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Archive for October, 2011

Food, appetite, and overeating

Posted in Brain & appetite, Food industry, Obesity on October 16, 2011 | 5 Comments »

Today is Blog Action Day and this year’s topic is food, so I thought I’d play along with a post on a subject near and dear to my heart: food, appetite, and overeating.

Part of what makes this timely is Peter’s post over at HyperLipid on mitochondrial damage and obesity, as well as the followup discussion on PaleoHacks.

I can understand having issues with Stephan Guyenet’s food reward hypothesis; I myself am skeptical about some of the implications (which may or may not be correct, given how Stephan has been trickling out the info).

But what I cannot understand is some folks’ apparent certainty that reward plays little to no part in obesity.

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Quote of the day

Posted in QOTD on October 14, 2011 | 3 Comments »

Simply telling people to eat less and exercise more is not going to be sufficient to reverse the obesity trend. There is a pressing need to develop novel drugs that complement diet and exercise to both prevent and treat this disease.

~ Professor Tony Tiganis, Monash University via Science Daily

Yee gads.

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Friday cat blogging

Posted in Friday cat blogging on October 14, 2011 | 1 Comment »

Why my bathroom door is always closed!

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A pessimistic prediction regarding obesity

Posted in Obesity, Policy on October 10, 2011 | 5 Comments »

Kurt Harris had a pretty pessimistic prediction over on the PHD blog yesterday:

The elephant in the room for fat loss is that for many if not most people they will never achieve healthy fat levels until they stop using food for stimulation and entertainment beyond their nutritional needs. …

But the resistance to [reducing highly palatable food & drink] is monumental.

For that reason, I predict there will be no progress made at large. There will be victorious skirmishes for a subset of the population that read PHD or maybe my blog and others, but we will not save the world from obesity any more than we will eliminate late industrial corporate capitalism or stop using petroleum.

Perhaps you’ll be surprised, but I tend to agree. It’s not just the bickering over just how many carbs that is the real issue; it’s that people live in a world where they work too hard, make too little money, and are pretty stressed out. But hey, no problem, here’s the food industry to help make it better … at least until tomorrow. Rinse and repeat!

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Your brain on [ porn | food ]

Posted in Brain & appetite, Food addiction on October 8, 2011 | 1 Comment »

[Yikes. This post has been in my draft queue since June. I'm going to go ahead and post this as is for now. More TBD!]

Via a Matt Stone post, I came across this fascinating video series on internet porn addiction. There are two things that are great about it: first, it’s extremely well produced and explains a complicated subject in a way that’s very accessible.

Second, although the theme is porn, the author uses food so frequently that it’s really a must-watch for anyone curious about how what we eat can affect the brain’s reward circuits and lead to overeating and potentially food addiction.

The first video is embedded above (all six are here and there are links there for transcripts if you prefer), and aside from the slightly embarrassing title, is completely SFW: safe for work. The total viewing time is a little bit over an hour, but I’ve summarized it below with timestamps so you can check out highlights you find interesting.

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Why I don’t eat low-carb

Posted in Ancestral health, Low carb, Macronutrients on October 8, 2011 | 9 Comments »

A month ago I wrote a post about why I eat moderate carb. This installment, why I don’t eat low-carb, has been inspired by Jimmy Moore’s Is There Any Such Thing As ‘Safe Starches’ On A Low-Carb Diet?

As the discussion on PaleoHacks indicates, there were some plusses and minuses about Jimmy’s blog post. On the plus side, there were many thoughtful responses from a number of folks; on the minus, there were many knee-jerk unhelpful responses from some surprising folks (hello, Dr. Bernstein!).

[As an aside, there seemed to be confusion about what constitutes a "safe" starch. For Paul's PHD, it's basically non-grain starches and white rice. See the argument against cereal grains (part 1 and part 2) from Kurt Harris for the rationale of calling non-grain starches "safe."]

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Quote of the day

Posted in QOTD on October 8, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.

~ Will Rogers

HT Weighing the Facts
 

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