Saturday Short Takes Here's a selection of web articles on weight loss and related topics that caught my eye this week. 1. Looking for Magic Bullets to Fire at Obesity According to an article on the MedicalXpress site, "a number of magic bullets" are needed to fight obesity. It's more like magic shotgun shells. After recounting the usual statistics about the extent of the obesity epidemic and its human and financial costs (in this case, with a UK focus), the article moves on to the "bullets." … [Read more...]
Goodbye to bread!
Saturday Short Takes Google Alerts has brought me a diversified set of low-carb stories from around the world. Let's take a look! 1. Goodbye to Bread First up is Kim Poindexter writing in the Tahlequah Daily Press, who testifies that "Low-carb diets work, but say ‘bye to bread." Kim was told by her doctor that she had Type-2 Diabetes and needed to lose weight. So she went on a low-carb diet and has so far lost 32 pounds. She notes that although she practices yoga, swims, and lifts weights, … [Read more...]
Why I am planning to take fish-oil supplements
Fish Oil Supplement Benefits -- and Risks? Last updated: April 2017 My respect for the health and diet reporting of the main-stream media has fallen so low that I am inclined to do the opposite of whatever they suggest. So when in the same week the New York Times runs a story panning fish oil supplements, and ABC Good Morning follows up with an anti-fish-oil-supplement segment, I'm thinking it is time to give the golden capsules another try. I regularly took fish-oil supplements for … [Read more...]
Of mice brains aflame and other travesties
A note to the editors of ScienceDaily -- this is what a high fat human diet looks like. Or it might look like a plate of scrambled eggs with bacon, or a green salad with cheese, avocado, and black olives. What a high-fat human diet does not look like is that pile of buns, pizza, french-fried potatoes, and onion rings that you used to illustrate your story about a recent mouse study. The collection of carbs shown in your photo would choke a moose, never mind a poor little mouse. Oddly, … [Read more...]
Whole grain consumption and/or many other factors may help you live longer
From the headlines, you'd think that just eating more whole grain would enable you to live to a very ripe old age. "Eat Whole Grains For A Long Life, New Study Says" (Forbes). "Fiber From Whole Grains Linked To Longer Life" (Huffington Post) "More Whole Grains May Boost Life Span" (WebMD) It turns out that things are more complicated than the headlines. There are many factors determining when you bid the world good-bye, with how much whole grain you chewed your way through possibly being … [Read more...]
Red meat and colon cancer: what’s the real risk?
Life is full of risks -- some real and some statistical. Most of the risks claimed by observational studies fall into the statistical category. By "statistical," I mean "imaginary." For instance, a study published yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine (online) entitled "Vegetarian Dietary Patterns and the Risk of Colorectal Cancers" suggests that eating a vegetarian diet will reduce a person's risk of getting colon cancer by over 20% . Or to put it the other way around, regularly eating red meat … [Read more...]
Sugar is never free
I don't eat much sugar anymore, and I especially don't drink sugar, but I don't really see it as the root of all dietary evil, either. Just the root of some dietary evil. Perhaps most. Let's face it. Except for all its calories, sugar is an empty sort of carbohydrate. So I was happy to see The World Health Organization (WHO) take a stand against gorging ourselves to death on sweets. Granted, the stand is more belated than bold, but we have to take what we can get from main-stream health … [Read more...]
Walnuts in a healthy low-carb diet
Walnuts are a good low-carb food. Like peanuts and almonds, walnuts provide protein, fat and fiber with relatively few net-carbs per serving. For instance, a quarter cup of walnuts has two grams of net-carbs (four grams of total carbohydrates minus two grams of fiber). Taste and Cost Some people find walnuts bitter. I admit I prefer the taste of roasted almonds and peanuts, and seldom eat walnuts as a stand-alone snack. The big drawback to walnuts is cost. Many consumers only encounter walnuts … [Read more...]
Obesogenic: a new word for an old idea
A commentary by Jane E. Brody in yesterday's New York Times has a promising title: Attacking the Obesity Epidemic by First Figuring Out Its Cause. You have to admit, there's logic in that approach. There's logic, too, in Brody's central claim that we live in an environment that encourages, or at least enables, frequent eating and discourages, or at least enables the avoidance of, exercise. But is that environment "obesogenic" as Brody and some of her sources claim? Does the modern world … [Read more...]
News report: cut carbs to hold off diabetes
Besides tracking my own weight-loss and healthy living progress, recording low-carb recipes, and showing off my considerable vocabulary (or lexicon) on this blog, I also keep an eye on media reports about diet, nutrition and fitness. Frequently, I am angered by the stubborn low-fat, high-carb bias of these reports, as well as their general lack of informed thoughtfulness, as was the case in yesterday's post on the claim that saturated fat may be the cause of inflammation. Every now and … [Read more...]