Diet replacement to lose weight is likely to lose health.

　　Photo courtesy of vision china

　　"A bottle contains 30 kinds of nutrients and can be full for 5 hours; Effective weight loss does not rebound; 6 flavors are changed for drinking. " Recently, an anchor sold a meal replacement milkshake called Smeal-NOTO series in the live broadcast room of the e-commerce platform. According to the seller, this meal replacement milkshake is a "body management tool that is popular all over the world". A bottle can provide 200g of protein for oysters, 1,000g of dietary fiber for vegetables, and 20 kinds of vitamins and minerals. The product introduction page also says: a bottle saves you an hour of exercise. On the e-commerce platform, this milkshake sells 39,000 bottles a month.

　　At present, meal replacement has become the new favorite of weight loss circle. meal replacement powder, meal replacement milkshake, meal replacement porridge and other products featuring "low calorie and strong satiety" emerge one after another. Then, can meal replacement products that make dieters rush to lose weight?

　　Eating meal replacement is equivalent to dieting in disguise.

　　"Weight loss with meal replacement is mainly achieved by reducing calorie and nutritional requirements. Improper use will affect health." Zhang Tian, a nutritionist in the Clinical Nutrition Department of Aviation General Hospital of China Medical University, told the Science and Technology Daily reporter that the meal replacement advertised in the market cannot completely replace normal meals. In order to maintain the basic metabolism and normal activities of the human body, a healthy adult woman needs about 1500— 1800 calories, men need 1800— 2,200 calories, safe weight loss is recommended to be reduced by 500— 600 calories, and to ensure that the nutrient ratio is reasonable. "But most meal replacement products do not meet the calorie and nutritional requirements for safe weight loss." Zhang Tian said.

　　Take the Smeal-NOTO series of meal replacement milkshakes in online celebrity as an example. The calorie of a bottle (75g) of meal replacement milkshakes with Ceylon milk tea flavor is 275 calories. The seller said, "One bottle can replace one meal, and three meals a day can be replaced. It is recommended to replace two meals a day, lunch and dinner. It is suggested that you should eat less oil and maintain 6-mdash when you eat a normal diet without meal replacement; 7 points full. "

　　According to the seller’s suggestion, drinking two bottles a day can only consume 550 calories. "This calorie is still very low. Even special obese people need to lose weight in such a low-calorie way under the guidance of a doctor. Eating meal replacement is equivalent to dieting in disguise, and the purpose of losing weight is achieved by increasing the difference between the required calories and the actual calorie intake. " Zhang Tian said that the extremely low-calorie weight loss method is not scientific and difficult to last for a long time. Once it stops, it is easy to cause weight rebound.

　　Long-term consumption is easy to cause malnutrition.

　　The nutrients needed by the human body need to meet a certain proportion. According to the recommendation of China Nutrition Society, lipids should account for 20% of the essential nutrients for human body & mdash; 30%； Protein accounts for 10%— 20%； Carbohydrate accounts for 50%— 65%。

　　As a mixture of various foods, can meal replacement be scientifically matched? The forms of meal replacement food include solid, semi-solid, liquid, etc., usually a mixture of various foods. "Meal replacement foods are often dominated by carbohydrates such as whole grains." Zhang Tian said that long-term consumption of meal replacement can easily lead to unbalanced nutrition and malnutrition.

　　Smeal-NOTO series meal replacement milkshakes claim that each bottle can provide 200 grams of protein (about 22 grams of protein) of raw oysters. However, the ingredient list shows that a 100g meal replacement milkshake only contains 8.6g of protein, so a bottle (75g) can only provide 6.45g of protein. "The protein that a normal human body needs every day is multiplied by 0.8&mdash per kilogram of body weight; 1.2。 For example, 50 kilograms of body weight, the daily protein content is 40-mdash; Between 60 grams. The protein content of this meal replacement is not as high as that of a pack of ordinary pure milk or an egg. No matter how many meals are replaced, the protein quality of each meal cannot meet the needs of the human body. " Zhang Tian said that consumers without nutrition knowledge background are easily confused by publicity.

　　"However, it should be noted that you can’t simply evaluate the quality of a food. For the human body, it is necessary to see whether the food structure can meet the needs of the human body as a whole. " Zhang Tian emphasized that it is ok to use meal replacement with other foods in the diet as long as the nutrition is balanced.

　　Dietary fiber makes people feel full.

　　In addition to low calories, satiety is another label that meal replacement is proud of.

　　Feeling full, in popular terms, means that although I haven’t eaten much, I still feel full. "Meal replacement is mainly based on coarse grains, konjac and other foods with more starch, which is characterized by high dietary fiber content. If you eat too much dietary fiber and you are not easy to get hungry, you can control your desire to eat. " Zhang Tian told the Science and Technology Daily reporter that the satiety of meal replacement is that dietary fiber is at work.

　　Professor Ai Hua, from the Nutrition Research Office of the Institute of Sports Medicine of the Third Hospital of Beijing Medical University, explained that dietary fiber in meal replacement has the function of water absorption and swelling, and it also has satiety effect without being absorbed and utilized by the human body. When dietary fiber is discharged through the intestine, it can also adhere to some fatty things, thus reducing energy intake.

　　Take konjac as an example, its rich glucomannan is very absorbent, so a few solids can form a lot of konjac gum, giving people a strong sense of fullness.

　　However, the dietary fiber provided by meal replacement may not be enough to produce satiety. Take the above-mentioned online celebrity meal replacement milkshake as an example. According to the taste composition table of Ceylon milk tea exposed by netizens, the content of dietary fiber in every 100g of goods is 1.8g, while that in 100g of vegetables generally contains about 3.5g.. Therefore, this bottle of meal replacement milkshake (75g) can’t provide the dietary fiber content of 1,000g vegetables as advertised.

　　In addition, in daily life, there are many coarse grains that can provide dietary fiber, such as corn, sweet potato, oats, brown rice and so on. In contrast, meal replacement food is likely to lose anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, anti-oxidation and anti-aging substances contained in natural food during production and processing.

　　Zhang Tian also warned that excessive consumption of dietary fiber will affect the digestion and absorption of other foods, leading to unbalanced nutrition and affecting health. "We usually recommend that you eat coarse grains rich in dietary fiber, which should not exceed half of the normal diet. However, the dietary fiber in meal replacement food definitely exceeds this ratio, which is not conducive to the body’s absorption of other nutrients. "

　　For people with metabolic disorders, improper use of meal replacement food may cause health risks. In 2018, in order to lose weight, a citizen of Loudi City, Hunan Province ate only one meal replacement biscuit and some vegetables and fruits for two months, which eventually led to cardiac arrest due to malnutrition.

　　Earlier, the British "Daily Telegraph" published a study by Oxford University. The researchers found that meal replacement can indeed reduce people’s body fat, visceral fat and liver fat, but the myocardial fat has increased. This means that long-term intake of meal replacement has an impact on heart function. Researchers warn that for people with heart disease, dieting may worsen the condition and aggravate heart failure symptoms such as shortness of breath or arrhythmia.

　　Extended reading

　　Past lives of meal replacement.

　　In fact, the birth of meal replacement food has nothing to do with losing weight.

　　The original product of meal replacement series is beverage meal replacement, and its concept can be traced back to the research results of some early physiologists. In the 1940s, some researchers first identified the main nutrients needed for human survival during the period of strict food restriction. In the late 1950s, space flight required the development of highly compact liquid dietary substitutes, and an aqueous mixture was born.

　　At present, beverage meal replacement has occupied an important position in the meal replacement family and has become one of the tools to manage overweight and obesity.

　　On January 1st, 2020, the group standard "Meal Substitute Food" issued by China Nutrition Society was officially implemented. The standard pointed out that meal substitute food is a kind of energy-controlling food specially prepared to meet the nutritional needs of one or two meals for adults during weight control.

　　Zhang Tian said that under the guidance of doctors and professionals, obese and overeating people can choose some meal substitutes with comprehensive nutrition and strong satiety to replace some meals in the overall diet, which can help them lose weight. "But it is not recommended to follow the trend or blindly adopt a very low-calorie and unbalanced weight loss method. Such a low-calorie weight will definitely come down, but then the weight will definitely rebound. If you want to lose weight healthily and not rebound, you must respect science and rebuild a healthy lifestyle. If you are a healthy person with normal weight, you can eat well, and you don’t need to use meal replacement food to manage your weight. "

　　"A bottle of meal replacement milkshake with about 300 calories can be completely replaced by 50 grams of meat +250 grams of vegetables +2 corns /2 slices of bread /50 grams of cereal +5 grams of oil." Zhang Tian said, "People who have no time to cook and eat meal replacement can learn some Aauto Quicker meals. At least the milk, cereal and eggs in breakfast must be guaranteed. "

　　With the gradual expansion of the market scale of meal replacement food, the chaos in the industry is gradually breeding. Some exaggerate publicity to cater to consumers’ psychology of losing weight, some are produced in small workshops but pretend to be big brands, and some even have no products. In addition, the national health literacy is not high enough, which leads many people to fall into the trap of meal replacement.

　　Zhang Tian said that the dietary pattern can be balanced according to the Dietary Guidelines for China Residents, so as to achieve a balanced diet. "In fact, on the basis of a healthy diet, eat a few mouthfuls less every meal and reduce the time of sitting, and the weight will gradually decrease. Losing weight also requires patience. "