Month: June 2011

Fake Fat Makes You Fat – Stuns Researchers – Low Carbers Say ‘Meh’

The gist of this story about Olsetra, the fake fat that they sometime use in chips to lower the calorie count, shows that rats that eat the stuff not only eat more calories, but eat more calories even after they stop eating it.

The writer of the story appears to be stunned, and writes the following:

This counter-intuitive finding shakes the conventional wisdom that substituting lower calorie, lower fat foods for the full-fat versions will help reduce overall caloric intake and encourage weight loss.

In other news, water runs down hill. Researchers amazed.

How many times must researchers be ‘stunned’ before they realize that just calorie counting doesn’t work?

Here’s another learned response from a puzzled professional:

“It goes against what you might think — you remove calories from food and you’ll lose weight, but at the end of the day the chemical manipulation of food leads to increased weight. We don’t understand exactly why yet, but research continues to show this is true,” ABC News Medical contributor Dr. Marie Savard said.

Actually,  Dr. Savard, it is not only the chemical manipulation that does it, but many other factors in food – both natural, unnatural, and processed that will do it. An understanding of nutrition beyond the ‘calories in, calories out’ myth could help you puzzle this out.

Stop by any Low Carb hangout on the Internet – you’ll find plenty of friendly and helpful people would would be happy to explain it to you.

Do You Know What Your Veggie Burgers are Made From…Really?

Let me start by mentioning that I don’t know if this is for real. I hope not.

The video above links to a story on a Japanese researcher who is perfecting a process of making artificial meat from human feces.

(Long pause here to let that sink in…OK…ready to go on?)

While there’s a lot one can say about this, my point might be a bit different that most of the commenters out there.

As someone who tries to avoid processed food as much as is possible, this adds to my reasoning why.

You never really know what you’re eating.

There is a long and rich history of food adulteration going back centuries. I have a wonderfully disgusting book on the subject named ‘Swindled!’ that I should review here (but haven”t because I’m lazy).

The one big takeaway from the book is this: the longer the chain that the food needs to travel to get to your table, the more likely it has been adulterated along the way.

The point being – even if you know that you would never order a burger made from the above process – how do you know some didn’t slip in?

Let’s score another one for eating natural foods, being a locavore, and knowing the farmer that feeds you.