A food memoir of weight loss, family recipes, and strategies for staying healthy in your 70's and beyond
Sarah Whiteside ’24 An iPod. Then an iPhone. Then an iPad. Then a laptop. It never ends. We eagerly await the newest technology release as if we are not satisfied with a fully capable and working phone. We strive for more. We equate technology with power, and power with success. We rarely stop to ponder […]
Technology and Food – Hand in Hand — University of Cincinnati COM Chronicles
Good article. I recommend reading the entire post.
We. Are. Doomed.
Weds 3/22
The Anti-Bunko meeting last night was a rousing success. Seven showed up and five of us ordered zero sides. Two ordered tots with their burgers. I guess it takes some people a longer time to learn why their jeans no longer fit.
I’m not sure if it was last night’s burger or busyness at work but I wasn’t hungry this morning. I didn’t notice any signs of hunger til around 10:30 AM. So while I may describe my meals as most people would, the times are definitely not the typical meal times. This turned out to be a good day to practice how to Eat Only When Hungry.
We should add eating only when hungry to this post Five healthy habits net more healthy years — Malheur County Health Department and make it Six Healthy Habits.
On Wednesdays the local store changes their weekly ad. I pulled the ad up online and to my surprise found boneless chicken thighs for $1.99/lb!
Chicken Thigh Week! An excuse to get out of the house!
But I was disappointed.
Avoid purchasing chicken if the package has excess liquid sitting in it. The excess liquid usually results from the conventional method of immersing chickens in water to chill them to an appropriate temperature. These liquids are expelled by the chicken once it is in the tray, which weakens the flavor and results in a mushy texture.
Guide on the different types of industrial chicken https://www.watermelon.market/post/guide-on-the-different-types-of-industrial-chicken
I did not buy any cheap chicken thighs BUT I did find one package of the $2.99/lb not as cheap chicken thighs. Now I have plenty of chicken thighs both boneless and bone-in.
So far my meals for today:
Breakfast – Raisin bran, soy milk banana at 10:30 AM
Lunch – cup of soup from the pot I never got around to freezing portions at 1:30 PM
Second Lunch – 2 roast chicken wraps with organic greens and hot honey coarse mustard at 3:00 PM.
It’s “dinner time” now and I’m not hungry.
Jastreboff’s research focuses on novel anti-obesity medications, specifically nutrient stimulated hormone therapeutics. She believes that a critical need in the field is to better understand obesity pathophysiology, especially how the body signals to the brain how much fat an individual should carry to store sufficient energy to function optimally; this is called the defended fat mass… Jastreboff cites the environment as a cause of obesity, specifically what she and other scientists call the obesogenic environment. “It’s not just the food, it’s not just the fact that we lead fairly sedentary lives,” Jastreboff explained. “It’s the stress, it’s the lack of sleep, it’s the circadian rhythm disruption, it’s things in our obesogenic environment that have led to this elevated defended fat mass on a population level.”
Yale Endocrinology Obesity Medicine: Approaching Obesity as a Complex, Chronic Disease — https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/yale-endocrinology-obesity-medicine-approaching-obesity-as-a-complex-chronic-disease/
You can now add your body’s defended fat mass to your personal list of reasons why you just can’t lose weight.
I must to go now. Super Bowl pig out starts soon and I have to adjust my defended fat mass set point.
The study found that eating fast food is associated with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, a potentially life-threatening condition in which fat builds up in the liver. Researchers discovered that people with obesity or diabetes who consume 20% or more of their daily calories from fast food have severely elevated levels of fat in their liver compared to those who consume less or no fast food. And the general population has moderate increases of liver fat when one-fifth or more of their diet is fast food.
University of Southern California – Health Sciences. “Consumption of fast food linked to liver disease: Risk of liver damage is highest for those with obesity or diabetes.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/01/230110103508.htm (accessed January 11, 2023).
Journal Reference – Ani Kardashian, Jennifer L. Dodge, Norah A. Terrault. Quantifying the Negative Impact of Fast-food Consumption on Liver Steatosis Among United States Adults with Diabetes and Obesity. Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, 2023; DOI: 10.1016/j.cgh.2022.11.040
But even with Foods With Low Nutritional Quality remember Braum’s Is the Best American Fast-Food Chain You’ve Never Heard Of.
Adults who stay well-hydrated appear to be healthier, develop fewer chronic conditions, such as heart and lung disease, and live longer than those who may not get sufficient fluids, according to a National Institutes of Health study published in eBioMedicine. Using health data gathered from 11,255 adults over a 30-year period, researchers analyzed links between […]
Good hydration linked to healthy aging — Health Secrets of a SuperAger
Thanks Tony.
A study now shows that many of the meat substitutes sold in Sweden claim a high content of iron — but in a form that cannot be absorbed by the body.
Chalmers University of Technology. “Low nutritional quality in many vegetarian meat substitutes.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/12/221208085718.htm (accessed December 10, 2022).
From the study conclusions:
The results in this study highlight the nutritional limitations in terms of iron and zinc bioavailability of shifting from a diet containing animal protein from meat to a diet based on meat substitutes. This study shows difficulties obtaining essential minerals from a diet in which meat has been replaced with products based on legume or cereal proteins, which might lead to an increase in iron deficiency, especially among vulnerable groups. Our results call for a sharpening on the interpretation of nutrition claims, especially for iron, which would create incentive for producers to improve their products with regard to iron bioavailability.
Nutritional Composition and Estimated Iron and Zinc Bioavailability of Meat Substitutes Available on the Swedish Market – https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/19/3903
If your diet is plant based stick with the plants, not the highly processed stuff.
A year-long study of the dietary habits of 9,341 Australians has backed growing evidence that highly processed and refined foods are the leading contributor of rising obesity rates in the Western world.
The new study, in the latest issue of the journal Obesity conducted by the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre (CPC), was based on a national nutrition and physical activity survey undertaken by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), and further backs the ‘Protein Leverage Hypothesis’.
Participants with a lower proportion of protein than recommended at the first meal consumed more discretionary foods – energy-dense foods high in saturated fats, sugars, salt, or alcohol – throughout the day, and less of the recommended five food groups (grains; vegetables/legumes; fruit; dairy and meats). Consequently, they had an overall poorer diet at each mealtime, with their percentage of protein energy decreasing even as their discretionary food intake rose – an effect the scientists call ‘protein dilution’.
“The results support an integrated ecological and mechanistic explanation for obesity, in which low-protein, highly processed foods lead to higher energy intake in response to a nutrient imbalance driven by a dominant appetite for protein,” said Professor Raubenheimer. “It supports a central role for protein in the obesity epidemic, with significant implications for global health.”
Study confirms that processed foods key to rising obesity — https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2022/11/08/processed-foods-key-to-rising-obesity-study-finds-.html
Beans for breakfast anyone? Eggs?
Link to the original study Macronutrient (im)balance drives energy intake in an obesogenic food environment: An ecological analysis – https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.23578
Earlier posts on the obesogenic food environment:
In an editorial in Obesity, Corkey discusses the many different theories explaining why obesity continues to increase despite best efforts at controlling weight gain in this environment, including increased availability and marketing of high-calorie and high-glycemic-index foods and drinks, larger food portions, leisure time physical activities being replaced with sedentary activities such as watching television and use of electronic devices, inadequate sleep, and the use of medications that increase weight.
According to Corkey, all of these purported explanations assume an environmental cause that is detrimental to the organism involved, (humans).
Boston University School of Medicine. “Finding the solution to obesity: Culinary medicine, emerging evidence-based field, ID’d as early intervention.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/11/221102115527.htm (accessed November 3, 2022)
Diseases related to obesity correlate with both the extent and duration of obesity. This suggests that diseases related to obesity will also increase more rapidly owing to the younger onset and more severe forms of the disease.
Barbara E. Corkey, Caroline M. Apovian. “En attendant Godot”: Waiting for the answer to obesity and longevity. Obesity, 2022; 30 (11): 2105 DOI: 10.1002/oby.23462
I have a growing sense of urgency to finish writing my future best seller.
I just have to figure out how to describe what I know in language simple enough for everyone to understand.
People have been working with the Hadza for decades now, so we have these long-term records, papers published from 30 or 40 years ago up through to today. We can understand from those data how variable diet can be: We’ve seen how the amount of meat changes with the seasons. It’s more skewed toward plants during wet seasons, for example. We’ve seen how different plant species, such as berries and tubers, contribute to diet in different ways over the course of a year. We’ve also learned that honey is a really big part of their diet…
Humans evolved to be adaptable. We are very much dependent on learning and developing these complex hoarding strategies to survive. And different people follow different paths. I think this adaptability is part of this whole package of how we live as a species. We’re built to be flexible. And flexibility means diversity…
I think the one thing that they never have in a hunter-gatherer diet is the heavily processed foods that we are surrounded with. In processed foods, you get these combinations of sugars, salts and fats that never occur in nature. You take out a lot of things like fiber and protein that make you feel full, and put in a lot of things that make your brain’s reward systems light up, like flavoring. Processed foods seem to be a big driver of obesity.
Our Ancestors Ate a Paleo Diet, With Carbs – https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/our-ancestors-ate-a-paleo-diet-with-carbs-180980901/
Remember, You Are What Your Ancestors Ate.
Be an Omnivore.
After four weeks on the diet, the animals showed characteristics of metabolic syndrome, such as weight gain, insulin resistance, and glucose intolerance. And their microbiomes had changed dramatically, with the amount of segmented filamentous bacteria — common in the gut microbiota of rodents, fish, and chickens — falling sharply and other bacteria increasing in abundance.
Sugar disrupts microbiome, eliminates protection against obesity and diabetes — Columbia University Irving Medical Center. “Sugar disrupts microbiome, eliminates protection against obesity and diabetes.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/08/220829194721.htm (accessed September 7, 2022)
Here’s the link to the original study – https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)00992-8?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867422009928%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
I’m cleaning up my saved drafts for this blog and apologize up front if I’ve already posted this. But since this post was in my draft folder I’m pretty sure I haven’t already posted this. I need to delete some drafts I’ve kept around since 2018.
2018!!!
