Food and Medical Politics
For some time now there has been debate in some nutritional circles about the relative merits of different ‘diets’. Certainly, there has been at least two factions here. One argues for a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet which usually includes plenty of starchy carbohydrates such as bread, potato, rice, breakfast cereals and pasta. Others (including me) argue […]
Healthy Eating
I came across this report yesterday. It concerns a study presented at the American Heart Association meeting in San Diego this week. From the report it appears that overweight individuals were randomised to one of two diets for 6 months (along with moderate exercise). ‘low-carb’: 30, 40, 30 per cent of calories from carbohydrate, fat […]
Food and Medical Politics
If you’re reading this blog post on 5th March 2012, there’s a good chance you came to it as a result of listening to discussion on BBC Radio 4’s programme ‘You and Yours’ about the most appropriate diet for those suffering from diabetes. You can listen to the broadcast here (the item starts about 15 minutes […]
Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome
Baroness Barbara Young is the chief executive of the UK’s largest diabetes charity – Diabetes UK. She’s been on the warpath recently, calling the UK Government out on a ‘lack of political will’ to do something about substandard testing and care of those with diabetes. Baroness Young has this week performed something of a media […]
Healthy Eating
Matt Edmundson emailed me awhile back relaying the story of what happened when he read and applied the principles laid out in my book Waist Disposal. His daughter, it turns out, used to call him ‘baggy belly’, but not anymore! After Escape the Diet Trap was released, Matt kindly asked to interview me about the […]
Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome
The New England Journal of Medicine recently published the photograph below. It is of a 55-year-old man with Type 1 diabetes who has been injecting insulin under the skin of his belly for more than 30 years. Those who inject insulin regularly are often advised to ‘rotate’ (vary) the site of injections. One reason for […]
Brain and Behaviour
I don’t believe that the best way for people to lose weight is to consciously restrict how much they eat. I have no issue with people eating less, I just believe that, for the best results, it needs to be done in a way that is both easy and sustainable. For the most part an […]
Low-Carbohydrate
This time of year will generally see a lot of people embarking on changes designed to shed some excess weight. The problem is that although many people will lose weight successfully, almost as many will regain that weight. Why? Well, a big part of the answer appears to be that when we lose weight, the […]
Healthy Eating
There’s a general notion in nutrition that, as far as body weight is concerned, ‘a calorie is a calorie’. In other words, the impact that food has on body weight is ultimately down to the number of calories we consume, and has nothing to do with the form that they come in. However, as I […]
Brain and Behaviour
For some time now evidence has linked the consumption of sugar and adverse health effects including raised blood pressure, increased inflammation, weight gain, and unhealthy changes in blood fats. The three most plentiful sugars in the diet are fructose, glucose and sucrose. A molecule of sucrose – table sugar – contains one molecule each of […]