Minestrone diet

What is it

The minestrone diet is advertised as a low-calorie diet that helps you lose weight quickly without having to deal with hunger attacks.

To make it possible would be the ingredient from which it takes its name, the minestrone, to be prepared with vegetables or vegetables. The most popular recipe includes among its ingredients garlic, onion, green peppers, tomatoes, carrots, mushrooms, parsley and cabbage.

In the face of a limited caloric intake (estimated at 45 Kcal per 100 grams), a soup of this type would exert a satiating effect such as to allow you to achieve an ambitious goal: lose even 5 kg in just one week and, at the same time, detoxify the body.

How does that work

The minestrone diet includes a weekly food program in which the minestrone is always present for both lunch and dinner.

Fried, sweets, flour, alcohol, coffee and other stimulant drinks are banned, while bananas and grapes should only be excluded in the first few days.

For the rest, vegetables can be brought to the table (especially spinach, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes or beetroot) and even some food of animal origin. Fruits (especially watermelon, strawberries and cherries) and infusions can be used to dampen hunger, respectively, on the first and third day of the slimming week.

The menu includes a breakfast and snack of tea, vegetable centrifuges, fruit or juices without added sugar or skim or soy milk.

At lunch and dinner it is expected to consume minestrone alone or combined with raw or steamed vegetables, baked potatoes, fruit, lean meat (in the case of poultry, strictly without skin), fish, brown rice or mixed salad, strongly limiting the dressings.

The pros

The minestrone diet can help you lose weight by basing meals on an energy-poor but highly satiating food, thereby reducing calorie intake.

Moreover, soups seem to be more satiating than solid foods also because they are liquid. Scientific studies have shown that starting a meal with a soup reduces hunger, increases the feeling of fullness and can reduce the amount of food consumed and calories consumed during that meal.

In fact, the fibers they are rich in help you feel satiated by increasing the distension of the stomach walls, slowing gastric emptying and influencing the production of hormones that control satiety.

From this point of view, both vegetable soups and soups with chopped vegetables are effective.

The cons

The diet of minestrone is unbalanced from a nutritional point of view. To lose weight without exposing the body to the risk of dangerous deficiencies, it is advisable that the calories taken with food come from appropriate sources. In particular, every day you should take energy coming for 45-60% from carbohydrates, for 20-35% from lipids and for the remaining part from proteins for a total of about 0.9 g per kg of body weight.

The minestrone diet does not fully respect these proportions: it is poor in both complex carbohydrates and proteins. In addition, the recipes for the preparation of the soup may be too rich in sodium.

Finally, the risk of flatulence, feeling of weakness and recovering lost pounds in a short time should not be underestimated.

For all these reasons it is better to rely on the advice of a nutritionist to take advantage of the benefits of consuming soups within a healthy and balanced diet that helps you lose weight and not recover it.