No, Avocados Don't "Scorch" Belly Fat

 

Avocados are good food. One-half of an avocado provides 160 calories, 2g of protein, 8.5g of carbohydrates, and 15g of fat. Avocados are an excellent source of magnesium, potassium, vitamin C, vitamin E, and vitamin K. While most of the calories in an avocado come from fat, they are mostly in the form of healthier monounsaturated fat. Monounsaturated fatty acids or come from plant sources and may be helpful in lowering your LDL or "bad" cholesterol. For this reason, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics recommends that you choose foods with monounsaturated fats instead of saturated fat.

But will avocados "scorch belly fat", as a 12-week study funded by the Haas Avocado Board and reported on the "Eat This, Not That" website claimed?

The two main types of fat stores in our bodies are subcutaneous fat and visceral fat. Subcutaneous fat is the body fat which is found directly under your skin and is normally pinchable and can be measured with fat/skin fold callipers. Visceral fat (also known as abdominal or belly fat) is found within the abdominal cavity, between the stomach, intestines, liver, kidneys etc., making it much trickier to measure.

The 12-week study on which the "scorching" claim based included 105 adults who were either overweight or obese. One group was provided a daily meal that included an avocado and the other group an equivalent meal that did not. The results? There was no difference in visceral fat between the study and control groups. Ooops! Not what the Avocado Board wanted to hear!

No worries though. Just dice and slice the data in different ways until you find something that you are looking for. In this case, that the women participants who were consuming a daily avocado showed a slight reduction in visceral fat. It was not statistically significant but that did not prevent a press release from claiming that "Women who consumed avocado as part of their daily meal had a reduction in deeper visceral abdominal fat." Nor did it stop the media from publishing breathless headlines about "scorching belly fat".

This is a classic example of a study that starts out with the results it wants, mines the data till it finds it - however meaningless the result may be - and than feeds it to an uncritical and headline hungry media. Always at least glance at the underlying study behind some new amazing claim. Who funded it? How was it conducted? For some unbiased advice on how to interpret nutrition studies, here is a quick read.

Go ahead and eat avocados, they really are good for you. Just don't expect them to "scorch" any belly fat. No matter what the Avocado Board tells you.