Food labels tell us how many calories a food contains. But what they don’t say is that the actual calories in this food also depend on how it’s been processed. So, if you eat your food raw, you will tend to lose weight. If you eat the same cooked food, you will tend to gain weight. Same number of calories but a different result on the waistline.
Processed foods are certainly much more digestible. But, because of this, the body burns less calories for their digestion. To prove it, Japanese researchers fed two groups of rats different lab food. To the first group, they offered solid and compact food. At the second, the same food but puffed, as we do for breakfast cereals.
The rats ate the same weight and the same number of calories. But the rats that swallowed the puffed pellets gained more weight and 30% more body fat than the rodents that ate normal laboratory food. “The reason is simple: puffed pellets take less time and require less effort on the body to break down. When rats eat, their body temperature rises due to the work of digestion. A meal of puffed pellets does increase the temperature less than a meal of compacted pellets. As less energy is used to digest, this leads to greater weight gain and fat “explained the researchers.
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