Google defines the Paleo diet as, “a diet based on the types of foods presumed to have been eaten by early humans, consisting chiefly of meat, fish, vegetables, and fruit, and excluding dairy or grain products and processed food”. This diet is one of the most recent in health trends, and it’s most popular use is for weight loss. Many celebrities have also embraced Paleo eating and swear by it. The purpose of this post is not to say that certain diets are only ‘trends’, there are real allergies and intolerances (such as gluten and lactose) that restrict people to eating in ways that align with these diets. This post is simply to explore and compare the advantages and disadvantages to eating a Paleo diet.

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Director of Sports Nutrition Leslie Bonci wrote an article  breaking down the Paleo diet into advantages and disadvantages, and then drew her own conclusions about it. Some of the benefits she observed are: the Paleo diet is free of additives and preservatives, you get more iron through increased consumption of red meat, and most people will lose weight on this diet. She also listed certain disadvantages including: the food for this diet is expensive, grains are eliminated (and some are important for energy), dairy is eliminated (important for bones), and the diet could lead to a nutrient imbalance. Bonci’s final conclusion is, “If you want to ‘health up’ your diet, by all means do. But rather than going Paleo, try this: eat three meals a day, include some protein at every meal and snack, include foods with color, include some grains, include a little fat”.

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A dietician from the University of California explores whether or not it is safe to only eat according to a Paleo diet. Nella explains that it is not accurate to say that people living in the Paleolithic period (cave men) only ate meat; it was more common that they ate whatever they could find. He also states that this diet could be healthy, but there are strong risks that it will lack certain necessary vitamins and minerals. Other disadvantages of the diet include increasing a person’s risk of heart disease and osteoporosis. Nella concludes by recommending, “I encourage them to use the Paleo as the starting point of a healthy diet but to add beans, lentils, nuts, whole grains, and low-fat or nonfat dairy or other calcium sources such as dark leafy greens, tofu, and soy or almond milk. Plate balance is the key”.

Michael Pollan, well-known author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, also chimes in on this issue. He discusses various aspects of the diet, but stresses, “what they’re eating is probably nothing like the diet of hunter-gatherers”. The common belief is that our ancestors ate meat, but many doctors argue that we aren’t really sure exactly what our ancestors ate; we just know they consumed what was accessible. Pollan also explains that even though the Paleo diet exiles bread, humans can survive on bread alone and it’s “a healthy way to access a wide array of nutrients from grains”. This is, of course, referring to how bread was traditionally made, not how it is currently processed. The greatest advice in the interview is to simply cook your own food. Pollan explains how over the years people have been persuaded to think that the food industry can cook better than they can, which is not the case. By cooking your own food, you know exactly what is in it and how it was made, which is much better than trying to pronounce all of the ingredients in a frozen dinner.

This article discusses the negative affects of the Paleo diet, and how it is unreasonable to believe that it is the way our ancestors ate. The article explains how much energy it takes to raise animals for people to eat, and how if everyone drastically increased their meat consumption it would cause a huge problem. The article also states, “Dr. Cordain finishes his national best-selling book The Paleo Diet by warning, ‘without them (starches, like wheat, rice, corn, and potatoes), the world could probably support one-tenth or less of our present population’”.

This issue connects back to our class discussions of the file drawer problem and the sugary drinks causing obesity. The sugary drinks study was affected by the file drawer problem because soda companies funded some studies. It is obvious that soda companies would bury any evidence that linked soda to obesity, because the companies want to continue making money. Although not many studies have been conducted, the same problem could arise here. It is possible that food industry companies could attempt to hide results that showed the Paleo diet causing harmful affects, because the food industry is able to make money off of selling specialty products fit for the Paleo diet. It will be interesting to see how experiments are formed to evaluate this diet in the future, and what results they produce.

Between a nation wide struggle with obesity and always being on the go, Americans need access to quick and healthy options for meals they are unable to sit down for. The food industry has adapted to this, and introduced numerous power bars, diet bars, protein shakes, and protein shake powder. The companies involved and options they provide have become endless, but is it possible that these ‘fitness foods’ are actually causing people to gain weight?

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Both terms ‘diet bar’ and ‘protein bar’ are considered fitness foods, but there’s an important distinction between the two. Although there is no set definition accessible online, a diet bar is generally consumed by people who desire to lose weight. It typically limits carbohydrates and fat, and is a good source of vitamins, protein, and fiber. Defined online, a power bar is, “a brand of bar-shaped food intended for use especially by athletes, having a high carbohydrate and low fat content with protein and vitamin supplements”. It’s important to note that this definition suggests power bar use for athletes, although power bars have become common use for anyone on the go.

This article from Penn State discusses how, “using ‘fitness’ labels on foods may cause consumers to eat more and exercise less”. The study was conducted in two segments: trail mix and exercise. During the trail mix segment, researchers gave participants one bag labeled ‘trail mix’ and one bag labeled ‘fitness’. They then observed, and found that people tended to eat more when they were given the ‘fitness’ bag. The second part of the experiment was focused on exercise. Participants were told they could exercise as vigorously as they wanted on a stationary bike. The study concluded, “the more fitness-branded food eaters consumed, the less active they became. ‘The findings are interesting because this is the first research paper that shows that fitness branding of food does not only affect energy intake but also energy expenditure’ Baumgartner said”. Although these are the first conclusions of their kind, they gained a lot of attention. Throughout researching this topic, I came across this study on four separate websites.

While this study is certainly a step towards proving that diet and protein bars are not as beneficial as they seem, the articles were all lacking in detail about the experiment. I would be interested in knowing how many people participated in this study, what their age and gender are, what they had eaten throughout the day before the study, and whether they had exercised earlier in the day before the study. These are all variables that could affect the outcome of this study.

A separate issue is that some bars are not as healthy as they claim. In March of this year, the FDA issued a warning letter to KIND Company stating that various products were in violation of FDA regulations. The report states, “the product labels bear nutrient content claims, but the products do not meet the requirements to make such claims… none of your products listed above meet the requirements for use of the nutrient content claim ‘healthy’”. This report gathered a lot of media attention because people were surprised that a food commonly thought of as a good choice was now shown to not have the benefits it was claiming. This could happen to any food in grocery stores, and it important to always be aware and check food labels. Calories aren’t the only thing that matter, either; consumers should look at sugar content, fiber content, and the ingredient list as well.

This issue relates back to the first thing we discussed in class: ‘our intuition is lousy’, a lesson that was brought up again during the presentation of the Monty Hall problem. Consumers’ intuition is that products in the grocery store are labeled truthfully and anything that says ‘healthy’ is an immediate good choice. This topic, however, once again proves that intuition is unreliable and people need to be aware of what is in their food. More studies need to be done in order to obtain concrete evidence that diet bars and protein bars do more harm than good, and I am curious to see what other studies are developed regarding this topic in the future.

This question has been debated for many years: is it better for a baby to be breast-fed or bottle-fed? The answer to this relies on various other questions such as: what is better for the mother, which is more affordable, which is more efficient, and who will be taking care of the baby most often?

The American Pregnancy Association states that, “the decision should be made by the parents… the American Pregnancy Association recommends breastfeeding”. The association also provides a list of advantages and disadvantages of each. The benefits of breastfeeding are that it is already the correct balance of nutrients, the baby easily digests the milk, it’s free, and the milk is

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always accessible at the right temperature. There are also disadvantages to breastfeeding, including: the mother must always be available to feed the baby or she must use a breast pump, early breastfeeding may be uncomfortable for the mother, and certain medications can interfere with the mother’s ability to breastfeed. The other option is to feed the baby from a bottle using formula. The advantage of this option is that anyone can feed the baby. There are numerous disadvantages to bottle feeding including: the nutritional content is dependent on proper preparation, the formula is expensive, it is necessary to buy and always carry bottles and lids, the formula needs to be prepared properly, and the baby may not be tolerant of the formula.

An article from the Natural Resources Defense Council states that, “formula feeding is linked to about a 20 to 30 percent greater likelihood that the child will become obese”. One reason for this is that many baby formulas contain a lot of sugar. This also connects to my previous blog about sugar addiction. Food manufacturers are aware that sugar has addictive qualities, and so the earlier they can introduce sugar to children, the more money they can make. This is why formula is so high in sugar, and leads formula-fed children to struggle with obesity later on in life. The article also says, “Children who are exclusively breast-fed during the first three months of their lives are 34 percent less likely to develop juvenile, insulin-dependent diabetes than children who are fed formula”. This again connects to the formula being full of sugar, and presenting health problems later on in life.

Time magazine published an article about a study that observed, “8,237 children, 7,319 siblings and 1,773 sibling pairs, where at least one child was breast-fed and at least one child was not”. The researchers were focused on 11 characteristics that have previously shown to be affected by breast-feeding. The study concluded, “breast-feeding had better outcomes than bottle-feeding in factors like BMI, hyperactivity, math skills, reading recognition, vocabulary word identification, digit recollection, scholastic competence and obesity”. This provides strong support for breast-feeding, but “when the researchers looked just at the siblings who were fed differently, the benefits were not statistically significant”.

This issue connects back to a topic we discussed in class: Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care book. Dr. Spock was wrong about recommending that children sleep on their stomachs, and many babies died because of that recommendation. He was correct, however, in stating in his book “breast-feeding is valuable in a number of ways” (Spock).

Based on the advantages and disadvantages described in this post, it is clear that breast-feeding is the better option. Although there are more disadvantages to formula feeding, there is no evidence showing it is severely harmful to the baby. Until more studies are done on this topic, the decision is left to families to choose what is better for them and their baby.

Hand sanitizer is a quick and accessible way to clean your hands when you can’t get to a sink, and many students carry mini bottles of hand sanitizer attached to their backpacks. Convenient, mess-free, and portable, hand sanitizer seems like the perfect product. But what if in instead of keeping you healthy, it’s actually making you sick?

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It is a common belief that anti bacterial soaps, wipes, and gels are the most effective way to kill germs and keep you healthy. An article written on the Scientific American website disproves all of that. A study conducted by Allison Aiello, a University of Michigan professor, found, “antibiotic soaps and wipes with triclosan were no more likely than good old-fashioned soap to prevent gastrointestinal or respiratory illness”. This study demonstrated that antibacterial soaps are no better than regular soaps, but they didn’t cause any harm either. It was in a separate study that Aiello discovered, “for chronically sick patients (those with asthma and diabetes, for example) antibiotic soaps were actually associated with increases in the frequencies of fevers, runny noses and coughs”. Although there’s no difference between regular and antibacterial soaps for healthy people, antibacterial soaps can cause those with chronic illnesses to become sicker.

A separate issue linked to hand sanitizers is that they don’t only kill bad bacteria; they kill good bacteria too. Good bacteria are the bacteria that live on your body and are the first line of defense against disease and germs. Bad bacteria are the bacteria that latch on to your body and make you sick. When you wash your hands with soap and water, you get rid of the bad bacteria while keeping the good ones intact. When you use hand sanitizer, you kill the bad bacteria and some of the good bacteria. According to the Scientific American article, “when we are mostly healthy, this doesn’t matter; the bacteria regroup and recover or our body in other ways defends. But when we are already unwell, it may be that this is enough to make us more unwell”.

A Time article sums up this issue by stating, “having identified bacteria as Dirt Vader, we have as a nation come to believe that the only good microbe is a dead microbe”. One of the main problems with this belief is that it leads to the overuse of hand sanitizer, which then causes the development of antibacterial-resistant bacteria. The CDC  confirms this by saying, “Non-alcohol-based hand sanitizers may cause germs to develop resistance to the sanitizing agent”. The non-alcohol distinction is important, because alcohol based hand sanitizers are not named as a cause to resistant bacteria, the problem is with sanitizers that contain triclosan.

Triclosan is the harmful ingredient in hand sanitizers

On top of making people sick, a Johns Hopkins study concluded that hand sanitizers may also be linked to increasing allergy risk in children. The article explains how it is important for children to be exposed to certain common pathogens in order to allow them to develop a healthy immune system. If this immune system is not allowed to develop properly, it will later attack harmless substances such as food proteins and pet fur. The study concluded, “children with the highest urine levels of triclosan had nearly twice the risk of environmental allergies as children with the lowest urinary concentrations”.

This topic connects to one that was briefly discussed in class: whether intensive care units do more harm than good. A possible connecting idea between these two topics is that the human body needs to be left alone to heal itself, and putting it in an overly sterile environment only complicates that process. The over sterilization is what links ICU’s to hand sanitizer, and an overuse of either has a negative effect. As researchers are making progress on this topic of hand sanitizers, I am curious to see if they will connect it to the ICU’s.

Technically speaking, a calorie is defined as the energy needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius. More commonly, calories are used as a way to define whether or not something is good for you. A food that is low in calories is considered healthy, and a food that is high in calories is considered unhealthy. But what if the calorie is not a consistent measurement?

This is what 200 calories of various foods looks like

For many years, doctors have been attempting to resolve the obesity epidemic by prescribing the simple advice that a person needs to balance the calories they take in to the calories they expend during the course of a day. This appears to be reasonable advice; it’s a simple matter of balancing input and output. The accuracy of this advice comes into question when numerous studies begin showing that not all calories are the same.

In a study published by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, weight loss was compared between adults that ate diets high in protein/low in carbohydrates and adults that ate diets low in fat. The article states, “diets high in protein/low in carbohydrates produced an 2.5-kg greater weight loss after 12 weeks of treatment… further research on differences in the composition of weight loss is needed to explain the observed increase in weight loss”. Although unexplainable, these conclusions are significant. This demonstrates that not all calories are equal, and the human body responds to the differences in calorie quality.

The movie Fed Up also discusses this topic. In this video clip titled Why a Calorie Is Not a Calorie, the example of almonds vs. soda is used to prove this concept. The fiber in the almonds slows down the absorption of the food and prevents a spike in blood sugar. Since the soda doesn’t have any fiber, the sugar goes straight through the body, spiking the blood sugar, and leaves the body with no choice but to turn it into fat. Even though the almonds and soda had the same caloric content, the body reacted to them very differently.

A PBS article explains that even though there is no exact answer to this question, nutritionists have been able to formulate some ideas as to why the body responds differently to calories from different foods. The article states, “we burn more calories while metabolizing protein than while metabolizing the other two so-called macronutrients… our bodies might use calories from diets higher in protein less efficiently, resulting in less fat storage or greater weight loss”. If this was the case, it would explain why the American Journal article observed the conclusions it did.

Dr. Mark Hyman, one of the doctors featured in Fed Up, wrote an excellent article explaining this exact concept. His example of sixth graders clarifies the concept when he states, “show them a picture of 1,000 calories of broccoli and 1,000 calories of soda, ask them if they have the same effect on our bodies, their unanimous response will be ‘NO’”. This relates back to the previous topic of how almonds and soda are digested differently. Although the number of calories is the same, the presence of other nutrients determines how many of those calories are absorbed into the body.

This question also relates to a topic discussed in class: whether or not sugary drink consumption is linked to obesity. Even though there are not enough studies on sugary drinks, there is evidence pointing towards the conclusion that yes, sugary drinks are connected to obesity. This question of differences in calories is connected because sugary drinks would be considered a bad source of calories since there’s nothing to slow down the absorption of sugar into the body.

Although many more studies are needed on this topic to be able to draw concrete conclusions, there is currently a growing amount of evidence supporting the thought that a calorie does not equal a calorie. This information could be very important in making a break through in solving the U.S. obesity epidemic and better educating children in the future.

It’s the time of year that is commonly referred to as flu season. It’s often heard that illness spreads like wildfire through the dorm buildings and the flu shot is an important step to prevent getting sick. Everyone has their personal views in support of or against vaccines, but many parents are leaving their children unnecessarily vulnerable to disease in fear that getting them vaccinated will cause them to develop autism. Fortunately, there is no truth to this fear.

The supposed connection between vaccines and autism has been a topic in the media for many years, but the idea was first presented back in 1998. British surgeon and medical researcher Dr. Andrew Wakefield claimed to have discovered a link between vaccines and autism in a study that he published in The Lancet. The specific vaccine at fault was MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella). It is important to note that Wakefield’s study had no control group and was not based on statistics. The paper was later retracted and Wakefield’s medical license revoked, but the claim caught the attention of many and stuck. Although this has been investigated for over a decade with studies of over 25,782,500 children, “one in four United States parents believe some vaccines cause autism in healthy children”.

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An article in Oxford Journals explained the hypothesis connecting autism to the MMR vaccine. The article states, “the combination measles-mumps-rubella vaccine causes autism by damaging the intestinal lining, which allows the entrance of encephalopathic proteins”. Researchers in various countries performed studies addressing this hypothesis, and found no correlation between the number of vaccinated children and number of children diagnosed with autism. The CDC explained that, “since 2003, there have been nine CDC funded or conducted studies that have found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism in children”. An article written by PBS News also clearly states, “no link with autism – not to any vaccines – has been found”. In April of this year, the Autism Speaks organization published an article regarding this issue. The article discusses a study, the largest ever of its kind, which studied over 95,000 children. The article explains, “consistent with studies in other populations, we observed no association between MMR vaccination and increased autism risk”.

 
This topic relates back to the fourth pop quiz we had in this class, the article titled What Really Causes Autism? The article only briefly mentions vaccines, but also connects the vaccine fear to celebrities. This made me curious, since when do we trust celebrities more than certified doctors?

Even though, as we discussed in class, no vaccine is 100 percent safe, it has been proven that vaccines will not cause autism. Although it may leave your arm a little sore, it’s worth it to be vaccinated.

The United States has struggled with the issue of obesity for many years, and doctors are still struggling to pinpoint the cause of this epidemic. Over the years, the possible causes have been narrowed down, and sugar has attracted a lot of attention. The question is: are people struggling with their weight because they have unknowingly become addicted to sugar? I decided to research this issue more to determine whether or not sugar addiction is a real possibility.

In a study done at Princeton University, Professor Bart Hoebel and his team designed a program to attempt to form sugar addiction in rats. Through various tests, the team was able to demonstrate strong evidence of sugar addiction in the rats, such as how, “in experiments, the researchers have been able to induce signs of withdrawal in the lab animals by taking away their sugar supply” (MacPherson). The rats usually consumed a sugar solution, and when that sugar was taken away, the rats turned to consuming more alcohol and exhibited anxiety. Although these results point towards a confirmation of the possibility of sugar addiction, Hoebel stated that, “more research is needed to understand the implications for people” (McPherson).

In a different article I read, it discussed a study where the “researchers did a randomized, blinded, crossover study using the most rigorous research design” (Hyman). This experiment was completed in two rounds. In the first round, the experimenters gave 12 overweight men a low sugar milkshake. In the second round, the same men received a milkshake that tasted the exact same, but would spike the blood sugar higher and more quickly. The men received brain scans and blood tests after each round. The most note-worthy discovery was that “when the high glycemic shake was consumed, the nucleus accumbens [part of your brain associated with addiction] lit up like a Christmas tree” which proves that “foods that spike blood sugar are biologically addictive” (Hyman).

Given the results of these two studies, although not definitive, there is strong evidence that says that sugar addiction is a real issue. One main component of this addiction is all of the sneaky sources of sugar in food. For example, energy bars can range from 30-50 grams of sugar and sports drinks can contain around 55 grams. Lots of foods have added sugars, and it is important to be on the lookout and learn how to make nutritious swaps. One article that discusses hidden sugar states, “whatever you eat should have no more than 4 grams of added sugars per hour, but even ‘healthy’ foods often exceed that by a lot” (Roizen). There are still some unknowns, but strong progress has been made to prove that it is possible to be addicted to sugar. If this is proven, the United States may have a better chance at resolving the obesity epidemic.