John Robbins
February 22, 2011
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/chocolates-startling-heal_b_825978.html
The food police may find this hard to take, but chocolate has gotten a bad rap. People say it causes acne, that you should eat carob instead, that it's junk food. But these accusations are not only undeserved and inaccurate, they falsely incriminate a delicious food that turns out to have profoundly important healing powers.
There is in fact a growing body of credible scientific evidence that chocolate contains a host of heart-healthy and mood-enhancing phytochemicals, with benefits to both body and mind.
For one, chocolate is a plentiful source of antioxidants. These are substances that reduce the ongoing cellular and arterial damage caused by oxidative reactions.
You may have heard of a type of antioxidants called polyphenols. These are protective chemicals found in plant foods such as red wine and green tea. Chocolate, it turns out, is particularly rich in polyphenols. According to researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, the same antioxidant properties found in red wine that protect against heart disease are also found in comparable quantities in chocolate.
How does chocolate help to prevent heart disease? The oxidation of LDL cholesterol is considered a major factor in the promotion of coronary disease. When this waxy substance oxidizes, it tends to stick to artery walls, increasing the risk of a heart attack or stroke. But chocolate to the rescue! The polyphenols in chocolate inhibit oxidation of LDL cholesterol.
And there's more. One of the causes of atherosclerosis is blood platelets clumping together, a process called aggregation. The polyphenols in chocolate inhibit this clumping, reducing the risks of atherosclerosis.
High blood pressure is a well known risk factor for heart disease. It is also one of the most common causes of kidney failure, and a significant contributor to many kinds of dementia and cognitive impairment. Studies have shown that consuming a small bar of dark chocolate daily can reduce blood pressure in people with mild hypertension.
Why are people with risk factors for heart disease sometimes told to take a baby aspirin every day? The reason is that aspirin thins the blood and reduces the likelihood of clots forming (clots play a key role in many heart attacks and strokes). Research performed at the department of nutrition at the University of California, Davis, found that chocolate thins the blood and performs the same anti-clotting activity as aspirin. "Our work supports the concept that the chronic consumption of cocoa may be associated with improved cardiovascular health," said UC Davis researcher Carl Keen.
How much chocolate would you have to eat to obtain these benefits? Less than you might think. According to a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, adding only half an ounce of dark chocolate to an average American diet is enough to increase total antioxidant capacity 4 percent, and lessen oxidation of LDL cholesterol.
Why, then, has chocolate gotten such a bum reputation? It's the ingredients we add to it. Nearly all of the calories in a typical chocolate bar are sugar and fat.
As far as fats go, it's the added fats that are the difficulty, not the natural fat (called cocoa butter) found in chocolate. Cocoa butter is high in saturated fat, so many people assume that it's not good for your cardiovascular system. But most of the saturated fat content in cocoa butter is stearic acid, which numerous studies have shown does not raise blood cholesterol levels. In the human body, it acts much like the monounsaturated fat in olive oil.
Milk chocolate, on the other hand, contains added butterfat which can raise blood cholesterol levels. And it has less antioxidants and other beneficial phytochemicals than dark chocolate.
Does chocolate contribute to acne? Milk chocolate has been shown to do so, but I've never heard of any evidence incriminating dark chocolate.
Dark chocolate is also healthier because it has less added sugar. I'm sure you don't need another lecture on the dangers of excess sugar consumption. But if you want to become obese and dramatically raise your odds of developing diabetes, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's disease, foods high in sugar (including high fructose corn syrup) are just the ticket.
Are chocolate's benefits limited to the health of the body? Hardly. Chocolate has long been renown for its remarkable effects on human mood. We are now beginning to understand why.
Chocolate is the richest known source of a little-known substance called theobromine, a close chemical relative of caffeine. Theobromine, like caffeine, and also like the asthma drug theophylline, belong to the chemical group known as xanthine alkaloids. Chocolate products contain small amounts of caffeine, but not nearly enough to explain the attractions, fascinations, addictions, and effects of chocolate. The mood enhancement produced by chocolate may be primarily due to theobromine.
Chocolate also contains other substances with mood elevating effects. One is phenethylamine, which triggers the release of pleasurable endorphins and potentates the action of dopamine, a neurochemical associated with sexual arousal and pleasure. Phenethylamine is released in the brain when people become infatuated or fall in love.
Another substance found in chocolate is anandamide (from the Sanskrit word "ananda," which means peaceful bliss). A fatty substance that is naturally produced in the brain, anandamide has been isolated from chocolate by pharmacologists at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego. It binds to the same receptor sites in the brain as cannabinoids -- the psychoactive constituents in marijuana -- and produces feelings of elation and exhilaration. (If this becomes more widely known, will they make chocolate illegal?)
If that weren't enough, chocolate also boosts brain levels of serotonin. Women typically have lower serotonin levels during PMS and menstruation, which may be one reason women typically experience stronger cravings for chocolate at these times in their cycles. People suffering from depression so characteristically have lower serotonin levels that an entire class of anti-depressive medications called serotonin uptake inhibitors (including Prozac, Paxil, and Zooloft) have been developed that raise brain levels of serotonin.
Since I am known as an advocate of healthy eating, I'm often asked about my food indulgences. One of my favorite desserts is a piece of dark organic chocolate, along with a glass of a fine red wine.
I do have a policy, though, to eat only organic and/or fair trade chocolate. This is because of what I have learned about child slavery in the cocoa trade.
May your life be full of healthy pleasures.
John Robbins is the author of many bestsellers including "The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World," the classic "Diet For A New America," and "The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less." He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award. To learn more about his work, visit http://www.johnrobbins.info/
Showing posts with label Junk Food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Junk Food. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Junk food as addictive as street drugs
http://www.naturalnews.com/030815_junk_food_addiction.html
Junk food as addictive as street drugs
Thursday, December 23, 2010
David Gutierrez, staff writer
(NaturalNews) Scientists are increasingly becoming convinced that junk food can be just as physically addictive as street drugs like heroin.
Researchers at Rockefeller University have found that foods high in fat and sugar cause the brain to release many of the same pleasure chemicals that produce drug addiction, including cortisol, dopamine, galanin and serotonin. Over time, regular consumption of junk food can create imbalances in these chemicals, leading us to eat more and more in order to restore normal levels.
"They cause us to have more cravings," said Rosa Lopez, of the New York Department of Health. "There are physiological changes."
A recent study by researchers from the Scripps Research Institute confirmed this long-term effect by feeding rats either a healthy diet, a healthy diet plus limited amounts of junk food, or a healthy diet plus unlimited amounts of junk food. While rats in the first two groups remained healthy, rats in the third group binged on junk food and quickly became obese.
"You lose control. It's the hallmark of addiction," researcher Paul Kenny said.
When researchers then directly stimulated the pleasure centers in the rats' brains, they found that the obese rats needed more stimulation than the other rats to achieve the same effect. This suggests that their junk food diet had actually dulled their brain's pleasure centers, creating dependency.
"This is the most complete evidence to date that suggests obesity and drug addiction have common neuro-biological foundations," researcher Paul Johnson said.
Because ending a junk food addiction may be as difficult as quitting smoking, Lopez recommends tackling just one bad habit at first. Cutting out soda can be a good place to start.
"In some ways, you may have to view junk foods the way alcoholics anonymous views alcohol: one bite is too many, and a thousand is not enough," writes Jack Challem in his book The Food-Mood Solution.
Junk food as addictive as street drugs
Thursday, December 23, 2010
David Gutierrez, staff writer
(NaturalNews) Scientists are increasingly becoming convinced that junk food can be just as physically addictive as street drugs like heroin.
Researchers at Rockefeller University have found that foods high in fat and sugar cause the brain to release many of the same pleasure chemicals that produce drug addiction, including cortisol, dopamine, galanin and serotonin. Over time, regular consumption of junk food can create imbalances in these chemicals, leading us to eat more and more in order to restore normal levels.
"They cause us to have more cravings," said Rosa Lopez, of the New York Department of Health. "There are physiological changes."
A recent study by researchers from the Scripps Research Institute confirmed this long-term effect by feeding rats either a healthy diet, a healthy diet plus limited amounts of junk food, or a healthy diet plus unlimited amounts of junk food. While rats in the first two groups remained healthy, rats in the third group binged on junk food and quickly became obese.
"You lose control. It's the hallmark of addiction," researcher Paul Kenny said.
When researchers then directly stimulated the pleasure centers in the rats' brains, they found that the obese rats needed more stimulation than the other rats to achieve the same effect. This suggests that their junk food diet had actually dulled their brain's pleasure centers, creating dependency.
"This is the most complete evidence to date that suggests obesity and drug addiction have common neuro-biological foundations," researcher Paul Johnson said.
Because ending a junk food addiction may be as difficult as quitting smoking, Lopez recommends tackling just one bad habit at first. Cutting out soda can be a good place to start.
"In some ways, you may have to view junk foods the way alcoholics anonymous views alcohol: one bite is too many, and a thousand is not enough," writes Jack Challem in his book The Food-Mood Solution.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Professor who lost weight on Twinkies...
http://www.naturalnews.com/030616_junk_food_diet.html
Professor who lost weight on Twinkies only proves that even nutrition educators can be Ding Dongs
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com
(NaturalNews) Over the last month or so, the mainstream media has been making a huge deal about Kansas State nutrition professor Mark Haub who lost 27 pounds eating mostly Doritos, Twinkies and other junk food while drinking Diet Mountain Dew. But as usual, they're misrepresenting the story.
You can lose weight on chemotherapy, too. And most chemotherapy patients lose all kinds of weight due to the mass poisoning of their bodies with synthetic chemicals. Does that mean chemotherapy is weight loss medicine, too? (Don't laugh, I've seen similar conclusions written up in the mainstream media...)
Virtually anything can be promoted as a "weight loss miracle" in the following way:
The cashew diet?
Consider this: You can lose weight by starving yourself (by eating nothing). That promotes rapid weight loss as long as you stick to it -- which is, of course, nearly impossible to do for very long.
If you're fasting and living on nothing but water, suppose you gulp down one cashew once a day. You're still going to lose all kinds of weight because you're severely restricting your calories. Does that mean you've made some great discovery about a "cashew diet?" Of course not. It just means you're burning a lot more calories than you're consuming.
What if you pop a Tic-Tac once a day while you're fasting? Have you now discovered some amazing "Tic-Tac weight loss diet?" Nope. You're just fasting with a Tic-Tac.
It's the same story with Slim-Fast. Can you lose weight on Slim-Fast even though it's made primarily with processed table sugar? Sure you can! Just go a severe calorie-restriction diet, and drink some Slim-Fast from time to time. Heck, you can lose weight eating Halloween candy if you restrict your calories!
The nutrition professor who lost 27 pounds was simply on a calorie restriction diet (a partial fast, if you will) that included a slew of processed junk food. Did he discover some miracle junk food diet? Nope. He just controlled his calories while poisoning himself with junk food chemicals and artificially modified food ingredients.
Weight loss alone is no measure of good health
The really important part of this story, of however, is realizing that weight loss alone is no measure of good health. When you see people withering away from the effects of chemotherapy and radiation for cancer treatments, you don't think to yourself, "Gosh, I wish I could be that healthy! Look how amazingly healthy they are!"
No, you think to yourself, "That person is dying!"
And then there's the whole nutritional side of this story. Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Oreos are called "junk food" precisely because they represent the nutritional equivalent of garbage. They lack virtually all naturally-occurring plant-based phytonutrients and deliver almost no natural minerals or vitamins. Instead, they're made of processed, modified, factory-fabricated food ingredients that are linked to diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. And that's not to even mention the aspartame in the Diet Mountain Dew this guy was chugging.
Perhaps that's why even this nutrition professor, while living on a "junk food" diet, was smart enough to take a multivitamin, eat a serving of vegetables and drink a protein shake each day. So even he wasn't "living on junk food" as the headlines claim. He was supplementing his diet with at least some source of nutrition because he knew junk foods were going to leave him nutritionally deficient.
It would be a totally different story if he lived on junk foods alone. In that scenario, he would very quickly become deficient in key vitamins, and he'd find himself in a hospital being treated for serious diseases as a result.
The mainstream media, of course, completely fails to understand the real story here, and they've been reporting this as some sort of "junk food diet breakthrough" that suggests people can live on Twinkies and Ding Dongs while somehow losing weight and getting healthy. But we've already done that experiment in America, and the results are clear: Two-thirds of the population is overweight, and diabetes rates are soaring. Cancer is a multi-billion-dollar industry, and Big Pharma can't wait for the coming wave of Alzheimer's patients either. All that disease is promoted in part by the consumption of processed junk foods.
If processed junk food caused healthy weight loss, America would be the healthiest nation in the world. Clearly that's not the case, which means the real Ding Dong in this story is the nutrition professor himself who has set a terrible example for the nation to follow and has only offered wrongheaded encouragement to the junk food industry.
Why not just cut off his own leg and announce that "amputation promotes weight loss" too?
It reminds me of the old joke. An overweight woman says to her friends, "I just lost a hundred and ninety pounds of useless fat."
"How'd you do that?" her friends ask.
"I got a divorce."
Professor who lost weight on Twinkies only proves that even nutrition educators can be Ding Dongs
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com
(NaturalNews) Over the last month or so, the mainstream media has been making a huge deal about Kansas State nutrition professor Mark Haub who lost 27 pounds eating mostly Doritos, Twinkies and other junk food while drinking Diet Mountain Dew. But as usual, they're misrepresenting the story.
You can lose weight on chemotherapy, too. And most chemotherapy patients lose all kinds of weight due to the mass poisoning of their bodies with synthetic chemicals. Does that mean chemotherapy is weight loss medicine, too? (Don't laugh, I've seen similar conclusions written up in the mainstream media...)
Virtually anything can be promoted as a "weight loss miracle" in the following way:
The cashew diet?
Consider this: You can lose weight by starving yourself (by eating nothing). That promotes rapid weight loss as long as you stick to it -- which is, of course, nearly impossible to do for very long.
If you're fasting and living on nothing but water, suppose you gulp down one cashew once a day. You're still going to lose all kinds of weight because you're severely restricting your calories. Does that mean you've made some great discovery about a "cashew diet?" Of course not. It just means you're burning a lot more calories than you're consuming.
What if you pop a Tic-Tac once a day while you're fasting? Have you now discovered some amazing "Tic-Tac weight loss diet?" Nope. You're just fasting with a Tic-Tac.
It's the same story with Slim-Fast. Can you lose weight on Slim-Fast even though it's made primarily with processed table sugar? Sure you can! Just go a severe calorie-restriction diet, and drink some Slim-Fast from time to time. Heck, you can lose weight eating Halloween candy if you restrict your calories!
The nutrition professor who lost 27 pounds was simply on a calorie restriction diet (a partial fast, if you will) that included a slew of processed junk food. Did he discover some miracle junk food diet? Nope. He just controlled his calories while poisoning himself with junk food chemicals and artificially modified food ingredients.
Weight loss alone is no measure of good health
The really important part of this story, of however, is realizing that weight loss alone is no measure of good health. When you see people withering away from the effects of chemotherapy and radiation for cancer treatments, you don't think to yourself, "Gosh, I wish I could be that healthy! Look how amazingly healthy they are!"
No, you think to yourself, "That person is dying!"
And then there's the whole nutritional side of this story. Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Oreos are called "junk food" precisely because they represent the nutritional equivalent of garbage. They lack virtually all naturally-occurring plant-based phytonutrients and deliver almost no natural minerals or vitamins. Instead, they're made of processed, modified, factory-fabricated food ingredients that are linked to diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. And that's not to even mention the aspartame in the Diet Mountain Dew this guy was chugging.
Perhaps that's why even this nutrition professor, while living on a "junk food" diet, was smart enough to take a multivitamin, eat a serving of vegetables and drink a protein shake each day. So even he wasn't "living on junk food" as the headlines claim. He was supplementing his diet with at least some source of nutrition because he knew junk foods were going to leave him nutritionally deficient.
It would be a totally different story if he lived on junk foods alone. In that scenario, he would very quickly become deficient in key vitamins, and he'd find himself in a hospital being treated for serious diseases as a result.
The mainstream media, of course, completely fails to understand the real story here, and they've been reporting this as some sort of "junk food diet breakthrough" that suggests people can live on Twinkies and Ding Dongs while somehow losing weight and getting healthy. But we've already done that experiment in America, and the results are clear: Two-thirds of the population is overweight, and diabetes rates are soaring. Cancer is a multi-billion-dollar industry, and Big Pharma can't wait for the coming wave of Alzheimer's patients either. All that disease is promoted in part by the consumption of processed junk foods.
If processed junk food caused healthy weight loss, America would be the healthiest nation in the world. Clearly that's not the case, which means the real Ding Dong in this story is the nutrition professor himself who has set a terrible example for the nation to follow and has only offered wrongheaded encouragement to the junk food industry.
Why not just cut off his own leg and announce that "amputation promotes weight loss" too?
It reminds me of the old joke. An overweight woman says to her friends, "I just lost a hundred and ninety pounds of useless fat."
"How'd you do that?" her friends ask.
"I got a divorce."
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor
Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds
Madison Park, CNN
November 8, 2010
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Nutrition professor's "convenience store diet" helped him shed 27 pounds
Haub limited himself to 1,800 calories and two-thirds come from junk food
Haub said it's too early to draw any conclusions about diet
(CNN) -- Twinkies. Nutty bars. Powdered donuts.
For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too.
His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most -- not the nutritional value of the food.
The premise held up: On his "convenience store diet," he shed 27 pounds in two months.
For a class project, Haub limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day. A man of Haub's pre-dieting size usually consumes about 2,600 calories daily. So he followed a basic principle of weight loss: He consumed significantly fewer calories than he burned.
His body mass index went from 28.8, considered overweight, to 24.9, which is normal. He now weighs 174 pounds.
But you might expect other indicators of health would have suffered. Not so.
Haub's "bad" cholesterol, or LDL, dropped 20 percent and his "good" cholesterol, or HDL, increased by 20 percent. He reduced the level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, by 39 percent.
"That's where the head scratching comes," Haub said. "What does that mean? Does that mean I'm healthier? Or does it mean how we define health from a biology standpoint, that we're missing something?"
Despite his temporary success, Haub does not recommend replicating his snack-centric diet.
"I'm not geared to say this is a good thing to do," he said. "I'm stuck in the middle. I guess that's the frustrating part. I can't give a concrete answer. There's not enough information to do that."
Two-thirds of his total intake came from junk food. He also took a multivitamin pill and drank a protein shake daily. And he ate vegetables, typically a can of green beans or three to four celery stalks.
Families who live in food deserts have limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables, so they often rely on the kind of food Haub was eating.
"These foods are consumed by lots of people," he said. "It may be an issue of portion size and moderation rather than total removal. I just think it's unrealistic to expect people to totally drop these foods for vegetables and fruits. It may be healthy, but not realistic."
Haub's body fat dropped from 33.4 to 24.9 percent. This posed the question: What matters more for weight loss, the quantity or quality of calories?
His success is probably a result of caloric reduction, said Dawn Jackson Blatner, a dietitian based in Atlanta, Georgia.
"It's a great reminder for weight loss that calories count," she said. "Is that the bottom line to being healthy? That's another story."
Blatner, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, said she's not surprised to hear Haub's health markers improved even when he loaded up on processed snack cakes.
Being overweight is the central problem that leads to complications like high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol, she said.
"When you lose weight, regardless of how you're doing it -- even if it's with packaged foods, generally you will see these markers improve when weight loss has improved," she said.
Before jumping on the Ding Dong bandwagon, Blatner warned of health concerns.
"There are things we can't measure," said Blatner, questioning how the lack of fruits and vegetables could affect long-term health. "How much does that affect the risk for cancer? We can't measure how diet changes affect our health."
On August 25, Haub, 41, started his cake diet focusing on portion control.
"I'm eating to the point of need and pushing the plate or wrapper away," he said.
He intended the trial to last a month as a teaching tool for his class. As he lost weight, Haub continued the diet until he reached a normal body mass index.
Before his Twinkie diet, he tried to eat a healthy diet that included whole grains, dietary fiber, berries and bananas, vegetables and occasional treats like pizza.
"There seems to be a disconnect between eating healthy and being healthy," Haub said. "It may not be the same. I was eating healthier, but I wasn't healthy. I was eating too much."
He maintained the same level of moderate physical activity as before going on the diet. (Haub does not have any ties to the snack cake companies.)
To avoid setting a bad example for his kids, Haub ate vegetables in front of his family. Away from the dinner table, he usually unwrapped his meals.
Haub monitored his body composition, blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose, and updated his progress on his Facebook page, Professor Haub's diet experiment.
To curb calories, he avoided meat, whole grains and fruits. Once he started adding meat into the diet four weeks ago, his cholesterol level increased.
Haub plans to add about 300 calories to his daily intake now that he's done with the diet. But he's not ditching snack cakes altogether. Despite his weight loss, Haub feels ambivalence.
"I wish I could say the outcomes are unhealthy. I wish I could say it's healthy. I'm not confident enough in doing that. That frustrates a lot of people. One side says it's irresponsible. It is unhealthy, but the data doesn't say that."
Haub's sample day
Espresso, Double: 6 calories; 0 grams of fat
Hostess Twinkies Golden Sponge Cake: 150 calories; 5 grams of fat
Centrum Advanced Formula From A To Zinc: 0 calories; 0 grams of fat
Little Debbie Star Crunch: 150 calories; 6 grams of fat
Hostess Twinkies Golden Sponge Cake: 150 calories; 5 grams of fat
Diet Mountain Dew: 0 calories; 0 grams of fat
Doritos Cool Ranch: 75 calories; 4 grams of fat
Kellogg's Corn Pops: 220 calories; 0 grams of fat
whole milk: 150 calories; 8 grams of fat
baby carrots: 18 calories; 0 grams of fat
Duncan Hines Family Style Brownie Chewy Fudge: 270 calories; 14 grams of fat
Little Debbie Zebra Cake: 160 calories; 8 grams of fat
Muscle Milk Protein Shake: 240 calories; 9 grams of fat
Totals: 1,589 calories and 59 grams of fat
Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds
Madison Park, CNN
November 8, 2010
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Nutrition professor's "convenience store diet" helped him shed 27 pounds
Haub limited himself to 1,800 calories and two-thirds come from junk food
Haub said it's too early to draw any conclusions about diet
(CNN) -- Twinkies. Nutty bars. Powdered donuts.
For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too.
His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most -- not the nutritional value of the food.
The premise held up: On his "convenience store diet," he shed 27 pounds in two months.
For a class project, Haub limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day. A man of Haub's pre-dieting size usually consumes about 2,600 calories daily. So he followed a basic principle of weight loss: He consumed significantly fewer calories than he burned.
His body mass index went from 28.8, considered overweight, to 24.9, which is normal. He now weighs 174 pounds.
But you might expect other indicators of health would have suffered. Not so.
Haub's "bad" cholesterol, or LDL, dropped 20 percent and his "good" cholesterol, or HDL, increased by 20 percent. He reduced the level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, by 39 percent.
"That's where the head scratching comes," Haub said. "What does that mean? Does that mean I'm healthier? Or does it mean how we define health from a biology standpoint, that we're missing something?"
Despite his temporary success, Haub does not recommend replicating his snack-centric diet.
"I'm not geared to say this is a good thing to do," he said. "I'm stuck in the middle. I guess that's the frustrating part. I can't give a concrete answer. There's not enough information to do that."
Two-thirds of his total intake came from junk food. He also took a multivitamin pill and drank a protein shake daily. And he ate vegetables, typically a can of green beans or three to four celery stalks.
Families who live in food deserts have limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables, so they often rely on the kind of food Haub was eating.
"These foods are consumed by lots of people," he said. "It may be an issue of portion size and moderation rather than total removal. I just think it's unrealistic to expect people to totally drop these foods for vegetables and fruits. It may be healthy, but not realistic."
Haub's body fat dropped from 33.4 to 24.9 percent. This posed the question: What matters more for weight loss, the quantity or quality of calories?
His success is probably a result of caloric reduction, said Dawn Jackson Blatner, a dietitian based in Atlanta, Georgia.
"It's a great reminder for weight loss that calories count," she said. "Is that the bottom line to being healthy? That's another story."
Blatner, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, said she's not surprised to hear Haub's health markers improved even when he loaded up on processed snack cakes.
Being overweight is the central problem that leads to complications like high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol, she said.
"When you lose weight, regardless of how you're doing it -- even if it's with packaged foods, generally you will see these markers improve when weight loss has improved," she said.
Before jumping on the Ding Dong bandwagon, Blatner warned of health concerns.
"There are things we can't measure," said Blatner, questioning how the lack of fruits and vegetables could affect long-term health. "How much does that affect the risk for cancer? We can't measure how diet changes affect our health."
On August 25, Haub, 41, started his cake diet focusing on portion control.
"I'm eating to the point of need and pushing the plate or wrapper away," he said.
He intended the trial to last a month as a teaching tool for his class. As he lost weight, Haub continued the diet until he reached a normal body mass index.
Before his Twinkie diet, he tried to eat a healthy diet that included whole grains, dietary fiber, berries and bananas, vegetables and occasional treats like pizza.
"There seems to be a disconnect between eating healthy and being healthy," Haub said. "It may not be the same. I was eating healthier, but I wasn't healthy. I was eating too much."
He maintained the same level of moderate physical activity as before going on the diet. (Haub does not have any ties to the snack cake companies.)
To avoid setting a bad example for his kids, Haub ate vegetables in front of his family. Away from the dinner table, he usually unwrapped his meals.
Haub monitored his body composition, blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose, and updated his progress on his Facebook page, Professor Haub's diet experiment.
To curb calories, he avoided meat, whole grains and fruits. Once he started adding meat into the diet four weeks ago, his cholesterol level increased.
Haub plans to add about 300 calories to his daily intake now that he's done with the diet. But he's not ditching snack cakes altogether. Despite his weight loss, Haub feels ambivalence.
"I wish I could say the outcomes are unhealthy. I wish I could say it's healthy. I'm not confident enough in doing that. That frustrates a lot of people. One side says it's irresponsible. It is unhealthy, but the data doesn't say that."
Haub's sample day
Espresso, Double: 6 calories; 0 grams of fat
Hostess Twinkies Golden Sponge Cake: 150 calories; 5 grams of fat
Centrum Advanced Formula From A To Zinc: 0 calories; 0 grams of fat
Little Debbie Star Crunch: 150 calories; 6 grams of fat
Hostess Twinkies Golden Sponge Cake: 150 calories; 5 grams of fat
Diet Mountain Dew: 0 calories; 0 grams of fat
Doritos Cool Ranch: 75 calories; 4 grams of fat
Kellogg's Corn Pops: 220 calories; 0 grams of fat
whole milk: 150 calories; 8 grams of fat
baby carrots: 18 calories; 0 grams of fat
Duncan Hines Family Style Brownie Chewy Fudge: 270 calories; 14 grams of fat
Little Debbie Zebra Cake: 160 calories; 8 grams of fat
Muscle Milk Protein Shake: 240 calories; 9 grams of fat
Totals: 1,589 calories and 59 grams of fat
Monday, August 16, 2010
Junk food-addicted rats chose to starve themselves
http://www.naturalnews.com/029382_junk_food_rats.html
Junk food-addicted rats chose to starve themselves rather than eat healthy food
Thursday, August 05, 2010
David Gutierrez, staff writer
(NaturalNews) A diet including unlimited amounts of junk food can cause rats to become so addicted to the unhealthy diet that they will starve themselves rather than go back to eating healthy food, researchers have discovered.
In a series of studies conducted over the course of three years and published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Scripps Florida scientists Paul Johnson and Paul Kenny have shown that rats' response to unlimited junk food closely parallels well-known patterns of drug addiction -- even down to the changes in brain chemistry.
"What we have are these core features of addiction, and these animals are hitting each one of these features," Kenny said.
In their first study, the researchers fed rats on either a balanced diet or on the same diet plus unlimited access to junk foods purchased at a local supermarket, including processed meats and cakes. Within a short time period, the rats on the junk food diet began to eat compulsively and quickly became overweight.
"They're taking in twice the amount of calories as the control rats," Kenny said.
The researchers hypothesized that the rats were eating compulsively because, like drug addicts, they had become desensitized to smaller amounts and needed more and more for the same rush of pleasure.
Many recreational drugs work by directly stimulating the brain's pleasure centers, particularly the dopamine receptor known as D2. Overstimulation of this receptor causes the body to start producing less dopamine, leading the addict to compensate by taking more of the drug.
Since dopamine can also be released by pleasurable activities such as food or sex, Kenny and Johnson speculated that food addiction could develop in the same way. To test whether the rats had, in fact, become habituated to dopamine, the researchers took the rats from the first experiment and hooked their brains up to a device that would directly stimulate their D2 receptors when they ran on a wheel.
Rats eating a junk food diet ran on the wheel significantly longer than rats fed a normal diet, suggesting that their receptors had indeed become desensitized. This "profound" desensitization occurred after just five days on a junk food diet.
"They're not experiencing rewards the way they should," Kenny said. "When you experience that, one way of feeling better is to go back to the junk food."
"They lose control. This is the hallmark of addiction."
In another test of their addiction hypothesis, the researchers used a virus to block the D2 receptors in healthy rats. All those rats soon became compulsive eaters.
"This is the most complete evidence to date that suggests obesity and drug addiction have common neurobiological underpinnings," Johnson said.
Having established that the junk food rats had become addicted, Johnson and Kenny wanted to know how far this addiction would push them. So they took both junk-food addicted rats and rats that had not previously been exposed to such food, and exposed them to electrical shocks whenever they ate junk. Rats that had just been introduced to junk food quickly stopped eating it, while the addicted rats ignored the discomfort and kept eating.
Perhaps the most shocking finding came when the researchers took away the addicted rats' access to junk food and started feeding them only healthy rat chow again -- the same diets the rats had eaten as pups. When junk food was no longer available, the rats simply refused to eat for two weeks.
"They actually voluntarily starved themselves," Kenny said.
"It's almost as if you break these things, it's very, very hard to go back to the way things were before. Their dietary preferences are dramatically shifted."
The research strongly suggests that many modern humans also suffer from junk food addictions. Kenny notes, however, that unlike the rats, all humans with access to junk food do not become obese. He attributes this difference to the influence of health knowledge and social pressure in moderating people's natural eating habits.
"The rats don't suffer from the same social pressures that we do," he said.
The idea of junk food addiction is not a new one, and the dopamine-junk food connection was actually put forward by former FDA Commissioner David Kessler in his best-selling book, The End of Overeating.
"Certainly, we see this addictive pattern in humans," nutritionist Sandy Livingston said. "They know they shouldn't overeat, but they do it anyway."
Livingston expressed hope that better knowledge about the biochemical side of food addiction might result in lessened guilt and judgment surrounding obesity.
"A lot of people blame themselves -- 'Why don't I have any willpower?'" she said.
"Food can be highly addictive," said author and nutritional supplement producer Jordan Rubin. "When people describe overeating and weight loss as a battle, this is why."
He called for more research into which individual components of junk food, such as MSG, might be behind its addictive effects.
Obesity researcher Ralph DiLeone of Yale University noted that more research is needed into the long-term effects of such addiction, even if an animal later switches its diet and loses weight.
"They might be a normal weight, but how they respond to food in the future may be permanently altered," he said.
Suggesting yet another area for future research, Kenny has expressed hope that better biochemical understanding of food addiction might someday enable the development of a drug or vaccine as a treatment for compulsive eating.
Johnson and Kenny's research was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, Bank of America and The Margaret Q. Landenberger Research Foundation.
Junk food-addicted rats chose to starve themselves rather than eat healthy food
Thursday, August 05, 2010
David Gutierrez, staff writer
(NaturalNews) A diet including unlimited amounts of junk food can cause rats to become so addicted to the unhealthy diet that they will starve themselves rather than go back to eating healthy food, researchers have discovered.
In a series of studies conducted over the course of three years and published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Scripps Florida scientists Paul Johnson and Paul Kenny have shown that rats' response to unlimited junk food closely parallels well-known patterns of drug addiction -- even down to the changes in brain chemistry.
"What we have are these core features of addiction, and these animals are hitting each one of these features," Kenny said.
In their first study, the researchers fed rats on either a balanced diet or on the same diet plus unlimited access to junk foods purchased at a local supermarket, including processed meats and cakes. Within a short time period, the rats on the junk food diet began to eat compulsively and quickly became overweight.
"They're taking in twice the amount of calories as the control rats," Kenny said.
The researchers hypothesized that the rats were eating compulsively because, like drug addicts, they had become desensitized to smaller amounts and needed more and more for the same rush of pleasure.
Many recreational drugs work by directly stimulating the brain's pleasure centers, particularly the dopamine receptor known as D2. Overstimulation of this receptor causes the body to start producing less dopamine, leading the addict to compensate by taking more of the drug.
Since dopamine can also be released by pleasurable activities such as food or sex, Kenny and Johnson speculated that food addiction could develop in the same way. To test whether the rats had, in fact, become habituated to dopamine, the researchers took the rats from the first experiment and hooked their brains up to a device that would directly stimulate their D2 receptors when they ran on a wheel.
Rats eating a junk food diet ran on the wheel significantly longer than rats fed a normal diet, suggesting that their receptors had indeed become desensitized. This "profound" desensitization occurred after just five days on a junk food diet.
"They're not experiencing rewards the way they should," Kenny said. "When you experience that, one way of feeling better is to go back to the junk food."
"They lose control. This is the hallmark of addiction."
In another test of their addiction hypothesis, the researchers used a virus to block the D2 receptors in healthy rats. All those rats soon became compulsive eaters.
"This is the most complete evidence to date that suggests obesity and drug addiction have common neurobiological underpinnings," Johnson said.
Having established that the junk food rats had become addicted, Johnson and Kenny wanted to know how far this addiction would push them. So they took both junk-food addicted rats and rats that had not previously been exposed to such food, and exposed them to electrical shocks whenever they ate junk. Rats that had just been introduced to junk food quickly stopped eating it, while the addicted rats ignored the discomfort and kept eating.
Perhaps the most shocking finding came when the researchers took away the addicted rats' access to junk food and started feeding them only healthy rat chow again -- the same diets the rats had eaten as pups. When junk food was no longer available, the rats simply refused to eat for two weeks.
"They actually voluntarily starved themselves," Kenny said.
"It's almost as if you break these things, it's very, very hard to go back to the way things were before. Their dietary preferences are dramatically shifted."
The research strongly suggests that many modern humans also suffer from junk food addictions. Kenny notes, however, that unlike the rats, all humans with access to junk food do not become obese. He attributes this difference to the influence of health knowledge and social pressure in moderating people's natural eating habits.
"The rats don't suffer from the same social pressures that we do," he said.
The idea of junk food addiction is not a new one, and the dopamine-junk food connection was actually put forward by former FDA Commissioner David Kessler in his best-selling book, The End of Overeating.
"Certainly, we see this addictive pattern in humans," nutritionist Sandy Livingston said. "They know they shouldn't overeat, but they do it anyway."
Livingston expressed hope that better knowledge about the biochemical side of food addiction might result in lessened guilt and judgment surrounding obesity.
"A lot of people blame themselves -- 'Why don't I have any willpower?'" she said.
"Food can be highly addictive," said author and nutritional supplement producer Jordan Rubin. "When people describe overeating and weight loss as a battle, this is why."
He called for more research into which individual components of junk food, such as MSG, might be behind its addictive effects.
Obesity researcher Ralph DiLeone of Yale University noted that more research is needed into the long-term effects of such addiction, even if an animal later switches its diet and loses weight.
"They might be a normal weight, but how they respond to food in the future may be permanently altered," he said.
Suggesting yet another area for future research, Kenny has expressed hope that better biochemical understanding of food addiction might someday enable the development of a drug or vaccine as a treatment for compulsive eating.
Johnson and Kenny's research was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, Bank of America and The Margaret Q. Landenberger Research Foundation.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Rats fed junk food pass down cancer risk through multiple generations
http://www.naturalnews.com/029198_cancer_epigenetics.html
Rats fed junk food pass down cancer risk through multiple generations of offspring
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
(NaturalNews) A recent study out of Georgetown University Medical Center has concluded that what you eat can affect your children's and grandchildren's health, even if they eat healthy themselves. Sonia de Assis and her colleagues observed that rats fed fatty, unhealthy food pass on an increased cancer risk to their children and grandchildren.
The study, which was presented at the American Association for Cancer Research in Washington, D.C., illustrates that a fatty diet can actually contribute to "epigenetic" DNA modifications, which are inherited changes in DNA patterns. Essentially, one's offspring can inherit DNA changes caused by their parents' unhealthy diets and other environmental factors.
The findings also seem to explain why diseases like breast cancer are more likely to manifest in certain family lines and not in others. If epigenetic DNA changes are altering genes like BRCA1 and BRCA2, then this would explain why some people are more prone than others to develop certain degenerative diseases.
"We think that there may be other means of transmission that are not genetic that can account for breast cancer," explained de Assis in response to the study's findings.
And Assis' perspective is warranted based on her findings.
According to Breastcancer.org, only about 20-30 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer have any family history of breast cancer. This means that the other 70-80 percent must be developing it for reasons other than simply genetics.
If a person's parents or grandparents ate a diet rich in processed, chemical-laden foods throughout their lives, then the DNA changes that likely occurred in their bodies may be passed down to their children. Even if they themselves didn't develop cancer, the children will be more likely to develop it, based on the findings of the study.
And if the children also eat junk food diets that lack proper nutrients, antioxidants, vitamins and other necessary life components, then their children will be even more prone than they were to develop degenerative diseases like cancer.
But your personal diet and lifestyle choices are still the primary deciding factors for whether or not you develop a degenerative disease. Even if your parents and grandparents ate unhealthy diets all their lives does not mean that you have to get sick. Eating a strong, healthy diet and regularly exercising will do wonders for your health.
Rats fed junk food pass down cancer risk through multiple generations of offspring
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
(NaturalNews) A recent study out of Georgetown University Medical Center has concluded that what you eat can affect your children's and grandchildren's health, even if they eat healthy themselves. Sonia de Assis and her colleagues observed that rats fed fatty, unhealthy food pass on an increased cancer risk to their children and grandchildren.
The study, which was presented at the American Association for Cancer Research in Washington, D.C., illustrates that a fatty diet can actually contribute to "epigenetic" DNA modifications, which are inherited changes in DNA patterns. Essentially, one's offspring can inherit DNA changes caused by their parents' unhealthy diets and other environmental factors.
The findings also seem to explain why diseases like breast cancer are more likely to manifest in certain family lines and not in others. If epigenetic DNA changes are altering genes like BRCA1 and BRCA2, then this would explain why some people are more prone than others to develop certain degenerative diseases.
"We think that there may be other means of transmission that are not genetic that can account for breast cancer," explained de Assis in response to the study's findings.
And Assis' perspective is warranted based on her findings.
According to Breastcancer.org, only about 20-30 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer have any family history of breast cancer. This means that the other 70-80 percent must be developing it for reasons other than simply genetics.
If a person's parents or grandparents ate a diet rich in processed, chemical-laden foods throughout their lives, then the DNA changes that likely occurred in their bodies may be passed down to their children. Even if they themselves didn't develop cancer, the children will be more likely to develop it, based on the findings of the study.
And if the children also eat junk food diets that lack proper nutrients, antioxidants, vitamins and other necessary life components, then their children will be even more prone than they were to develop degenerative diseases like cancer.
But your personal diet and lifestyle choices are still the primary deciding factors for whether or not you develop a degenerative disease. Even if your parents and grandparents ate unhealthy diets all their lives does not mean that you have to get sick. Eating a strong, healthy diet and regularly exercising will do wonders for your health.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Junk food 'as addictive as heroin and smoking'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7533668/Junk-food-as-addictive-as-heroin-and-smoking.html
Junk food 'as addictive as heroin and smoking'
Bingeing on junk food is as addictive as smoking or taking drugs and could cause compulsive eating and obesity, a study has found.
By Andrew Hough
29 Mar 2010
American researchers found burgers, chips and sausages programmed a human brain into craving even more sugar, salt and fat laden food.
Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida found laboratory rats became addicted on a bad diet just like people who became dependent on cocaine and heroin.
While the findings cannot be directly transferred to human obesity, it found that overconsumption of high-calorie food triggered addiction-like responses in the brain.
But the study, published online in Nature Neuroscience, suggests for the first time that our brains may react in the same way to junk food as it does to drugs.
Dr Paul Kenny, a neuroscientist who led the research, said the study, which took nearly three years to complete, confirmed the "addictive" properties of junk food.
"Obesity may be a form of compulsive eating,” he said.
“Other treatments in development for other forms of compulsion, for example drug addiction, may be very useful for the treatment of obesity.
"The new study explains what happens in the brain of these animals when they have easy access to high-calorie, high-fat food.”
He added: "It presents the most thorough and compelling evidence that drug addiction and obesity are based on the same underlying neurobiological mechanisms.”
In the study, the research team divided the animals into three groups.
One got normal amounts of healthy food to eat, another was given restricted amounts of junk food and the third had unlimited amounts of cheesecake, fatty meat products, cheap sponge cakes and chocolate snacks.
There were no adverse effects on the first two groups. But the rats which ate as much junk food as they wanted quickly became very fat and started bingeing.
When researchers electronically stimulated the part of the brain that feels pleasure, they found the rats on unlimited junk food needed even more stimulation to register the same level of pleasure as the animals on healthier diets.
"They always went for the worst types of food and as a result, they took in twice the calories as the control rats,” said Dr Kenny.
"When we removed the junk food and tried to put them on a nutritious diet – what we called the 'salad bar option' – they simply refused to eat.
"The change in their diet preference was so great that they basically starved themselves for two weeks after they were cut off from junk food."
Dr Kenny said the research supported what obese patients have been saying for years that, like addiction to other substances, junk food bingeing is extremely difficult to stop.
In the rats, the development of obesity coincided with a progressively deteriorating chemical balance in the circuitry of the brain responsible for reward.
As these pleasure centres become less and less responsive the animals quickly develop compulsive overeating habits, consuming larger quantities of high-calorie, high-fat foods until they become obese.
The very same changes occur in the brains of rats that over consume cocaine or heroin, and are thought to play an important role in the development of compulsive drug use.
The scientists fed the rats a diet modelled after the type that contributes to human obesity easy to obtain high-calorie, high-fat foods. Soon after the experiments began, the animals began to bloat.
Latest figures show that one in four people in Britain are obese with married people twice as likely to become obese than their single counterparts.
Eight in 10 men and almost 7 in 10 women will be overweight or obese by 2020.
Cases of devastating health conditions like heart disease, diabetes and stroke will increase with the nation’s waistlines, the recent Government-commissioned Foresight report warned.
Junk food 'as addictive as heroin and smoking'
Bingeing on junk food is as addictive as smoking or taking drugs and could cause compulsive eating and obesity, a study has found.
By Andrew Hough
29 Mar 2010
American researchers found burgers, chips and sausages programmed a human brain into craving even more sugar, salt and fat laden food.
Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida found laboratory rats became addicted on a bad diet just like people who became dependent on cocaine and heroin.
While the findings cannot be directly transferred to human obesity, it found that overconsumption of high-calorie food triggered addiction-like responses in the brain.
But the study, published online in Nature Neuroscience, suggests for the first time that our brains may react in the same way to junk food as it does to drugs.
Dr Paul Kenny, a neuroscientist who led the research, said the study, which took nearly three years to complete, confirmed the "addictive" properties of junk food.
"Obesity may be a form of compulsive eating,” he said.
“Other treatments in development for other forms of compulsion, for example drug addiction, may be very useful for the treatment of obesity.
"The new study explains what happens in the brain of these animals when they have easy access to high-calorie, high-fat food.”
He added: "It presents the most thorough and compelling evidence that drug addiction and obesity are based on the same underlying neurobiological mechanisms.”
In the study, the research team divided the animals into three groups.
One got normal amounts of healthy food to eat, another was given restricted amounts of junk food and the third had unlimited amounts of cheesecake, fatty meat products, cheap sponge cakes and chocolate snacks.
There were no adverse effects on the first two groups. But the rats which ate as much junk food as they wanted quickly became very fat and started bingeing.
When researchers electronically stimulated the part of the brain that feels pleasure, they found the rats on unlimited junk food needed even more stimulation to register the same level of pleasure as the animals on healthier diets.
"They always went for the worst types of food and as a result, they took in twice the calories as the control rats,” said Dr Kenny.
"When we removed the junk food and tried to put them on a nutritious diet – what we called the 'salad bar option' – they simply refused to eat.
"The change in their diet preference was so great that they basically starved themselves for two weeks after they were cut off from junk food."
Dr Kenny said the research supported what obese patients have been saying for years that, like addiction to other substances, junk food bingeing is extremely difficult to stop.
In the rats, the development of obesity coincided with a progressively deteriorating chemical balance in the circuitry of the brain responsible for reward.
As these pleasure centres become less and less responsive the animals quickly develop compulsive overeating habits, consuming larger quantities of high-calorie, high-fat foods until they become obese.
The very same changes occur in the brains of rats that over consume cocaine or heroin, and are thought to play an important role in the development of compulsive drug use.
The scientists fed the rats a diet modelled after the type that contributes to human obesity easy to obtain high-calorie, high-fat foods. Soon after the experiments began, the animals began to bloat.
Latest figures show that one in four people in Britain are obese with married people twice as likely to become obese than their single counterparts.
Eight in 10 men and almost 7 in 10 women will be overweight or obese by 2020.
Cases of devastating health conditions like heart disease, diabetes and stroke will increase with the nation’s waistlines, the recent Government-commissioned Foresight report warned.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Junk food dummies
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-1206448/Junk-food-dummies-How-bingeing-burgers-chips-drain-brainpower.html
Junk food dummies: How bingeing on burgers and chips can drain your brainpower
By Chris Brooke
14th August 2009
Eating too much fast food will make you thicker in more ways than one, according to a study.
As well as expanding the waistline, a high-fat diet of curries, kebabs, burgers and chips can make you less intelligent.
The research was performed by scientists at Oxford University on rats.
A high-fat diet over less than ten days damaged the rodents’ short-term memory and made them less mentally alert, as well as significantly decreasing their ability to exercise.
The group of biological experts say their results – dubbed a ‘high-fat hangover’ – show an important link between what people eat, how they think, and how our bodies perform.
Andrew Murray, co-author of the study, said: ‘Western diets are typically high in fat and are associated with long-term complications such as obesity, diabetes, and heart failure yet the short-term consequences of such diets have been given relatively little attention.
‘We hope that the findings of our study will help people to think seriously about reducing the fat content of their daily food intake to the immediate benefit of their general health, well-being and alertness.’
The research team studied rats fed a lowfat diet, comprising just 7.5 per cent of calories as fat, and compared them with rats fed a high-fat junk food diet, typically 55 per cent of calories as fat.
They discovered that after just four days the muscles of the rats eating the high-fat diet were less able to use oxygen to make the energy needed to exercise, causing their hearts to work harder and increase in size.
After nine days on a high-fat diet, the rats took longer to complete a maze and made more mistakes in the process than their low-fat-diet counterparts.
The number of correct decisions before making a mistake dropped from over six to an average of five to 5.5.
The low-fat rats were also running 50 per cent further by this stage than their fatter and ‘thicker’ counterparts.
Researchers then investigated the cellular causes of these problems, particularly in muscle cells.
They found increased levels of a protein called uncoupling protein 3, which made the cells less efficient at using oxygen to make the energy required for running.
The findings are published by the Federation of the American Societies for Experimental Biology.
Dr Gerald Weissmann, editor of the journal, said: ‘It’s nothing short of a high-fat hangover.’
The research funded by the British Heart Foundation may have implications for athletes looking for the best diet for training and patients with metabolic disorders.
The scientists are now studying the effect of a short-term high-fat diet on humans.
Junk food dummies: How bingeing on burgers and chips can drain your brainpower
By Chris Brooke
14th August 2009
Eating too much fast food will make you thicker in more ways than one, according to a study.
As well as expanding the waistline, a high-fat diet of curries, kebabs, burgers and chips can make you less intelligent.
The research was performed by scientists at Oxford University on rats.
A high-fat diet over less than ten days damaged the rodents’ short-term memory and made them less mentally alert, as well as significantly decreasing their ability to exercise.
The group of biological experts say their results – dubbed a ‘high-fat hangover’ – show an important link between what people eat, how they think, and how our bodies perform.
Andrew Murray, co-author of the study, said: ‘Western diets are typically high in fat and are associated with long-term complications such as obesity, diabetes, and heart failure yet the short-term consequences of such diets have been given relatively little attention.
‘We hope that the findings of our study will help people to think seriously about reducing the fat content of their daily food intake to the immediate benefit of their general health, well-being and alertness.’
The research team studied rats fed a lowfat diet, comprising just 7.5 per cent of calories as fat, and compared them with rats fed a high-fat junk food diet, typically 55 per cent of calories as fat.
They discovered that after just four days the muscles of the rats eating the high-fat diet were less able to use oxygen to make the energy needed to exercise, causing their hearts to work harder and increase in size.
After nine days on a high-fat diet, the rats took longer to complete a maze and made more mistakes in the process than their low-fat-diet counterparts.
The number of correct decisions before making a mistake dropped from over six to an average of five to 5.5.
The low-fat rats were also running 50 per cent further by this stage than their fatter and ‘thicker’ counterparts.
Researchers then investigated the cellular causes of these problems, particularly in muscle cells.
They found increased levels of a protein called uncoupling protein 3, which made the cells less efficient at using oxygen to make the energy required for running.
The findings are published by the Federation of the American Societies for Experimental Biology.
Dr Gerald Weissmann, editor of the journal, said: ‘It’s nothing short of a high-fat hangover.’
The research funded by the British Heart Foundation may have implications for athletes looking for the best diet for training and patients with metabolic disorders.
The scientists are now studying the effect of a short-term high-fat diet on humans.
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