Category: Nutrition (Page 8 of 48)

Food “Stop Sign” To Control Over Eating

June 1, 2012 / Staff

Edible food “Stop Signs” may be just the thing to remind you to quite eating.

The visual reminder helps people to manage portion control and acts to snap you out of the compulsion to continue eating out of momentum.

And it actually works.

People consumed 250 less calories when the edible “stop signs” were used.

Such mindless habit-eating helps explain why some people go overboard while snacking. Other reasons, the study notes: people aren’t good at self-monitoring how much they eat, or they eat what they believe — incorrectly — is an appropriate portion.
“By inserting visual markers in a snack-food package, we may be helping them to monitor how much they are eating and interrupt their semi-automated eating habits,” lead researcher Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab and author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, said in a statement.

Nutrition, Research, Wellness

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Get Fit With Faith?

May 31, 2012 / Staff

Will dieting for God motivate the overweight masses to shed unwanted pounds?

Rev. Rick Warren, author of the best seller, The purpose Driven Life and leader of Saddleback mega-church in Lake Forest, Calif., was convinced that his congregation of 20,000 overweight believers would benefit from a little divine inspiration to get fit.

With that was born the Daniel Plan, a sweeping program of smart eating (and yes, lean meats are included), workout classes, small-group support meetings, walk and worship sessions and more, much of it made available both in person and online. Warren recruited three marquee names from the world of medicine — Drs. Mehmet Oz, Daniel Amen and Mark Hyman (all of different faiths) — to help spread the good-health message, and the Saddleback members fell in love with the plan. More than 15,000 of them have signed up so far and in the past 18 months alone, they have lost a collective 260,000 lbs.

Warren hopes that people worldwide will embrace the message and is enlisting the help of the multi-faithed trio of Drs. Mehmet Oz, Daniel Amen and Mark Hyman to help spread the word.

Nutrition, Quality Control, Wellness

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Big Corn Loses Battle With FDA To Rename Corn Syrup

May 31, 2012 / Staff

This is a small victory for consumers who, finally aware of the dangers of high fructose corn syrup, will continue to be able to identify it in the products they buy.

Michael M. Landa, director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition at the F.D.A., denied the petition, saying that the term “sugar” is used only for food “that is solid, dried and crystallized.”
“HFCS is an aqueous solution sweetener derived from corn after enzymatic hydrolysis of cornstarch, followed by enzymatic conversion of glucose (dextrose) to fructose,” the letter stated. “Thus, the use of the term ‘sugar’ to describe HFCS, a product that is a syrup, would not accurately identify or describe the basic nature of the food or its characterizing properties.”

The Corn Refiners Association is afraid that consumers will avoid the product, which has received a bad reputation, under the pretext of “false information”, namely that corn syrup is natural and is the same as sugar.

The fact is that it is NOT natural , it is manufactured in a lab and can harm to people who can not properly metabolize the ingredient.

And further, to argue that HFCS is the same as sugar only calls into question the efficacy of sugar in the human diet.

There are many who would postulate that there already exists an overabundance of sugar which is causing obesity and Type 2 diabetes in epidemic proportions.

Nutrition, Quality Control, Wellness

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Mediterranean Diet For The Brain

May 30, 2012 / Staff

The Mediterranean Diet has long been considered to be the perfect diet to maintain a healthy weight, however, a few new benefits have been discovered along the way.

As well as offering a lower incidence of illness and general wellbeing include a boost to the brain!

The research involved data on more than 11,000 university students over a period of four years. Dietary intake data was taken at the beginning of the study and self-perceived quality of life was measured after the four year monitoring period. In order to ascertain whether the Mediterranean diet was followed, consumption of vegetables, pulses, fruit, nuts, cereals and fish was positively valued whereas consumption of meat, diary products and alcohol was negatively valued.

Participants reported greater feelings of wellbeing and rated their quality of life as being greater

Nutrition, Research, Wellness

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Little Changes That Can Make A Huge Difference

May 29, 2012 / Staff

Sometimes the hardest part about making changes is simply getting started.

But affecting great change can be accomplished by little adjustments.

Overhauling your lifestyle to improve your health can seem daunting and, quite simply, impossible so most of us won’t even consider the challenge.

However, starting with two simple aspects of your routine can snowball into real results that have substantial impact.

Eating more fruits and vegetables and cutting back on television viewing are two lifestyle changes that can effect dramatic changes in the ability to continue on a path to healthy living.

To determine which changes were most effective, the researchers recruited 204 adults aged 21 to 60, who engaged in all four unhealthy diet- and activity-related behaviors. The participants were divided into four treatment groups, each of which was assigned two lifestyle changes: increasing fruit and vegetable intake and increasing physical activity; decreasing fat consumption and reducing leisure time spent sedentary; decreasing fat intake and increasing physical activity; or increasing fruit and vegetable intake and decreasing sedentary leisure.
The participants engaged in their treatment regimens for three weeks and self-reported their progress by logging their data into a personal digital assistant every day and sending it to a coach who communicated with the participants as needed by telephone or email.

Nutrition, Quality Control, Research, Wellness

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