Calorie counting is off the menu for slimmers who want to shed the pounds for good.
According to the world’s largest diet study, the best way to lose weight is to eat as much as you like... as long as you choose the correct foods, which include cold pasta, meat and nuts.
Overweight children also get slimmer when their parents stick to high-protein, low-carb cooking, researchers claim.
A £12 million study concluded that the calorie-counting methods Britons have favoured for two decades are wrong, and the best way to stay slim is to eat unlimited amounts of the right foods.
They tested five diets and found that the most effective was a high-protein, low Glycaemic Index regime, which includes lean meat, poultry, fish, eggs, pulses and nuts.
It is based on carbohydrates with a low GI, such as whole-grain bread, porridge and brown rice. These break down slowly during digestion, making dieters feel fuller for longer and stabilising blood sugar levels.
Cooled and cold foods also take longer to digest so have a lower GI, while cold pasta contains more resistant starch that delays digestion.
Researcher Professor Arne Astrup, of the University of Copenhagen, claimed the findings could finally solve the obesity riddle.
He said: “For many years we have been giving people in Europe the wrong advice about how to lose weight and avoid becoming obese.
“Calorie counting hasn’t worked and may have made the problem worse because it didn’t distinguish between different types of food.
The new diet composition is much more effective at helping people maintain a healthy weight. It contains a slightly higher protein content and low GI foods, and you can eat as much as you want. The six-month Danish study involved 772 European families, comprising 938 adults and 827 children, The New England Journal of Medicine reports.
The overweight and obese adults followed a traditional 800 calorie-a-day meal plan for eight weeks, losing an average of 24lb (about 10kg). They were then allocated to one of five diets to see which was most effective at keeping the weight off.
The options were a low-protein, high GI diet; a low-protein, low GI diet; a high-protein, low GI diet; a high-protein, high GI diet; and a control group with no special instructions about GI foods. In the low-protein diets, protein comprised 13 percent of energy consumed, while in the high-protein diets, it represented 25 percent.
High GI foods are those scoring 70 or more on the Glycaemic Index - a scale of zero to 100 representing how quickly glucose is released into the bloodstream after eating.
Low GI foods are those with a value of 55 or less.
The participants were given access to free foods suiting their diet plan from a university supermarket, with barcodes to ensure they were sticking to the appropriate meals.
Those on the high-protein, low GI diet gained the least weight, while those following the low-protein, high GI diet put on the most an average of 3.5lb.
Children also benefited, even though they never specifically went on a diet. By the end of the study, the proportion who were overweight had fallen from almost half to 39 percent.
Researcher Dr Susan Jebb, head of nutrition and health research at the Medical Research Council Human Nutrition Research Centre, said: “It’s essentially a low fat diet, with a modest increase in protein that seems to make people feel fuller longer.
“The low GI foods give added value. If there is a single message to the public, it’s about eating quality carbohydrates not all carbs are the same.” - Daily Mail