Showing posts with label obesity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label obesity. Show all posts
Friday, 23 April 2010
Do me a flavour
Some genius has been writing about High Fructose Corn Syrup. I don't know who he is but he seems like a bright guy.
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
Well... duh!
This was published yesterday. Just in case you have a "too long, didn't read" moment, here's the story in a nutshell.
Rats were fed normal diet, but some were given sugar (sucrose) in the drinking water, some given high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in their water. The HFCS group became obese, the sucrose group remained pretty much the same.
HFCS is used extensively in a lot of foods, mainly processed stuff, because it is very cheap to manufacture. A bit like hydrogenated vegetable fats, it creeps into the daily diet of a lot of people, from those who need a microwave meal because it's quick and easy, to those who stuff their faces with crap from McDonalds.
What most people fail to realise is that although the calorific content of the two sugar types is virtually identical, HFCS bypasses the satiety response completely. Ordinarily, sucrose (one molecule of glucose joined up to one of fructose) triggers a negative feedback response: the body senses the high-energy source and eventually does a Mr Creosote ("**** off, I'm full.") This is caused by the metabolism of glucose to glucose-1-phosphate and then to glucose-6 phosphate as part of the glycolysis pathway down to pyruvate.
Fructose misses out this step and joins the pathway further down - the same endpoint, but a different entry point. However, all the metabolic sensors for glycolysis are based at the glucose-6-phosphate step. What this means is that food containing glucose makes the brain and body realise that it's had enough to eat but fructose doesn't.
People who eat this processed junk basically don't realise that they've already eaten enough calories, and as such about an hour after stuffing their faces with a Big Mac they fancy a nice tasty snack. Probably Doritos or some other rubbish. Why? Because they don't actually feel full.
So: one of the many problems with fast food. The trouble is that it's so cheap: so many calories for so little money. Unfortunately buying food that doesn't contain HFCS and other such junk costs more, hence the problems with obesity in the Western world, and until the food lobbyists are rapped on the knuckles this problem is going to continue, much to the detriment of world health.
Which brings me on to a final point: congrats to Obama for getting the USA healthcare bill pushed through, but the wankers that voted against it do have a point: the USA cannot afford the increased cost to the nation simply because the big businesses are still pushing bad diets down the necks of the taxpayers. The fatter they get, the bigger the burden on the tax bill. Obama was right to get the bill pushed through, but needs to tackle the tobacco and food lobbies before any real benefit will ever be seen.
Rats were fed normal diet, but some were given sugar (sucrose) in the drinking water, some given high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in their water. The HFCS group became obese, the sucrose group remained pretty much the same.
HFCS is used extensively in a lot of foods, mainly processed stuff, because it is very cheap to manufacture. A bit like hydrogenated vegetable fats, it creeps into the daily diet of a lot of people, from those who need a microwave meal because it's quick and easy, to those who stuff their faces with crap from McDonalds.
What most people fail to realise is that although the calorific content of the two sugar types is virtually identical, HFCS bypasses the satiety response completely. Ordinarily, sucrose (one molecule of glucose joined up to one of fructose) triggers a negative feedback response: the body senses the high-energy source and eventually does a Mr Creosote ("**** off, I'm full.") This is caused by the metabolism of glucose to glucose-1-phosphate and then to glucose-6 phosphate as part of the glycolysis pathway down to pyruvate.
Fructose misses out this step and joins the pathway further down - the same endpoint, but a different entry point. However, all the metabolic sensors for glycolysis are based at the glucose-6-phosphate step. What this means is that food containing glucose makes the brain and body realise that it's had enough to eat but fructose doesn't.
People who eat this processed junk basically don't realise that they've already eaten enough calories, and as such about an hour after stuffing their faces with a Big Mac they fancy a nice tasty snack. Probably Doritos or some other rubbish. Why? Because they don't actually feel full.
So: one of the many problems with fast food. The trouble is that it's so cheap: so many calories for so little money. Unfortunately buying food that doesn't contain HFCS and other such junk costs more, hence the problems with obesity in the Western world, and until the food lobbyists are rapped on the knuckles this problem is going to continue, much to the detriment of world health.
Which brings me on to a final point: congrats to Obama for getting the USA healthcare bill pushed through, but the wankers that voted against it do have a point: the USA cannot afford the increased cost to the nation simply because the big businesses are still pushing bad diets down the necks of the taxpayers. The fatter they get, the bigger the burden on the tax bill. Obama was right to get the bill pushed through, but needs to tackle the tobacco and food lobbies before any real benefit will ever be seen.
Thursday, 16 July 2009
Watch what you eat, folks!
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327171.200-the-calorie-delusion-why-food-labels-are-wrong.html?full=true
A wonderful, wonderful article by those folk at New Scientist who seem to be bucking the trend these days: this highlights the inherent errors in food labeling and points out the need to judge the content of food based on how much processing it has undergone, or the method of cooking.
It’s a particularly enlightening piece, especially when you read about the reptile metabolism experiments: raw steak provided fewer available calories and as such increased metabolic rate… the net calorie intake is therefore lower than that of processed, cooked steak.
The flip-side of course is this: don’t go eating raw meat, it will make you sick.
Mind you, I wouldn’t do that anyway, seeing as I’m a vegetarian. On that note, I seem to remember in the dim and distant past several people criticizing the late Linda McCartney's range of vegetarian food for being overly processed and remarkably fattening.
The moral of the story is this: fresh fruit and vegetables, organic meat, cereals, pulses and nuts are probably a whole lot better for you than the alternatives, and they are even healthier if you are careful about how you cook them. I would suggest that steaming or stir-frying would be better than deep fried.
Duh…
Of course, without cooking and processing food hugely then our brains might not have evolved to the state that they are now. Ya can’t win.
A wonderful, wonderful article by those folk at New Scientist who seem to be bucking the trend these days: this highlights the inherent errors in food labeling and points out the need to judge the content of food based on how much processing it has undergone, or the method of cooking.
It’s a particularly enlightening piece, especially when you read about the reptile metabolism experiments: raw steak provided fewer available calories and as such increased metabolic rate… the net calorie intake is therefore lower than that of processed, cooked steak.
The flip-side of course is this: don’t go eating raw meat, it will make you sick.
Mind you, I wouldn’t do that anyway, seeing as I’m a vegetarian. On that note, I seem to remember in the dim and distant past several people criticizing the late Linda McCartney's range of vegetarian food for being overly processed and remarkably fattening.
The moral of the story is this: fresh fruit and vegetables, organic meat, cereals, pulses and nuts are probably a whole lot better for you than the alternatives, and they are even healthier if you are careful about how you cook them. I would suggest that steaming or stir-frying would be better than deep fried.
Duh…
Of course, without cooking and processing food hugely then our brains might not have evolved to the state that they are now. Ya can’t win.
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
The lie that is BMI
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106268439&sc=fb&cc=fp
Having worked for a few years in obesity / cardiovascular biology and also struggling with my own weight and health, I came to the conclusion many years ago that the Body Mass Index was a big ball of dung. For the life of me I couldn't get to a BMI of less than 27 - it became an obsession - even though I was dieting, exercising and doing everything right. But the article I've linked to points out very succinctly that the BMI does not take into account tissue content. Bone and muscle all contribute and therefore should be adjusted for.
Why, in that case, have doctors failed to dismiss the BMI in favour of something like impedance or DEXA to measure body content combined with serum cholesterol and blood pressure? Maybe this is what they're doing, but every clinic I walk into STILL has that damn BMI chart. Burn them! Burn them all!
Having worked for a few years in obesity / cardiovascular biology and also struggling with my own weight and health, I came to the conclusion many years ago that the Body Mass Index was a big ball of dung. For the life of me I couldn't get to a BMI of less than 27 - it became an obsession - even though I was dieting, exercising and doing everything right. But the article I've linked to points out very succinctly that the BMI does not take into account tissue content. Bone and muscle all contribute and therefore should be adjusted for.
Why, in that case, have doctors failed to dismiss the BMI in favour of something like impedance or DEXA to measure body content combined with serum cholesterol and blood pressure? Maybe this is what they're doing, but every clinic I walk into STILL has that damn BMI chart. Burn them! Burn them all!
Wednesday, 17 June 2009
Therapies for obesity
Orlistat (Xenical) is the current big thing in obesity (if you'll pardon the pun). So it's no surprise that other Pharmas are trying to tap into this field. Cetilistat is interesting, not least because the side effects seem to be fewer compared to Xenical, and the efficacy seems to be the same.
This is obviously some years away from market, but it will be doubtless hailed as the answer to all our problems, just like lipitor was. *Ahem*
[mode=soapbox]
I'm all in favour of aids to weight loss, but the fact of the matter is that diet and exercise are the answer. If you don't redress the balance between intake and output you will get sick.
[/mode]
The problem I have with the whole Xenical / Alli thing is that it doesn't address the appetite question. One or two people I know have started taking Alli and they claim that they now feel justified in eating whatever the hell they like. Oops.
Personally when I started on the Prozac I also took the decision to listen to a lot more Radiohead. I thought it couldn't possibly do me any harm. I was wrong.
Ho ho.
This is obviously some years away from market, but it will be doubtless hailed as the answer to all our problems, just like lipitor was. *Ahem*
[mode=soapbox]
I'm all in favour of aids to weight loss, but the fact of the matter is that diet and exercise are the answer. If you don't redress the balance between intake and output you will get sick.
[/mode]
The problem I have with the whole Xenical / Alli thing is that it doesn't address the appetite question. One or two people I know have started taking Alli and they claim that they now feel justified in eating whatever the hell they like. Oops.
Personally when I started on the Prozac I also took the decision to listen to a lot more Radiohead. I thought it couldn't possibly do me any harm. I was wrong.
Ho ho.
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