Nutritious frozen foods may be worthwhile way to control portion sizes during diets

• Research dietitians Sandra M. Hannum and LeaAnn Carson, who work in the laboratory of food science and human nutrition professor John W. Erdman, studied how two diet regimens resulted in weight loss in overweight and obese men.
• Subjects following the first of the diets ate a self-selected regimen based on the Food Guide Pyramid, a nutrition plan established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1992.
• Subjects following the second diet ate two packaged entrees each day plus recommended servings from the food pyramid.
• Both diets contained about 1,700 daily calories with equal amounts of carbohydrates, protein and fat.
• Masterfoods provided the meals for the subjects and funded the study.
• Subjects weighed about 97 kilograms (214 pounds) with a body mass index (BMI) ranging from 26 to 42 kilogram per meter squared, which qualified them as overweight to obese.
• Over the course of the eight-week diet, all subjects reduced their daily caloric intake to about 1,700 calories and lost weight.
• Subjects who followed the frozen-entree diet lost more weight (7.4 kg or 16.3 pounds) compared with the subjects who made their own meals following the food pyramid (5.1 kg or 11.2 pounds).
• These findings replicate the researchers' findings in overweight and obese women, which were published in the March 2004 issue of the journal Obesity Research.
• Hannum and Carson and their colleagues attribute the greater weight loss among the frozen-entree eaters to the automatic portion control built into that diet, whereas subjects following the pyramid diet had to make their own meals.
• "The pyramid group had to figure out what to eat, and estimate how much they actually consumed," Hannum said.
• After the Illinois studies had finished, the USDA announced a new food pyramid, which allows people to customize their diets according to their age, gender and daily levels of physical activity.