Latest to fight obesity: Seaweeds

Scientists have come up with a rather peculiar substance to fight the obesity debacles. In a recent research it has been established that brown seaweed, a common ingredient in Japanese miso soup and other Asian salads helps cut down on obesity.

Fucoxanthin is a substance in the seaweed which helps this cause. It burned fat in lab tests on rats and obese mice, prompting the rodents to lose weight, report Kazuo Miyashita, Ph.D., and colleagues. The study was carried out at The Hokkaido University and presented at an American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco.

The study was carried out on about two hundred mice and rats. It found that rats given fucoxanthin lost up to 10% of their body weight, mainly from around the gut. The researchers didn't try to feed seaweed to rodents. Instead, they isolated fucoxanthin and added it to the animals' chow. The fucoxanthin appeared to boost the rodents' production of a protein involved in fat metabolism, according to the researchers. Also, levels of the omega-3 fatty acid DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) rose in the rodent livers when the animals were fed fucoxanthin with soybean oil.

Fucoxanthin also has anti-diabetic properties.

However, the researchers made it clear that drinking too much of the soup with Fucoxanthin will certainly not help in reducing weight. the substance is tightly bound to proteins in the seaweed and not easily absorbed in its natural form. Dr Kazuo Miyashita and his team also specified that it might take another three to five years to make a slimming pill based on Fucoxanthin.

"The exciting finding is that fucoxanthin may increase metabolism and weight control but the downside is that this is an animal study, and we can't automatically translate from animals to humans." said Connie Diekman, director of University Nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis. Consumers should understand that clinicians and researchers have a "whole lot to learn about weight control in humans and this is one study in a long investigation," Diekman cautioned.

Obesity is surely one of the biggest health problems being encountered in the world. Along with obesity come blood pressure problems, heart diseases etc. Though exciting, the research will require a lot more work for the findings to become useful for the masses and finally bring a product that might help to counter obesity.