Like many seeds, chia seeds have a high nutritional benefit in the form of valuable dietary fiber and heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Claims have also been made on chia seeds that promote weight loss. Can chia seeds help you lose weight or sustain a healthier weight as you get older?
Popular diet books like The Aztec Diet suggest eating 4 to 8 tbsp (1 to 2 oz, or 30 to 60 g) of chia seeds during the day to make you less hungry and less likely to overeat. Since chia seeds absorb up to 10 times their weight in water, supporters suggest that the seeds will help fill your stomach and slow down the rate at which your body absorbs everything you ate at your most recent meal.
There's not a lot of research into the weight-loss effects of eating chia seeds, and what little is there discounts any impact at all.
For example, a 2009 study of 76 overweight or obese (but otherwise healthy) men and women, published in Nutrition Research, looked at what occurred when participants in the study consumed 25 g of whole chia seeds in water twice a day before the first and last meal of the day. After 12 weeks, participants between the ages of 20 and 70 were measured for changes in body weight, body structure, blood glucose, blood pressure, and other disease indicators.
The results? Body mass did not change with either the chia or the placebo powder participants. Despite previous studies showing that chickens fed chia seed have lower body weight, and rats fed chia have lower visceral fat (a form of belly fat lying deep within the abdomen), the only improvement in human subjects in this study was a rise in healthy omega-3 fatty alpha-linolenic acid or ALA.
There's a lot of nutrition in that little seed, no doubt about that. Chia seeds contain ALA and are rich in dietary fiber. But the nutrient cluster doesn't mean they're going to do something magically in your body.
And with such an enormous amount of soluble fiber-up to almost 19 g extra per day in our studies-it seems that even though older people lose a little weight early on, they easily respond to higher fiber loads. In the end, there appears to be a little long-term impact on the weight reduction of chia seeds.
The bottom line is that you have to consume less and burn more to lose weight at every age. Chia seeds are healthy, like many other seeds, but they won't make you eat whatever you want.
