Dairy Foods and Weight Loss

Summary

Obesity is a national epidemic with multiple causes and complex solutions. Research in both animals and humans has suggested that the inclusion of dairy foods into a moderate calorie restricted diet can increase weight loss and fat loss. Our proposed project extends these prior findings by determining, for the first time, how inclusion of dairy in a calorie-restricted diet changes the amount of visceral adiposity in overweight and obese subjects. The investigators also propose unique studies to evaluate the potential mechanism(s) by which dairy promotes weight and fat loss during dieting, through an examination of adipocyte size, gene expression, and inflammatory markers. The hypotheses under investigation are (1) that inclusion of dairy foods in a modest energy restricted diet will significantly increase body fat loss compared to a control diet; (2) that dairy products in a modest energy restricted diet will result in greater fat loss from intra-abdominal adipose tissue compared to the control, 3) components of dairy products up- or down-regulate the secretion of metabolically-relevant hormones during the postprandial and inter-meal periods, 4) dairy products will promote satiety and/or satiation, 5) dairy foods reduce adipocyte differentiation and/or enhance adipocyte apoptosis, leading to concomitant white adipose tissue (WAT) expression changes for genes playing a role in these processes, 6) dairy foods will reduce adipocyte lipid storage and enhance pathways associated with thermogenesis and mitochondrial function in WAT, as reflected in gene expression changes and reduced adipocyte size, and 7) dairy foods included in a modest energy restricted diet will decrease inflammation in WAT and other tissues, thus decreasing circulating cytokines, increasing zinc status, decreasing expression of inflammatory markers in WAT, and reducing WAT macrophage infiltration.

Conditions

• Overweight and Obesity

Interventions

OTHER

high dairy diet

12 week energy restriction with 3-4 servings of dairy foods/day.

OTHER

Low Dairy

less than 1 serving of dairy foods per day.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Iowa State University

  collaborator OTHER

• USDA, Western Human Nutrition Research Center

  lead FED

Principal Investigators

• Marta D Van Loan, Ph.D. · USDA, ARS, Western Human Nutrition Research Center

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

20 Years

Max Age

50 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2006-10-31

Primary Completion

2009-08-31

Completion

2009-08-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations