Your secret weight loss food this winter

By Rosie Schwartz



Rosie Schwartz shares her expertise on soup as a smart choice for keeping off the pounds

At this time of year, when comfort foods appeal, a steaming hot bowl of
soup can really hit the spot - something that's very valuable as the
festive season starts to gear up. There is nothing quite like soup to
tame a hearty appetite. In fact, including soup on your menu on a
regular basis can be a smart way to practice girth control.

While
filling up on assorted liquids can appear to help in weight management,
research from Pennsylvania State University shows that eating soup
offers more advantages than drinking plain water. The study examined the
effects of water, both served with a food and incorporated into a food,
on satiety.

Study subjects received one of three
pre-lunch snacks and then were encouraged to eat as much lunch as they
wanted. The three pre-meal snacks, all containing the same number of
calories, consisted of chicken rice casserole, chicken rice casserole
served with a glass of water and chicken rice soup - which had the same
ingredients and amount of water as the second test snack.

After
having the first two test snacks, the chicken rice casserole and the
casserole plus water, the subjects consumed almost the same number of
calories at the following meal. But when they had the soup, where the
water was basically incorporated into the casserole, they consumed about
one third fewer calories than the other two options. And they didn't
make up for the fewer calories at dinner.



Soup is not just super in preventing weight gain, it can also make
shedding pounds easier. In a one-year study by the same researchers from
Pennsylvania State University, overweight subjects on a controlled
calorie weight loss regime consumed either one or two servings of low
calorie soup, two servings of higher calorie snack food or just the
controlled calorie diet each day. Each group consumed the same number of
calories. While the subjects in all the groups lost significant amounts
of weight at the end of the one-year mark, consuming two servings of
low calorie soup daily led to 50 per cent greater weight loss than
consuming the high calorie snack food.

Again, the key words for reaping the weight benefits were low calorie soup.

If
you're opting for soup as part of a waist management regime, keep in
mind that not all soups are created equal. A fat-laden one with cream or
cheese certainly might curb your appetite but at a cost. A broth-based
soup packed with lots of vegetables like zucchini, cabbage, spinach and
mushrooms offers appetite taming at any time at a caloric bargain.
There's not much that can beat a veggie-packed soup before dinner or
prior to heading out for a meal or a party. It won't ruin your dinner
but can help stop you from devouring the bread basket at a restaurant or
hijacking a hors d'oeuvre tray as it passes by.