diet
sa smith | February 22, 2012I am not a 'fan' of dietary sensationalism.
A can of Mountain Dew made with high fructose corn syrup once a week is not going to kill you.
Megadoses of various vitamins and minerals is not going to 'cure' you.
People who demonize or canonize food annoy me.
Funny enough, we have examples of both today, from 'pop'-news (har har) sources!
Raw milk is not a panacea. Its full of bacteria that make you sick, stupid!
Raw milk causes most illnesses from dairy, study finds
CDC: Raw milk to blame for most dairy-related disease outbreaks
Yes, those are actually anti-food-woo articles in USA TODAY and…
lborkowski | August 17, 2011In a new New York Times Magazine piece, John Tierney pulls together the results of several studies that suggest willpower is finite and decisionmaking exhausting. While these findings are important in many ways (Tierney leads off with an example from the criminal justice system), I was especially interested in the implications for dieting.
The whole article is well worth a read, but in a nutshell, researchers have found that subjects' willpower can be depleted by resisting temptation and be restored by glucose -- but not by artificial sweetners that provide less energy. When subjects'…
gregladen | April 7, 2011... Continued ...
Back from South Africa and with some time on my hands, I was hell bent on keeping the promise I had made to myself to get back into shape. For most people I know, this would mean eating better and going to the gym more often. But for me, it meant eating better and going to a gym for the first time in my life.
Photo by flickr user JerryOneLife
I went to an elementary school with no athletic program. In Junior high, there was a minimal program but the other students I hung out with and I had figured out how to skip gym. Always. I did not attend high school. I did not attend…
gregladen | April 7, 2011... Continued ...
I started out walking a good six feet behind her, to avoid the sand she was kicking up and the occasional thorn-lined branch that might swing back in the wake of anyone walking through the African Bush. We were traversing open country in the Kalahari, in an area sealed off from people owing to the presence of unfriendly lions and other dangers. We were doing this in part because we both felt like we had been locked up for days and needed some freedom; We needed freedom from confinement, freedom from the people we were with, freedom from patronizing park employees, freedom…
gregladen | April 7, 2011
Photo by flickr user gato-gato-gato.
Did you ever watch cattle? I mean, really watch them, for a few hours? Mostly they just sit or stand around munching on grass, chewing their cud, or snoozing. But every once in a while a handful of them will stand up and point in one direction. And they may take a few steps in that direction. Then a few more will join them. And once a critical mass has been reached, the whole herd will just go. Domestic cattle, wild African cape buffalo, whatever. This is what they do.
And as the cattle do, so do bloggers. And one day one, then another, then another of…
sa smith | February 23, 2011"If we're supposed to go out and eat nothing, if we're supposed to eat roots and berries and tree bark, show us how...
... The problem is, and dare I say this, it doesn't look like Michelle Obama follows her own nutritionary, dietary advice. And then we hear that she's out eating ribs at 1,500 calories a serving with 141 grams of fat per serving...I'm trying to say that our First Lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue or of a woman Alex Rodriguez might date every six months or what have you."
Huh. Overweight, out of…
gregladen | February 22, 2011The Biggest Loser is a TV reality show on which people who really do weigh a lot more than is healthy compete to lose weight. They do this on teams. There are various challenges. There are charismatic trainers. And, of course, because it is a TV reality show, individuals can get tossed off the show either because of poor performance (not losing enough weight) or by getting voted off.
An interesting and entirely inappropriate trend has developed on this show.
Individuals decide that they should leave the show while others must stay. They accomplish this by gaining, rather than losing,…
gregladen | August 27, 2010A recent paper provides the groundwork to establish a way for exercise to diminish appetite. Or, more likely, for sedentary behavior to increase appetite.
It is well known that exercise burns calories. Personally, I think that's overrated: Strength building raises your metabolic demand, and THAT burns calories. But that is not the main topic at hand. New research indicates that exercise also increases the sensitivity of neurons that are related to the control of the feeling of satiation. Therefore, you feel full rather than hungry sooner and/or more often.
In rodents. So far.
The…
tsaunders | June 22, 2010
Image by thienzieyung
Most people know that consuming too much fat, and especially saturated fat, is bad for your health. That's why there has been a concerted push for several decades to get people to reduce the amount of saturated fat that they consume, and to replace it with complex carbohydrates. Now unfortunately people often misinterpret that to mean that fat is evil, but carbs are ok. This is problematic since consuming too many simple carbs is also likely to increase the risk of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease - exactly what we are trying to prevent in the first…
pjaniszewski | June 9, 2010As our regular readers will recall, my partner, Marina, and I are travelling for the summer throughout South America as a means to celebrate the successful defense of both of our PhDs (Read about our travel adventures). Last week I discussed the dietary habits on the Galapagos islands.
This week I will discuss my experience at a local indigenous food market in Latacunga, Ecuador - a town a couple hours south of Quito.
Sitting on a filthy butcher's table with legs spread open, a toddler drinks fresh cow blood out of a plastic cup. Our eyes meet, as he finishes a gulp, and his face breaks into…
pjaniszewski | May 31, 2010
(Photo by Marina Komolova)
As our readers may have noticed, Travis has been solely carrying the Obesity Panacea load, while I have been a bit absent since my PhD defense. As some of you may know, I am taking the summer off to travel through South America with my partner, Marina, who also just defended her PhD thesis. While you can follow our adventures on our travel blog, I am also keeping notes during the travels that may be of greater interest to the readers of Obesity Panacea. Here is the 1st in the series of posts on lifestyles throughout South America: Galapagos edition.
We have just…
grrlscientist | May 30, 2010tags: The Clearwater Beach Diet, Scientology, cults, diet, weight loss, satire, humor, funny, offbeat, streaming video
This satirical video offends two groups of people at the same time: Scientologists and people who are on "the diet fad of the week."
Unfortunately, Scientology does not help people: Kirstie Alley is still fat, and Lisa McPherson is still dead.
oracknows | April 8, 2010Eat your fruits and vegetables.
Hasn't that been a constant refrain over the years from public health authorities? Certainly, I have. The benefits of eating fruits and vegetables have been widely touted, and seemingly with good reason. A diet high in fruits and vegetables, it is said, reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer. In the case of the latter, it as claimed that potential decreases in the risks of some cancers could be as high as 50% a day. As a result, the National Cancer Institute developed the 5-A-Day program, whose goal was to increase people's consumption of fruits…
grrlscientist | January 12, 2010tags: man drinking fat, NYC Health Anti-Soda Ad, Are You Pouring on the Pounds?, diet, nutrition, sports drinks, soda, sweetened drinks, television, disgusting, streaming video
Most people don't realize how easy it is to gain weight from drinking sugary sodas, juice drinks, sport drinks and sweetened tea and coffee drinks. Just one 20-ounce bottle of soda can pack 250 calories and more than 16 teaspoons of sugar. Is the lemon-flavored iced tea any better? Not by much with 210 calories and 14½ teaspoons of sugar. Sugar-sweetened beverages add hundreds of calories to your diet each day. Don't…
edyong | December 2, 2009If I say the phrases 'anti-ageing' and 'nutritional balance' to you, you'd probably think of the pages of quack websites selling untested supplements than the pages of Nature. And yet this week's issue has a study that actually looks at these issues with scientific rigour. It shows that, at least for fruit flies, eating a diet with just the right balance of nutrients can lengthen life without the pesky drawback of producing fewer offspring.
Despite the claims of the cosmetic and nutritional industries, chemicals or techniques that slow the ageing process are few and far between. We're a long…
razib | June 29, 2009A friend of mine has a new weblog, Low Carb Art and Science, which some of you might be interested in (or not). I do think it is ironic since this is an individual who presumably is in favor of a diet of red beans & rice. If you want a more eclectic range of posts on diet you might want to check out FuturPundit.
sheril | February 26, 2009Well, it was a long time coming. Between the myriad of diet plans on television, magazines, online, and everywhere, someone was bound to finally come up with conclusive evidence on what works and how to make sense of all the (excuse the term) dietary diarrhea. No doubt, you've also noticed that low-fat, high fiber, extra protein, pills, germs, and steel floods every sensory organ we have on a hourly basis.
Personally, I've never been all that interested in skinny, but healthy suits me just fine. I'm not one for regiments or counting calories, but do give thought to what I consume and prefer…
gregladen | November 12, 2007I find it absolutely fascinating that scientists often bother to estimate the effects of diet by feeding controlled quantities of food, especially plant food, to rats to see what happens.
For example, there is a common substance in cooked food that, if fed in even modest quantity to rats, causes the rats to get cancer and die in no time. This raises concerns for humans because, well, the rats died. So the substance must be "bad for you."
But this approach to nutritional science, and the reasoning that goes with it, is deeply flawed.
Now, you may wish to jump in and say, "No, wait,…
gregladen | November 6, 2007A new species of peccary has been discovered in the Amazon. It's different from other peccaries in that it appears to be a frugivore. It also lives in pairs or very small family groups. This is, of course, exactly what one might expect. Frugovores eat high quality food, while the other peccaries eat lower quality food. Higher quality food is rare and dispersed so it is difficult to get into larger groups.
A huge, undiscovered animal lurking in the Amazon rain forest? When pigs fly, you might say.
But recently, Dutch biologist Marc van Roosmalen spotted a new species of peccary--a type…