September 1, 2006, 5:07 AM CT

Portion Distortion And Weight Maintenance

New research shows that people's perceptions of normal portion sizes have changed in the past 20 years. A study out of Rutgers reported in the recent issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association reports that Portion Distortion may be the cause1. This phenomenon occurs when consumers perceive large portion sizes as appropriate amounts to eat at a single eating occasion.

"It has previously been established that portion sizes of virtually all foods and beverages served at restaurants and packaged for single-serve have dramatically increased over the last two decades," said Jaime Schwartz MS, RD, who was a graduate student at Rutgers at the time of this study. "Our study compared what people perceive to be a typical portion size now to what waccording toceived as typical two decades ago, before portions began to grow. We also compared current perceptions of typical portions to reference portion sizes, defined in this study as the serving size on the Nutrition Facts panel".

This study replicated one that was done 20 years ago in which participants were asked to serve themselves the amount they considered to be a typical portion of each meal item on a buffet table2. To follow this model, Schwartz and co-author, Carol Byrd-Bredbenner, PhD, RD, enrolled 177 young adults to participate. All were invited to attend one meal, selecting typical portions of a total of eight meal items at breakfast or six at lunch and dinner. Food and beverage choices mirrored the study of 20 years ago as to permit valid comparisons between typical portions over time.........

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August 24, 2006, 3:10 PM CT

Now You Can Be More Active

Do you believe that because you are big you can barely do any activity at all?

Do you think you cannot exercise, play sports, or become fit?

It's true that very large people face special challenges in trying to be active. We have to agree that you may not be able to bend or move in the same way that other people can. Sometimes you might find it hard to find clothes and equipment for exercising. It is also possible that you may feel self-conscious being physically active around other people.

Facing and solving these challenges is hard but it can be done!........

Posted by: Evelyn      Permalink

August 19, 2006, 6:58 AM CT

Publisher Takes Weight Challenge Seriously

For more than 21 years Jim Reevs has enjoyed exercising five to six times a week. He's even raced in the Ore to Shore bike race, the Superior Bike Fest and various running races on an annual basis. But when he turned 50, he realized that exercise alone does not constitute a healthy lifestyle.

Reevs found out he has hypertension and in order to lower it, he became part of the Healthy Weight Journal Challenge.

"There is a direct link between obesity and high blood pressure," he said. "To me it seems stupid taking medicine if you can take care of yourself healthwise".........

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August 19, 2006, 6:51 AM CT

Salads With Some Fat Are Healthier

Here's some diet advice you don't hear every day -- the next time you prepare a fresh, healthy salad, be sure to throw in some fattening food.

Far from being a dieter's worst enemy, scientists are discovering that a little fat can actually do a lot of good. The scientists aren't saying fry your salad in bacon grease! But they say don't cut all fat out of your diet either. Why? It takes some fat to help your body absorb the cancer fighting nutrients in your vegetables.

Jennifer Jarvis has always tried to stick to a light, healthy diet. But when she volunteered for a food study recently, she learned something that was a little hard to swallow -- that cutting fat completely out of her diet, was actually robbing her body of nutrients.........

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August 10, 2006, 11:58 PM CT

Parental Time And Childhood Obesity

The fight against obesity in children just got a new weapon, thanks to a multi-year study by scientists from Texas A&M University.

The study observed that the amounts and quality of time parents spent with their children has a direct effect on children's rates of obesity, said Dr. Alex McIntosh, lead researcher. McIntosh is professor of sociology with a research appointment from Texas Agricultural Experiment Station.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture study, "Parental Time, Role Strain and Children's Fat Intake and Obesity-Related Outcomes," was published in June.

In general, scientists found the amount of time a mother spent with her child, her work stress and her income level had a larger impact in lowering the child's risk of obesity than the father's time, work stress and income, McIntosh said.

Furthermore, the more time a mother spends with the child, the less likely that child is to be obese; on the other hand, the more time a father spends with a child, the more likely the child will be obese, he said.

"The impacts were greater for 9- to 11-year-old children than for 13- to 15-year-old children," he added.

As a sociologist, McIntosh has long wondered how parents influence their children's nutritional habits, he said.........

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August 8, 2006, 8:42 PM CT

Nutrition's Role In Genes And Birth Defects

Expectant mothers may someday get a personalized menu of foods to eat during pregnancy to complement their genetic makeup as a result of new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Researchers used transparent fish embryos to develop a way to discover how genes and diet interact to cause birth defects.

"By the time most women know they are pregnant, the development of the fetus' organs is essentially complete," said Bryce Mendelsohn, co-author and an M.D./Ph.D. student in the Medical Scientist Training Program at Washington University School of Medicine. "Since we currently do not understand the interaction between genetics and nutrition, the goal of this research was to understand how the lack of a specific nutrient, in this case copper, interacts with an embryo's genetics during early development".

Mendelsohn is doing the research in the laboratory of Jonathan D. Gitlin, M.D., the Helene B. Roberson Professor of Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine, director of genetics and genomic medicine at St. Louis Children's Hospital and scientific director of the Children's Discovery Institute.

Mendelsohn and collaborators Stephen L. Johnson, Ph.D., associate professor of genetics at the School of Medicine, and graduate student Chunyue Yin, working with Lila Solnica-Krezel, associate professor of biology at Vanderbilt University, studied the impact of copper metabolism on the development of zebrafish, a vertebrate that develops similarly to humans. Zebrafish have become staples of genetic research because the transparent embryos grow outside of the mother's body, which allows development to be easily observed.........

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August 1, 2006, 7:02 AM CT

Reduce Prostate Cancer Growth Rate

UCLA researchers found that altering the fatty acid ratio found in the typical Western diet to include more omega-3 fatty acids and decrease the amount of omega-6 fatty acids may reduce prostate cancer tumor growth rates and PSA levels.

Published in the Aug. 1 issue of the journal Clinical Cancer Research, this initial animal-model study is one of the first to show the impact of diet on lowering an inflammatory response known to promote prostate cancer tumor progression and could lead to new treatment approaches.

The omega-6 fatty acids contained in corn, safflower oils and red meats are the predominant polyunsaturated fatty acids in the Western diet. The healthier marine omega-3 fatty acids are found in cold-water fish like salmon, tuna and sardines.

"Corn oil is the backbone of the American diet. We consume up to 20 times more omega-6 fatty acids in our diet compared to omega-3 acids," said principal investigator Dr. William Aronson, a professor in the department of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a researcher with UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center. "This study strongly suggests that eating a healthier ratio of these two types of fatty acids may make a difference in reducing prostate cancer growth, but studies need to be conducted in humans before any clinical recommendations can be made".........

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July 17, 2006, 9:26 PM CT

Sleep more to lose weight

You may be spending very few hours for sleep, now stop this and try to relax and avoid gaining weight, that's the message scientists have for you according to the findings from a recently published study. This interesting study shows that women who tend to sleep less, 5 hours or less, are more prone to weight gain in comparison to women who sleep 7 hours. Scientists presented this study in the recently held American Thoracic Society International conference during the later part of May 2006.

The study was interesting because it showed that women who get only 5 hours or less of sleep per day had 32% higher chance of having significant weight gain in comparison to women who get 7 hours of sleep. The definition of significant weight gain was a gain in weight amounting to 33 pounds ore more. The results of this study also indicated that women who get 5 hours of sleep or less have fifteen percent increased risk of developing obesity during the study period of 16 years, in comparison to women who get 7 hours of sleep. The group in between, who had only 6 hours of sleep per day, had 12 percent higher chance of developing major weight gain and 6 percent higher risk of developing obesity in comparison to women who get 7 hours of sleep per day.

These conclusions are drawn form a large study, which had 68,183 middle-aged women, who were enrolled in the Nurses health study. Women who took part in the study were mandatory to give information about their sleeping hours and were asked to report their weights every 2 years of years during the 16 years of the study. Even at the beginning of the study women who had 5 hours or less of sleep weighed on an average 5.4 pounds more on the scale in comparison to women who had 7 hours of sleep on a regular basis. The principle investigator of this study, Dr. Sanjay Patel, claims that this is the biggest study of its kind. Dr. Patel says that, this would be the first study to demonstrate that lack of sleep lead to weight gain over a long period of time.........

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July 12, 2006, 11:37 PM CT

Sleep Deprivation Doubles Risks Of Obesity

You might be too busy to find time to sleep, but lack of sleep could lead to overweight and obesity. New research from Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick has found that sleep deprivation is associated with an almost a two-fold increased risk of being obese for both children and adults.

Findings from a study by Professor Francesco Cappuccio were presented to the International AC21 Research Festival hosted this month by the University of Warwick.

Researchers reviewed current evidence in over 28,000 children and 15,000 adults. For both groups Professor Cappuccio found that shorter sleep duration is associated with almost a two-fold increased risk of being obese.

The research also suggests that those who sleep less have a greater increase in body mass index and waist circumference over time and a greater chance of becoming obese over time.

Professor Cappuccio says: "The 'epidemic' of obesity is paralleled by a 'silent epidemic' of reduced sleep duration with short sleep duration linked to increased risk of obesity both in adults and in children.These trends are detectable in adults as well as in children as young as 5 years".

Professor Cappuccio points out that short sleep duration may lead to obesity through an increase of appetite via hormonal changes caused by the sleep deprivation. Lack of sleep produces Ghrelin which, among other effects, stimulates appetite and creates less leptin which, among other effects, suppresses appetite. However he says more research is needed to understand the mechanisms by which short sleep is linked to chronic conditions of affluent societies, such as obesity, diabetes and hypertension.........

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July 12, 2006, 8:26 PM CT

Who Eat More Fruits

Those who are sweet lover may be eating more fruits in comparison to those who love salty-snacks. People who like fruit eat more sweets than vegetable lovers do. These findings are as per researchers from Cornell University analyses.

"If we know a person likes one type of food, this kind of study helps us better predict what other types of foods he or she might prefer," said the researcher and director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab that studies the psychology behind what people eat and how often they eat it. By better understanding how various foods, such as sweets, are linked by preference, strategies used to market such sweet snacks as candy bars, for example, could be incorporated into an educational program to increase the consumption of fruit.

To research in this matter and to see how much fruit sweet and salty-snack lovers ate, Wansink used the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals. To determine whether fruit lovers eat more sweets than vegetable lovers, Wansink analyzed the results of a snack consumption survey of 770 individuals.........

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