Weight Loss Enemy Foods to Avoid: Forever on Your Hips Once Past the Lips

 

A new study from Harvard researchers provides scientific evidence that you are what you eat. In the quest for weight loss, the quality of foods consumed is much more significant than calorie content. Munching chips and sipping soda in front of the TV helps to pack on the pounds, giving real meaning to the term “couch potato.” The full details of the study can be found in the New England Journal of Medicine.

   Although it has long been known that a healthy diet includes fresh vegetables and fruits, whole grains, nuts and lean proteins, the Harvard research team has successfully determined the pound-packing impact of ingesting culprit foods. At the top of the list of fatty offenders are those tasty potato chips, which lead to more weight gain per serving that any other food in the study, while the best power food for weight loss is yogurt.

Making healthy food choices that work with your body will have a greater positive impact overall than will simply eating less. Consuming high-quality foods will also lead to the most successful weight loss long term, as adults gain about one pound per year, on average. Of course, when focusing on weight loss, the daily overall calorie count must be considered because moderation remains key in the weight loss process.

According to lead study author Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, “For diet, conventional wisdom often recommends ‘everything in moderation,’ with a focus only on total calories consumed.” He then pointed out, “Our results demonstrate that the quality of the diet — the types of food and beverages that one consumes — is strongly linked to weight gain.”

The study revealed that every extra serving of potato chips consumed within a day, results in a weight-gain of 1.69 pounds every four years. In addition, potatoes in general are foods that fatten whether French fried, mashed, boiled or even baked.

The study found that for each extra serving consumed, an average of 1.28 pounds were gained over a four-year period, while French fries alone were associated with over three pounds of added weight.

Also among the top five offenders were  sugar-sweetened beverages, unprocessed and processed red meat, with all being linked to about one pound of additional weight every four years.

Daily Diet: Blind Study Puts Premade Diet Meals to the Test

 

Now more than ever, people across the globe are focused on healthy eating, nutrition and diet fads. With obesity on the rise, the focus on these topics are more important than ever, and it can be difficult and time-consuming to cull through all the recipes, nutrition advice, and diets—both fad and tried-and-true.

Diet programs such as Nutrisystem, Weight Watchers and The Cookie Diet, and books like, The 'Prevention' Loss Weight Guidebook and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Losing Weight, all provide contradicting information about what an ideal diet is, thus making it difficult for us to pick the diet that works with our lifestyle, health goals and budget.

It’s apparent that any weight loss organization or company believes their recommendations are superior to the others, and will promote themselves in the best light possible, so what better way to know the real truth than reviews from real life people who can give an honest opinion about the effectiveness and pros and cons of these fad diets

HealthNews editors independently review various diet trends and provide in-depth reviews and information to help aid in choosing the right diet for your particular needs. Low carb diets are one of the most popular trends however, many people mistake the diet for being carb-free, when in fact, the diet allows for specific types of starch-resistant carbs, such as sweet potatoes and bananas.

Diet plan reviews not only help when deciding on the best course of action to take while dieting, it also helps to decrease the odds that the diet will be misunderstood and misused.

A good diet review will provide the user within formation on the history, basic steps, what type of foods that will be eaten,accessibility and the cost. The HealthNews review of the Fresh Diet, a meal delivery program, not only provides information about that diet specifically but it also compares it to similar plans, thus, giving the reader knowledge about options that may be more appropriate for them.

NextAdvisor.com conducted a study to determine which diet food delivery service provides the most generally appealing foods. Over a three-week time period, male and female tasters of various ages were given anonymous samples from seven companies’ “standard” meal plans. The testers then rated each meal on a scale from 1 to 10 based on taste and appearance. Each plan ran between 1200-1350 calories per day and were heated in the microwave and prepared based on the instructions for each meal.

The seven companies involved in the study were, Jenny Craig, Bistro MD, Diet-to-Go, The Biggest Loser, Nutrisystem, eDiets and Medifast. Costs per day for the food delivery programs ranged from $7.14 to $28.94/day. Four of the seven programs also had a fitness component. (Full report from NextAdvisor can be found here.)

After the study was completed, points were tallied and it was revealed that the Jenny Craig program received the highest reviews with 5 out of 5 stars for breakfast and dinner food, and 4.5 stars for lunch food. In fact one diner noted that “It didn’t seem like diet food.” High praise indeed.

The company with the lowest rating was MediFast which received only 2 out of 5 stars for breakfast foods, 2.5 stars for lunch food and 3 stars for dinner foods.

Having a review of various food delivery programs such as the one provided by NextAdvisor is essential before investing time and money into a program that may not be a fit.

If home-cooked meals and fresh foods are favored over pre-made delivery meals, HealthNews columnist Susan Brady’s article on the “Top 10 Weight Loss Cookbooks,” narrows down thousands of options when choosing a book to help with healthy meal preparation.

Daily Diet: Increase in Incidence of Celiac Disease

Apparently you are never too old to be diagnosed with celiac disease, and new findings challenge the notion that it is something that you develop in childhood. A study published in the latest issue of the Annals of Medicine has found not only an increased incidence of the disease, but that the incidence (or risk) of celiac disease rises with age.

Researchers found that the incidence of celiac disease has doubled in the United States every 15 years since 1974. The number of individuals with celiac disease blood markers rose from 1 in 501 in 1974 to 1 in 219 in 1989, and then to 1 in every 133 people in 2003. Results also confirmed previous research that elderly people are twice as likely to develop the disease compared to the general population.

Celiac disease is an inherited digestive system disorder caused by an intolerance to gluten that affects the digestive process of the small intestine. Once thought to be a rare condition, research shows that it affects about 3 million people. The disease often goes undiagnosed because there are as many as 300 different symptoms, many of them subtle and seemingly unrelated. In fact, it is sometimes confused with irritable bowel syndrome, iron-deficiency anemia, Crohn’s disease, diverticulitis, intestinal infections, and chronic fatigue syndrome.

When a person who has celiac disease eats foods containing gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye, their immune system responds by attacking the small intestine, destroying the intestinal villi, thus inhibiting the absorption of vital nutrients into the body. Left untreated, the disease may increase the risk of many other conditions, including hepatitis, thyroiditis, lymphoma, diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis.

Although genetic markers for celiac disease have been identified, the actual trigger that causes an individual to lose gluten tolerance is unknown. Study leader Alessio Fasano, M.D., director of the University of Maryland's Center for Celiac Research, said, “Even if you have these genetic markers, it's not your destiny to develop an autoimmune disease. Our study shows that environmental factors cause an individual's immune system to lose tolerance to gluten, given the fact that genetics was not a factor in our study since we followed the same individuals over time.”

The only treatment for celiac disease is a gluten-free diet. But despite the fact that manufacturers are required to label food that contains gluten, adhering to a gluten-free diet can be tricky business. In addition to the obvious places gluten can be found in a normal diet, such as breads, cereals and pasta, there are many hidden sources of gluten. Everyday products such as medicines, vitamins and even lip balms contain gluten, as does thickening agents, emulsifiers, fillers, flavor enhancers, and food stabilizers.