The weight loss industry is a multibillion dollar a year business that’s only getting bigger and bigger with absolutely no downturn insight.
There are hundreds of millions of people worldwide (billions, maybe) that would love nothing more than a quick fix to help them lose a couple of extra pounds – or a lot more than that – faster than they would be able to just eating right and exercising more.
Modern-day snake oil salesman peddling less than ethical products are a dime a dozen these days, promising the moon and the stars when it comes to weight loss results with their “fat loss in a bottle” products that never meet let alone exceed expectations.
But it looks like a team of researchers working at the China Medical University based out of Taiwan have found and interesting link between everyday tomato juice and the ability to lose weight a lot faster than you might have been able to alone.
Best of all, these researchers believe that drinking tomato juice every day can actually help you lose weight a lot faster than you would have otherwise without having to make any other changes to your diet or daily exercise routine.
These Chinese researchers collected a group of 25 women (between the ages of 20 years old and 30 years old) that were looking to lose weight and asked them to consume 280 mL of tomato juice – regular, old tomato juice – every single day over a 60 day span of time with absolutely no other changes to their diet or exercise routines.
At the beginning of the research study women were measured not only by body weight but also by overall body composition, with blood drawn and analyzed to really understand their body fat to muscle/water/bone content.
Over the next 60 days, these women were left to their own devices though they did have to self report that they had in fact consumed exactly 280 mL of tomato juice each and every day Over that same span of time.
Unfortunately the researchers did not think to establish a control group that was given a placebo over the span of this examination, but the results that they were able to uncover with the active test group were still pretty stunning.
It turns out that the daily tomato juice intake flooded the bloodstreams of these women with carotenoid lycopene, the substance inside of tomatoes (and tomato juice) that give these fruits their red color.
This alone was pretty stunning to the research group. Traditionally, raw tomatoes do not add a lot of this biochemical to the bloodstream though cooked tomatoes will. Commercially available tomato juice is almost universally pasteurized (and heated) which makes the carotenoid lycopene very bioavailable.
More interesting than that, however, was that even though the women in this test group did not change their diet or exercise habits as all they were able to lose quite a bit of weight at the same time.
Not only did body fat levels drop but waist circumference measurements were much smaller as well, with the researchers in China finding these figures to be statistically significant.
The research team believes that this fat loss boost was made possible thanks to the biochemical we highlighted above reducing the amount of inflammatory proteins (particularly MCP-1) found in the body while at the same time increasing the overall amount of adiponectin in the bloodstream.
This team also believes that the lycopene was able to activate a number of enzymes that melt fat throughout the bloodstream, especially SIRT1 enzymes, helping to stimulate weight loss without having to make any other behavioral or dietary changes whatsoever.
This new research sure makes it look like folks can melt fat faster without having to spend hours in the gym or give up their favorite foods just by drinking a couple of glasses of tomato juice every day.
Sources:
https://www.livestrong.com/article/291385-tomato-juice-for-weight-loss/
https://food.ndtv.com/food-drinks/tomato-juice-for-weight-loss-how-does-the-tangy-beverage-help-burn-belly-fat-1911876
