January 22nd, 2011 by Toni Brayer, M.D. in Health Tips, Research
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Haven’t we all learned that breakfast should be our biggest meal? “Start the day with ‘fuel’ and you can burn it off as the day goes on.” “Eat a big breakfast and you’ll eat fewer calories all day long.”
This advice is probably not true, and in fact a new study published in the January 17th issue Nutrition Journal shows that people ate the same at lunch and dinner regardless of what they had at breakfast. If a person ate 1,000 calories at breakfast (which is easy to do with bacon, eggs, toast, hashbrowns, and juice), he or she had a total increase in calories eaten throughout the day by 1,000 calories.
This doesn’t mean we should be skipping breakfast. The problem may be what we historically think of as an “American” breakfast. It might have worked for the farmer in the past or the laborer hauling lumber, but it’s just too many calories for our current level of activity. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
September 18th, 2010 by John Mandrola, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion
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I’m trying to get off the topic of fatness, but just when it seems right to move on to something less hopeless, we hear that even doctors can be felled by obesity’s resilience.
To the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group of well-meaning doctors who are buying expensive TV ads blaming McDonald’s for heart disease, I have just 5 words: McDonald’s is not the problem! Gosh. It’s maddening to think that such smart people could be that misguided — a whole committee of doctors completely devoid of any master-of-the-obvious is hard to fathom.
Don’t misunderstand — I’m not advocating McDonald’s food as overly nutritional, but blaming MacD’s for our obesity epidemic is like blaming guns for violence (for the record, guns scare me), brew pubs for alcoholism, or religion for war. (Sorry, that last one is a bad example.) Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*
August 29th, 2010 by Toni Brayer, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips, True Stories
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I know it’s not politically correct to look at what other people buy at the grocery store, but as a physician I just can’t help noticing. Some carts contain huge containers of soda pop, Doritos, frozen pizza, and other packaged goods.
I’m not surprised, because at the end of every isle is a display case that offers the giant soda for 89 cents or the Doritos on special for $1.29. With this type of marketing, it takes a strong person to resist the “bargain.”
Yesterday the woman in front of me (overweight, middle-aged) had a strange assortment of goods that she probably thought would help her lose weight. She had several Weight Watcher-type meals, diet drinks, power bars, and lots of “light” items — “light butter,” “light crackers,” “light yogurt,” and “light ice cream.”
Folks, this won’t work. Eating this way won’t help her lose weight. She needs to make dramatic changes to drop the pounds. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
August 1st, 2010 by Steve Novella, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips, News, Opinion, Research
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A new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition is reporting an association with eating meat and weight gain. This is a fairly robust epidemiological study, but at the same time is a good example of how such information is poorly reported in the media, leading to public confusion.
The data is taken from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition–Physical Activity, Nutrition, Alcohol, Cessation of Smoking, Eating Out of Home and Obesity (EPIC-PANACEA) project. This is a long-term epidemiological study involving hundreds of thousands of individuals, and is therefore a great source of data. We are likely to see many publications from from it. This one looked at the association of meat eating –- poultry, red meat, and processed meat -– with total weight. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*