Can You Slim Down on Peanut Butter Diet?

N E W  Y O R K, Sept. 6 -- Packed with 190 calories and 16 grams of fat per serving, peanut butter hardly sounds like the stuff that diets are made of. But two recent studies suggest people can actually lose weight by centering their meals around this popular spread.

The reason? It tastes good.

"Overweight people thought peanut butter was taboo," says , says Holly McCord, nutrition editor of Prevention magazine. "But studies now say that you don't just lose weight on the diet, but you stick with the diet better, because peanut butter is tastier and more satisfying, compared to other low-fat, high-carb diets."

McCord's new book, The Peanut Butter Diet, was prompted by two recent studies, one from Harvard University, the other from Penn State. Researchers found that a diet that includes foods with high levels of monounsaturated fats like peanut butter can help people lose weight and prevent heart disease.

Like other weight-loss programs, a peanut butter diet should be done in conjunction with exercise. And dieters are warned to avoid over-indulging — eat too much and you can gain weight.

Taste Comes First

When Prevention magazine ran an article on the peanut butter diet in March, it was the best-selling issue of the year, so the magazine decided to create a book of peanut butter recipes. They range from peanut butter oatmeal, to entrees such as Tahitian chicken with peanut butter mango sauce and curried peanut butter soup.

"The studies have concluded that taste comes first, so you have to like what you're eating, "McCord says. In studies, people in the low-fat group were jealous of those assigned to the peanut butter diet.

The Harvard study, done jointly with Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, looked at 101 people who weighed about 200 pounds each, and divided them into two groups. One group was put on a traditional low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet; the other got richer fare — the so-called peanut butter diet — that allowed them to to get 35 percent of their calories from fat, 50 percent from carbohydrates and 15 percent from protein.