The Mushroom Bureau kicked off the New Year with a real-life diet trial in a bid to tap into the traditional healthy eating drive.
Ten people were recruited to follow a five-week healthy eating plan, which included replacing meat with mushrooms in four otherwise identical meals a week.
The volunteers lost an average of 12.71 pounds, with the top dieter shedding a stone and a half. In total the 10 volunteers lost 127 pounds (just over nine stone) .
The diet trial was commissioned following research from America which involved 54 people swapping meat for mushrooms over an eight-day trial. This research suggested that under 10 mushroom meal swaps would cut one pound in body weight.
Mustard Communications managing director, Wendy Akers, said: “We brought on board leading nutritionist Sarah Schenker to develop the diet and held weekly weigh-ins to keep the volunteers motivated.
“We also offered a hair, beauty and clothes make over as a prize for the top three volunteers. But the biggest incentive of all was for the dieters to look and feel better.”
Nutritionists think this could be a new way to tackle Britain’s obesity problem. Currently one in four men and women are now classed as obese and there have seen warnings that the NHS faces a health time-bomb with a fifth of children overweight by the time they start primary school.
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