The Skinny Kid

SaukValley.com - Serving Dixon, Sterling & Rock Falls

It’s a pretty good bet that if you ate three pomegranates a day, you’d lose weight and live longer.For one thing, given how finicky and labor-intensive it is to eat a pomegranate, you wouldn’t have much time left to eat other foods.

Then there’s the growing body of research suggesting that the polyphenolic antioxidants found in pomegranates (and in red grapes, blueberries, cranberries) have beneficial health effects that include improving cardiac health and reducing the risk of cancer.

I’ve talked about some of those benefits before, and frequently drink pomegranate juice myself. But the article points out that the juice may not offer the same benefits in terms of weight control.

Check the nutrition labels, and you’ll see why. These are sugar bombs of the first order.

An 8-ounce serving of Pom? Thirty-four grams of sugar. Whole Foods’ 365 Everyday Value: 40 grams. Frutzzo: 32 grams.

By comparison, an 8-ounce serving of Coca-Cola contains 27 grams of sugar; 8 ounces of Mountain Dew, 31 grams.

More sugar than soda? Wow. I guess all that sugar is in the fruit as well, but as the article points out it is a little harder to get at. Another one of those cases where slowing down the pace of eating can have benefits of its own.

Avocado Nutrition » iFitandHealthy.com

As we grow increasingly health-conscious in our diets, avocado has stepped up to the plate as a choice replacement for fatty meats. Think ALT, hold the bacon. Think of all the veggie wraps teasing you away from those roast beef sandwiches.The small irony here is that avocado is one fat fruit. A typical, medium-sized variety provides 25 percent of your daily intake, if you eat the whole thing. Most of this is monounsaturated fat — the good kind — with no cholesterol and no sodium.

A little fat in the diet is necessary, and the good kind is a good way to get it. Avocado provides great texture and flavor to vegetarian dishes.

ScienceDaily: Broccoli and Other Vegetables Linked with Decreased Risk of Aggressive Prostate Cancer

Eating more cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower is associated with a reduced risk of aggressive prostate cancer.

Good reason # 473

news @ nature.com - Cancer-proof mice live longer - An extra copy of a tumour-killing gene helps mice to stay young.

Who would’ve guessed?

BBC NEWS | Health | Organic food ‘better’ for heart

Organic fruit and vegetables may be better for you than conventionally grown crops, US research suggests.A ten-year study comparing organic tomatoes with standard produce found almost double the level of flavonoids - a type of antioxidant.

Flavonoids have been shown to reduce high blood pressure, lowering the risk of heart disease and stroke.

I have found that many organic products seem to taste better. Some would argue that I am imagining the difference, but so what? In my mind, the better taste justifies the added cost.

To me it only makes sense that I should be minimizing my intake of fertilizers and pesticides. I don’t need much other justification, though I am not surprised to find them.

Low ‘energy density’ foods aid weight loss | Health | Reuters

Foods that fill you up without packing a ton of calories can help in the battle of the bulge, results of a new study suggest.In the study, obese women who reduced the “energy density” of their diet by cutting their intake of fats and adding more fruits and vegetables lost more weight over a 12-month period, and felt less hungry, than did those who simply reduced their fat intake.

On the other hand, CR practitioners tend to aim for food that is high in nutritional density: meaning that there are lots of nutrients (vitamins, fiber, etc.) per calorie. To some extent, the fruit/vegetable diet serves both goals.

Caffeine: Can it help me lose weight? - MayoClinic.com

A few studies indicate that caffeine may slightly enhance weight loss in people who exercise and maintain a low-fat diet. But there’s no evidence that increased caffeine intake results in significant or permanent weight loss.

Didn’t have to tell me that. If caffeine led to significant permanent weight loss I’d easily be 100 pounds lighter by now.

Ever feel like you’ll go crazy if you don’t have your evening cocktail? Turns out you may be right.

A Drink A Day May Delay Dementia

In people with mild cognitive impairment, up to one drink of alcohol a day may slow their progression to dementia, according to a study published in the May 22, 2007, issue of Neurology®, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Mild cognitive impairment is a transitional stage between normal aging and dementia that is used to classify people with mild memory or cognitive problems and no significant disability.

Yet another piece of evidence that all is good in moderation.

When a recent study showed no special weight loss benefit from low-glycemic diets relative to other diets, I said:

I’ve always been a believer in the “weight gain/loss = calories in - calories out” theory. Still, the concept of glycemic load has some intuitive appeal. For example, given the link between obesity and diabetes, and the need to control sugar absorption in the latter case, perhaps overweight people should pay attention to glycemic index even if they aren’t trying to lose weight.

As it turns out, not only was I on the right track with that question but other researchers were in the process of answering it.

Insidermedicine Video News : Low Glycemic Diet Lowers Cholesterol, Good for Weight Loss

Dieters who select a low-glycemic load diet my have more success at losing weight, than those following a low carbohydrate or low fat diet, say researchers in a report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.Three popular diets have recently received much attention – low fat, low carbohydrate, and low glycemic load. However, there is still no consensus on which diet yields the best results. Glycemic load refers to the increase in blood sugar that occurs following the consumption of a carbohydrate. Foods low on the glycemic index, such as certain fruits, nuts, and vegetables, release glucose gradually into the blood stream. Foods high on the glycemic index, such as breads and pasta, provoke an immediate response in the blood sugar levels and tend to result in increased hunger and overeating.

For people with tendency for high insulin levels 30 minutes after eating, the low-glycemic diet produced a five times greater decrease in weight than the low-fat diet at 18 months. The low-glycemic diet was also more effective in reducing body fat and improving cholesterol and trigyceride levels, while the low-fat diet improved low-density lipoprotein, or “bad” cholesterol.

Differences in insulin secretion among individuals may help predict the success of weight loss programs, and reducing glycemic load may be especially important for those who secrete insulin at a higher level.

Makes sense to me.

ScienceDaily: Boiling Broccoli Ruins Its Anti-cancer Properties, According To Study

Researchers at the University of Warwick have found that the standard British cooking habit of boiling vegetables severely damages the anticancer properties of many Brassica vegetables such as broccoli, Brussel sprouts, cauliflower and green cabbage.
Past studies have shown that consumption of Brassica vegetables decreases the risk of cancer. This is because of the high concentration in Brassicas of substances known as glucosinolates which are metabolized to cancer preventive substances known as isothiocyanates. However before this research it was not known how the glucosinolates and isothiocyanates were influenced by storage and cooking of Brassica vegetables.

The researchers, Prof Paul Thornalley from Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick and Dr Lijiang Song from the University of Warwick’s Department of Chemistry bought Brassica vegetables, (broccoli, Brussel sprouts, cauliflower and green cabbage) from a local store and transported them to the laboratory within 30 minutes of purchasing. The effect of cooking on the glucosinolate content of vegetables was then studied by investigating the effects of cooking by boiling, steaming, microwave cooking and stir-fry.

Boiling appeared to have a serious impact on the retention of those important glucosinolate within the vegetables. The loss of total glucosinolate content after boiling for 30 minutes was: broccoli 77%, Brussel sprouts 58%, cauliflower 75% and green cabbage 65%.

The effects of other cooking methods were investigated: steaming for 0–20 min, microwave cooking for 0–3 min and stir-fry cooking for 0–5 min. All three methods gave no significant loss of total glucosinolate analyte contents over these cooking periods.

I prefer the taste of the other methods to boiling as well. Perhaps those glucosinates are what tastes so good.