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The Rural Development Administration announced Monday that an experiment on 30 highly obese middle-school students showed that tangerines helped reduce three percent of body fat. The 30 students had a tangerine drink and exercised regularly for two months. Students in another control group, who were not given a tangerine drink but also exercised, failed to lose the 1.5 percent body shed by the others.

Tests on rats injected with tangerine concentrate for two months had 59 percent lower abdominal fat and were 45 percent lighter. The RDA found that injecting tangerine concentrate into rats with fatty livers helped their livers recover.

The RDA is currently developing a drink that may prevent obesity using tangerines, and also trying to explore tangerines' potential for preventing dementia.

(englishnews@chosun.com )