While it has been known that eating avocados is good for you, there has now been a new study detailing how they can improve unhealthy cholesterol levels. This has been the most extensive and largest study to date on the overall effects of health by consuming avocados including the length of the study period and the large number of participants.
The research team conducted an experiment lasting 6 months which involved more than 1,000 participants who were obese or overweight. Half were asked to consume one avocado each day and the rest continued their typical diet and were told to not eat over 2 avocados per month. At the beginning and the end of the study, fat around the organs and around the abdomen were precisely measured using an MRI.
Although the avocados did not affect weight gain or belly fat, the study does provide evidence that avocadoes can be beneficial to diet quality. This is important due to the fact that it is known that a higher quality of diet is linked with a lower risk of a variety of diseases including type 2 diabetes, heart disease and some cancers.
Eating one avocado per day did not point to scientifically substantial improvements in abdominal fat and other cardiometabolic risk factors or an increase in weight gain, belly fat or waist circumference. This is significant because the calories from eating avocados were shown to not affect abdominal fat or body weight. In addition, total cholesterol decreased 2.9 mg/dl and LDL cholesterol decreased by 2.5 mg/dl.
The study determined that consuming an avocado every day did improve the quality of the participants diets by 8 points on a scale of 100 points.
The team has stated that in the future they plan on continuing analyzing data from the research. As an example, participants were not asked how to eat their avocado every day. A later study might investigate how participants incorporated their avocados into their diet and whether or not it would have any influence on their overall health benefits
To view the original scientific study click below:
Effect of Incorporating 1 Avocado Per Day Versus Habitual Diet on Visceral Adiposity: A Randomized Trial
