Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Is Sugar the Next Tobacco?

December 27, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Robert Lustig

Among the least likely viral megahits on YouTube is a 90-minute lecture by the food scold and pediatric endocrinologist Robert Lustig entitled “Sugar: The Bitter Truth.” He delivers it in a windowless room at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. The talk is simultaneously boring and powerful, combining the gravitas of a national health crisis, the thrill of conspiracy theory, and the tedium of PowerPoint slides. Midway through the talk he scans the hall for approval. “Am I debunking?” The UCSF extension students mutter ... Read More

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Water the Perfect Apertif for Carrot Sticks

June 21, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Food and drink pairing isn’t just for winos. From a very young age, we form opinions about what we should drink with, say, pizza (soda), Lunchables (Capri Sun), and vegetables (plain ol’ water). Mix these pairings up and we’ll lose a little interest in one or the other. “Preferences start to develop very early in children,” explains Annemarie Olsen, a postdoc researcher at the University of Copenhagen who has studied child food preferences. “Several studies have demonstrated that they start to form already in the uterus!” To test how beverage might influence food choices, ... Read More

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Thinner Mice March to Mealtime Rhythm

May 17, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Rather than count calories, people who want to lose weight may want to count minutes. Investigators led by Satchidananda Panda at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies offered the same high fat diet to two groups of mice. The first group could access the food only eight hours a day, while mice in the other group could hit the rodent buffet whenever they wanted. The study, reported in the journal Cell Metabolism, found the mice on the time-restricted diet consumed just as much food as those with “ad lib” food access, yet had lower rates of obesity, excessive insulin, excessive ... Read More

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To Stay Thin, Eat Like the Cultural Elite

May 14, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Reading in fancy library

You don’t burn many calories flipping pages in a novel, or walking to your seat in the opera house. But new research reveals an intriguing association between weight control and enjoyment of culturally enriching but sedentary activities. That’s the conclusion I reach in a paper published in the Sociology of Health and Illness. The results show how specific sedentary activities reflect one’s lifestyle, and tell us something about the social sources of health. The study uses survey data from 17 nations, most of which are in Europe. In each country, a representative sample of the ... Read More

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Calm Down, Step Away From the Burger

May 4, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
ps-transfats2

If it’s true that we are what we eat, then people who eat a lot of trans fatty acids — common in fast foods ­— might be a bit touchier than the rest of us. In a new study of eating habits and behavior, Dr. Beatrice Golomb, a researcher and professor at the University of California, San Diego medical school, lays out evidence that a diet high in trans fats is linked to traits of irritability and aggression. In her study, Golomb gave 945 Californians who had already enrolled in a drug clinical trial a standard dietary questionnaire that asked what they ate and how often they ate ... Read More

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‘Fair Trade’ Chocolate Perceived as Healthier

January 5, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

It’s that time of year when weight-conscious people, determined to shed the pounds they put on during the holidays, pay closer attention to food labels. While the savvy are skeptical of overreaching health claims, newly published research suggests an entirely different assertion can lull us into caloric complacency. It finds socially conscious consumers are more likely to perceive a chocolate bar as being low in calories if it is labeled “fair trade.” “Ethical food claims can bias consumers to see poor-nutrition foods in a healthier light,” reports a research team led by ... Read More

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FDA Cracks Whip on Lap-Band Marketing

December 13, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

In July, we asked how candidates for Lap-Bands — surgically implanted belts that wrap around the stomach and can be tightened to make it smaller — should be evaluated after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration widened the window of those eligible for the weight-loss procedure. By lowering the body-mass index criteria, as many as one in seven Americans became eligible for the surgery. Our Taylor Orr wondered if the Lap-Band wasn’t being promoted a little recklessly as a get-thin cure-all – besides Lasik, how many surgical procedures do you see offered on billboards? “In short, ... Read More

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Applying Healthy Skepticism to Healthy Foods

July 26, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Summertime: outdoor concerts, beaches, barbecues. I don’t know about you, but my picnic basket is going to be filled with blueberries, pomegranates, açai, green tea, omega-3-laden fish and organic probiotic yogurts. This is the summer to start increasing my antioxidants and live longer. Or so I thought before I rediscovered my critical thinking skills hiding on the bottom of the grocery cart. Don’t get me wrong. It’s great to improve the way we eat. In July 2011, for example, the Los Angeles Unified School District stopped serving chocolate or strawberry flavored milk, which has ... Read More

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How Should We Evaluate Lap-Band Candidates?

July 15, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

You've tried Atkins, South Beach and Nutrisystem. You've enlisted the help of a personal trainer, busted your butt at your gym's boot camp and sweated it out in Bikram yoga. Desperate to trim inches, you've even bought into gimmicky weight-loss pills, fasting and cleanses. But the stubborn scale still tells you that you're overweight. Where should you turn now? If you have a body mass index of 30 or higher (a man standing at 5'9" and weighing in at 203 pounds) and one weight-related medical condition (high blood pressure, diabetes, etc.), you now qualify for quick and easy gastric bypass ... Read More

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The Farm School: Growing Organic Farmers

March 10, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

No one arrives at The Farm School by accident, because it's not around the corner from, or on the way to, much of anything. You drive increasingly narrow, winding and erratically paved roads through the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts until the only signs are historical markers for battles that old Yankees fought against the British or Native Americans. But Emily DeFeo knows exactly where The Farm School is. "Over the rainbow," she says with a gentle smile. DeFeo is one of 14 students paying for the privilege of spending a year living on and working a 183-acre organic farm. ... Read More

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