Preventing Tooth Decay

Meet Sir Edward Mellanby, the man who discovered vitamin D. Along with his wife, Dr. May Mellanby, he identified dietary factors that control the formation and repair of teeth and bones. He also identified the primary cause of rickets (vitamin D deficiency) and the effect of phytic acid on mineral absorption. Truly a great man! This research began in the 1910s and continued through the 1940s.What he discovered about tooth and bone...

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More Thoughts on the Glycemic Index

In the last post, I reviewed the controlled trials on the effect of the glycemic index (GI) of carbohydrate foods on health. I concluded that there is not much evidence that a low GI diet is better for health than a high GI diet. It is true that for the "average" individual the GI of carbohydrate foods can affect the glucose and insulin response somewhat, even in the context of an actual meal. If you compare two meals of very different GI, the low GI meal will cause less insulin secretion and cause less total blood glucose...

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The Glycemic Index: A Critical Evaluation

The glycemic index (GI) is a measure of how much an individual food elevates blood sugar when it's eaten. To measure it, investigators feed a person a food that contains a fixed amount of carbohydrate, and measure their blood glucose response over time. Then they determine the area under the glucose curve and compare it to a standard food such as white bread or pure glucose.Each food must contain the same total amount of carbohydrate,...

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Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture

In April of 1982, archaeologists from around the globe converged on Plattsburgh, New York for a research symposium. Their goal:...[to use] data from human skeletal analysis and paleopathology [the study of ancient diseases] to measure the impact on human health of the Neolithic Revolution and antecedent changes in prehistoric hunter-gatherer food economies. The symposium developed out of our perception that many widely debated theories about the origins of agriculture had testable but untested implications concerning human...

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Margarine and Phytosterolemia

Margarine is one of my favorite foods. To rip on. It's just so easy!The body has a number of ways of keeping bad things out while taking good things in. One of the things it likes to keep out are plant sterols and stanols (phytosterols), cholesterol-like molecules found in plants. The human body even has two enzymes dedicated to pumping phytosterols back into the gut as they try to diffuse across the intestinal lining: the sterolins. These enzymes actively block phytosterols from passing into the body, but allow cholesterol...

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Latest Study on Vitamin K and Coronary Heart Disease

A Dutch group led by Dr. Yvonne T. van der Schouw recently published a paper examining the link between vitamin K intake and heart attack (thanks Robert). They followed 16,057 women ages 49-70 years for an average of 8.1 years, collecting data on their diet and incidence of heart attack.They found no relationship between K1 intake and heart attack incidence. K1 is the form found in leafy greens and other plant foods. They found that each 10 microgram increase in daily vitamin K2 consumption was associated with a 9% lower...

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What Can Evolution Teach us About the Human Diet?

Vegetarians deserve our respect. They're usually thoughtful, conscientious people who make sacrifices for environmental and ethical reasons. I was vegetarian for a while myself, and I have no regrets about it.Vegetarianism and especially veganism can get pretty ideological sometimes. People who have strong beliefs like to think that their belief system is best for all aspects of their lives and the world, not just some aspects of it....

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Statistics

Ricardo just sent me a link to the British Heart Foundation statistics website. It's a goldmine. They have data on just about every aspect of health and lifestyle in the U.K. I find it very empowering to have access to this kind of information on the internet.I've just started sifting through it, but something caught my eye. The U.K. is experiencing an obesity epidemic similar to the U.S.:Here's where it gets interesting. This should...

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