12 April 2010

2 minute read

North America

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The University of Manitoba's Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals and the Australian Nutritional Physiology Research Centre at the University of South Australia, are conducting human nutritional trials to determine whether consuming whey proteins can improve body weight, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and metabolic rate.

Richardson Centre research and development manager Dr. Curtis Rempel says doctors have been telling people who are overweight to cut out dairy but the medical nutrition community is thinking dairy should be included.

Dr Curtis Rempel-University of Manitoba said: "Dairy has two types of protein casein and whey, or if you think of little Miss Muffett sat on her tuffet, the curds is the casein or the cheese proteins and the whey is left over after you've finished making the cheese so you have another set of proteins that are left over after cheese manufacture.

"Those are the proteins that we're looking at and those whey proteins have been in implicated in weight loss.

"Basically they help regulate or up-tick your body's thermostat so that you actually burn fat while conserving lean muscle mass.

"That's the hypothesis we're testing.

"Then the other piece that we're testing in a round about way is the diabetes or other maladies that are associated with this metabolic syndrome can be inflammatory to your body.

"Some of the things that we're doing then in terms of the blood that we're collecting and those sorts of things is we're looking at some of the inflammatory markers and seeing if the whey's proteins can't also be anti-inflammatory and help you manage diabetes. "

Dr Rempel went on to say that of dairy that should be included in the diet are up for debate and hopefully this study will answer that.

For information on participating in the trial visit www.rcffn.com or www.rcffn.ca.

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