Today Susan Brink of the LATimes has an interesting post about snacks that come in the smaller packages. According to a new study by the Journal of Consumer Research some people actually eat more when they eat snacks from the smaller packaging. Who are these people? Interestingly enough they are actually a group of calorie conscious adults (two group were assigned by the researchers “restrained eaters” and “unrestrained eaters”). Apparently when these calorie conscious eaters would eat from larger packaging, they would eat less than when they ate from smaller packaging. They also found the these same eaters were much less likely to even eat anything out of the larger packaging, but were less reluctant to eat fromt the smaller packaging.

Pretty interesting, just because something comes in a nice little 100 calorie pack doesn’t mean it fits with your diet.

LATimes Piece

A scientist from Monash University (Australia) has discovered that key appetite control cells in the brain degenerate over time-which may lead to adult onset obesity. According to Dr. Zane Andrew’s research, which was published in Nature, free radicals are a major culprit to degeneration of these cells. And the degeneration is more significant following meals of high in carbs and sugar.

article from sciencedaily

I’m not sure if this post is exactly health related. Biking is my chief form of exercise (I bike about 10 miles 4-5 days a week) & this is pretty interesting so I think I’ll post.

In Toronto the police organized a bike theft sting and managed to catch a man that might have stolen more bikes than anyone ever. After the arrest of Igor Kenk the police seized 3,000 bicycles that they found at his apartment, several rented garages and a shop that he owned. The police also found a large stash of drugs.

It’s unclear what he was going to do with all of the bikes, but apparently he had a scrap metal dealers license so he may have wanted to melt them down. He also told some people he was going to hold them until after world oil production peaked (presumably bikes will be in very high demand).

Toronto allowed anyone who had their bike stolen recently to take a look at the bikes to see if anyone could identify them. 15,000 people showed up, but only 400 were claimed (people needed proof of ownership or a picture with them and their bike)

list of articles from the national post(read these chronologically and you get an idea of how the story broke–the police would find one stash then another and another which makes the story a lot crazier)

nytimes article

A new Japanese law requires local governments and companies to measure the waistline of all Japanese people between the ages of 40 and 76 as part of their annual checkup. Individuals that have waistlines larger than the state prescribed limit are given dieting guidelines, if after 3 months they do not lose weight.

Apparently the government has become increasingly alarmed by the increase in metabolic syndrome and its derivatives (diabetes) and are attempting to curb the increase with these weight loss measures.

 According the the NYTimes the government limits to a healthy waistline are 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women. These numbers are pretty ambituous on the government’s part, especially the measure for men. Its unclear why the men’s waistline should be smaller than woman’s especially since men’s waistlines tend to average several inches more the women’s.

Check out the Article in the NYTimes

Who knows if the Japanese are successful in this endeavor maybe an American politician might try bringing something like this over here, just think this could be you:

At a city gym in Amagasaki recently, dozens of residents — few of whom appeared overweight — danced to the city’s anti-metabo song, which warned against trouser buttons popping and flying away, “pyun-pyun-pyun!”

“Goodbye, metabolic. Let’s get our checkups together. Go! Go! Go!

“Goodbye, metabolic. Don’t wait till you get sick. No! No! No!”

Apparently not all trans fat is artificial, a very very small percentage of the stuff exists naturally. The LA Times today had an article about a study involving vaccenic acid a naturally occurring trans fat found in milk and yogurts. The study which was done at the University of Alberta found that obese rats that were fed vaccenic acid had significant reductions in total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and triglycerides.

Does this have any significance on your food choices? No. The trans fat found in most the foods that we eat does not occur naturally, and has been shown to have the exact opposite effect as this study.

I thought it was interesting though that trans fat actually did occur naturally. And it sounds like it is healthy too. Weird.

Article

Today the NYTimes ran an article about the amount of wasted food in America. It turns out most of it comes from serving massive portions, especially at restaurants, resulting in the disposal of more than a quarter of all of our food. Jonathon Bloom a young author who is writing a book on the topic and runs a blog called Wasted Food offers a solution that will help out our landfills as well as our waistlines: serve smaller portions. His latest post references Dr. Brian Wansink–the author of Mindless Eating, a book we at thinjoy highly recommend.

NY Times Article

Entry about Wansink

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-David