The Claim: We Overeat Because Our Diet is Low in Vitamins and MineralsWe know that animals, including humans, seek certain properties of food. Humans are naturally attracted to food that's high in fat, sugar, starch, and protein, and tend to be less enthusiastic about low-calorie foods that don't have these properties, like vegetables (1). Think cookies vs. plain carrots.In certain cases, the human body is able to detect a nutritional need and take steps to correct it. For example, people who are placed on a calorie-restricted diet become hungry and are motivated to make up for the calorie shortfall (2, 3). People who are placed on a low-protein diet crave protein and eat more of it after the restriction is lifted...
Does "Metabolically Healthy Obesity" Exist?
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Obesity is strongly associated with metabolic alterations and negative health outcomes including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and some types of cancer (1, 2, 3, 4). Excess body fat is one of the primary causes of preventable health problems and mortality in the United States and many other affluent nations, ranking in importance with cigarette smoking and physical inactivity. Obesity is thought to contribute to disease via the metabolic disturbances it causes, including excess glucose and lipids in the circulation, dysregulated hormone activity including insulin and leptin, and inflammatory effects. This immediately raises two questions:Does metabolically healthy obesity exist?If so, are metabolically...
Beans, Lentils, and the Paleo Diet
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As we continue to explore the foods our ancestors relied on during our evolutionary history, and what foods work best for us today, we come to legumes such as beans and lentils. These are controversial foods within the Paleolithic diet community, while the broader nutrition community tends to view legumes as healthy.Beans and lentils have a lot going for them. They're one of the few foods that are simultaneously rich in protein and fiber, making them highly satiating and potentially good for the critters in our colon. They're also relatively nutritious, delivering a hefty dose of vitamins and minerals. The minerals are partially bound by the anti-nutrient phytic acid, but simply soaking and cooking beans and lentils...
Recent and Upcoming Appearances
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Smarter Science of SlimJonathan Bailor recently released an interview we did a few months ago on the neurobiology of body fat regulation, and the implications for fat loss. It's a good overview of the regulation of food intake and body fatness by the brain. You can listen to it here.Super Human RadioCarl Lanore interviewed me about my lab's work on hypothalamic inflammation and obesity. I'm currently wrapping up a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Michael Schwartz at the University of Washington, and the interview touches on our recent review paper "Hypothalamic Inflammation: Marker or Mechanism of Obesity Pathogenesis?" Dan Pardi and I are frequent guests on Carl's show and I'm always impressed by how well Carl prepares...
Buckwheat Crepes Revisited
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One of my most popular posts of all time was a recipe I published in 2010 for sourdough buckwheat crepes (1). I developed this recipe to provide an easy, nutritious, and gluten-free alternative to flour-based crepes. It requires no equipment besides a blender. It's totally different from the traditional buckwheat crepes that are eaten in Brittany, in part because it's not really a crepe (I don't know what else to call it, maybe a savory pancake?). I find these very satisfying,...
New Post on Eat Move Sleep Blog
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Yesterday, the Dan's Plan blog Eat Move Sleep published a blog post I wrote about sleep, artificial light, your brain, and a free computer program called f.lux that can help us live healthier lives. Head over to Eat Move Sleep to read it....
Sleep and Genetic Obesity Risk
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Evidence is steadily accumulating that insufficient sleep increases the risk of obesity and undermines fat loss efforts. Short sleep duration is one of the most significant risk factors for obesity (1), and several potential mechanisms have been identified, including increased hunger, increased interest in calorie-dense highly palatable food, reduced drive to exercise, and alterations in hormones that influence appetite and body fatness. Dan Pardi presented his research at AHS13 showing that sleep restriction reduces willpower to make healthy choices about food.We also know that genetics has an outsized influence on obesity risk, accounting for about 70 percent of the variability in body fatness between people in affluent nations...
Speaking in Lisbon on October 5
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My friend Pedro Bastos graciously invited me to speak at a conference he organized in Lisbon on October 5 titled "Food, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases". I will give two talks:"Ancestral Health: What is Our Human Potential?" This talk will explore the health of non-industrial cultures in an effort to understand how much of our modern chronic disease burden is preventable, and it will briefly touch on one major aspect of non-industrial life that may protect against the "diseases of civilization". This presentation will focus on age-adjusted data from high quality studies. "Why Do We Overeat: a Neurobiological Perspective." This talk will attempt to explain why most of us consume more calories than...
Is Refined Carbohydrate Addictive?
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[Note: in previous versions, I mixed up "LGI" and "HGI" terms in a couple of spots. These are now corrected. Thanks to readers for pointing them out.]Recently, a new study was published that triggered an avalanche of media reports suggesting that refined carbohydrate may be addictive:Refined Carbs May Trigger Food AddictionRefined Carbs May Trigger Food AddictionsCan You be Addicted to Carbs?etc.This makes for attention-grabbing headlines, but in fact the study had virtually nothing to do with food addiction. The study made no attempt to measure addictive behavior related to refined carbohydrate or any other food, nor did it aim to do so.So what did the study actually find, why is it being extrapolated to food addiction,...
More Thoughts on Cold Training: Biology Chimes In
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Now that the concept of cold training for cold adaptation and fat loss has received scientific support, I've been thinking more about how to apply it. A number of people have been practicing cold training for a long time, using various methods, most of which haven't been scientifically validated. That doesn't mean the methods don't work (some of them probably do), but I don't know how far we can generalize individual results prior to seeing controlled studies. The studies that were published two weeks ago used prolonged, mild cold exposure (60-63 F air) to achieve cold adaptation and fat loss (1, 2). We still don't know whether or not we would see the same outcome from short, intense cold exposure such as a cold shower...
Reflections on the 2013 Ancestral Health Symposium
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I just returned from the 2013 Ancestral Health Symposium in Atlanta. Despite a few challenges with the audio/visual setup, I think it went well. I arrived on Thursday evening, and so I missed a few talks that would have been interesting to attend, by Mel Konner, Nassim Taleb, Gad Saad, and Hamilton Stapell. Dr. Konner is one of the progenitors of the modern Paleo movement. Dr. Saad does interesting work on consummatory behavior, reward, and its possible evolutionary basis. Dr. Stapell is a historian with an interest in the modern Paleo movement. He got some heat for suggesting that the movement is unlikely to go truly mainstream, which I agree with. I had the opportunity to spend quite a bit of time with...
AHS Talk This Saturday
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For those who are attending the Ancestral Health Symposium this year, my talk will be at 9:00 AM on Saturday. The title is "Insulin and Obesity: Reconciling Conflicting Evidence", and it will focus on the following two questions:Does elevated insulin cause obesity; does obesity cause elevated insulin; or both?Is there a unifying hypothesis that's able to explain all of the seemingly conflicting evidence cited by each side of the debate?I'll approach the matter in true scientific fashion: stating hypotheses, making rational predictions based on those hypotheses, and seeing how well the evidence matches the predictions. I'll explore the evidence in a way that has never been done before (to my knowledge), even on this blog.Why am...
Food Reward Friday
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This week's lucky "winner"... cola!Thirsty yet? Visual cues such as these are used to drive food/beverage seeking and consumption behavior, which are used to drive profits. How does this work? Once you've consumed a rewarding beverage enough times, particularly as a malleable child, your brain comes to associate everything about that beverage with the primary reward you obtained from it (calories, sugar, and caffeine). This is simply Pavlovian/classical conditioning*. Everything...
Brown Fat: It's a Big Deal
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Non-shivering thermogenesis is the process by which the body generates extra heat without shivering. Shivering is a way for the body to use muscular contractions to generate heat, but non-shivering thermogenesis uses a completely different mechanism to accomplish the same goal: a specialized fat-burning tissue called brown fat. Brown fat is brown rather than white because it's packed with mitochondria, the power plants of the cell. Under cold conditions, these mitochondria are activated, using a specialized molecular mechanism called uncoupling* to generate heat.The mechanism of brown fat activation has been worked out fairly well in rodents, which rely heavily on non-shivering thermogenesis due to their small body size....
Zucchini: The Home Gardener's Worst Friend? With bonus garden-related rambling.
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One of my main gardening goals has been to harvest more of something than I can eat, despite my limited gardening space here in the Emerald City. I want the feeling of abundance that comes with having to preserve and give away food because I can't eat it all. Enter zucchini. My grandfather used to say that in New Jersey in summertime, you'd have to keep your car doors locked, otherwise the car would be full of zucchini the next time you got in! In mid-May, I planted two starts...
The Genetics of Obesity, Part III
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Genetics Loads the Gun, Environment Pulls the TriggerThanks to a WHS reader* for reminding me of the above quote by Dr. Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health**. This is a concept that helps reconcile the following two seemingly contradictory observations:Roughly 70 percent of obesity risk is genetically inherited, leaving only 30 percent of risk to environmental factors such as diet and lifestyle.Diet and lifestyle have a large impact on obesity risk. The prevalence of obesity has tripled in the last 30 years, and the prevalence of extreme obesity has increased by almost 10-fold. This is presumably not enough time for genetic changes to account for it.Read more...