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2006
Posted on July 31, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
Karen Collins, R.D. of MSNBC takes a look at
what happens when people add more fruits and vegetables to their diet. Collins examines the results of a new study linking overall diet to how well nutrients from fruits and veggies are absorbed:
Researchers at the University of Michigan recently decided to see how results of boosting vegetable and fruit consumption might vary depending on level of fat consumption. About 100 women were followed for a year. Some made no changes at all in their eating. Others increased vegetables and fruits from less than four servings a day to about 11, but kept dietary fat at their usual level of more than 30 percent of calories. A third group kept their usual low intake of vegetables and fruits, but reduced dietary fat to an average of about 16 percent of calories (quite low). A fourth group both decreased fat consumption and increased vegetables and fruits.
It seems the quality of a person’s diet directly affects how much they benefit from eating more plant matter:
Eating more produce raised consumption of nutrients like vitamin C and beta-carotene substantially. More importantly, blood levels of vitamin C, beta-carotene and another carotenoid, alpha-carotene, also rose. These increases were not prevented by reduced dietary fat.
Drop in some forms of Vitamin E
The study does suggest another possible problem with low-fat diets. Alpha-tocopherol is the form of vitamin E most widely studied for its possible antioxidant benefits. It is found in most vitamin supplements and fortified foods, and was not affected by reducing dietary fat. But consumption of gamma-tocopherol, a form that seems to be anti-inflammatory and may even stimulate self-destruction of cancer cells, dropped by more than 50 percent on the low-fat diets.
To get health benefits from low-fat diets, make sure that saturated fat is the type of fat you cut back.
Collins gives some advice for people looking to add more fruit and vegetables to their diet:
A general reminder is to make sure you are not eating too many calories if you are adding these foods to your diet. Increasing the amounts of fruits and vegetables you eat can promote weight control, but only if they replace higher fat foods like ice cream, meat and chips — to help you consume fewer calories. But if fruits and vegetables are simply added to what you already eat, total calories won’t significantly drop and weight loss should not be expected.
I pulled this article because it illustrates another major flaw in American dietary knowledge. We look at fruits and vegetables as magic pills, meaning lots of Americans eat horrible food seven days a week, then expect an occasional apple to keep the doctor away. Maximum health benefit comes from eating healthy nutrient-rich foods every day! And not viewing them as bandaids for otherwise poor diets.
This may be why Dr. Fuhrman doesn’t envision everyone embracing his
Eat to Live plan:
The social and economic forces that are pulling our population toward obesity and disease will not be defeated by one book preaching about achieving superior health with nutritional excellence. The “good life” will continue to bring most Americans to a premature grave. This plan is not for everyone. I don not expect the majority of individuals to live this healthfully. However, they should at least make that decision by being aware of the facts rather than having their food choices shaped by inaccurate information or the food manufacturers. Some people will choose to smoke cigarettes, eat unhealthfully, or pursue other reckless habits.
Posted on July 26, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
In order to keep heat-sensitive sperm safe, the testes are a few degrees cooler than the rest of the body. When testicular cancer cells spread to the rest of the body, warmer temperatures may cause a weakening of protein scaffolding within the nucleus of the cells, said a team of Johns Hopkins researchers reporting in the July 26 Journal of the American Medical Association.
This increase in heat makes the DNA in the cancer cell's nucleus more vulnerable to radiation and chemotherapy, they said.
The Baltimore experts reviewed more than 30 years of research on testicular cancer. They suggested that heat also may prove effective against other kinds of cancer.
1. Patient goes to their doctor for something seemingly minor, then is told to go to the ED. Example: a mother takes her seven year old son to the doc for a cut, expecting the pediatrician can stitch it up, but is sent to the ED. Next time she'll head straight for the ED.
2. Patient lacks a good relationship with PCP despite having insurance and doesn't feel comfortable making contact for the first time on an emergent issue. Example: healthy woman who's recently finished having kids has a PCP selected for HMO registration purposes but hasn't seen the doc in years and the issue isn't appropriate for her OB/Gyn. Off to the ED she goes.
To assess the effect of obesity on the quality of imaging exams, the researchers reviewed all radiology records from tests performed at Massachusetts General Hospital between 1989 and 2003. Specifically, they were looking at incomplete exams due to patient size.
"We looked at people who were able to fit on the imaging equipment and get the scan," Dr. Raul N. Uppot, lead author of the study, and an assistant radiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and an instructor in radiology at Harvard Medical School said. "When radiologists read the film, they had trouble interpreting the film because the quality of the image was not very good because of [the patient's] size."
I have to say, I really admire the creativity of this McDonald's billboard in Chicago. The ad agency and an engineer did a great deal of research to find the perfect location create the effect. The aluminum set of McDonald’s arches (which are 4 x 3.5 feet) casts a shadow on a different breakfast item each hour until noon when it casts an undistorted shadow on a sandwich, signaling lunchtime. It will be removed in August when the sun's position changes.
1. Get to know your local fruitier
Antioxidants, which are abundant in fruit and vegetables, neutralise cancer-causing free radicals. Lycopene, a potent antioxidant, is found in tomatoes, watermelon, guava, pink grapefruit, blood oranges and other foods. Beta-carotene is found in many orange foods, including rockmelon, apricot and mango. But the banana is the superstar - a Swedish study of 61,000 women found those who ate bananas four to six times a week had half the risk of kidney cancer.
2. Choke the smokes
Smoking is the obvious cancer causer. It's related to a massive one-third of all cancers and 80 per cent of all lung cancers. But it's not just your lungs that are in danger. "Everything that the smoke passes as it weaves its way down to your lungs - your mouth, larynx and oesophagus - is at risk," says Anita Tang, chair of the Tobacco Issues Committee at The Cancer Council. Then there's the fact that smoking also greatly boosts your risk of stomach, cervical, kidney, breast, liver and prostate cancers. But there is some good news in the doom: if you give up the fags today, within 15 years your lung cancer risk will drop to almost pre-smoking lows. Top tip: Make a pact with a child - seeing the disappointment on their face if you light up again may be enough to make you stop forever.
Posted on July 24, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
According to
Reuters a new study connects
consumption of fruit and fiber with healthy body weights, and linking foods higher in total fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol to obesity. Researcher Dr. Jaimie N. Davis of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles explains:
Davis' group found marked differences in the dietary habits of the two groups. The overweight and obese subjects consumed more total fat, saturated fat and cholesterol, and less carbohydrate, specifically dietary fiber and complex carbohydrate, than normal weight subjects.
The differences in diet composition "may have played a vital role in promoting or preventing obesity," they write.
The research shows lower body fat percents are a result of increased dietary fiber consumption:
Normal-weight adults consumed an average of 33 percent more dietary fiber and 43 percent more complex carbohydrates daily than their overweight and obese counterparts. Dietary fiber and complex carbohydrate intake were inversely related to body weight and "most strongly" to percent body fat.
Compared with normal-weight subjects, overweight and obese subjects consumed about one less fruit serving daily, which may partly explain their lower fiber and carbohydrate intake.
For readers of DiseaseProof this information is nothing new, according to Dr. Fuhrman
certain foods (especially leafy greens) actually make you thin. Consider this excerpt from a previous post:
Green vegetables are so incredibly low in calories and rich in nutrients and fiber that the more you eat of them, the more weight you will lose. One of my secrets of nutritional excellence and superior healing is the one pound-one pound rule. That is, try to eat at least one pound of raw green vegetables a day and one pound of cooked/steamed or frozen green vegetables a day as well. One pound raw and one pound cooked—keep this goal in mind as you design and eat every meal. This may be too ambitious a goal for some of us to reach, but by working toward it, you will ensure the dietary balance and results you want. The more greens you eat, the more weight you will lose. The high volume of greens not only will be your secret to a thin waistline but will simultaneously protect you against life threatening illnesses.
Now, the research team does acknowledge the social allure of popular high-protein, low carbohydrate diets, but offers this warning about them:
"The public is still attracted to popular weight-loss strategies that emphasize decreasing carbohydrate and increasing fat and protein," the study team notes in their report.
"Although there is evidence that high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets produce substantial weight loss in the short-term, to date there are no long-term studies that examine the effects of these regimens."
For information on the dangers of high-fat diets check out this previous post:
Short and Long-Term Dangers of High-Fat Diets
High-fat diets are unquestionably associated with obesity, and eating meat actually correlates with weight gain, not weight loss, unless you radically cut carbs from your diet to maintain chronic ketosis.1 Researchers from the American Cancer Society followed 79,236 individuals over ten years and found that those ate meat more than three times per week were much more likely to gain weight as the years went by than those who tended to avoid meat.2 The more vegetables the participants ate, the more resistant they were to weight gain.
Continue Reading...
Posted on July 24, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
Smoking increases the risk of erectile dysfunction by 50 percent, and obesity nearly doubles the risk, new research suggests. Researchers tracked the diet and health of more than 22,000 male health professionals from all 50 states from 1986 through 2000.
At the start of the study, after controlling for other factors, they found that men with good or very good erectile function had a lower prevalence of smoking, a lower body mass index, and less hypertension, heart disease and diabetes than those who reported fair, poor or very poor function.
Among men who started with good or very good function, those who expended energy equivalent to running 1.5 hours a week reduced their risk of future erectile dysfunction by 30 percent compared with the group that exercised least.
Pfizer is having a good year thanks to cholesterol lowering drugs. At the same time, insurance companies are experimenting with the "pay for performance" model. One of those experiments involves rewarding doctors for keeping their patients' cholesterol levels below defined guidelines. Cholesterol is an easy benchmark to measure and to collect, but the guidelines themselves are not without controversy. Rumor has it that some doctors with a large populations of cholesterol-targeted patients, such as cardiologists, are receiving bonuses in the 5-figure range. At least one news account appears to confirm this.
That's a hefty incentive to get those cholesterol numbers down as low as possible. How do you suppose they achieve the goals? By educating and encouraging lifestyle modification - i.e. diet and exercise? Not likely.
Even the natural sugar alcohol called Xylitol is now being made from corn sources. You may need to bring a small magnifier to read these ingredients and then look out for the hidden sources of sugar.
Sugar is a major enemy to the health of young people and those already losing limbs, eyesight and suffering immune problems. Those schools removing their vending machines are finding fewer discipline problems, more focused students and their parents are not filling prescriptions for Ritalin. Over active children do not need mega doses of processed sugar—they are usually very active without any chemical additives.
Weight-loss experts have long said calorie control and physical activity are both necessary for weight control.
Yet of participants in a government study who say they are working on their weight, only 23% are monitoring their calorie intake and doing an average of 60 minutes of physical activity a day on most days, the amount some experts say is needed to prevent weight gain.
While the doctor was supervising, she commented to the patient "She often talks to herself." I hadn't realized that I was talking myself through the steps. Partly, I was doing it to let the patient know what I was about to do for each step.
I don't know about you ladies, but I like to know what's coming along.. It's just polite that way.
I told the doctor that I do talk to myself and the crazy part is that sometimes I actually listen! She knows that I LOVE to talk so she gives me all of her talkative patients so that she can focus on the harder ones.
Posted on July 21, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
Surgery to replace damaged knees and hips with artificial joints has become so common among active baby boomers that it almost seems like a badge of honor. But evidence is growing that it's not only skiers and joggers fueling the explosion of operations, but obese Americans.
Some hospitals estimate that half to two-thirds of their patients having joint-replacement surgery are overweight or obese, and these patients are posing added challenges for medical teams.
I don't know what the current statistics are, but those dealing with a chronic condition such as diabetes are more likely to experience clinical depression. It's something like two to four times more likely to be diagnosed with clinical depression than the average population.
I would venture to guess that this would be true for nearly any chronic condition.
But maybe diabetes is a bit different in this respect - it is said that we are in control of how things turn out. If we do "good" and follow the "rules", we shouldn't have many problems. On the other hand, if we do "bad", disregard the "rules", we are destined to live a life full of "self imposed" complications. We all know it's not quite that simple, but that is often how the medical community makes it seem.
In the first comprehensive review of food marketing to children on the Web, the research found 85% of leading brands that target kids in TV ads also have games and other material on the Internet. The sites promote snacks, cereal, fast food, sugary drinks and candy.
More than 500 "advergames" such as Hershey's Syrup Squirt, LifeSavers Boardwalk Bowling and M&Ms Trivia Game were offered on 77 websites.
Many sites have special features. Oreo.com has a jingle contest for songs about Oreo cookies; McDonald's Ronald.com has pages for kids to color; Capncrunch.com, which promotes the Quaker Oats cereal, offers screensavers.
Posted on July 20, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
Monica Davey of
The New York Times reports
Chicago is looking to be the first major city to outright ban cooking oils containing trans fat. Alderman Edward M. Burke leads the push:
Edward M. Burke, who has served on the Chicago City Council since 1969, when cooking oil was just cooking oil, is pressing his colleagues to make it illegal for restaurants to use oils that contain trans fats, which have been tied to a string of health problems, including clogged arteries and heart attacks.
If approved, nutrition experts say, the ban will be the first in a major city, following the lead of towns like Tiburon, Calif., just north of San Francisco, where restaurant owners have voluntarily given up the oils.
The move is a reaction to Men’s Fitness magazine proclaiming Chicago the fattest city in the nation. Burke also points to increased occurrences of diseases linked to trans fat:
Mr. Burke, pointing to increases in obesity, diabetes and heart disease, is unapologetic. He does not profess that better oils would suddenly make Chicago skinny but says that they would at least begin to alleviate some of the related coronary concerns.
“If it were just about adults, I would say, ‘O.K., we should butt out,’ ” Mr. Burke said in an interview. “But youngsters are assuming diets that are unhealthy.”
Burke’s mission is not without merit. In
Eat to Live Dr. Fuhrman stresses avoiding trans fat, even going as far as to call it poisonous.
Trans fat is larger threat to health than most people know because not only can it be found in obvious foods like French fries and fried dough, according to Dr. Fuhrman it lurks in less suspicious foods as well:
Trans fats are found in ubiquitously in processed food: crackers, cookies, cakes, frozen foods, and snacks. Most of these enticing desserts, fried foods, and convenience foods are deadly, heart-attack-causing foods, even if they contain no animal products and no cholesterol, because of the trans fats they contain. Even Orville Redenbacher’s natural microwaveable popcorn contains artery-clogging trans fats.
Posted on July 19, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
In an attempt to counter the nation’s obesity problem
Australia plans to interview and weigh thousands of children.
The AFP reports:
Up to a quarter of Australian children aged between seven and 15 are overweight or obese, causing rising rates of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, the health department said.
Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott said 4,000 children would take part in the national nutrition survey -- the most comprehensive stock-taking in more than a decade of what Australian youngsters eat and their levels of physical activity.
In
Disease Proof Your Child Dr. Fuhrman explains the solution to childhood obesity is close to home:
We teach our children to eat when not hungry. We encourage it. Many parents actually think it looks health for their kids to be plump and bigger than average. They continually encourage them to ignore their bodies and eat when not hungry. The children learn to eat for a taste thrill; it is recreational eating, akin to recreational drug use. They do it for a thrill and pay a price for it later. These children and adults have overeaten their whole lives, so that they have no recollection of what true hunger feels like.
The first step toward your child’s healthy eating is changing your own. Concentrate on changing the dietary habits of the parents first and gradually remove more and more of the unhealthy options. If your child doesn’t change his diet right away, that is okay. Stop trying to control his intake. Stop battling. Instead, continue to offer delicious vegetable dishes and other great foods that are available. If he chooses to eat very little of it, that is fine. The best way to handle it is to say, “You don’t have to eat. If you are not hungry, why don’t you go and play.” If he asks for something not in the house, simply tell him that you do not have any. When he gets very hungry, he will ask to eat and relish what was offered earlier. You might be surprised at how much good stuff he will eat because he is really hungry and not forced to eat something when he was not. It will also be easier if he sees the rest of the family enjoying eating the healthy food choices and healthful recipes.
Posted on July 19, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
The Greenmarket system operates under the auspices of the council, which essentially adopted it when it was born 30 years ago. The name is a registered service mark, and the Greenmarkets operate on an annual budget of about $1.5 million. (More information on Greenmarkets is at cenyc.org.)
Ten new markets in one season is a record for the organization, which now has 45 in the five boroughs. The rock star is the market at Union Square on Saturdays, when more than 70 vendors show up. Some new markets are displaying star potential, like the one on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side and the one on East 82nd Street, where the line for fruit at the Samascott Orchards stand was more than 20 people long for over an hour on opening day, July 8.
But others appear to be duds. When the Greenmarket at 43rd Street in Clinton opened on July 1, its four vendors attracted a crowd so small that Gabrielle Langholtz, the usually enthusiastic spokeswoman for the Greenmarkets, described it as depressing.
Priscilla O’Carrol was excited when she showed up at the new market on East 92nd Street on July 9, but was surprised at its tiny size. “I used to live near Union Square, so I was expecting a lot more,” she said after a tour of its three vendors.
Bats represent a huge portion of mammal species: approximately 20% of the 4,600 mammalian species are bats, which range in size from a 130 mm wingspan up to 2 m and are found on all continents with the exception of Antarctica. Within these species, at least 66 different species of viruses have been isolated from bats or detected within their tissues, and there is serological evidence for many others. Rabies is by far the most important, as far as human health goes. However, even though 55,000 human deaths occur from rabies every year, only a small portion are from viruses associated with bats. Viruses that have been isolated include influenza virus, Nipah and Hendra viruses, SARS coronavirus, Chikungunya virus, Japanese and St. Louis encephalitis viruses, Hantaan virus (a relative of the Sin Nombre hantavirus), and Rift Valley fever virus, among others. Despite this incredible diversity of human-pathogenic viruses that have been associated with bats, there are giant gaps in our knowledge of both bat ecology and immunology, further discussed below.
There are currently more than 150 such clinics nationwide. None are in Southern California, but thousands of new clinics are planned nationwide in the next year or two, according to a report to be released today by the California Healthcare Foundation, an independent Oakland-based research institute that advocates for affordable healthcare. Los Angeles could have its first retail clinic this year.
Retail clinics are small, typically no bigger than a sandwich shop. They are open seven days a week and treat minor, non- urgent illnesses including strep throat and ear infections. Appointments are not necessary and most visits last 15 minutes for treatments that cost $40 to $70, which are clearly posted on menu-style boards on the wall.
If you have a problem with alcohol, you can keep your house alcohol-free and avoid pubs and bars. When it comes to food cravings you have to face the issue many times a day because - unlike alcohol - we cannot live without food.
This week I spent some time in a large city. Like any populous urban center everywhere you look there are food vendors. Go out to the large malls in the satellite suburbs and you find cavernous food courts with every kind of food imaginable.
Posted on July 18, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
Jane E. Brody of
The New York Times reports
we aren’t alone in the obesity epidemic, our pets are sharing the burden too:
“Studies in Western Europe and the United States have indicated that more than 24 percent of dogs and about 25 percent of domestic cats are obese,” the veterinarians, Jon J. Ramsey and Kevork Hagopian, noted. The findings were published this month in The Journal of Nutrition.
Surprisingly, research shows fat owners don’t necessarily mean fat pets:
While many (though clearly not all) French women may be slim, their dogs often are not. A team from Maisons-Alfort, France, found that among a “healthy population” of 616 dogs that attended a vaccination clinic, 38.8 percent were overweight, including 5 percent that were obese.
A potentially serious problem seems to be how people miscategorize their pet’s weight similarly to that of their children:
Just as mothers have been shown to underestimate excess weight and obesity in their children, researchers have found that pet owners are notoriously poor at assessing their pets’ weight problems. “My dog isn’t fat; he just has a lot of fur” is an all-too-common response when owners are accused of overfeeding their pets.
The article explains that overweight pets have health consequences that rival those of humans.
For more on the subject check out this previous post: Aussie Pets Plump Too
Posted on July 17, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
As you know Dr. Fuhrman contends obesity heightens cancer risk and healthy body weight helps prevent cancer. This claim seems to be catching on. According to Michelle Fay Cortez of
The Boston Globe a new study shows
women can lower their risk of breast cancer by losing weight:
Researchers found that breast cancer may occur in about one in seven women because of the weight they gain as adults.
The risks rose to one in four among weight gainers who never used hormone replacement therapy, the study said.
``Weight is one of the few breast cancer risk factors that women can do something about," said lead author Heather Eliassen. ``Our study suggests it's never too late to lose weight to reduce breast cancer risk. The best advice would be to avoid gaining it in the first place."
The research revealed it doesn’t take a lot of weight gain to increase breast cancer risk:
The increased risk came even from adding as little as 5 pounds, the study found, and rose in proportion with the scale. The good news was that losing weight appeared to be protective.
Check out this previous report to see how
obesity affects prostate cancer recurrence.
Posted on July 13, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
HealthDay reports
higher rates of obesity in the United States leave Americans with chronic kidney disease (CKD) twice as likely to develop end-stage kidney disease. Robert Preidt explains:
The researchers compared 65,000 Norwegians and 20,000 Americans in an attempt to gain a better understanding of why the incidence of end-stage renal disease (ESRD), as well as permanent loss of kidney function requiring dialysis or kidney transplantation, is so much higher in the United States than in Norway.
The study authors noted that overall prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) is similar in both countries -- 11 percent in the United States and 10.4 percent in Norway. However, once a person develops CKD, the risk of progression to ESRD was found to be 2.5 times higher among American patients.
Being obese doesn’t help matters:
American and Norwegian ESRD patients are similar in many ways, including age and level of remaining kidney function when they begin dialysis, the study noted. However, the American patients in this study had much higher rates of obesity and diabetes, which are two major and closely related risk factors for kidney disease.
"Obesity and physical inactivity lead to high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes, which are now the most important causes of ESRD," study leader Dr. Stein Hallan, of St. Olav University Hospital in Trondheim, said in a prepared statement.
Posted on July 12, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
In a recent study, researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle gave 23 people enough alcohol to reach a blood alcohol level of 0.04% (half the legal limit in many states and about 2 1/2 beers for a 180-pound man). A second group of 23 people drank no alcohol.
The researchers then showed members of both groups a 25-second video clip in which two teams passed a ball back and forth — and asked them to count the number of times one team passed the ball. During the clip, a person in a gorilla suit walks through the crowd, thumps its chest and walks off.
Researchers found that 46% in the control group saw the gorilla, but only 18% in the alcohol group did so.
1) Cell phones: I cannot describe how irking it is to enter the examining room and find the patient talking on the cell phone. Ask yourself, is this phone call more important than your bladder infection or kidney stone? If the answer is no, then please have the courtesy to put the phone away and silence the ringer.
Even ruder is when I am talking to the patient and the cell phone rings, and (s)he actually ANSWERS the damn thing in the middle of the consultation. I wait for the (usually inane) conversation to end while silently fuming inside.
Authoritarian parents, they wrote, “have high demands for self-control but low levels of sensitivity.” Compared with authoritative parents, they are more dictatorial. They are strict disciplinarians, often insensitive to the child’s needs and give little emotional support. Previous studies have linked authoritarian methods with lower grades in school and later behavior problems.
Only slightly less harmful in terms of children’s risk of being overweight are parents who are overly permissive, a style characterized by “low expectations for self-control and discipline in the setting of high sensitivity and warmth.” Their children often fail to learn limits. They may be more self-confident but often have little self-control, resulting in higher levels of drug use and school misconduct, previous studies have shown.
Make all your sides vegan. This is easy if you're a member of the CSA and have a large batch of fresh veggies and herbs. There are plenty of vegan recipes on the web site (vegetarian recipes are marked as such, but you'll have to look more closely for explicitly vegan recipes) and most public libraries have a vast collection of vegan cookbooks that you can borrow. If you have enough tasty vegan sides, they can mix and match those to fill up their plate. But please don't leave them with just salad and carrot sticks.
Ask the vegan if they want to bring a dish. Many times, vegans will bring their own dishes to functions in order to not trouble the host while ensuring that they have something to eat. But if it's a potluck, let the vegan know you're looking forward to seeing what they bring and trying something new.
Posted on July 11, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
In today’s
New York Times reporter Jane E. Brody takes a look at the United States’ obesity woes. Focusing her attention on
America’s portion sizes:
I'll start with what seems to be a mantra for most Americans: bigger is better. Bigger cars, bigger houses, bigger portions. About 30 years ago the restaurant industry tried to introduce Americans to a French dining style called cuisine minceur, small, elegant portions served on large, usually white plates (but priced as if the plates were heaped with food).
It was doomed from the get-go. Americans want more for their money, and more is what they got. Portions big enough to feed a horse.
It's not just McDonald's. Nearly every dish and beverage Americans now consume is supersized compared with what they used to eat (and, I might add, at a time when more energy was spent just getting through the demands of the day).
An average serving of pasta is now 480 percent greater than the one-cup recommended serving size, Lisa Young and Marion Nestle, nutritionists at New York University, reported in 2002 in The American Journal of Public Health. Some cookies, they found, are 700 percent larger.
A New York bagel, now sold nationwide, weighs five or six ounces. That is five or six bread portions, supplying about 500 calories, not counting cream cheese or butter. The muffin tins from my childhood produce muffins one-third the size of those at Starbucks.
Restaurants like fast-food and takeout establishments, as well as family-style businesses, pile on food with no regard for recommended portions.
To make matters worse research indicates portion size acts independently with another characteristic of meals, energy density:
The more energy-dense a food is — that is, the more calories per ounce or gram — the more calories people tend to consume.
In previous studies, Dr. Rolls found that, all other factors being equal, people eat about the same weight of food each day.
If those foods are in the moderate range of energy density like meat, cheese, pizza and French fries or at the high end of energy density like crackers, nuts and cookies, people consume more calories than they do if their meals contain lots of low-energy-density foods, like soup, green salad, nonstarchy vegetables and fruit.
Posted on July 10, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
According to
HealthDay new research shows a strong correlation between weight gain and insufficient sleep. Alan Mozes reports:
"We all need to be aware there is a relationship between sleep and obesity," says J. Catesby Ware, chief of the division of sleep medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, and director of the Sleep Disorder Center at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in Norfolk, Va.
Ware and his colleagues found signs of this link in a recently completed study of more than 1,000 men and women that indicated those who reported sleeping less also weighed more.
He is now in the midst of new research focusing on another group of 1,000 individuals that is quantifying specific daily sleep habits, with preliminary data reinforcing his previous observation -- less sleep equals a bigger belly.
"There are a number of research studies that all support the thesis that too little sleep leads to weight gain," Ware said. "How that happens is still somewhat unclear, but there are hormonal secretions that are affected with sleep loss that apparently affect appetite and eating."
It seems hormones are responsible for this association:
Eve Van Cauter, a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, recently found that when 12 healthy men in their 20s were instructed to sleep just four hours a night for two nights straight, they reported an increase in feelings of hunger by 24 percent.
What's more, Cauter and her colleagues noted that levels of the hormone leptin, which delivers feelings of satiation to the brain, decreased by 18 percent among the men.
Conversely, levels of the hormone ghrelin, which sparks hunger, shot up 28 percent -- prompting cravings for candy, cookies and cake.
Posted on July 5, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
For the study, five boys and five girls, ages 7 and 8, took part in sessions in which they were asked to carry blocks across a room and stack them no more than two high for more than 10 minutes. At one session, the blocks were simply hollow cardboard. At the other, the blocks had small steel blocks glued inside that brought their weight to three pounds.
As the researchers encouraged the children to keep moving the blocks, equipment measured their heart and breathing rates.
In addition to helping healthy children keep a bit fitter, the researchers said, weighted toys may also be useful for children with disabilities in which muscle weakness is a problem.
The study of more than 9,000 adults found that mood and anxiety disorders including depression were about 25 percent more common in the obese people studied than in the non-obese. Substance abuse was an exception — obese people were about 25 percent less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol than slimmer participants.
The results appear in the July issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, being released Monday. The lead author was Dr. Gregory Simon, a researcher with Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, a large nonprofit health plan in the Pacific Northwest.
The results "suggest that the cultural stereotype of the jolly fat person is more a figment of our imagination than a reality," said Dr. Wayne Fenton of the National Institute of Mental Health, which funded the study.
3. Where do you get your calcium? From my fruits and veggies! The whole dairy thing is a big myth--a very profitable one for the US dairy industry. Countries that consume the most dairy have the highest rates of osteoporosis in the world. There are millions of people who've come and gone on this earth without drinking a glass of cow's milk and their bone density has been just fine. Calcium can be obtained just fine with a dairy-free diet. Other variables such as Vit D, Vit K and weight-bearing exercise also impact bone density. A plant-based diet and a good exercise program will keep your bones strong.
4. Where do you get your protein? Again, from all of the foods in my diet. Animal protein is way overrated. And the more animal protein you include in your diet, the higher the incidence of immune-related disease (diabetes, MS) and cancer. My dad has MS; my grandma has diabetes and has had cancer. I stick to plant protein and keep it to about .8 g/kg. Does it look like I need more protein?????
