It’s no secret that the U.S. has a weight problem and with chain restaurants serving up meals with thousands of calories in a single dish, it’s easy to understand why. Watch “CBS Doc Dot Com” to see which meals you should try to avoid — or at least share.
We’ve been slacking in the “Medical news of the obvious” department lately. Seems like research has been either actually newsworthy or so obvious that you could spot it yourselves (for example, the continuing investigations of whether smoking and being lazy are bad for you).
But we couldn’t let this one slide by: “A new study that analyzes what would happen if a person were to eat 2,000 calories of foods that are advertised on the tube,” as HealthDay describes. As even the average Saturday morning cartoon viewer could have predicted, the food in commercials turns out to be bad for you. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*
An interesting press release from the Competitive Enterprise Institute recently came across our desk and is reproduced in full below. I’m curious what our readers think of it, and of the government’s role in nutritional issues, given the link between nutrition and health:
Institute Calls for Civil Disobedience on National Donut Day
As Government Meddling in Nutritional Issues Mounts, CEI Advises, “Eat Two Donuts Today—One for Yourself, and One for Your Freedom”
Washington, D.C., June 4, 2010 — The Competitive Enterprise Institute today urged Americans to turn National Donut Day into a day of protest against growing government intrusion into nutritional issues. CEI urged people to eat two donuts — “one for yourself, and one as an act of patriotic civil disobedience.” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*
Red meat consumption has been linked to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and several types of cancer (breast, colorectal, stomach, bladder, prostate, and lymphoma).
There are plausible mechanisms: Meat is a source of carcinogens, iron that may increase oxidative damage, and saturated fat. But correlation and plausibility are not enough to establish causation.
Is red meat really dangerous? If so, how great is the risk? A couple of recent studies have tried to shed light on these questions, but they have raised more questions than they have answered. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
In 1952 Martin Gardner, who just passed away this week at the age of 95, wrote about organic farming in his book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. He characterized it as a food fad without scientific justification. Now, 58 years later, the science has not changed much at all.
A recent review of the literature of the last 50 years shows that there is no evidence for health benefits from eating an organic diet. The only exception to this was evidence for a lower risk of eczema in children eating organic dairy products. But with so many potential correlations to look for, this can just be noise in the data.
Another important conclusion of this systematic review is the paucity of good research into organic food –- they identified only 12 relevant trials. So while there is a lack of evidence for health benefits from eating an organic diet, we do not have enough high-quality studies to say this question has been definitively answered. It is surprising, given the fact that organic food was controversial in the 1950s, that so little good research has been done over the last half-century. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
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