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Green coffee bean extract, which Dr. Mehmet Oz promoted on his show as a “magic weight-loss cure,” had one scientific study backing up the extract’s purported effects. Now, that research has been retracted, the blog Retraction watch reported. Oz had to do some explaining on Capitol Hill in June, when senators asked him why he, as a surgeon and well-known doctor, promotes the use of weight-loss products that are scientifically unfounded. […] The green coffee bean manufacturer, Applied Food Sciences Inc., agreed to pay a $3.5 million settlement after the Federal Trade Commission charged the company with using the results...

People who avoid carbohydrates and eat more fat, even saturated fat, lose more body fat and have fewer cardiovascular risks than people who follow the low-fat diet that health authorities have favored for decades, a major new study shows. The findings are unlikely to be the final salvo in what has been a long and often contentious debate about what foods are best to eat for weight loss and overall health. The notion that dietary fat is harmful, particularly saturated fat, arose decades ago from comparisons of disease rates among large national populations. But more recent clinical studies in which...

Those with a diet low in protein likely to gorge on carbohydrates and fat Proportion of protein in Western diets has dropped - which could account for obesity levels Poeple must eat enough protein to satisfy appetites, scientists say Protein is essential for the healthy growth and repair of body tissues Over the past 60 years the proportion of protein in Western diets has dropped, and researchers suggest this could account for soaring levels of obesity.

You’re not imagining it: There really are differences between the way men and women diet, lose weight and respond to exercise. Some of the differences stem from biology; other differences are behavioral. But though many of these seem to give men a head start, they shouldn’t be taken to imply that guys have it easy. No matter who you are or where you’re starting, the road to your ideal weight is difficult at best, and confusing for most. But the information that researchers are unearthing about the differences in the way that men and women lose weight inspires hope that...

South Korea’s current fetish with ‘watching people eat’, or ‘dinner porn’ as the crazy is now known has uncovered a new star. The dinner porn craze involves no sex of course, but simply watching other people eat – online, on TV, wherever. According to a report on asiaone.com, quoting Elite Daily, Tae Ryun Huh is the new and emerging Korean sensation. No just because she eats, but because of how much she eats. And then this amazing fact – the school worker weighs 48kg. Tae Ryun Huh invited TV cameras to watch her eat and the South Korean show discovered...

Dr. Caitlin Mason in her office at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center on April 19, 2014Photo by Robert Hood / Fred Hutch Click for high-res version SEATTLE - April 22, 2014 - A new study published online April 18 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that healthy or “replete” levels of vitamin D may be associated with weight loss in a certain segment of postmenopausal overweight women.Scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center looked at the results of Vitamin D supplementation on a group of overweight women ages 50 to 75 who tested low in D....

First Lady Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity campaign “Let’s Move” is encouraging kids to dance for the arrival of a dinosaur’s bones at the Smithsonian to achieve an active lifestyle. The Let’s Move blog explained on Wednesday: Yesterday, an exciting new addition to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History arrived: a 66.5 million year old Tyrannosaurus rex. In honor of the T. rex’s arrival, the Smithsonian is encouraging people to get up and dance. They’ve teamed up with Alaskan artist and musician Ray Troll and his band, The Ratfish Wranglers, to create “National Rex,” an original song celebrating the dinosaur’s arrival...

How do people let themselves get to be 100 pounds overweight? I suppose for everyone the story is a little different; here’s mine. First, before delving into the years of weight gain, I realized recently I was in denial about my weight and just how heavy I was. At 270 pounds, it just wasn’t sinking in that I was a hundred pounds overweight. It was after seeing recent pictures of myself that I realized just how heavy I was. I’m fairly tall, at 5’9”. I’ve always carried my weight pretty well. I’m top heavy, so that accounts for some of...

Eating five times a day can help keep weight down, a new study has suggested, as scientists reject the idea that three daily meals is the key to staying healthy. Researchers say a daily routine of breakfast, lunch, dinner along with two further snacks a day can help shed pounds. But breaking the routine can lead to weight gain—for instance, skipping breakfast is associated with putting on weight, according to the study published in the International Journal of Obesity. …

The notion that moving more will translate to weight loss is a dangerous one. For individuals, it may effectively discourage exercise when results aren't seen on scales. For the media and entertainment industries, it often leads to the perpetuation of the "people-with-obesity-are-just-lazy" stereotype. For the food industry, it allows an embrace of exercise by means of sponsorship and marketing, which, in turn, helps companies deflect product blame and forestall industry-unfriendly legislation. And for public policy makers, it makes it challenging to make the case for interventions that increase exercise, as inevitably the outcome hoped for is weight loss, and when...

Diet sodas and other artificially sweetened products don't help with weight loss, according to a new study from Purdue University. According to Susan E. Swithers, a professor of psychological sciences and a behavioral neuro scientist, it is important to know the effects of having too much artificial sweetener in the diet. She added that consuming too much food containing "no-calorie sweeteners" have been known to be associated with increased risk of heart problems and weight gain.About 30 percent of all adults in the U.S. consume artificial sweeteners. Even though, diet sodas have been considered healthy food by many, studies show...

Enlarge Image Burning fat in the cold. White fat cells sense cold directly, and release energy to warm up. Credit: Biophoto Associates/Science Source Transforming fat cells into calorie-burning machines may sound like the ultimate form of weight control, but the idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Unexpectedly, some fat cells directly sense dropping temperatures and release their energy as heat, according to a new study; that ability might be harnessed to treat obesity and diabetes, researchers suggest. Fat is known to help protect animals from the cold—and not only by acting as insulation. In the early 1990s,...

Obese mice were given the drug Amlexanox lost weight. (credit: University of Michigan)ANN ARBOR (WWJ) - Could a drug used to treat canker sores be a miracle weight-loss solution? Researchers at University of Michigan are working to find out.Back in February, U-M researchers discovered that mice given the prescription drug, Amlexanox, lost weight without diet or exercise. Now, Dr. Elif Oral, an associate professor of internal medicine at U-M’s Metabolism, Endocrinology & Diabetes (MEND) division, is beginning the first human study to determine whether the drug will have the same effect in people.“The weight loss together in improved glucose metabolism...

The federal Affordable Care Act, better known as “ObamaCare,” may provide activists and government a little-known wedge to advance their obesity agendas through regulated health-care providers — specifically America’s nearly 3,000 non-profit hospitals. One organization, The STOP Obesity Alliance, recently identified this wedge as a way to have such hospitals embrace its core convictions, including one principle which questions the role of personal responsibility as a cause and a solution to obesity.Community Health Needs Assessments. Section 9007 of the Act requires non-profit hospitals, as a condition of maintaining their tax-exempt status, to conduct Community Health Needs Assessments (CHNAs). These documents, which...

The logic behind weight-loss surgery seems simple: rearrange the digestive tract so the stomach can hold less food and the food bypasses part of the small intestine, allowing fewer of a meal's calories to be absorbed. Bye-bye, obesity. A study of lab mice, published on Wednesday, begs to differ. It concludes that one of the most common and effective forms of bariatric surgery, called Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, melts away pounds not - or not only - by re-routing the digestive tract, as long thought, but by changing the bacteria in the gut. Or, in non-scientific terms, the surgery somehow replaces...

In a move that could significantly expand insurance coverage of weight-loss treatments, a federal health advisory panel on Monday recommended that all obese adults receive intensive counseling in an effort to rein in a growing health crisis in America. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force urged doctors to identify patients with a body mass index of 30 or more — currently 1 in 3 Americans — and either provide counseling themselves or refer the patient to a program designed to promote weight loss and improve health prospects. Under the current healthcare law, Medicare and most private insurers would be required...

When roasted at 475 degrees, coffee beans are sometimes described as rich and full-bodied. But for the full-bodied person who is not so rich, unroasted coffee beans — green as the day they were picked — may hold the key to cheap and effective weight loss, new research suggests. In a study presented Tuesday at the American Chemical Society's spring national meeting in San Diego, 16 overweight young adults took, by turns, a low dose of green coffee bean extract, a high dose of the supplement, and a placebo. Though the study was small, the results were striking: Subjects lost...

The study found that people who frequently ate chocolate had a lower body mass index (BMI) than people who didn't. The researchers found that the participants - who were an average age of 57 - ate chocolate for an average of twice of week and exercised roughly 3.5 times per week. But the more frequent chocolate-eaters had smaller BMIs, a ratio of height and weight that's used to measure obesity. What explains the effect? Even though chocolate can be loaded with calories, it's full of antioxidants and other ingredients that may promote weight loss, the researchers said.

Eating chocolate cake as part of a full breakfast can help you lose weight, say scientists. It sounds too good to be true, but new research says having dessert—along with the traditional fry-up—burns off the pounds. Morning is the best time to consume sweets, because that's when the body's metabolism is most active—and we have the rest of the day to work off the calories, a new study shows. Eating cookies or chocolate as part of a breakfast that includes proteins and carbs also helps stem the craving for sweets later. Researchers split 193 clinically obese, non-diabetic adults into two...

Fat people have less than thin people. Older people have less than younger people. Men have less than younger women. It is brown fat, actually brown in color, and its great appeal is that it burns calories like a furnace... --snip-- The brown fat also kept its subjects warm. The more brown fat a man had, the colder he could get before he started to shiver. Brown fat, Dr. Carpentier and Jan Nedergaard, Dr. Cannon’s husband, wrote in an accompanying editorial, “is on fire.” On average, Dr. Carpentier said, the brown fat burned about 250 calories over three hours. But...