Will Eating Yogurt Help You Lose Weight?

You’ve probably heard that a diet rich in low-fat dairy, including low-fat yogurt, may help you trim the inches from your waistline. Now, new research from scientists at Washington University might offer more reason to jump on the yogurt bandwagon. According to a study just published in the journal “Science Translational Medicine”, there could be a link between the type of bacteria in your stomach and the amount of fat you carry around your middle.

When scientists from Washington University’s School of Medicine took stomach bugs from mice eating fatty foods and injected them into the stomachs of lean mice on plant-based diets, they discovered that, despite their healthier diets, the lean mice started packing on the pounds, too. “Switching from the low-fat, plant polysaccharide-rich diet to a high-fat, high-sugar ‘Western’ diet shifted the microbiota within a single day,” explains the study’s lead investigator, Jeffrey Gordon, M.D. in the abstract.