Cumin as a Weight Loss Aid: 26% Greater Reduction in Waist Circumference, 32% More Body Fat Lost, Increased Conservation of Lean Mass in 88 Dieting Women

Is a small bowl of yogurt with 1.5g cumin better than every weight loss drug? Probably not, but if we go by the results of the study at hand, it's a damn effective adjunct to an energy reduced diet.

The figures in the headline of today's SuppVersity article certainly are impressive. The total weight loss, the 88 overweight / obese women who had been randomly assigned into two groups who dieted for 3 months either with or without the help of 3 g/d cumin powder with yogurt at two meals (each time 1.5 g cumin + 150 ml low-fat yogurt | the control group received the same amount of yogurt, but without cumin) on the other hand sounds less exciting.

6.2kg in the cumin and 4.19kg in the control group - that does not sound much for "obese / overweight" women. Luckily Iranian "obese women" are comparably slender compared to their Western counterparts. With a starting weight of 79.43kg in the active and 76.7kg in the control arm of the study, those 6.2kg and 4.19kg were thus -7.14% and -5.54% of the women's total body weight.

The results of the study at hand are nice, but one thing is missing: Exercise!

Tri- or Multi-Set Training for Body Recomp.?

Alternating Squat & Blood Pressure - Productive?

Pre-Exhaustion Exhausts Your Growth Potential

Full ROM ➯ Full Gains - Form Counts!

Battle the Rope to Get Ripped & Strong

Hula Hooping to Spot Reduce in the Midsection

In contrast to the starting weight the waist circumference of the ladies who participated in the study showed a borderline significant difference, with a non-significant advantage on part of the women in the control group whose waists were on average 3.2cm more slender.

Figure 1: As the data shows, the cumin supplement helped with both fat loss and lean mass conservation (Zare. 2014)

In view of the fact that fat mass and fat free mass were almost identical, I would yet not argue that this was an unfair advantage for the cumin group - I mean, you should be aware that the "weightier" you are, the more and more readily you will usually drop body weight, when you start doing the right things.

"But I have heard nigella sativa causes abnormal heart growth!" That's fortunately incorrect. Studies by Yar et al. (2008) indicate that high doses of cumin aka "nigella sativa" will lead to physiological cardiac hypertophy, with a "selective enhancement of the inotropic reserve" that's similar to the one "provoked by exercise training" (Yar. 2008). It is thus not really surprising that Dehkordi et al. (2008) observed that cumin exerts anti-, not pro-hypertensive effectsin patients with mild hypertension. Moreover, Al-Asoom et al. have recently been able to show that kumin supplements in combination with exercise "might be introduced as a new therapeutic strategy for the treatment of heart failure with superior advantages to exercise training alone" (Al-Asoom. 2014)

Figure 2: Blood lipids & fasting blood glucose improved as well (Zare. 2014)

Apropos, the "right thing" for all women in the study at hand was a diet that delivered 500kcal less energy than the women would have needed according to the well-known Harris-Benedict equation (learn more).

Obviously, this deficit was large enough to trigger a weight loss of approx. 1lbs per week in the cumin group, and 0.6lbs per week in the control group - and that in the absence of any restrictions in carbohydrates, fats or an additional exercise component (the latter is something I would strongly recommend if you plan to lose body fat, though).

So how and why did this work? That's certainly a warranted question. As of now, most of you knew cumin probably as a spice and maybe as a digestive aid (Milan. 2008) - not as a fat burner, glucose sensitizer, lipid drug and, if you dig somewhat further in the archives of peer-reviewed scientific journals, even as a nootropic (Bin Sayeed. 2013), right?

Table 1: Cumin seed oil will deliver most of the cholesterol controlling agents in a concentrated form (Ramadan. 2007)

Well, if you take a look at the literature you will learn that Cumin contains more than 100 different chemicals, including essential fatty acids and volatile oils, which have been shown to induce significant decreases in glucose, cholesterol, triglyceride and LDL levels and a significant increase in serum HDL levelsin previous rodent studies (Mohiti. 2011). In that, the lipid reducing effects of cumin could be attributed to (a) its glycoside saponins which inhibit the absorption of dietary cholesterol and increase its fecal excretion by interfering with its enterohepatic circulation and (b) its phytosterol content which will displace cholesterol from intestinal micelles and will thus further reduce the amount of absorbable cholesterol (Hayes. 2002; Ramadan. 2002 & 2007; ). The mechanism by which cumin reduces the blood glucose levels, however, is still not fully understood.

As Zare et al. point out, "the majority of these studies have been done on animals and the published human studies have been conducted on patients suffering from diabetes or hypercholesterolemia," which makes the study at hand that was conducted with healthy (albeit overweight) female subjects all the more important.

References:

• Al-Asoom, L. I., et al. "Effect of Nigella sativa Supplementation to Exercise Training in a Novel Model of Physiological Cardiac Hypertrophy." Cardiovascular toxicology (2014): 1-8. 
• Bin Sayeed, Muhammad Shahdaat, et al. "The effect of< i> Nigella sativa</i> Linn. seed on memory, attention and cognition in healthy human volunteers." Journal of ethnopharmacology 148.3 (2013): 780-786.
• Dehkordi, Farshad Roghani, and Amir Farhad Kamkhah. "Antihypertensive effect of Nigella sativa seed extract in patients with mild hypertension." Fundamental & clinical pharmacology 22.4 (2008): 447-452.
• Hayes, K. C., et al. "Free phytosterols effectively reduce plasma and liver cholesterol in gerbils fed cholesterol." The Journal of nutrition 132.7 (2002): 1983-1988.
• Milan, K. S., et al. "Enhancement of digestive enzymatic activity by cumin (Cuminum cyminum L.) and role of spent cumin as a bionutrient." Food chemistry 110.3 (2008): 678-683. 
• Mohiti Ardakani, J., Z. Akbarian, And A. Nazarian. "Effects Of Cumin (Cuminum Cyminum L) Oil On Serum Glucose And Lipid Levels Of Rats." Journal Of Shahid Sadoughi University Of Medical Sciences And Health Services (2011). 
• Ramadan, Mohamed F., and Jörg‐Th Mörsel. "Characterization of phospholipid composition of black cumin (Nigella sativa L.) seed oil." Food/Nahrung 46.4 (2002): 240-244.
• Ramadan, Mohamed Fawzy. "Nutritional value, functional properties and nutraceutical applications of black cumin (Nigella sativa L.): an overview." International journal of food science & technology 42.10 (2007): 1208-1218. 
• Yar, T., et al. "Effects of Nigella sativa supplementation for one month on cardiac reserve in rats." Indian J Physiol Pharmacol 52.2 (2008): 141-8.
• Zare, Roghayeh, et al. "Effect of cumin powder on body composition and lipid profile in overweight and obese women." Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice (2014). 

Nutrition Quickie: Protein Snacks Shift Macro-Intake W/Out Risk of Overeating ✰ Fewer Dietary Restrictions From the Parents' Side Helps Kids Lose Weight ✰ Ricy Liver Cleanse

Regular snack: No relative increase in protein intake, but an absolute increase in energy intake; protein snack / shake: No increase in absolute energy intake, but increase in rel. protein intake.

I usually don't recommend snacking between the meals, but when it comes to nutritious science news snacks right from the "ahead of print" section of peer-reviewed scientific journals, I will make an exception.

In other words, if you are interested in what exactly makes protein supplements so valuable as an addition to your regular diet, if you want to know how you may help your kids lose weight by being less not more restrictive. And if that's nothing your are interested in, 'cause you ain't got kids, and still believe protein was bad for your bones (it's not!) you may want to take a parting look at evidence that rice cannot be that bad as some people make it.

Sounds good? Well, then I'd suggest you go ahead and "snack away" on today's SuppVersity Nutrition News Quickie... ah, I mean "Nutrition News Snack" ;-)

• Protein Supplements Shift Macro-Intake W/Out Risk of Overeating (Maillard. 2014) -- Scientist from the University of Otago in New Zealand have been able to show that the provision of extra-protein in form a high protein supplement (1034.5 kJ energy, 29.6 g protein, 8.7 g fat and 12.3 g CHO) to 18 healthy participants who took part in their randomized cross-over trial lead to a unique shift in the relative proportion of protein in the diet, but did not increase the absolute amount of total protein or energy consumed.
  
  This means, in contrast to the control treatment, in the course of which the subjects received a standard meal supplementation (1039 kJ energy, 9.9 g protein, 9.5 g fat, and 29.4 g CHO), the study participants compensated for the additional energy intake from the high protein meal. For the standard meal replacement, on the other hand, Maillard et al. observed an overall increase in food intake.
• Fewer Dietary Restrictions From the Parents' Side Helps Kids Lose Weight (Holland. 2014) -- If there is one subgroup of our society you can hardly blame for the ever increasing obesity rates, this would be the children.
  
  

  

  SuppVersity Suggested Read: "HIT the Cravings - Eat Less, Improve Your Health & Lose Weight: "Burning 350kcal" at >75% VO2-Max Improves Calorie Balance Doing it at 40% Just Makes You Hungry!" | more

  This notion would also be supported by the results of a recent study that's about to be published in one of the upcoming issues of the scientific journal Obesity. In the corresponding experiment, researchers from the Department of Psychology at the Washington University School of Medicine examine the associations between modifications in parent feeding practices, child diet, and child weight status.
  
  Interestingly, the scientists found that restrictive parent feeding practices and not the non-chalant "wtf eat whatever you want, kid" was not just the main predictor of childhood obesity, it was also the setscrew the scientists used to reduce the kids energy intake by teaching the parents to reduce children's energy intake without being overly restrictive.
• Ricy Liver Cleanses (Choi. 2014) -- It may not be in the OCD, but since google told me that it is a valid "scrabble word", I still used the the word "ricy" as a short form for "based on boiled rice". A "ricy liver cleanse" is thus nothing else but the reduction of hepatic fat accumulation researchers from the Division of Metabolism and Functionality Research at the Korea Food Research Institute observed, when they fed C57BL/6 mice with high fat diets that contained cooked rice as one of the major carbohydrate sources.
  
  As Choi et al. point out in the discussion of the results, these effects were mediated by the suppression of the "high fat"-induced increase in expression of lipogenic genes (including fatty acid synthase (FAS) and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ)) and accompanied by reductions in endogenous cholesterol production.
  
  Based on epidemiologic evidence, we do yet have to be careful as far as overgeneralized suggestions such as "eat more rice" are concerned. Studies by Villegas et al. or Sun do after all suggest that the consumption of likewise cooked mushy Asian white rice is associated with an increase in diabetes risk (Villegas. 2007) and replacing the latter with brown or other low GI (e.g. basmati) rice could reduce the diabetes risk of the average American rice-eater by 16% (Sun. 2010)

Suggested Read: "The Starch Satiety Shootout: Potatoes, Baked or Mashed, Pasta, Brown Rice or Even White Bread? What's the Best After a 12h Fast?" | read more

What do these studies teach us? The Maillard study is another piece to the puzzle that explains the high efficiency of high protein intake for weight loss. If we also take into account what Holland et al. found observed in their study, a viable strategy by the means of which parents could help their kids lose weight would thus be to offer them protein supplements instead of milk shakes and see what will happen instead of telling them that they will never drink another extra-sweet vanilla-cream milk shake again. Whether it really is a wise idea to actually increase your rice consumption as a means to protect yourself against non-alcoholic fatty liver disease remains questionable - irrespective of the myriad of healthy phenols in non-polished rice (Zhou. 2004), by the way.

Reference: 

• Choi et al. "Cooked rice inhibits hepatic fat accumulation by regulating lipid metabolism-related gene expression in mice fed a high-fat diet." J Med Food 17:1 (2014): 36-42. 
• Holland et al. "Modifications in parent feeding practices and child diet during family-based behavioral treatment improve child zBMI." Obesity (silver spring). 2014 [epub ahead of print]
• Maillard et al. "Protein Supplements-Do They Alter Dietary Intakes?" Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab (2014) [epub ahead of print]
• Villegas, Raquel, et al. "Prospective study of dietary carbohydrates, glycemic index, glycemic load, and incidence of type 2 diabetes mellitus in middle-aged Chinese women." Archives of Internal Medicine 167.21 (2007): 2310.
• Zhou, Zhongkai, et al. "The distribution of phenolic acids in rice." Food Chemistry 87.3 (2004): 401-406.

Nutrition News Quicky: ⤹ Energy Reduction & Metabolic Parameters ⤹ "Macrobiotic Ma-Pi 2" = Diabetes Diet 2.0? Plus: Remember You're Eating Foods, Not Figures

Review suggests: On the SAD American diet only energy restriction saves the average Joes & Janes form diabesity.

Have you ever wondered what actually happens to your body, when you start dieting? I mean on a molecular / signalling protein level? If so, today's "Nutrition News Quicky" is for you, because one of the two studies this quicky is dealing with talks about just that: The type and onset of changes and the realization that Mr. & Mrs. Average Joe on their standard Western diets will gain weight, if they don't subscribe to life-long energy restriction. If you don't like that, it appears as if the "Macrobiotic Ma-Pi 2 Diet" could be a solution - or is this just too good to be true?

Energy Restriction & Metabolic Parameters

With all the hoopla about macronutrient composition, timing, etc. and the realization that the calories in vs. calories out equation is not as simplistic as most dieticians still want to have it, the word "calorie restriction" has gotten quite a bad rep in the Internet health community. 

Table 1 Comparison of the metabolic effects of caloric restriction after a variable period of time on (Soare. ahead of print).

If you take a look at overview of its effects in on body composition, blood glucose, lipids, etc. in Table 1, it does yet become obvious that you must not underestimate what will happen if you simply cut back on calories (based on overview in Soare. ahead of print). As long as the nutrition remains adequate (= you get the necessary micronutrients), eating less will lead to improvements in insulin sensitivity. This in turn triggers a whole cascade of beneficial effects that start with the reduction of fasting blood glucose levels and insulin concentration and end with significant reductions in body fat, type II diabetes rates, blood pressure and chronic inflammation.

Hey Mr. Average Joe, you are going to be fat and sick!

What is quite shocking, is the comparison of overweight dieters to Mr. & Mrs. average in a recent study by Soare et al. (2013).

If you take a look at the data in Table 1 you will see that the "healthy control" group Soare et al. defined in their review of the literature will almost inevitably develop a diffuse combination of obesity-related pathologies we call the "metabolic syndrom". In other words, if Soare's assessment of the situation was correct only the dieters will be able to ward off an insidious increase in body weight, blood glucose, insulin, etc. in the long run.

"What? I am going to be a fat sedentary slob?" Don't worry, you are not going to be either fat or a slob, unless you are sedentary. There is (imho) no debating that you either have to diet for the rest of your life or incorporate a minimal amount of physical activity into your everyday lives. If the focus is on health, recent studies have confirmed: The effects of exercise are more pronounced than that of "healthy dieting" (read more in the SuppVersity Facebook News).

On a more general note, I would like to point out that these "results" (in a way the assumption that everyone who is not dieting is going to become obese is rather a hypothesis) confirms my personal conviction that the ostensibly paradoxical difference between our bodies' inability to compensate for increased vs. decreased energy intakes is also a result of chronic overnutrition - or, to put it differently: If there is a 20% margin in our daily energy requirements within which our weight would be stable, 90% of the weight stable population of the Western obesity belt is consuming those extra 20%, anyway.

This would not just explain why each and every additional cookie people eat ends up on their hips "instantaneously"; it would also provide us with a simple, yet logical explanation that significant weight loss can only be achieved, if you reduce your dietary intake by >20%... but hey, I am getting side-tracked, here ;-)

⤹ "Macrobiotic Ma-Pi 2" = Diabetes Diet 2.0?

In their very recent, hitherto unpublished review of the effects of diet on type II diabetes a group of scientists from the University Campus Bio Medico conclude:

Battle diabesity w/ supplements

"Many dietary regimens are available for patients with type 2 diabetes to choose from, according to personal taste and cultural tradition. [...] Additional randomized studies, both short-term (to analyze psychological responses) and long-term, could help reduce the multitude of diets currently recommended, and focus on a shorter list of useful regimens." (Kahzrai. ahead of print)

A diet that was not (yet?) on the list Kahzrai et al. are referring to, here is the "Macrobiotic Ma-Pi 2" diet. A pretty funky name for a nutritional intervention the efficacy of which has been tested by Francesco Fallucca, Carmen Porrata, Sara Fallucca and Mario Pianesi in recent experiment. The results of this experiment are about to be published in a future edition of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Diabetes/Metabolism Research and Reviews in 2014 with a telling subtitle:

" Gut microbiota, inflammation, diet, and type 2 diabetes"

In conjunction with the word "macrobiotic" in the name of the diet, it should be obvious that the main idea behind this "new" anti-diabesity diet is to tackle the imbalance of the intestinal microbiota of which more and more scientists (e.g.. Musso. 2011; Qin. 2012) believe that it was the cause not the consequence of development of several human diseases, including obesity and type II diabetes (T2DM). As Kahzrai et al. mention in their abstract,

"[t]he main regulators of the intestinal microbiota are age, ethnicity, the immune system, and diet. A high-fat dietmay induce dysbiosis, which can result in a low-grade inflammatory state, obesity and other metabolic disorders. Adding prebiotics to the diet may reduce inflammation, endotoxaemia, and cytokine levels as well asimproving insulin resistance and glucose tolerance." (Kahzrai. ahead of print)

In their overview of the currently available literature, on the effects the administration of prebiotics such as fermentable dietary fibers has on the production of incretins (~satiety hormones), i.e.

• glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1; fatty acid oxidation, glucose control ↑)  and 
• peptide YY (PYY; anorexigenic = hunger ↓), 

as well as its anti-ghrelin (orexigenic = hunger ↑), they highlight a very recent 21-day, intervention study in patients with T2DM. It is one of only few contemporarily available human studies of which the researchers say that they

"have not given robust results because of their limitations; most randomized controlled trials have been  short-term studies (no more than six months), with small sample sizes ( less than 50 subjects), and have focused on surrogate markers rather than clinical end points". (Kahzrai. ahead of print)

Many of these studies, which confirmed the previously referenced beneficial effects on GLP-1 and PYY have been conducted with pregnant women. These studies were able to show that the frequency of gestational diabetes is significantly reduced by probiotic intervention - immediate downstream effects on the children’s growth rate, on the other hand, were not observed (Luoto. 2010a).

"A unique follow-up study (Luoto. 2010b) has suggested that gut dysbiosis during the first stages of life may be associated with the development of obesity; this study investigated the bifidobacterial numbers in infant fecal samples and showed they were higher in children of normal weight than in overweight infants." (Kahzrai. ahead of print)

Luoto et al.'s follow up study is unfortunately does yet share one of the central limitations 90% of the currently conducted experiments have in common: They did not include all the factors that may be involved in the development of obesity, in particular dietary habits.

Table 2: Macrobiotic Ma-Pi 2 Diet typical composition (Porrata. 2009)

This takes us back to the previously mentioned "recent" series of studies, the results of which have not yet been fully evaluated, yet.

As you can see if you take a look at the typical diet composition of the subjects in the first, prospective trial (Porrata. 2009; see Table 2), the "macrobiotic" intervention was exclusively food based. It was composed of 40–50% whole grains (rice, millet and barley), 30–40% vegetables (carrots, kale, cabbage, broccoli, chicory, onions, red and white radish, parsley),  and 8% legumes (adzuki beans, chickpeas, lentils, black beans), plus gomashio (roasted ground sesame seeds with unrefined sea salt), fermented products (miso, tamari, umeboshi) and seaweeds (kombu, wakame, nori).

Bancha tea (tannin-free green tea) was the main source of liquid. The food intake was measured using the weight method for 7 consecutive days in the 2nd and 4th months of the intervention. The same goes for the compliance with the recommended (100% idiotic) macronutrient composition, according to which the subjects had to consume 15%, 20% and 65% of total energy in form protein, fat and carbohydrates, respectively.

Figure 1: Changes in body composition and glucose & fat metabolism after 6 weeks on Ma-Pi 2 (Porrata. 2009)

If you take a look at the data in Figure 1 there is yet still no debating: The tons of macrobiotic whole foods worked magically - irrespective of the suboptimal protein intake (66g per day, only), the study participants lost tons of fat weight and increased their lean body mass - certainly not bad, if you asked me.

There is yet still one question that needs to be answered: Is this a results of the macrobiotics or a result of the obligatory switch from the Western "convenience" to a whole foods diet that induced these changes? If you asked me, it's the latter. This does not exclude the beneficial influence of an increased macrobiotic content of the diet and corresponding changes in the bacterial make-up of the gut. In the end, this is yet a necessarily result of the enforced revisions the sixteen 60-year old adult type II diabetics who were all treated with insulin made to their food selection.

Bottom line: It may be hidden in plain sight, but the two studies I discussed in today's news quicky do have something in common. Something that's not just the term "type II diabetes": It's the way they can remind you of the things that actually matter: Food selection and quantity (well and exercise, or I should say "physical activity" - although it's not directly mentioned in the studies).

If I read the questions about diet I receive on an almost daily basis, the majority of them is concerned with irrelevant details that revolve around insignificant changes in macro- and micro-nutrient composition. At times it sounds as if you were eating figures, not foods. No wonder that this does not produce the weight loss or hypertrophy effects you could achieve if you started to count the number of eggs, potatoes and tablespoons of oil you consume instead of obsessing about the different effects of eating 300 and 324 rice corns... Ok, I am exaggerating, but if this exaggeration made you feel insulted, you are probably one of those people who would benefit most from letting go of the fractional digits in his or her food logs.

References:

• Luoto, R., Laitinen, K., Nermes, M., & Isolauri, E. (2010a). Impact of maternal probiotic-supplemented dietary counselling on pregnancy outcome and prenatal and postnatal growth: a double-blind, placebo-controlled study. British journal of nutrition, 103(12), 1792-1799.
• Luoto, R., Kalliomäki, M., Laitinen, K., & Isolauri, E. (2010b). The impact of perinatal probiotic intervention on the development of overweight and obesity: follow-up study from birth to 10 years. International journal of obesity, 34(10), 1531-1537.
• Musso, G., Gambino, R., & Cassader, M. (2011). Interactions between gut microbiota and host metabolism predisposing to obesity and diabetes. Annual review of medicine, 62, 361-380.
• Porrata, C., Sánchez, J., Correa, V., Abuín, A., Hernández-Triana, M., Dacosta-Calheiros, R. V., ... & Pianesi, M. (2009). Ma-Pi 2 Macrobiotic diet intervention in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus. MEDICC review, 11(4), 29-35.
• Soare A., Weiss E.P., Pozzilli P. (2013) "Benefits of caloric restriction for cardiometabolic health, including type 2 diabetes mellitus risk". Diabetes/Metabolism Research and Reviews [ahead of print]
• Qin, J., Li, Y., Cai, Z., Li, S., Zhu, J., Zhang, F., ... & Yang, H. (2012). A metagenome-wide association study of gut microbiota in type 2 diabetes. Nature, 490(7418), 55-60.