Legumes reduce lipid peroxidation in obese

MedWire News: Eating non-soy legumes enhances weight loss and reduces lipid peroxidation in obese people following a diet of moderate caloric restriction, say Spanish researchers.

There is a large body of research addressing the effects of soybean consumption on lipid profiles.

"However, in European countries the consumption of soybean is low, whereas lentils, chickpeas, peas, and faba bean consumption is more common," say Ana Crujeiras and team from the University of Navarra in Pamplona.

The team recruited 30 obese people, aged an average of 32 years, and assigned them to 8 weeks on a diet designed to produce an energy balance that was 30% negative.

The diet of 15 of the participants included 4 servings per week of non-soy legumes. Including legumes increased the fiber content of the diet, to 25 g/day compared with 18 g/day in the control diet.

Participants who ate legumes experienced a 7.7% reduction in body mass index (BMI) compared with a 5.3% reduction in those following the control diet.

People eating legumes had significant reductions in total cholesterol, from 215 to 182 mg/dl, whereas those on the control diet had nonsignificant reductions, from 181 to 173 mg/dl.

Eating legumes was also associated with significant reductions in several markers of oxidative stress, namely, malondialdehyde and 8-isoprostane F2α. The latter of these markers is an accepted indicator of overall lipid peroxidation, the authors note in the journal Free Radical Research.

In line with this finding, there was also a trend toward a reduction in oxidized low-density lipoprotein levels in participants eating legumes, whereas these tended to increase in people on the control diet.

As total plasma antioxidant capacity did not change during the intervention period, the team suggests that the antioxidant effects of legumes are specific to lipid peroxidation and do not affect water-soluble molecules.

http://www.lipidsonline.org/news/article.cfm?aid=4865