Every now and then, I venture out to go shopping at mainstream chain clothing stores. Although I find it onerous, there are certain things I can't get at thrift stores. For example, I can never find nice jeans.
The last time I set foot in these stores was about two years ago. It was tough to find pants my size at that time-- many stores simply didn't sell pants with a 30 inch waist. This year, it was even harder, since some of the stores that formerly carried 30W pants no longer did. I managed to find my usual 30W 30L size in two stores, but I had a bizarre experience in both cases. I put them on, and they were falling off my waist. Since my waist size hasn't changed in two years, and my old 30W 30L pants of the same brand still fit the same as they did when I bought them two years ago, I have to conclude that both stores have changed their definition of "30 inches". My new size is 28W 30L, which is tough to find these days.
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Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Friday, December 9, 2011
60 Minutes Report on the Flavorist Industry
A reader sent me a link to a recent CBS documentary titled "Tweaking Tastes and Creating Cravings", reported by Morley Safer.
Safer describes the "flavorist" industry, entirely dedicated to crafting irresistible odors for the purpose of selling processed and restaurant food. They focused on the company Givaudin. Dr. David Kessler, author of The End of Overeating, makes an appearance near the end.
Here are a few notable quotes:
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Safer describes the "flavorist" industry, entirely dedicated to crafting irresistible odors for the purpose of selling processed and restaurant food. They focused on the company Givaudin. Dr. David Kessler, author of The End of Overeating, makes an appearance near the end.
Here are a few notable quotes:
Read more »
Friday, December 2, 2011
New Review Papers on Food Reward
As research on the role of reward/palatability in obesity continues to accelerate, interesting new papers are appearing weekly. Here is a roundup of review papers I've encountered in the last three months. These range from somewhat technical to very technical, but I think they should be mostly accessible to people with a background in the biological sciences.
Food and Drug Reward: Overlapping Circuits in Human Obesity and Addiction
Written by Dr. Nora D. Volkow and colleagues. This paper describes the similarities between the mechanisms of obesity and addiction, with a focus on human brain imaging studies. Most researchers don't think obesity is an addiction per se, but the mechanisms (e.g., brain areas important for reward) do seem to overlap considerably. This paper is well composed and got a lot of media attention. Dr. Volkow is the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a branch of the National Institutes of Health. The NIH is the main source of biomedical research funding in the US, and also conducts its own research.
Here's a quote from the paper:
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Food and Drug Reward: Overlapping Circuits in Human Obesity and Addiction
Written by Dr. Nora D. Volkow and colleagues. This paper describes the similarities between the mechanisms of obesity and addiction, with a focus on human brain imaging studies. Most researchers don't think obesity is an addiction per se, but the mechanisms (e.g., brain areas important for reward) do seem to overlap considerably. This paper is well composed and got a lot of media attention. Dr. Volkow is the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a branch of the National Institutes of Health. The NIH is the main source of biomedical research funding in the US, and also conducts its own research.
Here's a quote from the paper:
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Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Another Simple Food Weight Loss Experience
Whole Health Source reader Sarah Pugh recently went on a six-week simple food (low reward) diet to test its effectiveness as a weight loss strategy, and she was kind enough to describe her experience for me, and provide a link to her blog where she discussed it in more detail (1).
Consistent with the scientific literature and a number of previous reader anecdotes (2), Sarah experienced a reduction in appetite on the simple food diet, losing 15 pounds in 6 weeks without hunger. In contrast to her prior experiences with typical calorie restriction, her energy level and mood remained high over this period. Here's a quote from her blog:
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Consistent with the scientific literature and a number of previous reader anecdotes (2), Sarah experienced a reduction in appetite on the simple food diet, losing 15 pounds in 6 weeks without hunger. In contrast to her prior experiences with typical calorie restriction, her energy level and mood remained high over this period. Here's a quote from her blog:
Well, it looks like the theory that in the absence of nice palatable food, the body will turn quite readily to fat stores and start munching them up, is holding up. At the moment, the majority of the energy I use is coming from my insides, and my body is using it without such quibbles as the increased hunger, low energy, crappy thermo-regulation or bitchiness normally associated with severe calorie restriction.I can't promise that everyone will experience results like this, but this is basically what the food reward hypothesis suggests should be possible, and it seems to work this way for many people. That's one of the reasons why this idea interests me so much.
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Saturday, November 26, 2011
A Brief Response to Taubes's Food Reward Critique, and a Little Something Extra
It appears Gary Taubes has completed his series critiquing the food reward hypothesis of obesity (1). I have to hand it to him, it takes some cojones to critique an entire field of research, particularly when you have no scientific background in it, and have evidently not read any of the scientific literature on it. As of 2012, a Google Scholar search for the terms “food reward” and “obesity” turned up 2,790 papers.
The food reward hypothesis of obesity states that the reward and palatability value of food influence body fatness, and excess reward/palatability can promote body fat accumulation. If we want to test the hypothesis, the most direct way is to find experiments in which 1) the nutritional qualities of the experimental diet groups are kept the same or at least very similar, 2) some aspect of diet reward/palatability differs, and 3) changes in body fat/weight are measured (for example, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). In these experiments the hypothesis has both arms and one leg tied behind its back, because the most potent reward factors (energy density, sugar, fat) have nutritional value and therefore experiments that modify these cannot be tightly controlled for nutritional differences. Yet even with this severe disadvantage, the hypothesis is consistently supported by the scientific evidence. Taubes repeatedly stated in his series that controlled studies like these have not been conducted, apparently basing this belief on a 22-year-old review paper by Dr. Israel Ramirez and colleagues that does not contain the word 'reward' (10).
Another way to test the hypothesis is to see if people with higher food reward sensitivity (due to genetics or other factors) tend to gain more fat over time (for example, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16). In addition, studies that have examined the effect of palatability/reward on food intake in a controlled manner are relevant (17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22), as are studies that have identified some of the mechanisms by which these effects occur (reviewed in 23). Even if not all of the studies are perfect, at some point, one has to acknowledge that there are a lot of mutually buttressing lines of evidence here. It is notable that virtually none of these studies appeared in Taubes's posts, and he appeared unaware of them.
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The food reward hypothesis of obesity states that the reward and palatability value of food influence body fatness, and excess reward/palatability can promote body fat accumulation. If we want to test the hypothesis, the most direct way is to find experiments in which 1) the nutritional qualities of the experimental diet groups are kept the same or at least very similar, 2) some aspect of diet reward/palatability differs, and 3) changes in body fat/weight are measured (for example, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). In these experiments the hypothesis has both arms and one leg tied behind its back, because the most potent reward factors (energy density, sugar, fat) have nutritional value and therefore experiments that modify these cannot be tightly controlled for nutritional differences. Yet even with this severe disadvantage, the hypothesis is consistently supported by the scientific evidence. Taubes repeatedly stated in his series that controlled studies like these have not been conducted, apparently basing this belief on a 22-year-old review paper by Dr. Israel Ramirez and colleagues that does not contain the word 'reward' (10).
Another way to test the hypothesis is to see if people with higher food reward sensitivity (due to genetics or other factors) tend to gain more fat over time (for example, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16). In addition, studies that have examined the effect of palatability/reward on food intake in a controlled manner are relevant (17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22), as are studies that have identified some of the mechanisms by which these effects occur (reviewed in 23). Even if not all of the studies are perfect, at some point, one has to acknowledge that there are a lot of mutually buttressing lines of evidence here. It is notable that virtually none of these studies appeared in Taubes's posts, and he appeared unaware of them.
Read more »
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