A new study finds that swapping out meat with mushrooms in one meal per day helped subjects lose weight, reduce overall body fat, and maintain this new improved physique over time.
In a new study from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the US, researchers recruited 73 adults, mostly women in their 40s, in a year-long randomized clinical trial on white button mushrooms and weight loss.
Subjects who ate one cup/128 grams of mushrooms per day in place of meat lost on average seven pounds, while showing improvements in body composition, compared to subjects who ate their standard diet. Each day, the mushroom-eating subjects consumed 123 calories and 4.25 grams of fat less per day.
The new findings build on previous research that shows increasing intake of low-energy-density foods such as mushrooms in place of high-energy-density foods, such as ground beef, can help you lose weight while still feeling satiated throughout the day.
For meat-lovers, scientists are mining the potential of mushrooms to produce "meaty" flavors in foods, animal-free. After fermenting oyster mushrooms with the addition of amino acids and sugars and heat-treating the different samples, scientists from the US and China found that the mushrooms produced flavor profiles that ranged from meaty to sweet, earthy, musty, pungent and caramel -- which could result in improved all-natural, vegetarian meat-flavored food products down the line.