Best reasons to eat blackcurrants – Express Health
An “extraordinary” common berry could help men banish their beer guts without lifting a finger, according to new research.
In a recent study it was found that eating blackcurrants daily could boost fat burning rates.
Specifically the paper revealed that consuming extract from New Zealand blackcurrants mimics the effects of exercise and increases fat burning rates while resting by as much as 61 percent.
Lead researcher Mark Willems, professor in exercise physiology at the University of Chichester, said it could lead to adults losing more than three stone of fat over a year without breaking a sweat.
In the study, published in the Journal of Dietary Supplements and Nutraceuticals, 16 healthy and physically active men were studied at rest.
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Over a two week period they took two blackcurrant capsules every day.
The capsules led to an average fat burning increase of 21 percent with an individual response of up to 61 percent.
During the study, three out of four people also improved their fat burning capacity.
Professor Willems said: “This is extraordinary data. If you’re trying to increase all your healthy habits and using diet and exercise to lose weight, it can be a significant tool for those seeking fat loss, without doing anything extra.
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“Plus, we have seen in exercise-based studies that it is even more beneficial in women, so we can expect this to be of benefit in both genders.”
Blackcurrants contain bioactive anthocyanins and polyphenols. These provide a wide range of fast-acting health benefits, including enhanced blood sugar and insulin responses, cardiovascular health and blood flow.
Those used to make the capsules taken as part of the study were grown in New Zealand.
New Zealand’s strong sunlight, high UV levels and cold winters are credited with giving the berry one of the highest anthocyanin levels in the world – 1.5 times the concentrations found in European-grown varieties.
Prof Willems added: “I’m in favour of whole foods that contain polyphenols, but the problem is it’s hard to know how many anthocyanins that you are consuming in fresh foods and you might not consume enough.
“With a standardised blackcurrant extract, you are receiving a known amount of bioactives that provide proven and favourable changes to energy metabolism, and these supplement studies consistently show exactly what a high-quality extract can do.”
The capsules used in the study were provided by brand CurraNZ.
It comes as a previous study, published in Nutrients journal last year, found that women who took two capsules a day increased their fat burning rates by 25 percent.
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