Eating one food before a meal slashes weight gain and inflammation (2025)

A pot of low fat yogurt before eating a meal might help prevent the harmful effects of a high fat diet, recent studies found. An 8oz or 226g pot before a 900 calorie helping of two sausage muffins and two hash browns stopped harmful inflammatory molecules from entering the blood stream.

The yogurt appetiser also improved glucose metabolism in the obese by speeding the reduction of post-meal blood glucose levels. Postdoctoral researcher Dr Ruisong Pei said: "Eating eight ounces of low-fat yogurt before a meal is a feasible strategy to improve post-meal metabolism and thus may help reduce the risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases."

The findings adds to further evidence the dairy product may dampen chronic inflammation, a factor in inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis and asthma. Chronic inflammation is also associated with obesity, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and other diseases.

Inflammation can be good as it is part of the body's innate immune system, our first line of defence against illness and injury. But when it last too long it can lead to where the body essentially attacks itself, wreaking biological havoc on our organs and systems.

Yogurt is made by adding a number of types of harmless bacteria to milk, causing it to ferment. And these live bacteria stimulate the gut's friendly bacteria and suppress harmful bacteria, it has been suggested.

The latest findings published in the Journal of Nutrition resulted from a study led by Assistant Professor of Food Science Brad Bolling at the the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It explored the hypothesis yogurt may help reduce inflammation by improving the integrity of the intestinal lining.

This in turn prevents endotoxins - pro-inflammatory molecules produced by gut microbes - from crossing into the blood stream. Prof Bolling who looks at the role of food in preventing chronic disease explained: "I wanted to look at the mechanism more closely and look specifically at yogurt."

Anti-inflammatory medications like aspirin, naproxen, hydrocortisone and prednisone can help mitigate the effects of chronic inflammation but each carries their own risks and side effects. So for the past two decades scientists have looked at alternatives, particularly safe, gentle, long-term treatments.

But results have been mixed sparking a debate whether dairy products are pro-inflammatory or anti-inflammatory. Prof Bolling noted a 2017 review paper that assessed 52 clinical trials showed "that things are pointing more toward anti-inflammatory, particularly for fermented dairy."

His study among the largest human intervention studies to look at yogurt's impact on chronic inflammation enrolled 120 premenopausal women, half obese and half non-obese. Half were assigned to eat 12oz or 340g of low-fat yogurt every day for nine weeks while the other half ate a non-dairy pudding.

Fasting blood samples were taken at various points to evaluate an assortment of biomarkers that scientists have used over the years to measure endotoxin exposure and inflammation. As described in the British Journal of Nutrition last December, the results showed that while some of the biomarkers remained steady over time, the yogurt-eaters experienced significant improvements in certain key markers, such as TNF-, an important inflammation-activating protein.

Prof Bolling said: "The results indicate that ongoing consumption of yogurt may be having a general anti-inflammatory effect."

The new study focused on a different aspect of the study where the participants were also involved in a high-calorie meal challenge at the beginning and end of their nine-week dietary intervention. The challenge, meant to stress an individual's metabolism, started with either a serving of yogurt or non-dairy pudding followed by a large high-fat, high-carb breakfast meal.

For both challenges, blood work showed the yogurt "appetiser" helped improve some key biomarkers of endotoxin exposure and inflammation as participants digested the meal over the ensuing hours. It also helped improve glucose metabolism in obese participants, by speeding the reduction of post-meal blood glucose levels.

The study doesn't identify which compounds in yogurt are responsible for the shift in biomarkers associated with the health-promoting effect or how they act in the body. Prof Bolling added: "The goal is to identify the components and then get human evidence to support their mechanism of action in the body.

"That's the direction we are going. Ultimately, we would like to see these components optimised in foods, particularly for medical situations where it's important to inhibit inflammation through the diet.

"We think this is a promising approach."

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Eating one food before a meal slashes weight gain and inflammation (2025)
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