Drink green tea, trim your waist.

I’m sure you’ve heard it before, that green tea contributes to weight loss. This month’s Fitness Journal features a study done at Penn State where mice were fed a high-glycemic meal along with an antioxidant extract from green tea (since, of course, mice can’t drink tea). These researchers found that the spike in blood sugar after the high-glycemic meal was only half as high as what was observed in the mice who were not given the green tea. This means that green tea, “should, in essence, lower glycemic index of starchy foods.” (Source: Fitness Journal).

The science

The Glycemic Index is a ranking of carbohydrates from 0-100 according to how much they spike your blood sugar after you eat them. Your blood sugar levels are important for several reasons. A fluctuating blood sugar level (brought on by eating high glycemic foods) will cause you to be hungrier more often. No thanks.

Foods with a high glycemic index (GI) also disrupt your body’s ability to burn fat. Specifically, they spike your body’s insulin level, which causes you to store more calories as fat. Eating lower glycemic foods–or drinking green tea, which essentially lowers a food’s GI–keeps your insulin levels more stabilized and allows your body to burn more fat, and store less fat.

The bottom line

1. Low-GI foods are better for you than high-GI foods. (Low GI is defined as 55 or lower. For a searchable Glycemic Index database, click here.)

2. Drinking green tea with meals to keep your body’s fat burning mechanisms working.

Still want to know more about Glycemic Index? Click here.