Discover the Science of Health
Around the world, obesity levels are rising. For the first time in history, more people are overweight than undernourished. Premiering Friday, April 4th through Sunday, April 20th on BBC World News, a 3-part documentary series entitled “The Men Who Made Us Fat” explores the political, economic and social events that led to our increasingly overweight world.
According to a new long-term observational study from researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and the National University of Singapore, increasing the number of servings of red meat over time increases the risk of getting type 2 diabetes, while cutting back reduces the danger. The study is published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
High cholesterol causes cardiovascular disease. Eggs are high in cholesterol; a large egg contains about 210mg of the stuff, which is concentrated in the yolk. The American Heart Association has recommended that people limit their daily cholesterol consumption to less than 300mg to maintain heart health [1]. Thus, it would seem that we should eat fewer eggs, or at least fewer egg yolks, to prevent cardiovascular disease. Right?
As we start the new year, approximately 180 million Americans have made a New Year’s resolution [1-3]. Two of the top five resolutions for 2013 focus on food, specifically weight loss (#1) and healthier eating (#5).
Ellen Gustafson and Danielle Nierenberg, co-founders of the food think tank Food Tank that launches on January 10th, have also been thinking about resolutions for the year ahead. They think eaters, farmers and policy-makers need new, bigger resolutions to fix the food system — real changes with long-term impacts on plates and in fields and boardrooms all over the world — and offer 13 resolutions to change the food system in 2013.
With Americans becoming increasingly overweight each year, weight loss is big business. This paves the way for any number of diet books and fads. Some of these are based upon sound scientific principles, while others may not work at all, or may result in a modest weight loss followed by rebound weight gain.
A preliminary scientific study — one neither large enough nor strong enough to be considered conclusive at this point — suggests that low-fat diets may be less effective than other weight-loss strategies from a metabolic perspective [1].
