Nutrition & DietProbiotics Add Little to Weight Loss During Calorie Restriction
Adding probiotics to a reduced calorie diet appears to offer little extra help with weight loss. Researchers reviewed 19 randomized trials involving 1,343 adults with overweight or obesity; 16 trials contributed to the combined analysis. Over three to twenty weeks, probiotics did not significantly improve body weight, waist size, body fat percentage, or the amount of nonfat tissue compared with calorie restriction alone or with placebo. Participants taking probiotics lost an additional 0.34 kilograms of fat on average, but the practical importance of that small difference is uncertain. These findings do not support buying probiotics specifically to boost weight loss during dieting. They also do not rule out benefits for other conditions or particular products. This summary is based only on the abstract, which does not provide detailed evidence certainty ratings.
