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.
Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome
At the end of last year I reported on the findings of the mammoth Women’s Health Initiative trial. The trial was initiated in 1993, and recruited a total of almost 50,000 post-menopausal women and followed them for an average of about 8 years. About 60 per cent of these women were allowed to continue on […]
Healthy Eating
It’s perhaps one of the most contentious issues in nutrition: should individuals who want to control their weight eat a diet low in fat, or low in carbohydrate? The ‘conventional’ view is that fat is ‘calorific’ and fattening, so low-fat is the way to go. However, some (e.g. Gary Taubes and the late Robert Atkins) […]
Brain and Behaviour
One key to successful weight control is to eat foods that, calorie for calorie, are most satisfying. Two factors that have identified as having some importance here are the glycaemic index of a food and its protein content. Basically low glycaemic index (GI) foods (those that release sugar relatively slowly into the bloodstream) are more […]
Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome
The body mass index (BMI) is the standard and most commonly-used method for assessing body weight by health professionals. It is calculated by dividing an individual’s weight in kg by the square of their height in metres. The fact that some arithmetic is required to ascertain the BMI makes it look quite scientific and robust. […]
Brain and Behaviour
The implicit advantage that artificial sweeteners have over sugar is that, being virtually devoid of calories, they’re a better option for those wanting to control their weight. However, as I described in a recent blog post here, there is no good evidence that artificial sweeteners promote weight loss compared to sugar. Plus, there is actually […]
Weight Loss
Some of you will be familiar with Gary Taubes’ book The Diet Delusion (entitled Good Calories, Bad Calories in the USA). In this book, I think Taubes does a good job of presenting obesity as not a problem to do with gluttony and lack of exercise, but a problem of fat storage. He argues, quite […]
Unhealthy Eating!
I don’t think for a moment that I’ve got my whole life sussed, and see it as a ‘work in progress’. I’ve been putting energy into my personal development and health management for 20-odd years now, and to this day still strive to lead a better, healthier, happier more balanced life. One of the most […]
Healthy Eating
On Monday I started a blog about the artificial sweetener aspartame with a reference to my preference for a diet rich in natural, unprocessed foods. Such a diet might be described in various ways including a ‘hunter-gatherer’, ‘caveman’ or ‘paleolithic’ diet. However such a diet is described, the aim is the same: to feed the […]
Weight Loss
When I was studying medicine I was even more cynical than I am now and so, I think, were quite a few of my friends. We had all established firmly in our minds the notion that eating few calories than the body ‘burned’ would result in weight loss, so generally had little compassion for individuals […]
Children's Health
I think the salt is somewhat over-emphasised as an unhealthy food constituent, though the likelihood is that most of us eat more of it than is strictly good for us. Personally, I don’t consume much salt because I don’t eat much processed food (where most of our salt comes from) and I add little, if […]