Vegetable Juice Aids Weight Loss

Incorporating vegetable juice into your daily diet may not only increase the number of daily vegetable servings, data from a recent study also suggest the potential of using a low-sodium vegetable juice in conjunction with a calorie-restricted diet to aid in weight loss in overweight individuals with metabolic syndrome (Nutr J. 2010;9:8). Researchers evaluated the effects of a ready-to-serve vegetable juice as part of a calorie-appropriate Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet in an ethnically diverse population of people with metabolic syndrome, a constellation of metabolic risk factors for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease (CVD), on weight loss and their ability to meet vegetable intake recommendations, as well as their clinical characteristics of metabolic syndrome (waist circumference, triglycerides, HDL, fasting blood glucose and blood pressure).

A prospective 12-week, three-group (0, 8 or 16 fluid ounces/d of low-sodium vegetable juice) parallel arm randomized controlled trial requested 81 participants with metabolic syndrome (22 men, 59 women) to limit their calorie intake to 1,600 kcals for women and 1,800 kcals for men, and were educated on the DASH diet.

There were significant group-by-time interactions when aggregating both groups consuming vegetable juice (8 or 16 fluid ounces/d). Those consuming juice lost more weight, consumed more vitamin C, potassium and dietary vegetables than individuals who were in the group that only received diet counseling (P<0.05).>