Home Diseases and Conditions Archive by category "Obesity" (Page 3)

Category: Obesity

The Biggest Loser

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Last Tuesday night I watched the Biggest Loser. It was the first time I have ever made it through a whole episode from start to finish. Although I know that most television shows, even the reality shows, are carefully scripted, I found it appalling. It looked like a reenactment of the Bataan death march from World War II. Suffering, pain, emotion, triumph, and despair may make compelling entertainment, but at what price? And I’m not just referring to the unlucky contestants who were bullied, ridiculed,…

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Gary Taubes at UC Berekey

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Gary Taubes gave a presentation at UC Berkeley called “The Quality of Calories; What Makes Us Fat and Why Nobody Seems to Care.” If you have read Gary’s book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, it gives a bit more detail about the subject. If you have not, you’ll see why you should. It is 1 hour and 45 minutes long, but well worth the time: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=21216 One quote from the lecture shows very clearly how things went so terribly wrong and why it is so hard…

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Sweeteners Update

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I have received questions as to why I did not include some of the all-natural alternatives, like brown rice syrup, agave nectar, and date sugar in the discussion about the different kinds of sweeteners in my book. I did not include most of them because, in my opinion, they offer little advantage over common table sugar. However since the subject continues to come up, I will address it here. Let me point out at the start that “natural” is not synonymous with “safe.” Nature abounds…

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Rating Consumers Report

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The June, 2007 issue of Consumers Report again disses low carb diets. They point out that the diets were not tested (Isn’t that the whole point of Consumers Report? To actually test things?), but rated by a panel of nutritionists as to how they compare to the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans. As long as diet plans continue to be ranked based on the U.S. Guidelines, we will get bad advice and will likely continue to get fatter and sicker. Just look at the food…

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