Pectin is a soluble fiber that is naturally found in many fruits. It is most richly found in apples, strawberries, grapes, grapefruits, lemons, oranges, and tangerines, among others. Recently, it’s been receiving good press for its weight reduction benefits, which are caused by its ability to make you feel full and to keep blood sugar and insulin levels steady. To top it off, pectin also has low fat and calorie content.
Ironically despite the general wisdom that eating fresh fruit is best, pectin is easier to digest when apple are cooked, giving that nice almost jelly like texture to the apple sauce. The pectin comes out of the fruit cells when cooked making it more bio available in this state. Therefore it is good to mix cooked and uncooked fruit in the diet.
To understand how pectin helps bring about weight loss, you first need to understand what makes people fat. The first culprit is excessive eating, or eating more than your body can burn. Pectin, however, can create the feeling of fullness and can therefore slow down and decrease your food consumption. This gives your body enough time to burn all the calories that need to be burned before new calories come in.
Pectin can also regulate your insulin levels. Since higher insulin levels lead to increased body fat, pectin helps keep fat controlled by keeping your insulin levels in check.
However, studies also showed that the effectiveness of pectin decreases if it is consumed together with a lot of high-fat foods, which goes for many nutrients. High fat should be avoided anyway when trying to lose weight.
Pectin is most richly found in natural fruits, but most of it is removed when fruits are processed into juices, the pulp left behind is high in pectin and is often used to extract pectin powder that is then used as a vegetarian alternative to gelatin. Also, to get as much pectin for your body to enjoy its weight loss benefits, you’ll need to eat plenty of pectin-rich fruits every day, such as apples, pears and cooked fruits.
But with most diets it’s hard to stick to eating fruit all the time, people have busy lives and don’t always have the time to go out buy and prepare fruit, let alone boil it up.
Thus, to help you get more pectin without getting tired of eating fruits, you can also take weight loss supplements that contain pectin. Pectin weight loss supplements are now widely available.
