Including ginger in your morning meal could help curb hunger and potentially play a role in overall weight management, suggests a new study published in Metabolism. For overweight men, a morning ginger drink was linked to lower prospective food intake later in the day and reduced hunger.
Researchers at Columbia University and the New York Obesity Research Center gave 10 healthy but overweight men a standard breakfast accompanied by a ginger “tea” with 2 grams of dried ginger powder (equivalent to about 1 teaspoon) or the same breakfast with plain hot water on two separate days.
The researchers documented feelings of hunger immediately before and hourly after breakfast consumption, the calories burned after eating (thermic effect of food) as well as other measures. They found approximately 43 more calories were burned after eating but total resting energy expenditure and respiratory quotient were not significantly affected. There were also no ginger-related effects on blood glucose, insulin, triglycerides or a variety of other metabolic parameters.
While more research is needed to understand the role of ginger in weight management, the researchers concluded that including powdered ginger in the diet could have a small but significant effect on how food is processed in the body and “influence feelings of satiety without any adverse side effects.”
Please refer to the study for more details. The McCormick Science Institute provided the spices for the research.
Source: Mansour MS, Ni Y, Roberts A, Kelleman M, RoyChoudhury A, St-Onge MP. Ginger consumption enhances the thermic effect of food and promotes feelings of satiety without affecting metabolic and hormonal parameters in overweight men: A pilot study. Metabolism 2012. Epub 2012 Apr 24.
There are many simple and delicious ways to add ginger and other spices to meals and snacks throughout the day.
