It sounds so promising: If you chew sugar-free gum for 20 minutes three times during the morning, you'll naturally eat almost 70 fewer calories at lunch and won't compensate for it later in the day. Plus you'll burn a few extra calories doing all that chewing. Keep it up for a year, and you could lose eight pounds without even trying.
It was one of those small, quirky studies (35 people) that got all kinds of media attention two years ago ... and led to a larger follow-up study that included 201 people, all overweight.
The just-in upshot? If only.
After eight weeks, there was no significant weight-loss difference between the gum chewers (half the group) and the gum-free group, even though the chewers kept at it for at least 90 minutes a day. That's a lot of chewing.
Still, it wasn't a total wash. Everyone in both groups was trying to lose weight and got minimal help doing it - basically, just some printed nutritional information (the kind of thing that rarely works) and, for half of 'em, a ton of gum. Yet both groups emerged with somewhat smaller waists and healthier blood pressure. And the gum group said, mildly, that chewing curbed snack cravings, helped them stay on their diets and trimmed nighttime eating. So - you guessed it - there'll likely be another study.
Interesting disclaimer: Both studies got funding from, ahem, the Wrigley Science Institute, which presumably was thrilled by the first results. The second? Probably not so much.
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The YOU Docs, Mehmet Oz, host of "The Dr. Oz Show" and Mike Roizen of Cleveland Clinic, are authors of "YOU: Losing Weight." For more information go to www.RealAge.com.
(c) 2011 Michael Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet Oz, M.D.
Distributed by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
