Brain and Behaviour
Back in October I wrote about the artificial sweetener aspartame. This food ingredient is perhaps the most controversial of all: its manufacturers and official bodies claim it’s safe, but a stack of anecdotal evidence and a fair degree of science says it’s not. Tellingly, whether a study finds for or against aspartame seems to be […]
Food and Medical Politics
If I were to summarise what is conventionally regarded as a ‘healthy’ diet, I’d say it would be one which is low in fat, and rich in carbohydrate, including fruit and vegetables and fibre. I don’t particularly have much enthusiasm for such as diet myself: while I’m a general fan of fruit of veg, I […]
Brain and Behaviour
I don’t know what health news stories were circulating in other parts of the globe, but here in the UK we have not been able to move for the ‘revelation’ that, for the majority of people who take them, popular antidepressants work no better than placebo. This story was spawned from the results of a […]
Food and Medical Politics
The Food Standards Agency in the UK is the Government agency entrusted with policing the food industry and also with the task of giving us the correct steer on what we should be eating. However, as I have felt compelled to point out of several occasions, the FSA doesn’t seem to do such as good […]
Brain and Behaviour
When it comes to healthy living, my tendency is to favour as natural a course as possible. The word ‘natural’ means different things to different people, but in the context of our diet I take it to mean food that is close as possible to the way it found in nature. This does not guarantee […]
Cholesterol and Statins
Here in the UK we look to the Government’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) to guide us regarding what we should be eating, and we also trust them when it comes to ensuring the food industry doesn’t offer us too much shite to eat. Or that’s the theory, anyway. In reality, I reckon the FSA does […]
Food and Medical Politics
I read yesterday that Alan Johnson, the Health Minister here in the UK, is going to call this week for the practice of water fluoridation to be extended here in the UK. Currently about 10 per cent of the UK population is piped fluoridated water, something that is that we are told would reduce dental […]
Brain and Behaviour
News broke in the UK this week that prescriptions for obesity drugs topped 1 million in 2006 ” an eight-fold increase in just seven years. No doubt some of this increase has come about as a result of the increasing dire statistics about the burgeoning rates of obesity. However, as I revealed here and here, […]
Cholesterol and Statins
Last Monday’s blog featured an article which revealed evidence of ‘publication bias’ (basically, the publication of positive studies and the junking of negative ones) in the area of antidepressant therapy. Not only that, but this study revealed that many negative studies are reported by their authors in a way that makes them look positive. The […]
Food and Medical Politics
Those of you familiar with my nutritional beliefs will know that I don’t have too many good things to say about the ‘low-fat’ paradigm that has pervaded nutritional advice for some 30 years. Not only do I believe that there is not much to be feared in naturally-occurring fats in the diet, but the fat-phobia […]