Archive for February, 2017

Sugar in the Food Supply: Action and Reaction

February 19, 2017 — Change is afoot in the food supply. The last time we saw such sweeping changes, food makers responded to low-fat dietary guidelines by replacing fats in their products with carbs and especially sugar. Obesity took off and three decades later, the villain is sugar, not fat. In July 2018, Nutrition Facts labels will call out […]

Different Foods Spark Different Parts of Your Brain

February 18, 2017 — It’s a complex puzzle. But your brain definitely responds in very complex ways when you spot some food. Food marketers know this at a practical level. They spend their lives figuring out ways to make you respond to images of their products. Neuroscientists are figuring it out at a more basic level. Functional MRI images […]

Little Snack Bar Takes On Big Food

February 17, 2017 — It’s a perfect narrative. A brave entrepreneur making healthy snack bars is putting his money on the line to bring us truth in nutrition. Daniel Lubetzky, founder and owner of Kind Bars LLC, announced Tuesday that he is funding the creation of a new nonprofit. He will call it Feed the Truth. And thus, Little […]

Surgery: Six Times Better for Controlling Type 2 Diabetes

February 16, 2017 — Today in the New England Journal of Medicine, five-year results of a randomized, controlled trial show that bariatric surgery is six times better than intensive medical treatment for controlling type 2 diabetes. That’s right. Six times better chances for success after five years. Without surgery, the outcomes were dramatically worse. This study, known as the […]

Trash Talk About Causality, Personality, and Obesity

February 15, 2017 — Causality captivates people when the subject is obesity. The appetite for understanding factors that cause obesity grows more insatiable as its health and economic impact grows more devastating. That appetite surely spurred a new publication in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Gulay Avsar and colleagues developed a random effects model to […]

Why Can’t We Just Quit Sugar?

February 14, 2017 — The New York Times has a new food writer, Yotam Ottolenghi. In his first column for the Times, this British chef and author makes a radical confession about sugar: I rarely go a day without a bite or slice or square of something sweet. If it’s not cake, then it’ll be a cookie, a slice of […]

The Mystery of a Retracted Study That Came Back to Life

February 13, 2017 — A new paper in the February issue of Pediatric Obesity probes an important question. Can a gardening, cooking, and nutrition program exert an effect on obesity risk for Latino youth? At first glance, the results are encouraging. Right there in the title, the authors answer the question. The LA Sprouts program “reduces obesity and metabolic […]

Yes, Whole Grains Are the Real Deal for Metabolic Health

February 12, 2017 — Here’s a bit of nutrition advice that holds up pretty well under close scrutiny. Whole grains have been front and center in dietary guidelines for decades now. Epidemiology studies have long found that whole grains and dietary fiber correlate with health benefits such as better glycemic control, better insulin sensitivity, less heart disease, and less weight gain. Now, two new […]

Ready to Move Past Little Fibs in Eating Patterns

February 11, 2017 — Little fibs are among the biggest challenges in nutrition research. These little fibs show up in food diaries – self-reports of what a person in a nutrition study has eaten. People misremember, they fudge, or they might write down what they wish they had eaten. Mostly, people try to be honest, but little fibs add up […]

The Treacherous Quest for Healthy Fats

February 10, 2017 — Whether you’re reading consumer or scientific literature these days, healthy fats are a hot topic. The problem is that you’ll run into the quite a bit of conflicting information. The history is tortured. And unfortunately, even as science resolves some issues, others keep cropping up. For nearly 30 years, nutrition guidelines emphasized low-fat and low […]