Michael Zemel, of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville reports that high-calcium, low-calorie diets help obese mice lose weight at rates double those of mice given low levels of calcium. The potential link between calcium and fat metabolism was inspired by studies years ago in obese men, where men placed on high-calcium diets lost significant amounts of body fat, even though their calorie intake remained the same. Zemel’s team believes that high levels of dietary calcium may suppress hormones that help us ‘hold on’ to stored fat, reporting that for any given level of energy balance – of calorie intake and physical activity – dietary calcium helps determine whether calories go to storage in the form of fat, or get burned. These hormones also appear to ‘switch on’ fat-storing and fat-preserving mechanisms within fat cells. High-calcium diets seem to have the opposite effect – suppressing these weight-gain hormones so that the mice stay thin. High-calcium diets help already obese mice lose weight, losing roughly a fifth of their body weight and 42% of their body fat over six weeks. The team also found that calcium from dairy might stimulates fat loss any more efficiently than supplemental calcium carbonate.
SOURCE/REFERENCE: Experimental Biology 2000 conference, April 2000
