Welcome to “FitnessMantra Weekend”, your once-a-week health news update. As always you can also stay updated with the latest in fitness news by subscribing separately to the Fitness Mantra del.icio.us feed.
Finally, an article I have been waiting to read! The prevalence of low-fat, low-calorie, diet and 100-calorie foods had really gotten me thinking: do these things work? Can you become skinny on Diet Coke and Lean Cuisine? “Junk-food dieters fake their way to skinny” attempts to answer just such a question and makes for great reading.
It’s amazing to see the lengths people will go to in order to avoid overeating. Chewing gum, sucking on lollipops, smoking, chugging a Diet Soda all day - each of this is used by different people as an alternative to eating real food. The kicker, of course, is that if the same people ate real (unprocessed) food instead, the proteins, fiber and natural fat would probably have kept them full longer and obviated the need to depend on artificial solutions to hunger-cravings.
Here are the week’s top health and fitness stories:
- Junk food advert code launched: A global campaign aimed at reducing the marketing of unhealthy food to children has been launched.
- New method finds networks of genes behind obesity: “Obesity is not a disease that is the result of a single change to a single gene. It changes entire networks,”
- Diabetes: Of Mice and Men: Destroying killer-T cells is supposed to stop the immune system from chomping up beta cells. In mice, it did. The real shock, however, was that with the killer T-cells eliminated, beta cells apparently regenerated enough to pump out sufficient insulin to
- 10 diet flubs - and how to fix them: We’ve uncovered 10 sneaky ways your workout, your work habits and even your clothing can undermine your diet, and we devised easy fixes for each.
- Junk-food dieters fake their way to skinny: According to their credo, low-calorie is good; no-calorie is better - even if the food contains more chemicals than a can of hair spray.
- Overweight women have worse breast cancer: study: A dangerous type of breast cancer, known as inflammatory breast cancer, was seen in 45 percent of obese patients, compared with 30 percent of overweight patients and 15 percent of patients of healthy weight.
- Personal Contact Helps Maintain Weight Loss: [...] a new study finds that when people have monthly personal contact with a weight-loss professional, they’re able to keep off more weight.
- Going green: Tips for eco-friendly exercise: Going green with your workout routine is actually pretty easy to do. Here’s how:
- Obesity tied to higher pancreatic cancer risk: New research suggests that obesity may raise older adults’ risk of developing pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms of the disease.
- Vitamin D ‘cuts risk of diabetes’: Giving young children vitamin D supplements may reduce their risk of developing type 1 diabetes later in life, research suggests.
- Boston bans use of trans fat in restaurants: The city’s health board gave final, unanimous approval yesterday to a ban on the artificial substance in french fries, doughnuts, and other dishes made in restaurants and grocery stores.
- Minimal Exercise Benefits Overweight Postmenopausal Women: Just 10 minutes to 30 minutes of exercise a day can improve the quality of life for sedentary, overweight or obese women, American researchers suggest.
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Have a great weekend!
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