Weight Loss
Previously on this site I have drawn attention to the fact that the body mass index (weight in kg divided by the square of someone’s height in metres) is not a particularly good gauge of health status. For a start, the BMI tells us noting about the body’s composition, and it is entirely possible for […]
Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome
I believe that what represents an ideal diet varies from person to person, but one thing I’m clear about is that many health professionals and even our Governments advise intakes of carbohydrate that are greater than is good for us. In particular, while starchy carbohydrates such as bread, potatoes, rice, pasta and breakfast cereals have […]
Food and Medical Politics
The body mass index (BMI) has for a long time been the standard measurement used to determine whether someone’s weight is ‘healthy’ or not. BMIs (calculated by dividing weight in kg by the square of someone’s height in metres) of 25 or more are generally regarded as ‘unhealthy’. The suggestion is there are somehow mortal […]
Food and Medical Politics
Very few people would disagree with the idea that cigarette smoking is generally bad four our health. This habit has strong links with a range of conditions including cardiovascular disease, lung cancer and other respiratory diseases. The only doctors and scientists that dispute the negative effects of smoking seem to be those in the pay […]
Healthy Eating
Many individuals who are attempting to lose weight will see hunger as a sign that they have pushed themselves into calorie deficit, and that their body weight will be dwindling as a result. They may be right, but the problem is that getting hungry can make it very difficult indeed for individuals to control what […]
Healthy Eating
Overeating is something that many of us will have experienced at one time or another. This phenomenon can, of course, be down to plentiful supply of appetising food, but it can also have a physiological and/or biochemical root too. One cause of overeating is ‘hypoglycaemic’ or low blood sugar. When blood sugar levels drop to […]
Healthy Eating
For a long time I’ve been an advocate of tree nuts (e.g. cashews, hazelnuts, walnuts, pecans, brazil nuts, almonds) and peanuts in the diet. One reason for this is that they are a highly nutritious food, and their consumption has been consistently linked in the scientific literature with a reduced risk of heart disease and […]
Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome
One basic nutritional tenet I subscribe to is the idea that the diet should be based on foods that give relatively slow sustained release of sugar into the blood stream. Some of the reason for this thinking comes from the fact that fast sugar-releasing (high glycaemic index) foods will tend to cause surges in the […]
Healthy Eating
Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is a food ingredient which is used to enhance flavour and palatability. It is the glutamate ” an amino acid – part of the MSG molecule that does the job in this respect. MSG (and/or other sources of glutamate) can be found in a wide range of processed foods with the blessing […]
Healthy Eating
In the World of nutrition, not everyone shares the same opinion (obviously). And perhaps the most stark and common example of this concerns the relative amounts of carbohydrate and fat we should have in our diets. The conventional view is that the diet should be, generally speaking, low in fat and high in carb. Fat, […]