Spinach is a leafy vegetable that can be added to all sorts of dishes and combined with many food products. It is distinguished with its wonderful fresh taste and healthy effect on the body.
Spinach improves cardiovascular health, brain function, sharpens vision and has an anti-inflammatory effect. This healthy leaf vegetable lowers blood pressure, boosts the immune system and fights against certain cancers.
More good news have recently come to light for spinach lovers. It turns out that the extract from this leaf vegetable decreases the urge to eat unhealthy foods by an entire 95% and helps weight loss by 43%.
In science, our constant desire to eat something, mainly unhealthy, is called hedonic hunger. Experts believe that it is the main cause Of indiscriminate weight gain and obesity.
The green leaf membranes, called thylakoids, that are found in spinach, stimulate the production of hormones of satiety and suppress hedonic hunger. Hunger is controlled in this way and a healthy diet is created, resulting in a decrease in weight.
In a study by experts at Lund University, participants took 1 tsp (5 g) of spinach extract before breakfast. They were asked to eat balanced 3 times a day, without following any sort of specific diet.
Those taking the spinach extract lost 11 lb (5 kg) in 3 months, while the participants from the control group that took a placebo only lost 7.5 lb (3.5 kg) in the same period.
The excellent results in the 1st group were achieved thanks to the feeling of satiety, which the spinach extract gave them. The food products that modern-day man eats are digested so quickly that the hormones in the intestines which send signals to the brain regarding satiety don't have enough time to react.
Thylakoids slow down the digestive process and thus intestinal hormones have enough time to signal the brain.
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