The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

photo credit: Nutsboutnuttn (Allison)

Lately, I’ve been suffering from a sweet tooth - I can’t get enough chocolate to satisfy my “craving,” and grapes just aren’t cutting it. I know enough now to just keep it out of the house so I don’t have access to it, but it’s nice to know my “addiction” might be more based on biology and less on my lack of will-power. According to an article on Science Daily, scientists found the brain can sense caloric values of foods independent of taste mechanisms:

Their finding that the brain’s reward system is switched on by this “sixth sense” machinery could have implications for understanding the causes of obesity. For example, the findings suggest why high-fructose corn syrup, widely used as a sweetener in foods, might contribute to obesity.

In their experiments, the researchers genetically altered mice to make them “sweet-blind,” lacking a key component of taste receptor cells that enabled them to detect the sweet taste.

In analyzing the brains of the sweet-blind mice, the researchers showed that the animals’ reward circuitry was switched on by caloric intake, independent of the animals’ ability to taste. Those analyses showed that levels of the brain chemical dopamine, known to be central to activating the reward circuitry, increased with caloric intake. Also, electrophysiological studies showed that neurons in the food-reward region, called the nucleus accumbens, were activated by caloric intake, independent of taste.

Significantly, the researchers found that a preference for sucrose over sucralose developed only after ten minutes of a one-hour feeding session and that neurons in the reward region also responded with the same delay.

So I eat chocolate, my brain releases an amount of dopamine relative to the caloric value of the chocolate, and I inherently place a higher value on chocolate because of the pleasant feelings it invokes. It’s like someone designing our bodies knew we wouldn’t eat enough if there weren’t some biological prompting. Frankly, I don’t know if this is good news or not - it’s like I’m my body is biologically designed towards obesity! Or, at least, our current society, with all it’s abundant and ready access to high-calorie foods, warps our biological mechanisms.

At any rate, I just need to keep grapes in the house, and evict the chocolate.

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photo credit: kansasliberal

Eating Fabulous points to this Consumer Reports article on designing a heart-healthy diet. Advice offered includes recommended fruits and vegetables to load up on, designing a diet around the “Mediterranean eating plan,” and whether “heart-healthy supplements” actually promote heart health. Their supplement advice is particularly interesting, as they investigate three supplements currently marketed as heart-healthy, including B vitamins (like folic acid) and fish oils. For example, here’s what they have to say about vitamin E:

While considerable observational evidence has associated high intakes of vitamin E with protection against heart disease, several large-scale clinical trials have failed to find persuasive evidence that vitamin E supplements yield any benefit to the heart. In fact, some suggest the opposite.

Upshot: We feel that taking supplements of vitamin E to lower your risk of heart disease is a waste of time and money.

Consumer Reports also recommended eating a diet with enough “healthy fats” (as opposed to those nasty ones the USDA recently reported on) and various colors of fruits and veggies to ensure a wide variety of micronutrients. Personally, I’ve always thought consuming vitamins and nutrients naturally is probably much healthier than taking supplements. Of course, there’s so many chemicals in our food now, maybe it doesn’t matter.

photo credit: SqueakyMarmot

When is eating healthy not … healthy? Apparently when you have a condition known as orthorexia, described as “an unhealthy obsession (as in obsessive-compulsive disorder) with what the sufferer considers to be healthy eating.” Weight of the Evidence points to a Chicago Tribune article on orthorexia, which treats the topic with more than a little tongue-in-cheek humor:

People suffering from the addiction—usually those righteous raw foodists, vegetarians and vegans—obsessively check labels, avoid junk food, plan menus and often eat a healthy diet so they can feel “pure.” Some even make fun of McDonald’s customers.

Orthorexics, for example, “tend to dwell on upcoming menus,” [Dr. Steven Bratman, who is credited with coining the term in the 1990s,] wrote. “If you get a thrill of pleasure from contemplating a healthy menu the day after tomorrow, something is wrong with your focus.”

Actually, planning meals is one of the skills a person needs to maintain a healthy body weight. The alternative—eating at restaurants—is a sure way to gain weight because “every time we eat out the calories are far higher than we intuitively imagine,” said Yoni Freedhoff, medical director of the Bariatric Medical Institute in Ottawa.

The article concludes that “Orthorexia, more often than not, is a non-medical term popularized by people who feel guilty that they aren’t eating better and need a name to call people who try harder.” However, the first commenter on the article suggests otherwise:

You clearly haven’t meet a person so devoted to their food it is killing them. I have met a person who has Orthorexia. This person was so depleted of nutrients that hospitalization was the only option. This person struggles to put any food in their body fearing it contains an unhealthy substance. Is that carrot organic enough? Was it next to a carrot that isn’t organic?

Personally, I think we already have a condition that explains that behavior - obsessive compulsive. Do we really need to cast a shadow over healthy eating by drawing an (in my opinion) unfair comparison to anorexia?

According to an article on WebMD, people may suffer from orthorexia and not even know it:

So what constitutes orthorexia?

• Are you spending more than three hours a day thinking about healthy food?
• Are you planning tomorrow’s menu today?
• Is the virtue you feel about what you eat more important than the pleasure you receive from eating it?
• Has the quality of your life decreased as the quality of your diet increased?
• Have you become stricter with yourself?
• Does your self-esteem get a boost from eating healthy? Do you look down on others who don’t eat this way?
• Do you skip foods you once enjoyed in order to eat the “right” foods?
• Does your diet make it difficult for you to eat anywhere but at home, distancing you from friends and family.
• Do you feel guilt or self-loathing when you stray from your diet?
• When you eat the way you’re supposed to, do you feel in total control?

If you answered yes to two or three of these questions, you may have a mild case of orthorexia. Four or more means that you need to relax more when it comes to food. If all these items apply to you, you have become obsessed with food.

Frankly, I’d say many people pay an annual fee for commercial diets that afford them the privilege to suffer at least 5 of the above symptoms.

photo credit: chiodachic

Trans fats take one more step to earning the infamy associated with drugs, alcohol and cigarettes. A study recently conducted on Wistar rats shows pregnant or nursing mothers fed a diet enriched with hydrogenated vegetable fat causes symptoms associated with obesity, even when the offspring never consumes that same diet. Scientists split the rats into four groups, and the results were striking:

Pregnant and lactating Wistar rats were fed with either a control diet (C group) or one enriched with hydrogenated vegetable fat (T group). Upon weaning, the male pups were sorted in four groups: CC a mothers were receiving C, and pups were kept on C; CT - mothers were receiving C, and pups were fed with T; TT a mothers were receiving T, and pups were kept on T; TC a mothers were receiving T, and pups were fed with C.

… Offspring of TT and TC rats had increased white adipose tissue PAI-1 gene expression. Insulin receptor was higher in TT than other groups. Ingestion of hydrogenated vegetable fat by the mother during gestation and lactation could promote deleterious consequences, even after the withdrawal of the causal factor.

That result bears repeating: offspring that never ate the high-trans-fat diet still exhibited symptoms of obesity, including insulin resistance, which leads to diabetes. Science Daily’s article includes this explanation of the study’s results:

“We know that foetal growth is influenced by the mother’s nutritional status,” explained Brazilian nutritionist Luciana Pisani. “Fats play a fundamental role in foetal development and changes in dietary fatty acids has important implications for foetal and postnatal development. Heavy ingestion of very hydrogenated fats rich in trans fatty acids increases risk of cardiovascular diseases and reduces insulin sensitivity and so leads to type 2 diabetes. We need to investigate this further as this has important implications for people’s own diets, especially pregnant women.”

Interestingly enough, Science Daily’s article also linked to a similar study on junk foodconducted in 2007:

Mothers who eat junk food during pregnancy and breastfeeding may be putting their children at risk of overeating and developing obesity, according to a study funded by the Wellcome Trust and carried out at the Royal Veterinary College, London. The research suggests that pregnant and breastfeeding women should not indulge in fatty, sugary and salty foods under the misguided assumption that they are “eating for two”.

The study*, published in the British Journal of Nutrition, found that rats fed a diet of processed junk food such as doughnuts, muffins, biscuits, crisps and sweets during pregnancy and lactation gave birth to offspring which overate and had a preference for junk foods rich in fat, sugar and salt when compared to the offspring of rats given regular feed. The research team behind the study believe the findings have implications for humans.

The more we study HFCS and hydrogenated fat, the more obvious it becomes we are killing ourselves by replacing food with man-made substances. I’m betting Michael Pollan’s non-scientific claims may eventually be backed with scientific studies - the more natural food and less man-made “food” in our diets, the healthier overall we’ll be.

The takeaway? Stop eating fried peeps. Yes, in case you were wondering, the picture above is someone’s fried peeps. Gross.

photo credit: JasonTromm

Medical News Today reported on a study on possible health benefits from natural trans fats. According to the study, rats fed a diet enriched with trans vaccenic acid experienced a drop in total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and triglycerides.

University of Alberta researcher Flora Wang found that a diet with enriched levels of trans vaccenic acid (VA) - a natural animal fat found in dairy and beef products - can reduce risk factors associated with heart disease, diabetes and obesity.

Results indicated this benefit was due in part to the ability of VA to reduce the production of chylomicrons - particles of fat and cholesterol that form in the small intestine following a meal and are rapidly processed throughout the body. The role of chylomicrons is increasingly viewed as a critical missing link in the understanding of conditions arising from metabolic disorders.

Because VA is the major natural trans fat in dairy and beef products, comprising more than 70 per cent of the proportion of natural trans fat content in those products, the findings support a growing body of evidence that indicates natural animal-based trans fat is different than harmful hydrogenated trans fat created through industrial processing, Wang noted.

Read the entire article for more details.

Chylomicrons. Isn’t that the special gene thingy that creates Jedi?