Entries for January 2009

After receiving some news releases telling sports fans how many calories are in buffalo wings and advising them to "eat like an athlete" on Super Bowl Sunday, I was mildly fed up. Yes, I know Americans are already fat. Sure, I realize that cut-up veggies and hummus are a more nutritious option than nachos and sour cream dip. And clearly, sitting on the sofa making rude comments about the commercials won't burn as many calories as a quick outdoor jog during halftime. But I did the math: Even if you put away 1,000 or 2,000 extra calories on top of your normal intake, you can probably compensate for that with diet and exercise in the following week. What's the big deal about an occasional day of eating yourself into oblivion?

Not so surprisingly, nutritionists, when I posed this question to them, had other ideas. Here's why they say that a pigskin pigout is not such a great idea.

1. The definition of "special occasion" tends to expand. It can be a slippery slope; first you decide you can eat whatever you want on Thanksgiving, then you give yourself license on Christmas and Super Bowl Sunday, and the next thing you know you're going crazy when it's "someone's birthday at the office," says Tara Gidus, a nutrition performance coach and an American Dietetic Association spokesperson. "If you're doing it on a regular basis, you will see a lasting effect in terms of weight," she says.

Athletes have been utilizing interval training—alternating periods of high- and low-intensity exercise—for years. (When I wrote last summer about the favorite workouts of 11 Olympians, a number of them cited intervals.) But it has taken a little longer for the concept to trickle down to the average exerciser. Studies have shown that this kind of workout, which has the appeal of taking far less time than the usual steady slog, can improve cardiovascular capacity and other markers of health. Today, researchers are reporting that a workout centered around just two to three minutes of all-out sprinting helped sedentary young men improve their body's capability to process sugar, key to preventing diabetes.

To be sure, the study was small—just 16 men in the active arm—and it is too early for public-health authorities to turn on a dime and start endorsing shorter, more intense bursts of exercise in lieu of the 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity activity they now recommend. But the potential health benefits of interval training are intriguing.

In this study, subjects used exercise bikes to perform six sessions of intervals over two weeks. Each session consisted of between four and six 30-second sprints, plus a few minutes of rest in between. After two weeks of training, their body's ability to control blood sugar levels improved by 23 percent, says James Timmons, the study's coauthor and an exercise biologist at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. The study appears in BioMed Central's BMC Endocrine Disorders.

My story about the suit over VitaminWaters labeling got a lot of comments. A large contingent of people felt that as long as the drink's actual nutrition label is accurate, caveat emptor on the rest of the packaging and name. Others noted that it's natural to expect the packaging and marketing copy to reflect the product's actual nutritional value; that is, if it mentions three kinds of fruit on the front, those fruits should actually show up in the list of ingredients. Wherever you fall on the philosophical spectrum, it's clear that what is obvious to some people (in this case, that VitaminWater, unlike real water, has calories and sugar, and doesn't contain any fruit juice), is not so to others. And that products that may sound healthful or decadent can fool you.

With the help of online calorie database CalorieKing.com and a new book, Eat This, Not That! Supermarket Survival Guide, I put together a quick quiz on the calorie content of some common supermarket foods. While calories aren't everything (and I'll get into other considerations in the answers to the quiz), they are certainly the important factor when it comes to weight loss and maintenance.

Nutritionists are often unimpressed by studies showing that a given diet works for weight loss. After all, if you stick to a diet that restricts calories, you're going to drop pounds in the short term. The hard part is keeping it off, and that's where diets fail.

Judith Beck, director of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research, says that's not surprising, given that so many people haven't been taught the mental skills necessary to sustain changes in their eating and exercise habits. In The Complete Beck Diet for Life, she applies the tenets of cognitive therapy to weight loss. (She also offers an eating plan for the initial stages of the program because reader feedback after her previous book indicated that people need help in figuring out what they should be eating.)

After reading about a new brain imaging study suggesting that they have a tougher time controlling their hunger than males, women could be forgiven for throwing up their hands in frustration. Ladies, don't worry; this study does not mean that because of your gender, you're physically incapable of turning your back on Ben & Jerry. And men, don't be smug; neither does it mean you all have an iron will when it comes to food.

As part of the study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers used PET scans to track brain activity in 23 volunteers. They wanted to see what areas of the brain were working when subjects had their favorite foods in front of them. They also monitored volunteers' brains when shown the same foods after being told to tamp down their desires. What researchers found is that the areas of the brain involved in the desire to eat lit up in both sexes when hungry and exposed to favorite foods. But when told to rein in their response, the men's brains, on average, showed less activity in those food-related areas. Women's brains, on average, were still active.

You'd think it would be easy to judge whether you are carrying too much body fat. Not so. Plenty of us, especially women, think we're fat when actually we're just not as skinny as the actresses on Gossip Girl. And on the other side of things, nearly half of people who are obese don't think their weight is a problem, according to obesity expert Barry Popkin.

The current issue of the Harvard Health Letter offers three low-tech ways to measure fatness. You've probably heard about body mass index, or BMI, which is the simplest way to go: Just input your height and weight into one of many Web calculators or charts, and you'll get back a number that pegs you as underweight, healthy, overweight, obese, or extremely obese.

Coca-Cola's line of VitaminWater drinks is not healthful, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which is suing the beverage company for what it calls deceptive and unsubstantiated claims. We'll leave the legal and rhetorical battles to CSPI and Coke (which, for its part, calls the suit "ridiculous" and says VitaminWater is "clearly and properly labeled"). But whether VitaminWater is breaking consumer protection laws or just engaging in effective marketing, the situation does offer a great lesson in the importance of reading nutrition labels.

Let's take as an example the flavor of VitaminWater called "XXX." On the label facing me on the deli shelf, I saw the words "acai-blueberry-pomegranate (triple antioxidants)." Farther down, it said that the drink has the "power of triple antioxidants to help keep you healthy and fight free radicals." And lower down, ". . . it is definitely au naturel." If I read no further, I might make some assumptions: 1) VitaminWater is some kind of water plus vitamins, and thus, like water, must not have many calories. 2) This particular flavor contains acai, blueberry, and pomegranate (all of which have been called "superfoods" for their nutritional punch). 3) Those fruits contain antioxidants, which are substances in fruits and veggies that are associated with lower rates of chronic disease. By drinking VitaminWater, I'm getting those benefits. And 4) VitaminWater is "natural."

Despite all the fads, a "good diet" in terms of health is fairly straightforward: Eat mostly fruits and vegetables, whole grains, sources of good fats and lean sources of protein, and fewer processed and fried foods, bad fats, and overall calories. But the notion of "good food" is expanding in some circles to include not just nutritional value but other considerations—such as the environment and animal welfare. (Just look at some of the suggestions I got when I asked nutritionists what they'd like to see on food labels.)

One of the better recent summations of how all these ideas come together is illustrated by this e-mail interview, by the Barnes & Noble Review, with cookbook author and food writer Mark Bittman. He's answering questions about his new book, Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating With More Than 75 Recipes . Here's just one quote:

Why in the heck did the world's chief food problem shift from malnutrition to obesity? That's the question Barry Popkin, director of the University of North Carolina's Inter-Disciplinary Obesity Center, explores in his new book, The World Is Fat. From the book and a conversation with Popkin, we've extracted seven tidbits you might not have known about obesity, nutrition, and what we put in our mouths.

• Americans aren't the only ones getting fatter. Yes, we are the poster children for obesity, but the rest of the world isn't far behind. Popkin writes that half the population is overweight or obese in Russia and Eastern Europe, much of Latin America and South America, the Middle East, and Australia. He blames it on a complex cocktail of forces, from globalization to technology to the way we now eat—that is, anytime and anywhere. (Traditional diets in most societies promote health, but those traditional diets have gone the way of the dodo bird.)

By now, everyone knows that Oprah Winfrey is displeased with her current weight and is seeking to turn things around in 2009. She elaborated on her situation in a "falling off the wagon" episode this week. Here are some practical lessons I culled from her experience that you can apply to your attitudes about diet, exercise, and weight, even if you don't have the cash to surround yourself with trainers, doctors, and assistants.

1. Sometimes you need a "Proud Mary" moment. It's tough to make changes unless you realize you need to. Winfrey said she really became aware of her size last May, when Tina Turner and Cher appeared on her show and she was invited onstage to sing with them to "Proud Mary." Of course, any of us might worry how we'd look next to those ladies, whose legs reach approximately as high as my chin, but for Winfrey, her anxiety was a wake-up call that she'd put on more pounds than she was comfortable with. Having a reason to change is only the first step in harnessing your willpower, but it's an essential one.