not familiarized himself with the recent research before its publication, but comments on the topic based on previously accumulated research information.
He also says that far-reaching conclusions about human weight management cannot be made based on mouse experiments.
Boxy don’t think that resistant starch is a miracle cure for weight loss. A few years ago in a US study For example, an extra 45 grams did not affect the appetite of overweight subjects.
In another in the study resistant starch was also not found to reduce cardiovascular disease risks in overweight participants with prediabetes.
On the other hand, published in the journal Cell Metabolism last fall research says, based on a four-month trial period, that adding resistant starch to the diet could slow down the progression of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
In that too, the researchers got indications that the benefits would be based on changes in the microbial composition of the gut.
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