Chris Ryan for Getty Images
Chris Ryan for Getty Images

If you’ve been eating your fruits and vegetables as recommended but you’re still having trouble with the bathroom scale, a new study published by PLOS Medicine sheds light on what’s going on. Researchers following more than 133,000 men and women in the U.S. over two decades found that eating starchy vegetables like corn, peas and potatoes was actually associated with weight gain. It was the vegetables with the highest fiber content—broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts, to name three—that aided people in a weight loss plan even more so than lower-fiber vegetables like carrots and cabbage. Leafy greens like kale and spinach also carried high weight loss perks, as did soy/tofu. 

 

Eating fruit, however, tended to be more generally beneficial than eating vegetables. Fruits demonstrating the strongest association with weight loss were berries, apples and pears.

 

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