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Usage of Plant Food Supplements (PFS) for weight control in six European countries: results from the PlantLIBRA PFS Consumer Survey 2011-2012

BACKGROUND: Obesity is increasing worldwide and weight-control strategies, including the consumption of plant food supplements (PFS), are proliferating. This article identifies the herbal ingredients in PFS consumed for weight control and by overweight/obese dieters in six European countries, and ex...

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Autores principales: Garcia-Alvarez, Alicia, Mila-Villarroel, Raimon, Ribas-Barba, Lourdes, Egan, Bernadette, Badea, Mihaela, Maggi, Franco M., Salmenhaara, Maija, Restani, Patrizia, Serra-Majem, Lluis
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4964311/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27465483
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12906-016-1227-5
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author Garcia-Alvarez, Alicia
Mila-Villarroel, Raimon
Ribas-Barba, Lourdes
Egan, Bernadette
Badea, Mihaela
Maggi, Franco M.
Salmenhaara, Maija
Restani, Patrizia
Serra-Majem, Lluis
author_facet Garcia-Alvarez, Alicia
Mila-Villarroel, Raimon
Ribas-Barba, Lourdes
Egan, Bernadette
Badea, Mihaela
Maggi, Franco M.
Salmenhaara, Maija
Restani, Patrizia
Serra-Majem, Lluis
author_sort Garcia-Alvarez, Alicia
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Obesity is increasing worldwide and weight-control strategies, including the consumption of plant food supplements (PFS), are proliferating. This article identifies the herbal ingredients in PFS consumed for weight control and by overweight/obese dieters in six European countries, and explores the relationship between their consumption and their self-reported BMI. METHODS: Data used were a subset from the PlantLIBRA PFS Consumer Survey 2011-2012, a retrospective survey of 2359 PFS consumers. The survey used a bespoke frequency-of-PFS-usage questionnaire. Analyses were performed in two consumer subsamples of 1) respondents taking the products for “body weight reasons”, and 2) “dieters for overweight/obesity”, to identify the herbal ingredients consumed for these reasons. The relationship between the 5 most consumed herbal ingredients and self-reported BMI in groups 1 and 2 is explored by comparing BMI proportions of consumers vs. non-consumers (using Chi-squared test). RESULTS: 252 PFS (8.8 %) were consumed for “body weight reasons” (by 240 PFS consumers); 112 PFS consumers (4.8 %) were “dieting for overweight/obesity”. Spain is the country where consuming herbal ingredients for body weight control and dieting were most popular. Artichoke was the most consumed herbal ingredient. Considering only the 5 top products consumed by those who responded “body weight”, when using the total survey sample, a greater proportion of BMI ≥ 25 was observed among consumers of PFS containing artichoke and green tea as compared to non-consumers (58.4 % vs. 49.1 % and 63.2 % vs. 49.7 % respectively). Considering only the 5 top products consumed by “dieters” and using only the “dieters” sample, a lower proportion of BMI ≥ 25 was observed among pineapple-containing PFS consumers (38.5 % vs. 81.5 %); however, when using the entire survey sample, a greater proportion of BMI ≥ 25 was observed among artichoke-containing PFS consumers (58.4 % vs. 49.1 %). CONCLUSIONS: A comparison of results among the scarce publications evaluating the use of weight-loss supplements at the population level is limited. Nevertheless every hint is important in finding out which are the self-treatment strategies used by overweight/obese individuals in European countries. Although limited by a small sample size, our study represents a first attempt at analysing such data in six EU countries. Our findings should encourage the conduction of further studies on this topic, long-term and large sample-sized studies, ideally conducted in the general population.
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spelling pubmed-49643112016-07-29 Usage of Plant Food Supplements (PFS) for weight control in six European countries: results from the PlantLIBRA PFS Consumer Survey 2011-2012 Garcia-Alvarez, Alicia Mila-Villarroel, Raimon Ribas-Barba, Lourdes Egan, Bernadette Badea, Mihaela Maggi, Franco M. Salmenhaara, Maija Restani, Patrizia Serra-Majem, Lluis BMC Complement Altern Med Research Article BACKGROUND: Obesity is increasing worldwide and weight-control strategies, including the consumption of plant food supplements (PFS), are proliferating. This article identifies the herbal ingredients in PFS consumed for weight control and by overweight/obese dieters in six European countries, and explores the relationship between their consumption and their self-reported BMI. METHODS: Data used were a subset from the PlantLIBRA PFS Consumer Survey 2011-2012, a retrospective survey of 2359 PFS consumers. The survey used a bespoke frequency-of-PFS-usage questionnaire. Analyses were performed in two consumer subsamples of 1) respondents taking the products for “body weight reasons”, and 2) “dieters for overweight/obesity”, to identify the herbal ingredients consumed for these reasons. The relationship between the 5 most consumed herbal ingredients and self-reported BMI in groups 1 and 2 is explored by comparing BMI proportions of consumers vs. non-consumers (using Chi-squared test). RESULTS: 252 PFS (8.8 %) were consumed for “body weight reasons” (by 240 PFS consumers); 112 PFS consumers (4.8 %) were “dieting for overweight/obesity”. Spain is the country where consuming herbal ingredients for body weight control and dieting were most popular. Artichoke was the most consumed herbal ingredient. Considering only the 5 top products consumed by those who responded “body weight”, when using the total survey sample, a greater proportion of BMI ≥ 25 was observed among consumers of PFS containing artichoke and green tea as compared to non-consumers (58.4 % vs. 49.1 % and 63.2 % vs. 49.7 % respectively). Considering only the 5 top products consumed by “dieters” and using only the “dieters” sample, a lower proportion of BMI ≥ 25 was observed among pineapple-containing PFS consumers (38.5 % vs. 81.5 %); however, when using the entire survey sample, a greater proportion of BMI ≥ 25 was observed among artichoke-containing PFS consumers (58.4 % vs. 49.1 %). CONCLUSIONS: A comparison of results among the scarce publications evaluating the use of weight-loss supplements at the population level is limited. Nevertheless every hint is important in finding out which are the self-treatment strategies used by overweight/obese individuals in European countries. Although limited by a small sample size, our study represents a first attempt at analysing such data in six EU countries. Our findings should encourage the conduction of further studies on this topic, long-term and large sample-sized studies, ideally conducted in the general population. BioMed Central 2016-07-28 /pmc/articles/PMC4964311/ /pubmed/27465483 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12906-016-1227-5 Text en © The Author(s). 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Garcia-Alvarez, Alicia
Mila-Villarroel, Raimon
Ribas-Barba, Lourdes
Egan, Bernadette
Badea, Mihaela
Maggi, Franco M.
Salmenhaara, Maija
Restani, Patrizia
Serra-Majem, Lluis
Usage of Plant Food Supplements (PFS) for weight control in six European countries: results from the PlantLIBRA PFS Consumer Survey 2011-2012
title Usage of Plant Food Supplements (PFS) for weight control in six European countries: results from the PlantLIBRA PFS Consumer Survey 2011-2012
title_full Usage of Plant Food Supplements (PFS) for weight control in six European countries: results from the PlantLIBRA PFS Consumer Survey 2011-2012
title_fullStr Usage of Plant Food Supplements (PFS) for weight control in six European countries: results from the PlantLIBRA PFS Consumer Survey 2011-2012
title_full_unstemmed Usage of Plant Food Supplements (PFS) for weight control in six European countries: results from the PlantLIBRA PFS Consumer Survey 2011-2012
title_short Usage of Plant Food Supplements (PFS) for weight control in six European countries: results from the PlantLIBRA PFS Consumer Survey 2011-2012
title_sort usage of plant food supplements (pfs) for weight control in six european countries: results from the plantlibra pfs consumer survey 2011-2012
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4964311/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27465483
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12906-016-1227-5
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