Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin

Whether because exercise makes us hungry or because we want to reward ourselves, many people eat more — and eat more junk food, like doughnuts — after going to the gym. Ben Bloom / Getty

From Time Magazine:

As I write this, tomorrow is Tuesday, which is a cardio day. I'll spend five minutes warming up on the VersaClimber, a towering machine that requires you to move your arms and legs simultaneously. Then I'll do 30 minutes on a stair mill. On Wednesday a personal trainer will work me like a farm animal for an hour, sometimes to the point that I am dizzy — an abuse for which I pay as much as I spend on groceries in a week. Thursday is "body wedge" class, which involves another exercise contraption, this one a large foam wedge from which I will push myself up in various hateful ways for an hour. Friday will bring a 5.5-mile run, the extra half-mile my grueling expiation of any gastronomical indulgences during the week.

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Organic 'Has No Health Benefits'

From The BBC:

Organic food is no healthier than ordinary food, a large independent review has concluded.

There is little difference in nutritional value and no evidence of any extra health benefits from eating organic produce, UK researchers found.

The Food Standards Agency who commissioned the report said the findings would help people make an "informed choice".

But the Soil Association criticised the study and called for better research.

Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine looked at all the evidence on nutrition and health benefits from the past 50 years.

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New Evidence That Vinegar May Be Natural Fat-fighter

Found in many salad dressings, pickles, and other foods, vinegar could help prevent accumulation of body fat and weight gain, scientists report. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 7, 2009) — Researchers in Japan are reporting new evidence that the ordinary vinegar — a staple in oil-and-vinegar salad dressings, pickles, and other foods — may live up to its age-old reputation in folk medicine as a health promoter. They are reporting new evidence that vinegar can help prevent accumulation of body fat and weight gain.

Tomoo Kondo and colleagues note in the new study that vinegar has also been used as a folk medicine since ancient times. People have used it for a range of ills. Modern scientific research suggests that acetic acid, the main component of vinegar, may help control blood pressure, blood sugar levels, and fat accumulation.

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Vinegar Might Fight Fat

From Live Science:

Ordinary vinegar used to make salad dressings and pickles just might live up to its age-old reputation in folk medicine as a promoter of health, a new study suggests.

Nobody should start guzzling vinegar, but Japanese scientists found new evidence that vinegar can help prevent accumulation of body fat and weight gain, at least in mice.

Tomoo Kondo and colleagues note that vinegar has been used as a folk medicine since ancient times. People have used it for a range of ills. Modern scientific research suggests that acetic acid, the main component of vinegar, may help control blood pressure, blood sugar levels, and fat accumulation.

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Chocolate-Flavoured Milk Speeds Up Recovery As Well As Expensive Sports Drinks

Chocolate milkshake, which is low-fat milk flavoured with cocoa and sugar, has the advantage of additional nutrients not found in most traditional sports drinks Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Football players would be better off drinking chocolate milkshake after a game than expensive recovery drinks, claim scientists.

Researchers found that chocolate milkshake's "natural" muscle recovery benefits match or may even surpass a specially designed carbohydrate sports drink.

They discovered that muscle damage was actually lower in those players that drank the milk after training than those that drank the commercial energy drinks.

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American Diets Getting Worse

From Live Science:

Eat your vegetables. Exercise. Don't drink so much beer. Blah. Blah. Blah.

Even fewer Americans in their middle and later years adhere to this healthy lifestyle advice than they did two decades ago.

Despite the well-known benefits of a lifestyle that includes physical activity, eating a diet high in fruits and vegetables, maintaining a healthy weight, moderate alcohol use and not smoking, only a small proportion of older adults follow this healthy lifestyle pattern, a new survey finds.

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Scientists Identify A Key Protein That May Explain The Anti-Aging And Anti-Cancer Benefits of Dietary Restriction

From The Next Big Future:

High nutrients activate HIF-1 through the TOR-S6K pathway, which leads to increased ER stress and shortened lifespan. Other regulators such as PHA-4, SKN-1, AAK-2, DAF-16 and HSF-1 may function in parallel to HIF-1 to modulate DR-induced longevity phenotypes.

A protein that plays a key role in tumor formation, oxygen metabolism and inflammation is involved in a pathway that extends lifespan by dietary restriction.

The finding, which appears in the May 22, 2009 edition of the on-line journal PLoS Genetics, provides a new understanding of how dietary restriction contributes to longevity and cancer prevention and gives scientists new targets for developing and testing drugs that could extend the healthy years of life.

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Molecular Link Between Sleep And Weight Gain

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 23, 2009) — There appears to be a link between sleep and weight control, with some studies indicating that sleep disruption can increase weight gain and others that diet affects sleep. Victor Uebele and colleagues, at Merck Research Laboratories, West Point, have now provided further evidence to support this association by showing that T-type calcium channels regulate body weight maintenance and sleep in mice.

These data suggest that sleep and circadian treatment approaches may be of benefit in the fight against obesity.

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Boys Have Sweeter Tooth Than Girls

Children's love of sweetness starts to wane as they hit their teens Photo: John Kernick

From The Telegraph:

Girls have a finer sense of taste than boys - but boys have a sweeter tooth, a new food study has found.

On average boys need 10 per cent more sourness and 20 per cent more sweetness in their grub to recognise how tasty it is.

However, boys prefer wild and extreme tastes compared to the muted flavours favoured by girls, the figures revealed.

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Increased Food Intake Alone Explains Rise In Obesity In United States, Study Finds

New research finds that the rise in obesity in the United States since the 1970s was virtually all due to increased energy intake. (Credit: iStockphoto/Michael Krinke)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 8, 2009) — New research that uses an innovative approach to study, for the first time, the relative contributions of food and exercise habits to the development of the obesity epidemic has concluded that the rise in obesity in the United States since the 1970s was virtually all due to increased energy intake.

How much of the obesity epidemic has been caused by excess calorie intake and how much by reductions in physical activity has been long debated and while experts agree that making it easier for people to eat less and exercise more are both important for combating it, they debate where the public health focus should be.

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China's Secret Tea Revealed As Fat-Busting Wonder Cuppa By Scientists

From The Scotsman:

A DAILY cup of special tea may combat the obesity epidemic, scientists will say today.
An extract of white tea prevents new fat cells from forming and helps to burn off mature ones, according to research.

The herbal brew increases the metabolism and boosts slimming by having a very high concentration of antioxidants compared to the more popular green variety.

Nutritionist Marc Winnefeld said: "In the industrialised countries, the rising incidence of obesity-associated disorders including cardiovascular diseases and diabetes constitutes a growing problem.

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Factors Other Than Genes Could Cause Obesity, Insulin Study Shows

Purdue researchers have uncovered new evidence that factors other than genes could cause obesity, finding that genetically identical cells store widely differing amounts of fat depending on subtle variations in how cells process insulin. Here, insulin (green) is present in cells with no fat storage and absent in cells with fat storage at two days after insulin addition. This observation indicates faster insulin processing rates in cells with fat storage. Fluorophore-labeled insulin (green) is visualized with fluorescence imaging, and fat is visualized with coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering - or CARS - imaging (red/white). (Credit: Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 15, 2009) — Researchers have uncovered new evidence suggesting factors other than genes could cause obesity, finding that genetically identical cells store widely differing amounts of fat depending on subtle variations in how cells process insulin.

Learning the precise mechanism responsible for fat storage in cells could lead to methods for controlling obesity.

"Insights from our study also will be important for understanding the precise roles of insulin in obesity or Type II diabetes, and to the design of effective intervention strategies," said Ji-Xin Cheng, an assistant professor in Purdue University's Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Chemistry.

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Brown Fat: A Fat That Helps You Lose Weight?

From Time Magazine:

For most people, fat is a burden. It doesn't really matter whether it appears as cellulite on our thighs or cholesterol in our veins — we just don't want it.

But it turns out that our bodies also make a unique form of fat tissue that behaves remarkably unlike any other: rather than storing excess energy, this fat actually burns through it.

It's called brown fat (as opposed to the more familiar white fat that hangs over belt buckles and swings from the backs of arms), and a series of papers published in the New England Journal of Medicine confirm for the first time that healthy adults have stores of this adipose tissue, which researchers hope to study further as a potential new weight-loss treatment.

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Additional Evidence That Potato Chips Should Be Eaten Only In Moderation

Acrylamide, found in foods such as potato chips and french fries, may increase the risk of heart disease. Acrylamide has been linked previously to nervous system disorders and possibly to cancer. (Credit: iStockphoto/Alexander Zhiltsov)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 26, 2009) — A new study published in the March 2009 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition by Marek Naruszewicz and colleagues from Poland suggests that acrylamide from foods may increase the risk of heart disease. Acrylamide has been linked previously to nervous system disorders and possibly to cancer.

After ingesting large amounts of potato chips providing about 157 micrograms of acrylamide daily for four weeks, the participants had adverse changes in oxidized LDL, inflammatory markers and antioxidants that help the body eliminate acrylamide—all of which may increase the risk of heart disease.

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Just How Fat Are We?

Big Little Kids: Obesity rates in Americans ages 12 to 19 have more than tripled since 1980.

From Popsci.com:

Headlines fret about the growing obesity epidemic, but what does it mean? How did it happen? And what are the costs?

Obesity, defined as a body-mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher, is not equally distributed across the U.S. Check out this map to find out which state is the fattest (hint: it's the namesake of mud pie), which is the thinnest (think Coors Light), and which spends the most money on obesity-related health care (its governor pumps iron).

Read on, after the break, for more of America's (and the world's) fat facts.

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Too Much TV Linked To Future Fast-food Intake

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 1, 2009) — High-school kids who watch too much TV are likely to have bad eating habits five years in the future. A new study followed almost 2000 high- and middle-school children and found that TV viewing times predict a poor diet in the future.

Dr Daheia Barr-Anderson worked with a team of researchers from the University of Minnesota to investigate the relationship between television and diet. She said, "To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the association between television viewing and diet over the transition from adolescence into young adulthood. We've shown that TV viewing during adolescence predicts poorer dietary intake patterns five years later".

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Obesity Caught Like Common Cold

From Live Science:

Yet another claim that a common and contagious virus is linked to some cases of obesity is in the news today.

Studies on humans show that 33 per cent of obese adults had contracted an adenovirus called AD-36 at some point in their lives, according to an article in the UK's Daily Express, whereas only 11 per cent of lean men and women have had the virus.

The research, to be presented in a BBC television special, is not big news to scientists, however. Further, some worry that the portrayal of obesity as something you simply catch could obscure the fact that overeating remains the biggest driver of obesity.

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One Man's 3-Year Experiment In Eating Organic Food - All The Time

(Photo: Stuart Bradford)

Form International Herald Tribune:

Fruits, vegetables and animals can be 100 percent organic. What about people? In a fascinating experiment - on himself - Dr. Alan Greene, a pediatrician and author in Danville, California, decided to find out. For the last three years, Greene has eaten nothing but organic foods, whether he's cooking at home, dining out or snacking on the road.

He chose three years as a goal because that was the amount of time it took to have a breeding animal certified organic by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. While food growers comply with organic regulations every day, Greene wondered whether a person could meet the same standards.

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Fast Food Made Up Mostly of Corn

If you are what you eat, most Americans are an ear of corn (above), a November 2008 study suggests. A chemical analysis of popular fast food menus reveals that some form of the grain appears in most items. Photograph by Joe Schershel/NGS

From The National Geographic:

If you are what you eat, most Americans are an ear of corn, new research suggests.

A chemical analysis of popular fast foods reveals that some form of the grain appears as a main ingredient in most items—especially beef.

The researchers examined the molecular makeup of hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, and french fries purchased from three fast food chains in six U.S. cities.

"Out of the hundreds of meals that we bought, there were only 12 servings of anything that did not go straight back to a corn source," said study lead author Hope Jahren, a geobiologist at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu.

Corn's dominance in the nation's fast food is well known, "but the [chemical analysis] really bring it home in a way that hasn't been brought home before," said Craig Cox, Midwest vice president for the nonprofit Environmental Working Group.

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The Overflowing American Dinner Plate

From the New York Times:

In 1970, the average American ate about 16.4 pounds of food a week, or 2.3 pounds daily. By 2006, the average intake grew by an additional 1.8 pounds a week.

Among other things, that's an extra half pound of fat weekly - mostly from oils and shortening. That doesn't count the fat in the extra quarter pound of meat Americans now eat every seven days. Those fats were somewhat offset by a steep drop in dairy consumption, the only major food group to have a decline, primarily in milk drinking. (But we do love our cheese. More and more of it.)

This portrait of the raw ingredients of the American diet is based on what the Agriculture Department calls "food availability" - the amount of food produced for the average American consumer. The data are adjusted for food losses (waste on farms; in processing and transportation; and in stores, restaurants and homes) to provide a close approximation of what individuals eat. (The most recent year for which data are available is 2006.)

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