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Reducing overall calorie intake may rejuvenate your muscles and activate biological pathways important for good health. Decreasing calories without depriving the body of essential vitamins and minerals, known as calorie restriction, has long been known to delay the progression of age-related diseases in animal models. This study suggests the same biological mechanisms may also apply to humans. Researchers analyzed data from participants in the Comprehensive Assessment of Long-Term Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy (CALERIE), a study that examined whether moderate calorie restriction conveys the same health benefits seen in animal studies. During a two-year span, the goal for participants...

A study analyzes in old rats the effects of a calorie-restricted diet on the hippocampus, a brain structure that is critical in learning and memory processes. The results corroborate that there is a cognitive improvement derived from diet, linked to a reduction in the levels of inflammation and neuronal loss in the hippocampus. It has been described that some of the brain alterations observed during aging are related to the cognitive dysfunction that manifests naturally as we age. These processes, which depend on both genetic and environmental factors, are particularly important in the hippocampus. Calorie-restricted diets have been shown to...

Metabolism studies reveal surprising insights into how we burn calories—and how cooperative food production helped Homo sapiens flourish It was my daughter Clara’s seventh birthday party, a scene at once familiar and bizarre. The celebration was an American take on a classic script: a shared meal of pizza and picnic food, a few close COVID-compliant friends and family, a beaming kid blowing out candles on a heavily iced cake. With roughly 380,000 boys and girls around the world turning seven each day, it was a ritual no doubt repeated by many, the world’s most prolific primate singing “Happy Birthday” in...

Woman berates waitress for giving her menu with calories... You Tube Link to neurotic

In 2011, Allie Kieffer ran a 4:40.9 mile and placed third in the USA Track & Field Indoor Championships 3,000-meter event. She was fast. But she wanted to be faster. “We often hear that to run faster, you should lose weight,” Kieffer says. At 17 percent body fat, the now 32-year-old was already lean, but “everyone seemed leaner than me.” So, as she made the jump to the elite scene, Kieffer began cutting calories and fat. She lost 10 pounds and qualified for the upcoming Olympic Trials. She also developed a stress reaction in her tibia. Not only did running...

IT SEEMS ABSURD. How could two humans -- seated for hours, exerting themselves in no greater manner than intermittently extending their arms a foot at a time -- face physical demands? Still, the evidence overwhelms. The 1984 World Chess Championship was called off after five months and 48 games because defending champion Anatoly Karpov had lost 22 pounds. "He looked like death," grandmaster and commentator Maurice Ashley recalls. In 2004, winner Rustam Kasimdzhanov walked away from the six-game world championship having lost 17 pounds. In October 2018, Polar, a U.S.-based company that tracks heart rates, monitored chess players during a...

They found that healthy mice have plenty of bacteria from a genus called Clostridia, but few from Desulfovibrio, and that their guts let most fat pass right through. Those with an altered immune system had fewer Clostridia and more Desulfovibrio, and this microbial balance helped the gut absorb more fats from food. These mice gained more weight and exhibited signs of type 2 diabetes. “Whether this applies in humans, we don't know,” Hooper says, “but this is a tantalizing clue.” The role of the immune system in the gut is to maintain balance. Changes to the body’s defenses, which can happen as a result of...

Calories consumed minus calories burned: it's the simple formula for weight loss or gain. But dieters often find that it doesn't work. Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley of Gastropod investigate. "For me, a calorie is a unit of measurement that's a real pain in the rear." Bo Nash is 38. He lives in Arlington, Texas, where he's a technology director for a textbook publisher. He has a wife and child. And he's 5'10" and 245 lbs -- which means he is classed as obese. In an effort to lose weight, Nash uses an app to record the calories he consumes...

The past 40 years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of obese adults worldwide, climbing to about 640 million from 105 million in 1975. If the current trend continues, about one-fifth of adults will be obese by 2025. The rate has more than doubled for women and tripled for men, according to a new analysis published in the Lancet. Under the present trajectory, the chance of meeting a goal set by the World Health Organization to halt the increase over the next decade is, according to the study, “virtually zero.” Behind the global spike is greater access to...

The Food and Drug Administration is going to try its hand at shaming consumers into making healthier choices when they go out to eat. Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, the FDA announced a controversial and expansive rule that will require certain establishments with 20 or more locations -- including chain restaurants, grocery and convenience stores, and movie theaters -- to post calorie information on their menus and menu boards. A separate rule was also issued requiring operators of 20 or more vending machines to post calorie information. Section 4205 of the Affordable Care Act, a provision included in the law...

For those watching their weight, choosing a restaurant salad over a fast food burger may not be the wisest idea. A restaurant meal that includes an appetizer, salad entrée and one side can contain an average of 1,494 calories, compared to a greasy McDonald’s Big Mac Extra Value Meal that will set you back 1,130 calories, according to the Journal of Nutrition, Education and Behavior. […] A Burger King Whopper with cheese, for example, has 710 calories. Comparatively, an Applebee’s Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad contains 800 calories and an Applebee’s Cheeseburger will set you back 940 calories. Similarly, Chipotle’s Chicken...

A. Barton Hinkle, a Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist and Reason magazine contributor, wrote a fascinating and chilling column this week about the Food and Drug Administration expensive and burdensome new menu labeling scheme. The regulations will “dictate the disclosure of calorie counts for foods sold in restaurants, grocery stores, delis, bakeries, coffee shops, and even gas stations,” according to Hinkle. And those businesses will pay a hefty price to comply with the policy. The federal government figures the rules will “cost more than $1 billion and require more than 14.5 million hours of labor to meet.” The calorie posting regulations, which...

Nutrition is full of all kinds of nonsense. The worst examples are listed here, but unfortunately this is just the tip of the iceberg. Here are the top 13 nutrition lies that have made the world both sick and fat. Eggs are so incredibly nutritious that they’re often called “nature’s multivitamin.”The nutrients in them are enough to turn a single cell into an entire baby chicken.However, eggs have been demonized in the past because they contain a large amount of cholesterol, which was believed to increase the risk of heart disease.But the truth is that despite being high in cholesterol,...

A CALORIE is a calorie. This truism has been the foundation of nutritional wisdom and our beliefs about obesity since the 1960s. What it means is that a calorie of protein will generate the same energy when metabolized in a living organism as a calorie of fat or carbohydrate. When talking about obesity or why we get fat, evoking the phrase “a calorie is a calorie” is almost invariably used to imply that what we eat is relatively unimportant. We get fat because we take in more calories than we expend; we get lean if we do the opposite. Anyone...

The Obama budget is finally out and there are, to no surprise, a potpourri of new tax hikes proposed, many of which are aimed at the "wealthy" among us. Deep within the bowels of the colossal budget, however, lies a proposed tax that targets the poor among us and it is perhaps a precursor of other health-related taxes to come. President Obama proposes raising the tax on cigarettes from $1.01 to $1.95 per pack--a whopping 93% increase in taxes. The White House estimates that the tax would raise $78.1 billion, of which around $66 billion would be used to fund...

Enlarge Image Counting calories. Our bodies may take more energy to process the carbohydrates in garbanzo beans than in cereal, which suggests all carbohydrate calories are not alike. Credit: iStockphoto/Thinkstock BOSTON—When it comes to weight loss, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. That's been the mantra of nutritionists, dietitians, and food regulators in the United States and Europe for more than a century. But when it comes to comparing raw food with cooked food, or beans with breakfast cereals, that thinking may be incorrect. That was the consensus of a panel of researchers who listed the many...

The ceremonial lunch President Obama and his former congressional colleagues are eating Monday tops out at 3,000 calories, according to a website that has tallied up the luxurious menu of lobster, bison and apple pie. HealthyFoodRecipe.net posted the full menu, complete with its calorie count, and said it was “unsatisfactory” to see such an unhealthy spread, given first lady Michelle Obama’s push for healthier eating. She has come under fire for the high-calorie counts of some of the state dinners she’s hosted at the White House, but other nutritionists have given her a pass, saying indulging on special occasions is...

I’m pretty critical of Senator John Hoeven at times, but he deserves credit for going to bat against federal overreach on school lunches. New federal guidelines that, among others things, limited calories in school lunches rankled parents and school administrators across the nation. It was a one-size-fits-all policy for a nation full of students who have very different nutritional needs.Now, thanks to the work of Senator Hoeven (who teamed up with Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor), the calorie restriction is no more, though just for the 2012-2013 school year. So it’s a temporary reprieve, for now. From a press release sent...

House Republicans say new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) guidelines aimed at forcing students to eat fruits and vegetables are a failure because students across the country are simply tossing the healthy fare into the trash. "[T]here remains great concern with the amount of food waste generated at school cafeterias, much of it brought on by requiring students to take fruits and vegetables rather than simply offer them," Reps. John Kline (R-Minn.), Kristi Noem (R-S.D.) and Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) told USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack in a letter sent Thursday. "This is a waste of federal, state and local funds and...

Malia and Sasha Obama Will Eat Well at Sidwell FriendsPosted by Tim Carman on Nov. 24, 2008 at 5:54 pm **SNIP** The post got me to looking at the Sidwell Friends' online menus, which look like Nora Pouillon put them together. I mean, look at some of these dishes: "Fennel & Arugula w/ Parmesan," " Organic Pear & Gorgonzola Salad," " All Natural Curried Chicken Salad," and "Pumpkin Bread." Hell, I remember when french fries were considered exotic on junior high cafeteria menus. But I must say, I think I spot a mini-trend among gourmets and budding gourmets in the...