DASH Diet Guidelines: Study Shows New Diet Benefits For Teen Girls

The DASH diet was never intended for teen girls, but that doesn't mean it's ineffective.

Originally created to treat adults with high blood pressure, the Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet is showing new promise in reducing weight gain in teenage girls. According to USA Today, girls whose diet most resembled DASH showed the smallest increase in body mass index (BMI) over 10 years in a new study.

They also recorded the lowest BMIs during the study's follow-up period.

The diet plan itself essentially cuts out red meat and many forms of carbohydrates, focusing on fruits, vegetables, lean meat and whole grains. According to DashDiet.org, the main focus of the plan is to reduce salt intake, which helps to reduce blood-pressure in older dieters.

The study followed 2,379 girls between the ages of 9 and 10, and tracked them for 10 years, according to the LA Times. While the participants were socioeconomically and geographically mixed, over half the girls in the study were black.

The study was especially important, the LA Times reported, because those who showed the best results, didn't even fulfill all of the DASH requirements. Even those in the 95th percentile had a higher than recommended sugar intake and did not necessarily eat the recommended number of servings of fruit per day, were they actually following the diet.

You can learn more about the diet plan here, at DashDiet.org.

Comments

[bracken]

10:53 AM on 06/13/2011

Teenagers aren't as insulin-resistant as older people, so it's not surprising that TEENAGERS might benefit from a diet that is higher in carbs, especially if they come in the bound-up form of fruits and vegetables. That doesn't translate to the DASH diet being useful for older people, which I suspect is the angle they're trying to push.

[HerrMonk]

11:45 AM on 06/11/2011

Another ignorant 80s-style diet... awesome...

[KIVPossum]

04:12 PM on 06/08/2011

Who would have guessed - eat a healthy diet and you are healthy

[Andrew Martinson]

03:51 PM on 06/08/2011

Yes, eating healthy causes you to lose weight.

[BuckyJamesDio]

03:39 PM on 06/08/2011

I'm thinking the name of this could be changed to Dietary Understanding of Health, or ... well, you know.

[Rwin Hopkins]

03:31 PM on 06/08/2011

no crap

[Djabout Mauren]

02:29 PM on 06/08/2011

It is no wonder that most Americans have such a skewed view of what it means to eat healthy. It's all about economic incentive. Crappy food is cheap, addictive, and has a HUGE marketing machine behind it. Plant based whole foods. It's not rocket science. It's not counting calories or some micromanaging of portion control. It's simply eating REAL food which we used to eat 200 years ago. Do we really need 800 studies to get the FDA or USDA to pay attention? Of course their wil be resistance because there is a very wealthy infrastructure that of food manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies that will do anything to prevent the disruption of their gravy train.

[SofaKing22]

02:07 PM on 06/08/2011

I wonder how much money was spent on a study to confirm that eating healthier benefits teen girls.

[OB-GYN]

12:57 PM on 06/08/2011

This is a good post, Huffpo. My teen started using excess salt in the dining room at college, and low and behold, her blood pressure went up as did her weight. By drastically cutting back, both have normalized.

Here is an additional study link and comment:

Study Shows New Link Between Salt Sensitivity and Risk of Death

"Weinberger noted that some Americans are more likely than others to be salt sensitive. These include older persons, African Americans, and those with a family member who is salt sensitive or who have a parent, sibling, or child with hypertension. Based on the researchers’ earlier studies, he estimates that about 26 percent of Americans with normal blood pressure and about 58 percent of those with hypertension are salt sensitive.

Salt sensitivity is a measure of how blood pressure responds to a decrease in salt intake. Besides hypertension, salt sensitivity increases the risk of developing such conditions as left ventricular hypertrophy, in which the heart’s main pumping chamber is enlarged and does not function properly, and the likelihood of kidney problems."

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/new/press/01-02-15.htm

[catalyst1219]

12:41 PM on 06/08/2011

That you can lose weight and be more healthy by eating more fruits and vegetables while cutting out red meat and carbs is news? Isn't that the original "diet" plan?

[HerrMonk]

11:47 AM on 06/11/2011

It is news... because it's wrong.

It's not news in that it's the same junk that's been pushed on us for the last few decades.

The only thing 'new' here is the recommendation to limit carbs at all.

[BannedFromCommenting]

12:24 PM on 06/08/2011

Uh, DUH! This is some NEW concept??? LOLOL

[OldJazzyGirl]

12:22 PM on 06/08/2011

I don't think I am overstating to say millions of Americans think cooking means opening a box or package and microwaving. If you don't know how to cook, you don't know what to do with all those vegetables. In our kitchen we always cook extra vegetables so we have something to rotate into the next 2 or 3 days. There is nothing wrong with starting with frozen mixed vegetables and adding them to sauteed fresh zucchini and onions, for example. Maybe today you add a pinch of Parmesan cheese (salty, but you get a lot of flavor mileage out of a pinch) and the next day expand the leftovers vegetables with a can of unsalted tomatoes and oregano.
My niece went to cooking school and told me something very important. Everything has a sweet, salty, and acid component to taste good. Adding lemon or vinegar to vegetables makes a tiny amount of salt go a long way. Adding a fruit for sweet brings a whole new taste to a vegetable medley. I now keep an assortment of vinegars and fresh lemons and limes on hand at all times.
Google vegetable recipes. There are millions of recipes online. Just search for something that sounds good, healthy, and not complicated.

[elmaestro2010]

02:20 PM on 06/08/2011

When I mentioned American food and cooking to my female/Asian student, she said that she doesn't eat or know American food because her family doesn't buy any food in a box - IE already prepared meals. I was a bit embarrassed to think that that is what the world thinks of American cuisine- already prepared meals you can toss into a microwave.

[bracken]

10:55 AM on 06/13/2011

If you go to an Asian market you see lots of green vegetables and root vegetables that are completely foreign (to me, anyway). I don't know what they are, how they're prepared, or where they fit in to Asian cuisine, but I know they're healthy.

[koban]

12:22 PM on 06/08/2011

Wouldn't this diet benefit everyone, not just teen girls?

[violettefemme]

05:58 PM on 06/08/2011

Ah, but it's the girls we want to start being obsessed from a young age, as it keeps them from being serious competition in the career field ;)

[HerrMonk]

11:47 AM on 06/11/2011

Because some of us want to be big and strong, and not skinny and weak.

[volumexxvii]

12:19 PM on 06/08/2011

Why are all the participants in this study girls?
Great job, 'researchers'. Just reinforce in young women that they should 'watch their figure', be thin and 'beautiful', and all that jazz.
Nothing against young people eating healthy foods (and really, like everyone else has pointed out -- it's really news that a diet that 'focuses on fruits, vegetables, lean meat and whole grains' is good for you?) ... but how about including some other people in the study instead of just young women to show that it's important for everyone to be healthy ... rather than appealing to oppressive social expectations for girls to be thin by creating a link between 'young women' and 'dieting'.
Bad#ss fat girls unite! And awesome chubby girls! You're all beautiful. And 'skinny' does not equal 'healthy.

[Rachel Ann Kelson]

12:12 PM on 06/08/2011

Just what teen girls need, another way for them to scrutinize their bodies!

[SukiTheCat]

12:16 PM on 06/08/2011

no, they're offering a healthy way for teenage girls to stay in shape and healthy. In case you didn't know, obesity is a problem in this country

[marianproletarian]

01:03 PM on 06/08/2011

For everyone, not just teenaged girls.

[emmeaki]

04:08 PM on 06/08/2011

Why just teenage girls, though? what about teenage boys?