“Our current system for assessing calories is surely wrong,” said evolutionary biologist Richard Wrangham of Harvard University, the co-organizer of the panel.
In a wide-ranging discussion of how food is digested in everything from humans to rats to pythons, the panel reviewed a new spate of studies showing that foods are processed differently as they move from our gullet to our guts and beyond. They agreed that net caloric counts for many foods are flawed because they don’t take into account the energy used to digest food; the bite that oral and gut bacteria take out of various foods; or the properties of different foods themselves that speed up or slow down their journey through the intestines, such as whether they are cooked or resistant to digestion.
Of course, in addition to that, the thermodynamic theory of nutrition doesn’t take into account how your metabolism responds to different kinds of calories. In a just world, much of the lipophobic nutrition industry would be sued into oblivion, or in prison, bearing responsibility for millions of premature deaths, and sufferers of ill health. Instead, they still seem to be in charge of the FDA.
Weiner said that he eats at the Chipotle if he must have fast food. He cited the chain’s vegetable ingredients and vegetarian and vegan options.
Two questions: 1) what does vegetarian, and particularly vegan food have to do with weight loss and 2) Why would we expect someone who makes a living reducing weight via surgery to have any idea of what good nutrition for weight loss is?
On a related topic, the search “Dr. Oz quack” yields a couple hundred thousand results. A theory that is reinforced by the large amount of email spam I get featuring his name in the subject.
I continue to try to limit my own sodium intake, because it does seem to affect my blood pressure, but trying to extrapolate from individuals with salt sensitivity to the general population is a fool’s errand based on junk science. Of course, a lot of the power mongers out there, like Mike Bloomberg, are unfortunately fools as well.
This is a step in the right direction, though they persist in the myth that the problem with potato chips is fat. I’d love to try a collard- or cabbage- or kale-based chip.
Australian scientists have created a pineapple that tastes like a coconut. It took them ten years to develop, but the fruit dubbed as the “piña colada pineapple” wasn’t exactly what they were trying to create.
Scientists, from a government agency in Queensland, were initially trying to develop a new variety of a sweeter, juicier pineapple but instead, created a coconut flavored one and now call it the AusFestival.
I just noticed that both words in the title are combinations of two types of vegetation. Sort of like Palmolive™.
I think that if “wilderness advocates” quoted in the story valued empty ocean more than an oyster farm, they should have paid him to stop, instead of getting the government to make him stop. But hey, that’s just me. The new way to get what you want is to have the state take it for you. It’s different from theft because there are uniforms and everything involved.
I’ve been thinking about starting to drink it for health reasons, but “as much as I like” is currently none at all — I’ve just never developed a taste for it, and I’ve never envied people who seem (or claim to be) unable to function in the morning without it. I don’t want to get dependent on it in that way. From the article, the most obvious benefit is to reduce triglycerides, but mine are already very low from my paleo diet.
It wouldn’t be hard for me to take it up, because I make a pot for Patricia every morning. I’d just have to make more.