Avocados have been a popular food item over the last few years. Now, researchers have found that women who eat avocado every day could have long-term health benefits.
The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and found that avocados can change the way belly fat is stored in the female body.
For the study, the researchers looked at 105 overweight and obese adults for 12 weeks. They were split into two groups. One group received an avocado each day, and the other received a similar meal without the avocado.
They then collected data related to glucose tolerance and abdominal fat for the two groups to compare those that ate avocados and those that didn’t.
After twelve weeks, the researchers found that eating an avocado each day was associated with metabolic benefits and the redistribution of belly fat in the female participants, but not the men.
The results show that avocados lowered visceral fat levels, which can reduce the risks of a number of diseases, like diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Researcher Naiman Khan noted, “In the abdomen, there are two kinds of fat: fat that accumulates right underneath the skin, called subcutaneous fat, and fat that accumulates deeper in the abdomen, known as visceral fat, that surrounds the internal organs.
Individuals with a higher proportion of deeper visceral fat tend to be at a higher risk of developing diabetes. So we were interested in determining whether the ratio of subcutaneous to visceral fat changed with avocado consumption.
While daily consumption of avocados did not change glucose tolerance, what we learned is that a dietary pattern that includes an avocado every day impacted the way individuals store body fat in a beneficial manner for their health, but the benefits were primarily in females.
It’s important to demonstrate that dietary interventions can modulate fat distribution. Learning that the benefits were only evident in females tells us a little bit about the potential for sex playing a role in dietary intervention responses.”
