Eating soy may improve weight loss in women who have already gone through menopause, according to findings presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior.
Soy is a vegetable used to make milk, oil and other food products, and contains a variety of nutrients, including compounds similar to estrogen, that can lead to many health benefits when added to ones diet.
Women who have experienced menopause will typically have lower hormone levels, which has been linked to abdominal weight gain. In order to maintain healthy hormone levels, some women turn to replacement therapy, which has been proven to cause many health problems, including the development of breast cancer.
In an effort to find a natural alternative to hormone treatments that also provided weight loss benefits, researchers fed soy, a plant that contains compounds similar to estrogen, to post-menopausal rats.
The results of the rats eating an increased intake of soy led to higher energy expenditure and weight-loss.
Michelle Murphy, a researcher at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, stated that these findings have “implications for the development of alternative natural treatments for obesity in post-menopausal women.”
For post-menopausal women who are interested in adding other natural alternatives to their diets in order to improve weight-loss, recent research conducted at Johns Hopkins University showed that eating pomegranate can boost weight loss results and provide natural replacement therapy.