Whole Health Source: Fat, Added Fat, and Obesity in America
In the last post, we saw that carbohydrate and particularly sugar intake have been declining in the US since 1999, even as our obesity rate ...| wholehealthsource.blogspot.com
In the last post, we saw that carbohydrate and particularly sugar intake have been declining in the US since 1999, even as our obesity rate ...| wholehealthsource.blogspot.com
Hello dear readers, | Whole Health Source
A photo Staffan sent me, showing him | Whole Health Source
I've written twice before about the Instant Pot, an electronic pressure cooker that helps make healthy food in a time-efficient manner (1, 2). At some point, I'll write another review of my Instant Pot, but the gist is that it still works flawlessly and looks sharp after more than four years of frequent use. Here are a few of the reasons why I like it so much:| Whole Health Source
Image credit: Evan Amos| Whole Health Source
A popular argument holds that the US Dietary Guidelines caused our obesity epidemic by advising Americans to reduce fat intake. Does the evidence support this idea, or is it simply a fantasy?| Whole Health Source
If we want to understand the accumulation of excess body fat, it's tempting to focus our attention on the location that defines the condition: adipose tissue. Ultimately, the key question we want to answer is the following: why does fat enter adipose tissue faster than it exits? | Whole Health Source
You've heard the story before: when you eat carbohydrate-rich foods that digest quickly, it sends your blood sugar and insulin levels soaring, then your blood sugar level comes crashing back down and you feel hungry and cranky. You reach for more carbohydrate, perpetuating the cycle of crashes, overeating, and fat gain.| Whole Health Source
It's no secret that I'm an avid food gardener. In the last two years, I've moved from exclusively growing vegetables to growing large quantities of staple calorie crops, such as potatoes, flour corn, and long-storing winter squash. | Whole Health Source
In January of this year, I handed in a complete manuscript draft of my first book, The Hungry Brain, to my editor at Flatiron Books. This book represents more than two full-time years of my life, and I can't wait for it to hit shelves. It's markedly different from any other book in its category, and believe it has the potential to substantially change the public conversation on eating behavior and obesity. | Whole Health Source
A new metabolic ward study tests the idea that lowering insulin via severe carbohydrate restriction increases metabolic rate and accelerates fat loss, independently of calorie intake. Although carbohydrate restriction did modestly increase metabolic rate, it actually slowed fat loss. One of the details that sets this study apart from previous studies is that it was funded by the Nutrition Science Initiative, an organization that was founded specifically to test the insulin hypothesis of o...| Whole Health Source
The "obesity paradox" is the observation that people with higher fat mass sometimes have better health outcomes than lean people, including a lower overall risk of death. Evidence has been steadily mounting that this finding may be a misleading artifact of the methods used to observe it. Two massive new studies add to this evidence.| Whole Health Source
Warning: this post will be a bit more wonkish than usual, because I need to get detailed to make my points. To read a summary, skip to the end.| Whole Health Source
The brain is the central regulator of appetite and body fatness, and genetic variation that affects body fatness tends to act in the brain. One important site of variation is the POMC gene, which codes for a signaling molecule that suppresses food intake. A new study shows that Labrador retrievers often carry an inactive version of the POMC gene, causing them to be highly food motivated, obesity-prone-- and perhaps more easily trainable. | Whole Health Source
Linoleic acid (LA) is the predominant polyunsaturated fat in the human diet, and it's most concentrated in seed oils such as corn oil. LA accumulates in fat tissue, and as with many of the nutrients we eat, it is biologically active. In a new paper, we systematically review the studies that have measured the LA concentration of fat tissue in US adults over time. We show that the LA concentration of fat tissue has increased by approximately 136 percent over the last half century.| Whole Health Source
Warning -- Satire -- old April Fools post!| Whole Health Source
The debate rages on over whether dietary salt (NaCl) increases the risk of cardiovascular events, with no clear answer in sight. Yet few people are paying attention to another, more insidious effect of salt: it may increase our calorie intake, and eventually, the size of our waistlines.| Whole Health Source
Examine.com is a website that provides unbiased information on supplements and nutrition. They publish the Examine.com Research Digest (ERD), which reviews the latest studies in these areas. I like ERD because it does a nice job of curating recent science, making it understandable and engaging for a broad audience, and explaining important background information. They have no conflicts of interest because they don't sell anything except information. I've been a scientific reviewer for...| Whole Health Source
People often ask me what I eat. I've been reluctant to share, because it feels egocentric and I'm a private person by nature. I also don't want people to view my diet as a universal prescription for others. But in the end, as someone who shares my opinions about nutrition, it's only fair that I answer the question. So here we go.| Whole Health Source
Over the last two decades, multiple independent research groups have come to the surprising conclusion that people with obesity (or, more commonly, overweight) might actually be healthier than lean people in certain ways. This finding is called the "obesity paradox". Yet recent research using more rigorous methods is suggesting that the paradox is an illusion-- and excess body fat may be even more harmful to health than we thought.| Whole Health Source
Dr. David Ludwig, MD, recently published a response to my critique of the carbohydrate-insulin-obesity hypothesis. This is good because he defends the idea in more detail than I've encountered in other written works. In fact, his piece is the most scientifically persuasive defense of the idea I can recall. | Whole Health Source
David Ludwig, MD, recently published a new book titled Always Hungry? Conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells, and lose weight permanently. The book is getting widespread media coverage. Ludwig is a professor of pediatrics at the Harvard Medical School and a professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. He's a pediatric endocrinologist, but his primary focus is research, particularly the impact of nutrition on hunger, calorie expenditure, and body weight. Although I ...| Whole Health Source
We tend to believe we're aware of what's happening in our own brains, and also in conscious control of our behavior. But a growing body of neuroscience and psychology research demonstrates that most of what happens inside the brain-- including the processes that cause us to select and execute behaviors-- is beyond our conscious awareness. This has important implications for our eating behavior, body weight, and health, as I explore in my upcoming book The Hungry Brain.| Whole Health Source
I've put off writing this post for many years because I know it will be controversial. But we're a few days from Christmas, and I also know this post will be a wonderful gift for some people.| Whole Health Source
Obesity involves changes in the function of brain regions that regulate body fatness and blood glucose, particularly a region called the hypothalamus. My colleagues and I previously showed that obesity is associated with inflammation and injury of the hypothalamus in rodent models, and we also presented preliminary evidence that the same might be true in humans. In our latest paper, we confirm this association, and show that hypothalamic injury is also associated with a marker of insulin ...| Whole Health Source
A blog about health, food, science, and whatever else captures my interest.| wholehealthsource.blogspot.com
A new paper published on December 6th in the journal Science once again tackles the question of whether elevated insulin drives the develop...| wholehealthsource.blogspot.com
Is Elevated Insulin the Cause or Effect of Obesity? The carbohydrate hypothesis, in its most popular current incarnation, states that elev...| wholehealthsource.blogspot.com
