The humble white button mushroom may have a role to play in the fight against obesity, according to new preliminary research from the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, America.
The study*, published in the July issue of “Appetite” and led by Dr. Lawrence Cheskin, involved 54 volunteers eating four different lean ground beef recipes over four days, then eating the same meals over another four days, but this time substituting the beef with white button mushrooms.
The volunteers consumed on average 420 fewer calories and 30g less fat on a mushroom day than on a meat day. This suggests that just under 10 mushrooms swaps could lead to a reduction in body fat of 1lb. If one such substitution was made every week, this would amount to a saving of nearly 20,000 calories in a year, or more than 5 lbs in body fat.
What was particularly important about the research was that it also looked at palatability (meal appeal), appetite, satiation (after-meal fullness) and satiety (general fullness) and volunteers gave similar scores across the two different meal categories.
“What’s really intriguing to me about the results was that the volunteers seemed to accept mushrooms as a palatable and suitable culinary substitute for meat,” said Dr. Cheskin. “They didn’t compensate for the lower calorie mushroom meal by eating more food later in the day.”
The study concluded that the method of substituting one food for another within familiar recipes may be more appealing to many prospective dieters than making more dramatic or restrictive changes in dietary behaviour. Over the long run, individuals may respond to such dietary changes by adjusting intake. However, if the reduced calorie intake resulting from such substitutions continued to be poorly compensated for, as in this research, the effects on weight control could be considerable.
The research team is continuing to study these effects over a period of time.
The findings of Cheskin’s team follow those of other initial American data** that suggested if men substituted a 4-ounce Portabello mushroom for a 4-ounce grilled hamburger every time they ate a grilled hamburger over the course of a year, and didn’t change anything else, they could save more than 18,000 calories and nearly 3,000 grams of fat - the equivalent of 5.3 pounds**.
Mushrooms contain virtually no fat, sugar or salt and are a valuable source of dietary fibre. They are brimming with the five B vitamins thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), pyridoxine (B6) and folate; and contain the essential minerals potassium, selenium, copper, phosphorous and small, but nutritionally important, amounts of iron.
What's more, mushrooms are one of the highest antioxidant vegetables in the world, in the same league as the red pepper and spinach. They were recently elevated to superfood status as they are one of the few sources of L-ergothioniene, a potent antioxidant, which was recently found to have its own transport system in human cells.
Notes
- In the UK over half of women and about two thirds of men are either over weight or obese. The estimated cost to the country is 18 million sick days, 30,000 deaths and £2bn a year.
- The rise in obesity rates over the last two decades has been blamed in part by an increase in the consumption of high calorie foods. There is evidence that over consumption of such foods may be due to a limited ability of people to regulate their own energy intake when eating some of these high calorie foods. In other words, there is a passive overconsumption of energy resulting from the availability of high calorie, inexpensive, and palatable foods. Passive over consumption is likely to lead to an increase in an individual’s body weight and risk of obesity. The substitution of low calorie foods for high calorie foods has been proposed as a means of preventing, or reversing, passive overconsumption.
- A total of 18 men and 36 women aged, between 18 and 65, took part in the study. Their weights spanned normal weight, overweight and obese categories (BMI ranged from 18-45).
- The study had a randomized, crossover design, whereby each subject served as his/her own control.
- The two, four-day test periods were separated by a three-day washout period in order to prevent carry-over effects.
- The recipes used were meat and mushroom versions of four dishes Lasagna, Savoury Napoleon, Sloppy Joe, and Chilli. Lean ground beef and ground mushrooms were used in the recipes. Volunteers were provided with water to drink. Neither second helpings nor any other food or drink items were available. The amount eaten by each volunteer was determined by weighing the meal before and after each eating period. Volunteers were asked to consume as much of the test meal as possible, and were given no time restrictions. Volunteers were asked to keep food diaries to record what else they ate on the test days.
- The average calorie content of the four meat dishes was 783 kcal compared with an average of 339 kcal for the mushroom dishes.
*Cheskin LJ, Davis LM, Lipsky LM, Mitola AH, Lycan T, Mitchell V, Mickle B, Ad-kins E. Lack of energy compensation over 4 days when white button mushrooms are substituted for beef. Appetite. 2008:51;50-57.
**Block, Dietary Data Systems. Analysis of NHANES III Data.