How Not to Diet

by Michael Greger

A study in Israel, for example, found that vegetarians weighed about twenty pounds less than nonvegetarians, yet they appeared to be eating about four hundred more calories every day.2486 As we saw in the High in Fiber-Rich Foods section, it’s not what you eat but what you absorb, and the Israeli vegetarians were eating extraordinarily healthy diets, averaging nearly seventy grams of fiber a day. This could help explain why those eating more whole plant foods seem to lose more weight even at the same estimated caloric intake.2487 Interestingly, a similar paradox arose in rural China at even half the fiber intake.2488 Before the Westernization of their diets, the rural Chinese got about 90 percent of their protein from plants. Even the least active “office workers” ate 30 percent more calories than Americans, yet were 25 percent leaner.2489 Of course, they may have been biking to the office or something, but the calories still didn’t seem to add up. It turns out that those eating more plant-based may effectively be burning more calories in their sleep.