Sugar: The Bitter Truth. Robert H. Lustig, Professor of Pediatrics at UCSF, discusses the biochemical properties of fructose and makes the case for why it should be considered, essentially, a poison. [Youtube, 1.5 hours] [more inside]
posted by knave on Oct 8, 2009 - 110 comments

American Heart Association: American men should not consume more than 150 calories of sugar a day[pdf], American women 100 calories. paper[pdf]
posted by bigmusic on Aug 25, 2009 - 88 comments

An expose of non-vegan ingredients in pancakes at LA Vegan Thai inspired the QuarryGirl.Com writers to conduct their own extremely thorough investigation of LA vegan restaurants, testing their meals for traces of casein, egg, and shellfish. Over $1000 and a chain of interviews up to Taiwan later, they find that half the restaurants aren't as vegan as they claim, with half registering Positive or High and one registering Overload. Some restaurants vowed to conduct their own tests or requested further assistance; one banned them from the establishment.
posted by divabat on Jul 5, 2009 - 260 comments

Eat food. Mostly animals. As much as you want. And don't cook em
posted by Not Supplied on May 29, 2009 - 172 comments

"People lose weight if they lower calories, but it does not matter how." According to recently published study in the New England Journal of Medicine, "For people who are trying to lose weight, it does not matter if they are counting carbohydrates, protein or fat. All that matters is that they are counting something." [more inside]
posted by mecran01 on Apr 5, 2009 - 98 comments

A single nutrient may have turned early humans into civilized man. Has stripping it from our diet given rise to cancer, diabetes, and other civilized diseases? "There has been a thousandfold increase in the consumption of soybean oil over the past hundred years. The result is an unplanned experiment in brain and heart chemistry, one whose subject is the entire population of the developed world." A series of epidemiological studies showed that populations that consume high levels of omega-3s in the form of seafood are the least afflicted by the major diseases associated with the Western diet. (via) [more inside]
posted by netbros on Feb 24, 2009 - 66 comments

If you don't see any patterns in your data, yet day-to-day fluctuations persist, he is reacting to something you aren't tracking. Look elsewhere. A heartrending (and long) online log of one father's 10-year struggle to make sense of his child's ADHD and find a way to treat it without medication.
posted by Deathalicious on Feb 18, 2009 - 60 comments

Nicholle, Amy, Melanie, and Jenny are "in no way affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by the products reviewed , its partners, or subsidiaries."
posted by MrChowWow on Feb 11, 2009 - 66 comments

Via Amazon, you can read the first few chapters[PDF] of Carol Lay's new graphic novel-cum-diet book The Big Skinny. Blogger and fellow cartoonist Ampersand/Barry Deutsch doesn't object to the weight loss she documents, he just isn't convinced that it's actually all that healthy. [more inside]
posted by Acheman on Feb 7, 2009 - 78 comments

Have you seen the new ads for Diet Pepsi Max? Reactions have not been kind. Some are comparing it to The Book of Bunny Suicides. The images in the Pepsi links are the same, the comments are not. [more inside]
posted by cjorgensen on Dec 3, 2008 - 59 comments

How many calories did you drink last night? Alcohol intake, rendered in food equivalents. [more inside]
posted by jbickers on Dec 3, 2008 - 76 comments

A well designed Japanese video about food security
posted by oxford blue on Nov 16, 2008 - 44 comments

The Twenty Worst Foods in America. There's something for everyone!
posted by monospace on Feb 11, 2008 - 143 comments

TaB history, photo galleries, and Generation TaB: The Motion Picture. [more inside]
posted by dersins on Nov 2, 2007 - 26 comments

Why most of us believe that exercise makes us thinner—and why we're wrong.
posted by miss lynnster on Sep 25, 2007 - 125 comments

Scientists are testing a new diet pill that expands to the size of a tennis ball in your stomach. When taken with two glasses of water, the slow-growing 'gelatinous blob' gives one the feeling of having eaten a plate of food. Although it's no replacement for diet and exercise, it could help some people control their urges.
posted by chuckdarwin on Jun 8, 2007 - 66 comments

"Being thin doesn't automatically mean you're not fat." According to the data, people who maintain their weight through diet rather than exercise are likely to have major deposits of internal fat, even if they are otherwise slim. "The whole concept of being fat needs to be redefined," said Bell, whose research is funded by Britain's Medical Research Council.
posted by mr_crash_davis on May 10, 2007 - 82 comments

Tim Ferris claims to have gained 34 lbs. of muscle in 28 days while exercising for only four hours, total.
posted by craniac on May 3, 2007 - 93 comments

Obesity and the Farm Bill. Michael Pollan continues his series of articles on the state of the American food supply by looking at the connection between the obesity epidemic and the federal farm bill (NYT, reg. required, blah blah blah). Previously.
posted by dw on Apr 23, 2007 - 68 comments

Good news if you want another source of antioxidants in your diet.
posted by OverlappingElvis on Apr 22, 2007 - 29 comments

What's in your milk? Estradiol, testoerone, and growth hormones (IGF-1) IGF-1 is what Fox News doesn't want you to know is in your milk.
posted by bigmusic on Feb 20, 2007 - 65 comments

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
posted by jaronson on Jan 28, 2007 - 184 comments

Vegetarian is the New Prius : following a report from the UN indicating that the billions of livestock raised for meat are wreaking more havoc on the environment than fossil fuels, environmental activists are linking vegetarianism with fighting global warming.
posted by grapefruitmoon on Jan 19, 2007 - 102 comments

What does 200 calories look like? (via)
posted by Kwantsar on Jan 16, 2007 - 34 comments

A sampling of the range of medieval and 18th C. European diets from Michael de Leone's Ein Buch von Guter Speise and Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's Physiologie du goût (The Physiology of Taste).
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Dec 14, 2006 - 7 comments

Diet trials. Is it time to reconsider changing what we eat to prevent cancer?
posted by engling on Nov 28, 2006 - 26 comments

Julian Dibbell, the same journalist that lived off virtual cash for a year, gives Calorie Restriction a 9-week test drive and tells all about it in this long New York Mag piece. Sure preliminary evidence says you could lengthen your life by 50 years, but is 150 years of starving yourself worth it?
posted by mathowie on Oct 24, 2006 - 59 comments

An inquiry into living while walking the roads of America, Mexico, and beyond
posted by MetaMonkey on Aug 17, 2006 - 16 comments

The Monkey Chow Diaries. In the spirit of Seth Roberts' dietary self-experimentation, Angryman has decided that he's tired of cooking, scrubbing pots and pans, and wasting time in the checkout lines. Instead, he is looking for a constant diet of pelletized, nutritionally complete food: Monkey Chow [pdf]. [via]
posted by monju_bosatsu on Jun 6, 2006 - 48 comments

A recent diet book offers a new, easy, work free way to lose weight. Big surprise. However, the technique and the way it was "discovered" raise some interesting questions. Is it so simple and safe to play at "hacking" the body, and is a physician's self experimentation really entirely trustworthy?
posted by BrodieShadeTree on May 26, 2006 - 16 comments

Eat less, live more - maybe.
posted by daksya on Apr 21, 2006 - 14 comments

Ascaris lumbricoides. According to estimates, about 1.5 billion people--about a quarter of the earth's population--are hosts to the Ascaris lumbricoides parasitic worm. Ascaris worms can grow to be 18 inches in length, and use their host's windpipe and esophagus to migrate between the small intestine and the lungs. A single human host may support dozen of large worms, which can be contracted by contact with fecal matter, animals, or undercooked pork. Under some circumstances (the worms dislike anesthesia, for example) one or more worms may exit from the mouth (a horrifying image), or the anus (one of the most disgusting images I have ever seen, and not safe for work, obviously). Here, the removal of a worm is caught on video (Realplayer). Too disgusting to post? Almost. But 1.5 billion people have got these in their bodies right now. That's what's grosser than gross.
posted by washburn on Mar 4, 2006 - 96 comments

Science is better: An enormous scientific study has conclusively demonstrated that "diet had no effect" on rates of women getting cancer or heart disease. Because the study investigated the efficacy of overall low fat diets, rather than the more recently developed hypothesis that saturated fats are the only pernicious kind, some leading medical researchers accept these findings but still think there MAY be a direct link between certain diets and major health problems in women, but (and here's the money shot) "if they did a study like that and it was negative, then I'd have to give up my cherished hypotheses for data." Now that, my friends, is a heartwarming example of one of the pinnacles of human creativity, the scientific method, which is under so much attack these days. . .
posted by twsf on Feb 7, 2006 - 29 comments

Feeding Minds - the impact of food on mental health
posted by Gyan on Jan 15, 2006 - 24 comments

The Story of Wheat
posted by Gyan on Dec 27, 2005 - 24 comments

Diet and behavior.
posted by Gyan on Sep 30, 2005 - 30 comments

Are you HUNGRY or do you just crave the flavor? (my favorite is that Mustard is under the heading Exotic.)
posted by Phantast on Aug 17, 2005 - 29 comments

A Step Closer to In Vitro Meat Production
A group of scientists are proposing techniques in the Tissue Engineering journal (4pg .pdf) that may allow industrial production of meat sans animals. They have established a non-profit organization "to support the development of meat substitutes, with the long-term goal of delivering economically competitve alternatives to conventional meat production".
[New Scientist 2002 & /. discussion] [meat-mefi] [vegan-mefi]
posted by peacay on Jul 8, 2005 - 46 comments

The World's Healthiest Foods
posted by Gyan on Jun 24, 2005 - 21 comments

Scotlands diet was healthier in 1405 (within a lifetime of the Black Death) than today, according to archaeologists. Might we see the "Medieval diet" replace the "Mediterranean diet"? Some traditional food practitioners think so.
posted by stbalbach on Jun 5, 2005 - 40 comments

A recent study of 60 people with anorexia suggests that a biological mechanism may be a causative factor. It was found that there was a reduction in blood flow to a specific area in one of the temporal lobes in those with the eating disorder. The author of the study believes that sociocultural factors have been over emphasized. Not all agree. By way of contrast, another research group has just published findings which purport to show that "even small amounts of exposure to thin bodies can have a short-term negative effect on body image." And adult anorexia rates are said to be rising.
There's associated debate too, regarding the contributing role played by therapy that seeks to personify eating disorders. Flourishing underground online communities derive some thinspiration by referring to their 'lifestyle choices' as 'Ana' (for anorexia) and 'Mia' (for bulimia). Argentina is responding to the body image controversy by enacting a size law. previous mefi threads [via + via ]
posted by peacay on Jun 5, 2005 - 44 comments

The Guinness Diet Challenge.
posted by srboisvert on Jun 4, 2005 - 18 comments

Bread is dangerous Research on bread indicates that: More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users. More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread. Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat begged for bread after as little as two days. (More research inside)
posted by growabrain on Apr 19, 2005 - 34 comments

Chankonabe. If you've ever wondered how sumotori achieve their epic bulk, this article from Gastronomica details the complex preparation and serving rituals of the (perhaps not) delicious, protein-rich chunky soup that's the staple of their diet (with recipe helpfully included).
posted by melissa may on Mar 26, 2005 - 7 comments

Supersized in the NFL Analyzing data from the 2003-2004 season, researchers say "more than a quarter of NFL players had a body mass index that qualified them as class 2 obesity" -- equivalent to a 6-foot man weighing between 260 and 300 pounds. Even those players weren't the biggest ones: the study counted more than 60 players -- 3 percent -- with body mass indexes placing them into class 3 obesity, with individual weights approaching 400 pounds. "I don't know what's going on in the minds of coaches", said lead researcher Dr. Joyce Harp, an assistant professor of nutrition and medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Players' growing girth "is a major concern," said Dr. Arthur Roberts, a former NFL quarterback and retired heart surgeon (.pdf file) whose Living Heart Foundation works with the players' union to evaluate heart-related health risks faced by current and retired players. More inside.
posted by matteo on Mar 1, 2005 - 42 comments

NutritionData.com is a free and very useful website for detailed nutrition information, including the in-vogue Glycemic Index; their own Fullness Factor, a measure of how filling foods are per calorie; and others. Their Better Choices Diet makes use of the Fullness Factor to make consuming less energy than you use easier to do without going hungry. Previously mentioned in response to this AskMe question.
posted by callmejay on Jan 19, 2005 - 13 comments

The US Government pronounces the Food Pyramid dead. More information from the USDA. Hail the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005! The guidelines won't be released for a couple months yet, but some graphics on Food Groups, being On The Go and Physical Activity are being circulated as teasers.
posted by FlamingBore on Jan 13, 2005 - 18 comments

Want to lose weight, but don't want to exercise? How about quitting smoking? And, what about those other little nasty addictions? Well Rimonabant is the magic pill for you. It's so great that it can even cure your Doritos craving, commonly known as the munchies. It works by blocking the endocannabinoids/cannibas receptors in your brain. This latest and greatest cure-all even has it's own blog.
posted by Juicylicious on Dec 16, 2004 - 50 comments

Portion Distortion Quiz. Just in time for T-day, our helpful friends at NIH have updated last year's quiz with Portion Distortion II. Caution: pictures of food are bigger today than they were 20 years ago.
posted by grateful on Nov 24, 2004 - 29 comments

Lose WeightMoney Fast! If you click on this link, you'll go to an apparent sales site for "FatFoeTM Eggplant Extract" another 'miracle' weight loss aid. But click on the Order Now! link and you get a lecture from the FTC on how to avoid getting scammed by diet products that are too good to be true, all part of the US Federal agency's campaign against diet fraud.
posted by wendell on Nov 9, 2004 - 12 comments