Diet and Cognition

 

A study completed earlier this year concluded that people who eat a Mediterranean-style diet -- particularly one rich in green leafy vegetables and low in meat -- are more likely to stay mentally sharp in later life. Nutritionists have long touted the benefits of the diet on various facets of health, including cardiovascular health. But a team of researchers in Scotland, led by Janie Corley, PhD, at the University of Edinburgh, tested the cognitive ability of over 500 people averaging 79 years of age, none of whom showed any signs of dementia. The tests focused on problem solving, thinking speed, memory and word knowledge, and the researchers also obtained MRI brain scans of over 350 of the participants.

In their initial test, people who adhered most closely to the Mediterranean diet tended to score better, the study found. While the study couldn’t prove cause and effect, the diet was positively associated with improved performance in specific brain functions, such as memory, verbal ability and visuospatial ability. Even after adjusting for childhood IQ and other health and education factors, the results still showed a significant benefit to the brain for folks adhering to a Mediterranean diet compared to those who didn’t.

Other studies have linked cognition and "brain fog" with inflammation in the brain. Much research has identified the Mediterranean diet as the closest thing to an "anti-inflammatory diet" because of its emphasis on including plenty of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean protein sources, herbs and spices, and healthy fat sources in the diet every day. These healthy whole foods deliver vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that help strengthen your immune system and ward off inflammation. According to Lona Sandon, a registered dietician nutritionist and professor of nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas, “We could hypothesize that it has something to do with inflammation for one, as well as with other nutrients like magnesium or folate that are found in the leafy greens.”

Less healthy diets — dominated by processed foods — could have the opposite effect, the Scottish researchers warned. That’s because these types of diets tend to be high in red meat, potatoes, and sugary and fried foods. Of these, Sandon noted, red meat appears to be particularly unhealthy for the brain, probably because of red meat’s high level of saturated fat. She added that processed foods are also packed with excessive salt, sugar and other components that can make them both cheap and addictive.

So now you have yet another reason to look at making a Mediterranean-style diet a core part of your wellness lifestyle.

Artificial Sweeteners and Pregnancy

A recent animal study published in the journal Gut suggests that consuming low calorie artificial sweeteners while pregnant or breast feeding could lead to higher body fat levels in infants and an increased risk for obesity later in life.

The animal study aimed to examine the impact of the maternal consumption of sweeteners on the body weight, glucose tolerance and gut microbiota of offspring. Researchers analyzed 150 female Sprague-Dawley rats during pregnancy and lactation and their offspring up to 18 weeks after birth. Findings suggested that regular consumption of artificial sweeteners while pregnant increased body fat in offspring at weaning and body weight long-term. The researchers also believe that these sweeteners could be responsible for disrupting the gut microbiome of offspring.

“The results of our study assessing maternal consumption of aspartame and stevia are consistent with emerging human evidence from observational studies that low calorie sweetners intake is associated with increased body mass index (BMI) and cardiometabolic risk,” the study reads.

More research is needed to confirm the impact on humans but for now the safest course is to limit or, better, avoid artificial sweeteners while pregnant or nursing.

Cold Brew vs Hot Brew Coffee

 

 

Specialty lattes and other coffee drinks are generally not healthy options because they tend to be loaded with fat and sugar. But what about black coffee? Does the way that it is brewed have any impact on its nutritional quality? A 2018 study done by Megan Fuller, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry, and Niny Rao, Ph.D., associate professor of chemistry at Thomas Jefferson University in Philladelphia, suggests that it does.

Cold brew coffee is made by steeping ground coffee in room temperature water for a long while - 8 to 24 hours. Hot brews are made by passing very hot water through the ground beans in various ways. The study compared the acidity and antioxidant levels of hot and cold brewed coffees to determine if one brewing method produced any significant advantage of the other.

Cold brewed coffee is often believed to be less acidic than a hot brew, but the study found no evidence that this was so. The pH values in each brew were found to be essentially the same (pH of around 5, which is just slightly acidic). So despite the marketing, cold brew coffee is no "easier on the stomach" than hot brew.

Hot brew coffee turned out to have have an advantage though, in that it
has higher antioxidant levels than cold brew coffee. Antioxidants are responsible for most of the beneficial health effects of moderate coffee consumption.
“Coffee has a lot of antioxidants and, if you drink it in moderation, research shows it can be pretty good for you,” Fuller said. “We found the hot brew has more antioxidant capacity.”

None of this is to say that if you enjoy cold brew coffee you should avoid it. Just don't expect it to be any particular benefit over a hot brew.

Natural vs Added Sugar: Is there a difference?

While the processed white sugar on your table and the sugar in an orange are chemically quite similar, the way that your body processes them differs quite a bit. 

The sugar in the orange is contained within the cells of the fruit, so your body actually has to expend more energy to process and digest it than it does digesting added sugar. The fiber in the orange also slows down the digestive process. As a result, you do not experience the rapid spike in blood sugar that added sugars cause. Also, a similar weight of orange simply contains much less sugar than say, an orange sherbet with a lot of sugar added to it. The fruit is also packed with other nutrients which added sugar completely lacks.

“If we eat a peach or if we eat an apple, we are also eating all the other nutrients encompassed in that food, including water, fats and proteins,” says Dana Hunnes, a registered dietitian and adjunct assistant professor in the department of community health sciences at UCLA . “When we take the sugar out of context, that sugar is devoid of all the heath-enhancing properties of the original food it was sourced from, losing all of its nutrient properties except for the sweetness and the calories.” Many types of sugar, like rice sugar and agave nectar, are technically natural sugars, but they’re extracted and processed in very high concentrations and then added to foods where they’re very easy to digest and absorb. The natural sugars in fruits and vegetables never exist in such a high concentration as added sugars, and they’re always accompanied by healthy components like fiber, which slows the absorption of natural sugars into the blood.

The Department of Agriculture’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans suggest consuming less than 10% of your daily calories from added sugars, which would fall somewhere around 50 grams of added sugars per day for a 2,000 calorie diet.

The Real Price of Sugar

 

"Sugar is a completely nonessential part of our diets," says Kimberly Stanhope, a research nutritional biologist at the University of California, Davis. On the other hand, the health risks of getting too much sugar are fairly well established. So here we have a "food" that does us no good at all and causes us a long list of harms, and yet we can't seem to put it aside.

For starters, sugar offers us nothing but nutrition-free calories. The weight gain from these useless calories increases the risk for type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke and several types of cancer. Even if sugar did not pile on the pounds, it is an important factor in fatty liver disease, tooth decay, cellular inflammation, anxiety and depression, age-related cognitive decline, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Starting in January, 2020, food nutrition labels were required to list added sugar in grams. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends that added sugars make up no more than 10% of your total daily calories. That comes to 50g for a 2,000 calorie diet. The American Heart Association recommends that added sugars be no more than about 30g. But seriously, why should an utterly worthless food make up any of our diet?

Artificial sweeteners come with their own problems. There is very little evidence that replacing sugar with artificial sweeteners results in much if any sustained weight loss. "The goal is not to get people to switch from sugar to diet drinks," says Vasanti Malik, a researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "Its to get them to switch from sugar to water." Sweeteners may be useful as a temporary bridge while making that transition, but they are not a permanent solution.

Cutting back on added sugar and artificial sweeteners is your best bet to avoid the ill health effects of this utterly worthless "food".

A Need for Speed?

 

 

When it comes to losing weight, does it make any difference if the pounds come off quickly rather than slowly? Usually, individuals are recommended to lose weight at one or two pounds per week, as faster weight loss is related to a slightly higher risk for gallstones. However, there are reasons to believe that faster weight loss may have better effects for cardiovascular disease and diabetes risk factors.

In the first study of its kind to look specifically at whether the speed of weight loss was related to health outcomes, researchers concluded that it probably was not. "With the same pound for pound weight loss, there is no difference in terms of health benefits if you lose weight fast or slow," says Jennifer Kuk, associate professor in York University's Faculty of Health and the lead researcher in the study. 

What did matter? The amount of weight lost and whether or not the loss was sustainable over time. "The results show that we really need to look at interventions that focus on long-term weight management that can achieve sustained weight loss at the recommended one to two pounds per week," says Kuk.

The study looked at 11,283 patients who attended the Wharton Medical Clinic Weight Management Program between July 2008 and July 2017.

It seems to me there may be a trade-off here. Losing weight rapidly may prove motivating and inspire individuals to continue on with their program. But losing it gradually allows one to make the kind of permanent lifestyle changes that make sustaining the lost weight more likely as then there then is no program to "go off".

Which is right for you? Whichever works. And whichever you can sustain for the rest of your life.

 

2019 Food Porn Awards

 

More than two out of three American adults are either overweight or obese. There is no mystery to this. We simply eat too much and do too little. And the restaurant industry is right there to support us by supersizing their menu offerings right along with our waistlines. In the 1960s, the average fast food meal of a burger, fries and a 12oz drink was 590 calories. The same meal today would clock in at over 1,500 calories. And nearly all of the increase comes from more fat, carbs and sugar.

I came across Nutrition Action newsletter's Extreme Eating Awards for 2019. To put all this in perspective, let's remind ourselves what we really should be eating over an entire day.

         Calories - about 2,000                                Sodium - 2,300mg

Saturated Fat - about 20g                           Added Sugar - 50g

With that as a yardstick, lets take a look at the winners from two years ago, keeping in mind that the numbers have grown a bit since.

Gold Medalist - Dave & Buster's Chicken and Waffle Sliders

2,340 calories of white flour, sugar and starchy carbohydrates. It is the equivalent of eating 8 Eggo waffles with 8 Jimmy Dean sausage patties slathered in half a cup of maple syrup. In addition to 1.3 days worth of calories, you'll waddle away with almost 2 days worth of saturated fat, a day and half's worth of sodium and about 2 days worth of added sugar. Well played, Dave and Buster! Well played.

Silver Medalist - Jimmy John's 16" Gargantuan

"The only thing better than a sandwich is a sandwich twice as large!" Enter the 16-inch Giant Gargantuan, loaded with nitrates, saturated fat, white flour and sugar. It clocks in at 2,190 calories but it puts Dave and Buster to shame with 29g of saturated fat and 7,720mg of sodium (I'll save you crunching the numbers, that's over three days worth). Rumor is their next innovation will be a triple. Triple bypass that is. You'd have to eat three Subway foot long coldcut subs to match it.

Bronze Medalist -  The Cheesecake Factory's Cinnamon Roll Pancakes

Perennial medalist The Cheescake Factory take a bronze in 2019 by figuring out how to squeeze 2,040 calories into just three pancakes. Combining all that white flour, brown sugar, butter and syrup into just 3 pancakes is a culinary marvel indeed. Complete with 51g of saturated fat, 2,950mg of sodium and 137g of added sugar. Don't care for pancakes? Eating 11 Krispy Kreme Original glazes doughnuts will give you about the same "nutrition".

Runner Up - Chili's The Boss Burger

So what if 70% of us are already overweight or obese, Chili's has burgers to sell. This one contains 5 meats, cheese and ranch dressing and, just in case its not enough for you, it also comes with fries. At 2,020 calories it was just barely edged out by Cheesecake Factory. But its 47g of saturated fat and 3,900g of sodium is nothing to feel ashamed of. No Chili's near you? You can get the same "nutrition" from 3 McDonald's Triple Cheese burgers with a large fries.

 

I don't even know what to say.