Nutrition News

Original here. (Ellipted for space and relevance)
 


Researchers with the Unilever Food & Health Research Institute examined the effects of gas-filled liquid foods on the appetites of 24 overweight adults.

The study participants received a gas-filled liquid meal or a standard liquid shake, either as a single large serving (1,000 milliliters for the gas-filled liquid, 325 milliliters for the standard liquid), or as two half-servings given two hours apart. The total calorie count from the drinks was the same. Participants reported feelings of hunger and fullness for four hours after drinking the shakes.

The experiment showed that both the full- and half-size gas-filled liquids significantly reduced appetite ratings when compared to the standard liquid meals.

But one might wonder: Could a belly full of gas lead to a big bellyache? Researchers noted "increased reports of gastrointestinal complaints" among those who received the large gas-filled liquid meals.


Let’s break this down. There has been a lot of nutritional research that suggests that eating soup before a meal causes you to eat fewer total calories than if you just ate the meal itself or ate it with a big glass of water. I’m not familiar with the “adding air” experiments.

Unilever makes slim-fast, so that’s almost definitely the “liquid meal” in question. They have somehow turned it into a fizzy lifting drink, which sounds absolutely revolting because I hear “gas in liquid” and immediately think “soda,” but it turns out that the actual mechanism they used is closer to whipped cream. (According to Agence France Presse.) So that’s less gross, but I can’t quite picture it as a drink.  Apparently, soda doesn’t work because the gas isn’t stable enough (i.e. it won’t make you feel full because it’s gone by the time the drink hits your stomach).

Still, even if the whipped slim-fast isn’t completely foul, it’s going to give you a GI incident…which is just as gross. How many of those low appetite ratings actually meant “please don’t make me drink any more of this?”

My take? DIY and see how you feel. Buy a regular diet shake, pour half of it into a pint glass and hit it with an immersion blender. (or pour it into a regular blender, but I think that will take longer to form stable bubbles.)
If you feel befouled, don't do it again.

Blood and Guts

I try to give blood. It's on my list of things to do in my life. Maybe once a year or so, I think "that would be a nice thing to do, and it will be a nice way to conquer my fear of needles." I really do try. It just never works out.

I get very little support in this endeavor, by the way. Every time I bring it up to friends, they tell me horror stories about passing out. A few seem to have a pathological fear of blood. None of them seems to understand my need to donate my blood at least once in my life.

Every few months, there's a blood drive at work. And one of my friends donates regularly, so I decided to go down with him on Thursday. He advised me to eat and drink before I went. So I did. I was very good. I filled out the questionnaire, got my finger prick, lay down on the bed...Dave, my friend, was next to me, and let me tell you, the blood was just flying out of him.

Periodically, the guy who told you which bed to go to (who was wearing a purple shirt) would come by and look at the nurse by me, and eventually she came over. She clamped the band around my arm and had me squeeze a little toy. Then the guy in the purple shirt came over and tapped my arm and told her which vein to go for. It occurred to me at that point that maybe this girl was new or something, but she had a line in the woman next to me, so I figured it would be OK.

So, the stupid girl puts the needle in, and it really hurt. But I've never given blood before, and I'm kind of a baby about needles, so I'm trying to be brave...and then she runs over to the guy collecting Dave's blood and says "her vein is blowing up."
So he says "you have to take it out. Clamp it, tape it down, and I'll be right over."
Then she gets the guy in the purple shirt, and they're all working on getting the port out of my arm.
I was trying not to look, so I stayed facing Dave, who was COMPLETELY DONE by this point.
The girl bandaged my arm, and I asked her what happened.
So she turned to the man in the purple shirt and tells him that "she wants to know why this is happening."
And the man in the purple shirt explained it thusly: "Move over to the next bed and we'll try a vein in your other arm."

Umm...no. No you won't.

By this point, Dave was up drinking juice and eating cake like no one took a pint of blood out of him just ten minutes ago. We were back at our desks within an hour.


It's like Mardi Gras in my crelbow right now. And I'm starting to feel my dream of donating blood just floating (or is that flowing?) away.