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May 08 2012
Thick, 1,000-Year-Old Dental Plaque Is Gross, Useful to Archaeologists
What big plaque deposits you have!
A dentist will tell you to floss everyday, but an archeologist might, well, have different priorities. Turns out the nitrogen and carbon isotopes in dental plaque can give archeologists a look at 1,000-year-old diets.
The buildup of plaque on this set of teeth is, um, impressive. (Cut the skull some slack though, this was before we had dentists to chide us about daily flossing.) Without the benefit of modern dental hygiene, the plaque built up over a lifetime, layer upon layer like a stalagmite. In a paper recently published in the Journal of Archeological Science researchers exhumed 58 medieval Spanish skeletons and scraped off their dental plaque to test carbon and nitrogen isotopes. When they compared the isotope profiles of the Spaniards to that of plaque from an Alaskan Inuit, the scientists found the ratio of nitrogen-15 to be quite different. That makes sense, as the Intuit ate a predominantly marine diet, and there is more nitrogen-15 in the protein molecules of organisms living in sea than on land.
Another benefit of plaque is that it’s easier to test than bone, which has to be dissolved in acid to extract from ...
July 05 2011
Why Can’t We Can’t Stop Snacking? Maybe Because of Pot-Like Chemicals
Have you ever eaten a single potato chip or French fry that sent you spiraling into nearly uncontrollable gluttony? Scientists are now saying that these sober binges are actually quite similar to pot smokers’ notorious bouts of the munchies: fatty foods cause your body to release marijuana-like chemicals called endocannabinoids, and this likely compels you to continue stuffing your face.
In a study to be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Daniele Piomelli and his colleagues at UC Irvine investigated the connection between fat intake in rats and their production of endocannabinoids, natural compounds similar to THC, the main active ingredient in marijuana. They allowed the rats to sip on several types of drinks, including ones high in sugar, protein, or fat, and monitored the rats’ endocannabinoid levels.
The researchers learned that the high-fat drinks sparked the release of endocannabinoids, but the sugar and protein beverages did not. When a rat tasted a fatty drink, signals traveled from the rat’s tongue to its brain. The vagus nerve bundle in the brain then routed the message to produce endocannabinoids down to the rat’s gut. The researchers believe ...
January 19 2011
November 24 2010
Chubby Kitties, Tubby Turtles, Mega Marmosets: Animals Are Fattening Up
A prophetic story from The Onion in 2003 seems to be coming true: our pets and even lab and wild animals are becoming obese alongside humans:
Amid a barrage of commercials for new diet dog and cat foods, many owners say that their pets are being held to impossibly high animal-body standards perpetrated by the media. “I don’t care what anyone says, my Sassy looks good,” said Janice Guswhite.
Back in the non-satirical world, the findings are alarming. A study of over 20,000 animals from 12 different populations, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found that over the last 20 years the animals in every population they studied have been growing significantly tubbier, paralleling the human obesity epidemic.
Not only pets are fattening up–the group also studied wild animals living near humans and animals living in labs and zoos. All of them have been chubbing-out over the last two decades. This could mean we are thinking about the obesity epidemic all wrong, lead author David Allison told Nature News:
“Now, we don’t know why these increases occurred, but it invites some very interesting speculation,” Allison says. The surge in human obesity is generally attributed to an increasing consumption of calories and a decrease in physical activity. “But maybe there are other things that are important–because those things can’t be acting on the marmosets, or the rats and mice in the National Toxicology Program,” he says.
Some of the increases can certainly be explained by increases in caloric intake; for example your typical city rat, which ballooned up 40 percent, could be getting a more energy-rich diet of human scraps than 20 years ago. On the other hand, populations like lab monkeys shouldn’t be affected by changes to human habits, since they are raised on well-defined diets.
Obesity researcher Jaap Seidell, who wasn’t involved in the project, admits that environmental factors like Adenovirus 36 (which might be linked to human obesity) or endocrine disruptors and other drugs (which can get into the water system) may play a role in the obesity epidemic. But he told Nature News that each case of lab animals or wild animals ballooning up should be investigated individually before jumping to conclusions.
Other factors may also have changed. For example, over the past 30 years the number of rodents housed in each cage may have altered–which could very well affect the amount of exercise they get. “I think they are trying to deflect the attention from restriction of physical activity and high-energy foods,” Seidell says.
Related Content:
Discoblog: Mother’s Fatty Diet Makes Baby Monkeys Afraid of Mr. Potato Head
Discoblog: New Villain in the Obesity Epidemic: Mean Gym Teachers
Discoblog: New Theory: Plastic Can Make You Fat?
Discoblog: Super-Size Me, Jesus: Last Suppers in Paintings Have Gotten Bigger
Discoblog: Animal Prosthetics: False Limbs for Elephants, and Silicone Where You’d Least Expect It
DISCOVER: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About… Fat
Image: flickr / Yukari
November 19 2010
Mother’s Fatty Diet Makes Baby Monkeys Afraid of Mr. Potato Head
What monkey mothers eat has a large impact on how skittish their offspring act in stressful situations like stranger danger–or the presence of a Mr. Potato Head in their cage.
According to researchers, even normal monkeys find the toy’s large eyes to be “mildly stressful.” But baby monkeys from mothers who were fed a high-fat diet (over 35 percent of calories from fat, modeled after a typical American diet) had a much stronger reaction to an encounter with the spud man, and also spazzed in the presence of an unknown human.
The study, presented at the Society for Neuroscience annual conference, found that in stressful situations, the female offspring were more anxious and the males more aggressive, explains LiveScience:
The babies of the moms on the fatty diet were overwhelmingly more freaked out by the toys and stranger, the researchers found. That was especially true of female monkeys, which were reluctant to approach the toys (although they responded eagerly to food). The male offspring of fatty-diet moms were more likely to behave aggressively, threatening the human intruder in the stranger test, for example.
The behavior didn’t seem to result from the mother’s body fat content–the attitude changes occurred in the children of both fat and lean monkey moms on the high-fat diet. When they looked closer, the researchers found that the difference might lie in the brain.
When they examined the brains of the offspring, researchers found disruptions in serotonin signaling, which normally provides a feeling of well-being. The researchers think that placental inflammation brought on by the high-fat diet exposed the monkey fetuses to proteins called cytokines, which are known to cause serotonin disruptions.
It also doesn’t seem to matter what the offspring eat themselves, study researcher Kevin Grove told LiveScience:
“Even if we take the offspring, after they’re weaned from their mothers, and put them back onto a normal, healthy diet, their susceptibility to stress and anxiety still remains,” Grove said. “This really appears to be a permanent issue that occurs in utero.”
You heard it here, potential mothers-to-be: Watch what you eat while pregnant, or your child could end up with a lifelong potato head paranoia.
Related Content:
DISCOVER: How Did 9/11 and the Holocaust Affect Pregnant Women and Their Children?
Discoblog: Nutritionists to America: For the Love of God, Don’t Try the Twinkie Diet
Discoblog: Mozart Won’t Make Your Baby Smarter, But the Right Food Might
80beats: Can Mom’s Diet Shape Baby’s Genes? Study of Pregnant Mice Suggests So
80beats: “Metabolic Sins of the Father”: Fat Dads May Give Their Kids Diabetes
Not Exactly Rocket Science: You are what you eat – how your diet defines you in trillions of ways
Image: flickr / beeep
November 12 2010
Nutritionists to America: For the Love of God, Don’t Try the Twinkie Diet
It’s been making headlines all week (”Twinkie diet helps man lose weight” and “Trying To Lose Weight… Try The Junk Food Diet” might be some of the worst health-related headlines I’ve seen in awhile) as the Ding-Dong Diet or the Twinkie Diet, but let’s just call it the worst diet ever for short.
The newsplosion came from an experiment by Mark Haub, an associate professor in the department of human nutrition at Kansas State University. In an effort to prove to his class the importance of calories in weight gain and loss, he decided to drastically change his eating habits.
He embarked from the shores of a balanced diet of fruits, vegetables, grains, and meat (totaling about 2,600 calories per day) to a junk food diet consisting of Twinkies, Hostess and Little Debbie snack cakes, and Doritos–with sides of vitamin pills, protein shakes, and small portions of vegetables. He lost 27 pounds in 10 weeks. Why? Because he restricted his new diet to a total of 1,800 calories per day.
He expected to lose weight, but was unsure about the other health outcomes of the diet. Ten weeks later his blood tests showed that both his lipid levels and glucose had lowered, a fact that would put him in a healthier heart state, according to the American Heart Association’s guidelines. According to ABC News, Haub even felt better:
The thing is, he began to feel healthier. He had more energy, stopped snoring, and not only did he lose enough weight to drive down his overall cholesterol and body mass index (BMI), his good HDL cholesterol crept up two points and his blood glucose — despite all that cream filling — dropped 17 percent.
Discoblog was skeptical about the hype over Haub’s junk food binge, so we asked some nutritionists and doctors what they thought of it. We came back with several different takes, but one general message. In a loud and clear voice, these nutritionists are telling America that this diet is a bad idea, and pleading with people not to try it.
The experts did agree that the diet had one important lesson: It really showed just how much weight loss can improve your health. It also demonstrated that just cutting the number of calories you take in is enough to make you lose weight. But James Hill, the director of human nutrition at the University of Colorado, Denver told Discoblog that health-conscious people shouldn’t emulate Haub:
“This is not the diet you should be eating. The goal is to find a way you can eat forever and this isn’t a way to eat forever. This is a stunt, the stunt illustrates it doesn’t matter what you eat, if you take in less than you expend you will lose weight, but nobody should be promoting this as a way of eating.
“
Our nutritionists all agreed: This kind of diet isn’t sustainable in the long run. “Health is not measured in your habits of days and weeks,” said Miriam Pappo, director of clinical nutrition at Montefiore Medical Center.
After the weight loss benefits from the caloric restriction kick in, the dangerous combination of fat and sugar in these processed foods will start to take their toll. Also, Haub’s diet is lacking in a variety of basic nutrients that will risk his health in the long run, according to Pappo:
“The effects of what he did showed the importance of weight loss and how immediately weight loss can effect our well being and our lab results. However, long term, his diet was one that was void of antioxidants, phytonutrients, and fiber, all of which have been associated with longevity, with cancer prevention, diabetes control, and mental acuity, among other things. So, he would probably not fare well in the long term.”
And while the weight loss benefits are showing in Haub’s blood tests now, it’s not certain that once he reaches his goal weight these benefits will be sustainable on a diet with such a high fat and sugar content. Hill doesn’t believe the he will be able to keep the weight off in the long run:
“Weight loss isn’t any long term benefit unless you keep it off. If you lose weight and regain it, you are right back where you started. And most diets, that’s what happens. And I’m sure it’s going to happen to this guy.”
“Man has the unique ability to take a very healthy food substance and to chemically alter it into something that is not healthy, ” said Pappo, who also made the point that even some foods labeled low-fat or low-sugar can have negative health consequences. Walter Willet, from the department of nutrition at Harvard University, agrees:
“Much confusion exists about the definition of junk vs healthy food. Many people still believe that a bagel with jelly is a healthy food because it is low in fat, but in reality almost nothing could be worse than this large dose of refined starch and sugar. In contrast, Doritos and most other chip are now trans fat free and made with unsaturated fats that reduce blood cholesterol and risk of heart disease. Thus, they will be healthier than most of the foods consumed by Americans, which is not to say that a Dorito diet is recommended.”
My takeaway from this this little nutrition experiment is strikingly similar to author Michael Pollan’s thesis in much of his writing on nutrition:
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy.
Related content:
Discoblog: Lawsuit Claims Jenny Craig’s Diet Isn’t Backed by “Serious Lab Geeks”
80beats: Low-Calorie Diet Staves off Aging & Death in Monkeys
80beats: A Victory for the Atkins Diet? Not So Fast.
Not Exactly Rocket Science: You are what you eat – how your diet defines you in trillions of ways
Image: Flickr/franckdetheir and Prof Haub’s Diet Experiment Facebook Page
November 04 2010
Happy Meal Set to Become a Sad Meal in San Francisco
A decision made Tuesday by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors may make little kids (and probably some adults) cry. With an un-vetoable vote of 8 to 3, the board banned restaurant chains like McDonald’s and Burger King from giving out toys with “unhealthy” happy meals within San Francisco’s city limits.
The decision is preliminary and will be followed up by a second debate and vote on Tuesday, November 9.
Under the proposed rule, meals deemed healthy can still be packed with action figures. To meet the city’s “healthy” standard a kid’s meal must contain fewer than 640 milligrams of sodium and 600 calories, and under 35 percent of those calories can come from fat. It also has to include a serving of fruit or vegetable with each meal and meet a number of other requirements (pdf).
The majority of McDonald’s Happy Meal options don’t meet these standards, including ALL of the cheeseburger options and any meal with fries. McDonald’s spokesperson told The New York Times they don’t agree with the Supervisors’ stance:
McDonald’s called the bill misguided. “It’s not what our customers want,” said Danya Proud, a spokeswoman for the company, in a statement. “Nor is it something they asked for.”
The restaurateurs aren’t the only ones disappointed in the decision. San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom (who just won the lieutenant governor’s seat in this week’s election) said he would veto the bill, even though with eight supervisor votes he can’t override the decision. Others aren’t excited that the city government is trying to control what individuals are eating, said chef Henry Dimbleby in his blog for The Telegraph:
Libertarians, needless to say, are not impressed. “This is great,” reads a typical message board entry. “As a parent, I support this 100%. But I was wondering, why stop at telling me what to feed my kids? It would be great if the government would also tell me what time to put my kids to bed and what to clothe them in and what names to give them and how many I can have. That would make being a parent much, much easier and less time consuming. Thanks.”
A very similar ban came out of Santa Clara County (also in California’s Bay Area) in April. The San Francisco board was spurred to act themselves because of the city’s struggle with childhood obesity: Over 30 percent of fifth graders are overweight. The board hopes the ban will encourage kids to eat healthier foods, supervisor Bevan Dufty told the SF Gate:
“If you have to put a Shrek doll with a package of carrots,” Dufty added, “maybe that’s what you have to do, but there hasn’t been a real incentive for this industry to do that, and I think that this legislation in a small appropriate way is a step to say you need to do things differently.”
Related content:
Discoblog: To Catch Hamburglars, McDonald’s Installs DNA-Spraying Security System
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: I’d like a number 2 value meal, a frosty, and a peer-reviewed publication, please.
Discoblog: Why Do Some People Never Get Fat? Scientists May Have the Answer
80beats: Will the Supreme Court Let California Kids Buy Violent Video Games?
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Fast food logos unconsciously trigger fast behaviour
Image: Flickr/cbgrfx123
September 23 2010
The Public Speaks: Best Insulting New Names for High Fructose Corn Syrup
The New York Times’s health blog is asking scientists and readers what they would rename high fructose corn syrup, if they were given the chance.
The ubiquitous sticky sweetener is considered poison by many foodies and some public health officials, who worry that HFCS-packed processed foods contribute to obesity. But the companies that make the sweetener–the Corn Refiners Group–are hoping that changing the name of the product will change its image, as their president told the New York Times:
“Clearly the name is confusing consumers,” said Audrae Erickson, president of the Washington-based group, in an interview. “Research shows that ‘corn sugar’ better communicates the amount of calories, the level of fructose and the sweetness in this ingredient.”
The Times asked six leading nutritionists what they thought of the new name, and what they would rename it, given the chance. Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, would rename HFCS “enzymatically altered corn glucose” because he says:
The name also connotes a highly-processed, novel food ingredient, which has always been the best reason to avoid it….
See the whole list and vote for your favorite at the New York Times’ Well Blog, or suggest one of your own! Commenters on the site chimed in with their own opinions and suggestions to re-name HFCS. Here are our 10 favorite (and funniest) suggestions found floating around the extensive comments.
#10 Larry B says “How about ‘diabetes enhancer’, ‘Killer Sweets’, ‘Chucky the Sugar’ or ‘Texas Chainsaw Sweetner’”
#9 Kirk says we should “Just rename it ‘Glutton syrup,’ ‘Overeaters delight’ or ‘American way,’ any would be fitting.”
#8 S.L Marshall suggests the name “Liquid death.”
#7 davehalo has a couple names up his sleeve:
“1- corporate welfare sugar
2- millionaire’s elixir
3- tax payer subsidized corporate sugar
4- S.U.G.A.R – corporate ceo saying ’sure u get a refund’ right into my pocket”
#6 Jg suggests “Pre-fat”
#5 Craig Maltby: “Maize Glaze”
#4 Alex says “It should be called ‘Corn Glufru.’”
#3 Bruce suggests: “obesitose”
#2 wilwallace says to “call it F-A-T (Fat American Tonic)”
And #1 comes from Carl, who wisely says, “I think we should call it ‘the sweetener formerly known as high fructose corn syrup.’”
Scan through all the comments at the New York Times’ Well Blog.
Related content:
Gene Expression: Fructose, bad in rats
80beats: Rats Fed on Bacon, Cheesecake, and Ding-Dongs Become Addicted to Junk Food
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Corn is everywhere in American fast food
Cosmic Variance: Cheap, Crappy Calories
Image: iStockphoto
August 12 2010
Diagnosis: Pea Plant Growing in Lung
Doctors recently found a surprising growth in Ron Sveden’s lung: a pea plant.
Sveden, a 75-year-old man from Massachusetts reportedly suffered from emphysema for months. He worried when he met with New York City pulmonologist Len Horovitz that he might have lung cancer. Instead, X-rays revealed a pea plant, the BBC reports, which Sveden estimates grew to around half an inch.
Dr. Horovitz says that the lung’s warmth and moisture made the perfect pea habitat and suspects a pea seed went down the wrong way. He told AOL Health:
“That can definitely happen. This did not surprise me…. You can inhale a seed of a plant or sprouting plant and it can cause bronchial obstruction. I’ve pulled food out of people’s lungs before.”
Still, given the popularity of this story, we’re guessing lung gardening is pretty rare. As Sveden says in the ABC News video above, he’s not sure how big a lung-born pea plant can grow:
“Whether this would have gone full-term and I’d be working for the Jolly Green Giant, I don’t know.”
Related content:
Discoblog: Birth of a Kidney! Doctors Remove Organ Through Woman’
s Vagina
Discoblog: The Science of Virgin Birth
Discoblog: The Incredible Shrinking Baby Keeps Shrinking, Baffles Doctors
Discoblog: Another Type of Lead Pipe to Avoid
May 03 2010
Army Generals Fret: Are Americans too Fat to Fight?
April 23 2010
Fast Food News: It Boosts Impatience, and What Trumps KFC’s Double Down?
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