Does Eating Oranges Burn More Fat? 🍊

August 23, 2021

Oranges For Fat Loss, Chewing Gum While Walking and Eating Bugs to Build Muscles

Oranges… do they really improve fat loss? Why do you need to chew gum while walking… And eating bugs to build muscles? These are some crazy things that have been coming up and research papers on these have been going up too!

Oranges for fat loss

There is a study that has been done that found 2S-H which is found in oranges. In this study, 2S-H has shown to decrease body fat and increase lean mass in amateur cyclists. Basically, the summary of this whole thing said that it reported an increase in muscle mass in the group that had this (2S-H).

Although, the increase wasn’t found in the DEXA analysis. A DEXA scan is a tool that scans your whole body for body fat. The increase in muscle mass was only found in the caliper analysis (If you’ve ever done body fat measures, calipers are tools that pinches your skin and goes through calculations to figure out what your body fat is).

DEXA scans and calipers give you completely different body fat measurements. There’s als that bioelectrical impedance, which is a scale you step on. They all give you very different results. I’ve done a DEXA scan before.

A DEXA scan can detect changes that a caliper can’t. It’s like an X-ray machine as opposed to calipers which greatly depend on who’s doing it. If different people or trainers are doing it, there’s a lot of room for error. There’s so much risk in getting the information wrong. So it’s not always the best technique. I like bioelectrical impedance better than calipers.

If I didn’t look into the study and didn’t read through the science on how they did it, I would’ve thought that 2S-H caused a 15% decrease in body fat while maintaining muscle over an 8-week period without any changes in diet or training. That’s pretty much what the study said– that the 2S-H ingredient would be equivalent to the most powerful, illegal performance enhancing drugs out there.

This trial or paper was funded by HealthTech Bioactives. You’ll probably see some stuff on 2S-H supplements. HealthTech Biocatives is a company in Spain that provides this 2S-H supplement. It’s important to read health studies like these. They’ll make these studies and cite their work. But the problem is HOW they performed it.

They used skinfold calipers over DEXA scans. Their claims are crazy! This means that you lose 15% in body fat without losing muscle mass or anything. That’s pretty wild. This is why I bring up the study because you have to be able to read through the science.

The summary of this is that oranges aren’t cut out for fat loss. They are packed with nutrients like vitamin C but they’re not that magical thing that’s going to help you lose weight. I wanted to debunk that.

Chewing Gum While Walking

A study showed that gum chewing increases energy expenditure during a walk. Researchers have noted that when you chew gum, you increase your heart rate which increases your energy expenditure while you’re walking.

They did a study where they compared the effects of chewing gum during a 15-minute walk to those who just took a tablet with similar ingredients and energy content before the walk. There was a statistically significant difference in walking speed, step count, heart rate, energy expenditure during walking. All these factors were high with the people that were chewing gum.

It was about 5.1% higher than the tablet group. Although these results were very compelling, it’s worth noting that the difference in energy expenditure for the tablet was about three calories and the gum contained about six calories per serving. Essentially, even though you’re spending three calories more, you’re eating six calories more.

It would be useful to know how walking while chewing gum compares to walking without. The idea is when you’re chewing gum, you’re walking more briskly. That’s how they like to see the results.

To debunk this study… Chewing gum helps you lose weight faster– very insignificant differences.

Here’s my joke for you guys… What did the pack of gum say to the train?

‘Chew Chew!’

Eating Bugs To Build Muscles

Can eating insects help you build muscle? This study took animal protein and compared it to a mealworm based supplement. The mealworm supplement contains 46 grams of protein, 6 grams of carbs and 46% of the calories are from protein, carbs and fat. You can see the differences there.

Basically, they found that it was very similar in terms of how much protein that you get from either sources. Although, the studies show that it even though you’re eating way less from the mealworm supplement, it suggests that it may have similar antibiotic properties to whey proteins, like a milk-based supplement.

However, the mealworm supplement is way higher in calories (higher in fat for milk-based). This may be a problem for people who are trying to consume enough protein while limiting calorie intake.

Whey protein is by far one of the best protein sources because it’s so limited in terms of other calories. Most of them are 20-25 grams of protein, 2 grams of carbs. You’re keeping all the other macros down while hitting your protein which is the most important macronutrient for fat loss. Although the mealworm supplement which has bugs in it gives you protein… It has more calories. They also found that the mealworm has four more grams of protein than the milk one.

Even though it’s a good suitable way to get in extra proteins, eating bugs can help you with that, but they are higher in calories than a milk supplement.