Dr John Briffa's blog, A Good Look at Good Health — writing on food, cholesterol, weight, energy and the science behind everyday health, from the drbriffa.com archive. Filter by topic, browse by category, or search the library.
Healthy Eating
At this time of year many of us will come across messages which warn of the hazards of consuming excessive quantities of food and drink. For example, a week or so ago I read a report which maintained that children can get through 6000-odd calories on Christmas day. And last week I wrote a piece […]
Healthy Eating
I came across a video today (posted below). It’s an Associated Press news report regarding an anti-soft-drink/soda video made by the New York City Department of Health. It portrays a man drinking the contents of a soda-can. Except that the contents aren’t the fizzy, sugary liquid one is anticipating, but what looks likes globs of […]
Healthy Eating
I am not a fan of refined sugar, generally speaking. But I’m most certainly not a fan of the ‘healthy’ alternatives ” artificial sweeteners ” either. One cause of concern is their safety. For example, aspartame (Nutrasweet, Equal, Canderel) has quite a body of research which demonstrates it has real potential to have adverse effects […]
Exercise and Activity
I had the radio on in the car this morning and was listening to a discussion involving a 32 stone (450 lb/200 kg) man who was complaining that he was not getting the medical care he needed (surgery, basically) to allow him to lose significant quantities of weight. Inevitably there was a backlash from listeners […]
Healthy Eating
As a general rule, scientists, doctors and dieticians subscribe to the view that when it comes to weight management, ‘a calorie is a calorie’. Essentially, this means that weight loss is the aim, we need to consume fewer calories than we burn, and as long as we do, then the form that these calories come […]
Healthy Eating
There is generally unbridled enthusiasm in the medical establishment for cholesterol-reducing drugs known as statins. While they do have the ability to reduce the risk of cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and strokes, they don’t appear to reduce overall risk of death in individuals who have no history of cardiovascular disease when they start […]
Exercise and Activity
Anyone familiar with my health ‘philosophy’ will know that I am a big believer in using our ancient past to inform our modern-day dietary and lifestyle habits. Logic dictates that, say, the foods we’ve eaten for longest in terms of our time on this planet are the foods that we’re generally going to be the […]
Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome
Last Friday my blog focused on a study which found that fat intake (total fat, as well as levels of, saturated, unsaturated and polyunsaturated fat) appeared to have no impact on change in body weight over a period of several years. Partly in an attempt to explain how this can be so, I outlined the […]
Healthy Eating
We all know that fat is fattening right? (It is called fat, after all.) But not so fast, because as I detail here, for fat to get ‘fixed’ in the fat cells, a substance known as glycerol is required. Glycerol itself is supplied from a substance known as alpha glycerol phosphate (also known as glycerol-3-phosphate), […]
Exercise and Activity
A couple of months ago I wrote a blog which reviewed the evidence which suggests that exercise is not particularly effective for weight loss, and why this might be. That is not to say, however, that exercise is a fruitless endeavour. It is linked, for instance, with improved measures of health as well as reduced […]