Could Cinnamon Be the Secret to Weight Loss?
‘Tis the season for looking for the best way to avoid holiday weight gain, and there’s one flavor you’ll find this season that could help balance that overindulgence. If you’re a fan of cinnamon, a new study has good news for your waistline.
A recent study found that when rats paired high-fat foods with cinnamon, they weighed less and had less belly fat than the rodents that didn’t take cinnamon supplements. Other studiessuggest cinnamaldehyde, the essential oil that gives cinnamon its flavor, helps mice eat less and ward off weight gain, but researchers weren’t sure if it would hold true for humans—until now.
University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute researchers treated human fat cell samples with cinnamaldehyde, and their findings in the journal Metabolism have some promising findings.
Excerpted from Reader’s Digest
