If you are looking for weight loss shakes, meal replacement shakes are an excellent option. They are perfect while traveling, working or when you need a nutritious breakfast, dinner or lunch but you don't have time to prepare a healthy dish. Most contain a good amount of protein, vitamins and essential minerals. For this reason, meal replacement shakes are a convenient way to get a healthy, low-carb meal.





The diets that include the use of food substitutes propose replacing one, two or more daily intakes with different products, the most frequent being the shakes, although there are also bars, cookies, snacks and other options that serve to replace any of the usual meals throughout the day. Also, the Atkins weight loss plan offers different products, many of them food and other substitutes, which are recommended to be used to facilitate the achievement of the protein-rich and low-carbohydrate diet they propose.





Most of the substitutes are marketed as the easy alternative to lose weight, since they avoid us having to cook, think about food and if we are choosing nutrients in a balanced way. Thus, they capture the attention of many people who prefer to disburse money on their purchase and not cook or worry about what they ingest but yes, lose weight. However, do they work to lose weight? Science shows different results in this regard. On the one hand, a study published this year concludes that food substitutes are effective, safe and favor adherence when losing weight by being comfortable to solve daily intakes.





Likewise, research published in the Nutrition Journal indicates that food substitutes promote a significantly greater weight loss than a meal-based plan, although with the first option much more weight is recovered than with the second.





Also, both studies that show positive conclusions about the use of substitutes are financed by companies that sell these products, such as Herbalife and Medifast's.





However, there are studies

with positive results using meal replacements without conflict of interest, and there is also research

showing that at equal calories, protein-rich shakes do not produce a significantly higher metabolic expense, so, a meal with equal calories that a shake or other substitute might be useful too.





It is clear that the use of substitutes

. However, a meal of equal calories can be as much or more effective than a shake and much cheaper to lose weight, in addition to being more appropriate to educate our eating behavior and teach us to eat well by changing habits.