What is Food Reward?After reading comments on my recent posts, I realized I need to do a better job of defining the term "food reward". I'm going to take a moment to do that here. Reward is a psychology term with a specific definition: "a process that reinforces behavior" (1). Rewarding food is not the same thing as food that tastes good, although they often occur together. Read more...
Thursday, 26 May 2011
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Healthy Skeptic Podcast
Posted by Admin in: diet Food reward hyperphagia low-carb native diet overweight
Chris Kresser has just posted our recent interview/discussion on his blog The Healthy Skeptic. You can listen to it on Chris's blog here. The discussion mostly centered around body fat and food reward. I also answered a few reader questions. Here are some highlights:How does the food reward system work? Why did it evolve?Why do certain flavors we don’t initially like become appealing over time?How does industrially processed food affect the food reward system?What’s the most effective diet used to make...
Sunday, 22 May 2011
Fast Food, Weight Gain and Insulin Resistance
Posted by Admin in: diabetes diet disease Food reward metabolic syndrome overweight
CarbSane just posted an interesting new study that fits in nicely with what we're discussing here. It's part of the US Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study, which is a long-term observational study that is publishing many interesting findings. The new study is titled "Fast-food habits, weight gain, and insulin resistance (the CARDIA study): 15-year prospective analysis" (1). The results speak for themselves, loud and clear (I've edited some numbers out of the quote for clarity):Read...
Wednesday, 18 May 2011
Food Reward: a Dominant Factor in Obesity, Part III
Posted by Admin in: diabetes diet fats Food reward hyperphagia low-carb metabolic syndrome overweight paleolithic diet
Low-Fat Diets In 2000, the International Journal of Obesity published a nice review article of low-fat diet trials. It included data from 16 controlled trials lasting from 2-12 months and enrolling 1,910 participants (1). What sets this review apart is it only covered studies that did not include instructions to restrict calorie intake (ad libitum diets). On average, low-fat dieters reduced their fat intake from 37.7 to 27.5 percent of calories. Here's what they found:Read more...
Tuesday, 17 May 2011
Clarifications About Carbohydrate and Insulin
Posted by Admin in: archaeology fats Food reward low-carb overweight
My statements about carbohydrate and insulin in the previous post seem to have kicked up some dust! Some people are even suggesting I've gone low-fat! I'm going to take this opportunity to be more specific about my positions.I do not think that post-meal insulin spikes contribute to obesity, and they may even oppose it. Elevated fasting insulin is a separate issue-- that's a marker of insulin resistance. It's important not to confuse the two. Does insulin resistance contribute to obesity? I don't...
Friday, 13 May 2011
Healthy Skeptic Podcast and Reader Questions
Posted by Admin in: diet fats Food reward low-carb overweight
Chris Kresser, Danny Roddy and I just finished recording the podcast that will be released on May 24th. It went really well, and we think you'll find it informative and maybe even practical!Unfortunately, we only got around to answering three of the questions I had selected:How does one lose fat?What do I (Stephan) eat?Why do many people gain fat with age, especially postmenopausal women?I feel guilty about that, so I'm going to answer three more right now.Read more...
Sunday, 8 May 2011
Ask Me a Question
Posted by Admin
On May 13th, I'll be recording a podcast with Chris Kresser of The Healthy Skeptic. Chris interviewed me about a year ago, and I thought it went well. Chris is a good host and asks interesting questions.This time around, we're going to do things a bit differently. I'll start with a little overview of my current thoughts on obesity, then we'll answer reader questions. The show is going to be mostly about obesity and related matters, but I may answer a couple of questions that aren't related to obesity if they're especially...
Friday, 6 May 2011
Food Reward: a Dominant Factor in Obesity, Part II
Posted by Admin in: diet Food reward hyperphagia overweight superstimuli
How to Make a Rat ObeseRodents are an important model organism for the study of human obesity. To study obesity in rodents, you have to make them fat first. There are many ways to do this, from genetic mutations, to brain lesions, to various diets. However, the most rapid and effective way to make a normal (non-mutant, non-lesioned) rodent obese is the "cafeteria diet." The cafeteria diet first appeared in the medical literature in...
