- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The post-workout binge is so common, according to the Los Angeles Times, scientists have come up with a term for it: compensation. They are now trying to figure out what makes some people compensate while others don't.
In studies of the effects of diet and exercise on body weight, some people who lose a lot of weight, some lose very little weight and some lose none at all. That has led some scientists to believe that exercise might not be a reliable way to lose weight, the Times reported. Exercise seems to stimulate the appetite.
While compensation can be triggered by particularly intense workouts, in most people it appears to be...- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Elena Conis of the Los Angeles Times "Nutrition Lab" was puzzled when pork, billed for years as "the other white meat," was lumped in with beef for a study that linked their high consumption to heart disease and death.
According to Conis' story, the pork industry adopted the white meat slogan after breeding leaner pigs in the 1970s. Scientists, however, generally consider "white" meat to be poultry and "red" meat to come from mammals because saturated fat is generally higher in mammal meat than in fowl.
"If this sounds really confusing, that's because it...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Every Tuesday, students at the University of San Francisco are presented with "low carbon" diet choices in the school cafeteria, according to a story in the San Jose Mercury News. Gone is cheese pizza and hamburgers. Such savory treats are being substituted with options that are equally delicious - like guacamole and cucumber relish - but are produced on farms that release less greenhouse gasses than dairies and livestock operations.
USF is one example of institutions looking at changing food consumption to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases floating into earth's atmosphere. According to the article, the United...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
A comment by UC Davis professor of medicine, Dr. M. Eric Gershwin, will probably give many moms the shivers. In a CNN story today, he says that if your child's pacifier falls on the floor, put it right back in his or her mouth.
OK, that's really hard to do, but it does draw attention to his point: The human immune system will offer a child better protection in the future if it is exposed to germs and allergens at a young age.
In the story, written by Elizabeth Landau, Gershwin called the immune system "a complicated, multiorgan, chemical and genetic nightmare" that evolved about 250,000 years ago and is unlikely to improve...