Tag: Diet

Diet Soda is killing you and not helping you lose weight

Just in case you were planning on shedding a few pounds before the Summer, the World Health Organization has informed us that diet sodas aren’t a fast track to success. According to a recent write-up in Science Alert, artificial sweeteners have no added health benefits when compared to traditional sugar and should not be utilized as a means of achieving weight loss. This news is devastating to many, as poor weight management can be a leading cause of deadly diseases such as diabetes and certain forms of cancer, which are leading causes of death all over the world.

Knowingly eating artificially sweetened foods might contribute to the “idea of ‘it’s better for me so I can eat as much as I want,'” registered dietitian Alissa Rumsey told Axios.


Sugar substitutes aren’t as satisfying as the real thing, so “for some people, this leads to them continuing to eat and graze on foods to try to find that feeling of satisfaction

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Get Fat Back In Your Diet

Listening to the doctors on cable TV, you might think that it’s better to cook up a batch of meth than to cook with butter. But eating basic, earthy, fatty foods isn’t just a supreme experience of the senses—it can actually be good for you.

The foods that best hit that sweet spot and “overwhelm the brain” with pleasure are high-quality fatty foods. They discourage us from overeating. A modest serving of short ribs or Peking duck will be both deeply pleasurable and self-limiting. As the brain swoons into insensate delight, you won’t have to gorge a still-craving cortex with mediocre sensations. “Sensory-specific satiety” makes a slam-dunk case (it’s science!) for eating reasonable servings of superbly satisfying fatty foods.

via Let Them Eat Fat: In Praise of Fatty Foods – WSJ.com.

How Sweet It Is?

The new stevia extract, which is an extract 300 times more potent than sugar, is the only widely marketed sugar substitute derived from a shrub. Other commonly used sweeteners aspartame (Nutrasweet, Equal) and saccharin were developed artificially in labs. Sucralose (Splenda) is derived from sugar but is processed with chlorinated chemicals.

Studies indicate that consuming something with a sweet taste primes the body for a calorie delivery that doesn’t happen. As a result eaters seek more sweets to satisfy the body’s cravings. Recent research also found that sucralose may alter people’s gut bugs in ways that promote weight gain.

A recent study by researchers at Louisiana State University’s School of Public Health found that liquid calories are a bigger problem than food when it comes to weight gain, and that sugar-sweetened beverages are the main culprit. What’s worse, Americans consume an average of 20 teaspoons of added sugars a day, about twice as much as recommended, according to government reports.

via New sweetener not so sweet for your diet – TODAY Health.

Five Myths About Drinking Water

Five Myths About Drinking Water : NPR
Myth No. 1: Drink Eight Glasses Each Day

Scientists say there’s no clear health benefit to chugging or even sipping water all day. So where does the standard advice of drinking eight glasses each day come from? “Nobody really knows,” says Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a kidney expert at the University of Pennsylvania. Continue reading “Five Myths About Drinking Water”

Can Sugar Substitutes Make You Fat?

Can Sugar Substitutes Make You Fat? – TIME
Like Pavlov’s dog, trained to salivate at the sound of a bell, animals are similarly trained to anticipate lots of calories when they taste something sweet — in nature, sweet foods are usually loaded with calories. When an animal eats a saccharin-flavored food with no calories, however — disrupting the sweetness and calorie link — the animal tends to eat more and gain more weight, the new study shows.

The sugar-fed rats, for example, showed the expected uptick in core body temperature at mealtime, corresponding to their anticipation of a bolus of calories that they would need to start burning off — a sort of metabolic revving of the energy engines. The saccharin-fed animals, on the other hand, showed no such rise in temperature. “The animals that had the artificial sweetener appear to have a different anticipatory response,” says Susan Swithers, a professor of psychological sciences at Purdue University and a co-author of the study. “They don’t anticipate as many calories arriving.” The net result is a more sluggish metabolism that stores, rather than burns, incoming excess calories.

Though it’s premature to generalize based on animal results that the same phenomena would hold true in people, Swithers says, she notes that other human studies have already shown a similar effect. A University of Texas Health Science Center survey in 2005 found that people who drink diet soft drinks may actually gain weight; in that study, for every can of diet soda people consumed each day, there was a 41% increased risk of being overweight.

Born to be Fat

Genes Take Charge, and Diets Fall by the Wayside – New York Times
krispy-kreme-bacon-cheddar-cheeseburgers There is a reason that fat people cannot stay thin after they diet and that thin people cannot stay fat when they force themselves to gain weight. The body’s metabolism speeds up or slows down to keep weight within a narrow range. Gain weight and the metabolism can as much as double; lose weight and it can slow to half its original speed.

80 percent of the offspring of two obese parents become obese, as compared with no more than 14 percent of the offspring of two parents of normal weight. 70 percent of the variation in peoples’ weights may be accounted for by inheritance, a figure that means that weight is more strongly inherited than nearly any other condition, including mental illness, breast cancer or heart disease. ibeatanorexia

The feeling of hunger is intense and, if not as potent as the drive to breathe, is probably no less powerful than the drive to drink when one is thirsty. This is the feeling the obese must resist after they have lost a significant amount of weight

Continue reading “Born to be Fat”