A study published in the British Journal of Nutrition, reveals that replacing saturated fats in your diet with extra virgin olive oil, you will experience a significant loss of body weight and fat loss, without changing anything else in your diet.
This research was conducted on eight overweight men, ranging in age of 24 to 49 years. All the men followed one of the two diets for four weeks each. The first saturated fat- rich diet provided 24% of calories from saturated fat, 13% from monounsaturated fat, and 3% from polyunsaturated fat. The second monounsaturated-fat rich diet, provided 11% of calories from saturated fats, 22% from monounsaturated fat and 7% from polyunsaturated fat. Although there were no major differences in calories intake or physical activity, the men that used the monounsaturated fats were 2.1 kilograms lighter and their fat mass was down by 2.6 kilograms.
Extra virgin olive oil‘s fat burning effects come from another study published in the British Journal of Nutrition, which suggests that monounsaturated fats found in extra virgin olive oil, are the cause of the breakdown of fats in fat cells. In this study three groups of laboratory animals were fed a different type of fat. Olive oil, palmitic acid or soybean palmitic acid. The results of the study showed a number of indicators of fat metabolism were measured including body weight, plasma leptin, tissue concentration of fatty acids, fat cell size, fat cell lipolytic (fat breakdown) activity, and the capacity of insulin to inhibit fat breakdown.
The animals that received the monounsaturated fats, not only was fat breakdown greater, but the insulin’s ability to block it was lower. In rats given polyunsaturated fat in the form of soybean oil, the opposite effect was noted in fat tissue.
Extra virgin olive oil is a super food, and when is used daily as the primary source of fat the health benefits are great.