Avocados are an increasingly popular food in the U.S. with avocado demand more than tripling since 2001. A big part of this demand stems from the many health benefits that avocados offer. As more Americans look to eat more healthily, avocados are an easy, delicious way to do that. A recent study involving researchers from Penn State gives more evidence of the health impact avocados have.
While the study looked at what eating one avocado each day would do for weight loss and fat, the study also uncovered more evidence that avocados are a healthy addition to a person’s diet.
Avocados and Cholesterol
Avocados are an excellent source of healthy fats, making them a excellent choice for anyone looking for an alternative to unhealthy fats common in the Western diet. Not only that, avocados have benefits for cholesterol. This study found that eating an avocado every day for six months did lead to a slight decrease in unhealthy cholesterol levels.
“Incorporating an avocado per day in this study did not cause weight gain and also caused a slight decrease in LDL cholesterol, which are all important findings for better health,” said Penny Kris-Etherton, Evan Pugh University Professor of Nutritional Sciences at Penn State. This research found that daily avocados resulted in total cholesterol decreasing 2.9 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) and LDL cholesterol decreasing 2.5 mg/dL.
Avocados and Weight Loss
Eating one avocado a day for six months was found to have no effect on belly fat, liver fat or waist circumference in people with overweight or obesity, according to this study. While prior, smaller studies have found a link between eating avocados and lower body weight, BMI, and waist circumferences, this was the largest, most extensive study to date on the health effects of avocados, including the large number of participants and length of the study period.
“While one avocado a day did not lead to clinically significant improvements in abdominal fat and other cardiometabolic risk factors, consuming one avocado a day did not result in body weight gain,” said Joan Sabaté, professor at Loma Linda University School of Public Health. “This is positive because eating extra calories from avocados doesn’t impact body weight or abdominal fat, and it slightly decreases total and LDL-cholesterol.”
Avocadoes and Healthy Diets
In the randomized trial, the team — including Penn State researchers — also found that participants who ate avocados had better quality diets during the study period. “While the avocados did not affect belly fat or weight gain, the study still provides evidence that avocados can be a beneficial addition to a well-balanced diet,”
Kristina Petersen, assistant professor of nutritional sciences at Texas Tech University, said the study also found that eating avocados daily improved the overall quality of the participants’ diets by eight points on a 100-point scale.
“Adherence to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans is generally poor in the U.S., and our findings suggest that eating an avocado per day can substantially increase overall diet quality,” Petersen said. “This is important because we know a higher diet quality is associated with lower risk of several diseases including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers.”
The Study
The research — published in the Journal of the American Heart Association — was conducted in conjunction with Loma Linda University, Tufts University, and UCLA, with coordinating support from Wake Forest University.
For the study, the researchers conducted a six-month experiment involving more than 1,000 participants experiencing overweight or obesity, half of whom were instructed to eat an avocado every day while the other half continued their usual diet and told to limit their avocado consumption to less than two a month. Fat in the abdomen and around other organs was measured precisely using MRI before and at the end of the study.
The researchers said that in the future, they will continue to analyze data from the study. For example, participants were not instructed on how to eat their avocados each day, and future research could investigate how participants incorporated the avocados into their diet and whether any differences in the results are observed based on how participants ate the avocado.
The Hass Avocado Board funded this research.
Adapted from a press release by Penn State.
