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.

Really? There's no more concise way to say this?

Another close encounter...from the same, apparently authorless, document:


Facilities, physicians and other health care professionals are reminded that to pursue an inquiry or complaint on behalf of a member through Member Services, facilities, physicians and other health care professionals must have the consent of the member.

Close encounter with the English language

This sentence may have met a native speaker once at a party:

Participating physicians are required to participate in this program.

Post-operative procedures

Discovered while researching my latest scintillating Women's Health article:

To prevent infection, for a few weeks after the cesarean birth you should not place anything in your vagina.


But, but...the baby takes up so much closet space! Where am I supposed to store my tamagotchi?!?

An update on my glorious day

I went to the gym on my lunch break yesterday. Ran a few miles, showered, changed, went to get on an elevator...and the elevators are out.

The gym is on the 1st floor.

I work on the 15th floor.

The stairwells are not climate controlled.

I want combat pay.

Outpourings of crazy III

Each year, 250,000 Americans die from illnesses caused by lack exercise. By working out regularly you are less likely to become overweight or develop diabetes, osteoporosis and cancer. Opting not to exercise is as bad as the other controllable health risk factors such as smoking, high cholesterol or high blood pressure.

Moment of crazy number 1. I kind of agree that opting not to exercise is the same as opting to smoke, but the rest of the paragraph is just crazy. There is no such thing as an illness caused solely by lack of exercise, unless you count bed sores. Second, I haven't run the numbers to see if she's including cancer deaths, but if she is, that's just wrong. As in factually wrong. And finally, every "controllable" condition she mentioned has a significant hereditary risk factor. You can work to control them, but you can't say that you got them as "punishment" for not exercising.


As always, the only cure is text-yelling:

HERE'S A FEW WAYS TO FIRE UP YOUR WORKOUT!!!

• UP THE INTENSITY. Revving your usual pace will help you avoid hitting a plateau. Example: Run, jump rope or run the stairs at any given day.

Hint: you can't show an increase if you don't have a baseline.

More Work Madness

I know that's all I blog about anymore, but getting these crazy messages really incents me to write. Do you like that word? I don't. I don't even think it's a word, but I've seen it coming from my clients a lot lately.

I probably haven't told you about the bathroom soap madness because why would I? See, for whatever reason, Horizon has evolved this culture where people bring in hand soap and moisturizer for the entire floor. So behind every sink (each of which has a perfectly usable soap dispenser, by the by) you'll find at least one brought-from-home dispenser. Some floors, mine included, also have baskets full of soap and lotion and other restroom accoutrements. We have a dried flower display. The 14th floor has little pots of bamboo. That means that some woman on every floor takes it upon herself to buy soap for everyone on the floor - unreimbursed. I know for a fact that they're doing this on their own dime because the woman who buys the soap for our floor went to one of the executive assistants trying to get reimbursed, and after she got shot down the exec. asst. went around telling everyone how crazy it was...but seriously, she was not going to reimburse this woman for something the landlord already provides for free. I have no idea how this happened, but I find it fascinating. I have no idea what would drive someone to do something like this. Decorating your cubicle I get. Decorating the restroom? Notsomuch.

Obviously I'm talking about the ladies rooms here. I seriously doubt these goings on are going on in the mens rooms. I also think it's worth noting that no one has found it necessary to decorate the ladies locker room.

So, clearly, the woman who keeps buying soap for our floor is very emotionally invested in the bathroom soap. I don't know her name or her job, but I frequently encounter her in the ladies room futzing with the soap bottles. She straightens the bottles. She rearranges them on the counter. She takes inventory. Periodically, she finds that one is missing. Then she tacks very specific signs to the mirrors. Like so:

1. Please return the cucumber-melon soap. It is not yours.
2. Please do not throw out the empty soap bottles. Horizon does not provide them.
3. - Please stop taking the soaps. Horizon does not provide them. If you like them so much, they're $2 at Target. Go buy your own.
4. Will whomever "borrowed" the pomegranate soap please return it. Horizon
   does not provide the soaps and lotions.

Number 3 was my personal favorite. I seriously took extra trips to the ladies room that week just to read that sign. Also, the sign about not throwing out the empty bottles gets posted a lot. I guess she's refilling the bottles? I can't figure out why else she wouldn't want them thrown out.
Also, I don't think anyone is "borrowing" the soaps because, seriously, who cares. It seems more likely that the cleaning women see the empty bottles and throw them out because they are garbage.

EXCEPT...a day or two after sign 4 appeared (so, Thursday?) I was in the ladies room late in the day, and I saw this girl walk out of a stall CARRYING THE POMEGRANATE SOAP!!!!!

I know, right?

The root of the crazy

I have found the root of the crazy! (Maybe.) I'm writing an article on the DASH diet, and my research has turned up mountains of crazy I didn't know I had. First, I found a recipe for the weird lasagna with zucchini and carrots (eww) that Matt's stepfather made for Christmas. Then I hit the motherload.

Remember when I was complaining about the crazy gym lady who sends ridiculous comparisons of two foods that are nothing alike and then claims that you'll lose a ridiculous amount of weight by choosing the better option? Well, let's see what the NIH has to say:

To increase fruits?
● Eat a medium apple instead of four shortbread cookies. You’ll save 80 calories.
● Eat 1/4 cup of dried apricots instead of a 2-ounce bag of pork rinds. You’ll save 230 calories.

The rest of the suggestions are pretty normal. BUT, who thinks "ooh pork rinds...oh, no. I'll have some dried apricots instead. That's exactly the same thing." Honestly, I don't eat pork rinds, because eww, but I can't imagine that pork rinds and dried apricots would fill the same space in
your diet. Also, a medium apple is about 70 calories, so tip one is really telling me that two shortbread cookies = one apple? Why don't I just eat 2 shortbread cookies instead of 4?

An open letter to whoever is coming up with this nutritional nonsense:

Look. I get that you're trying to help people make healthier choices, but there are a few substitutions that people just will not make. I don't care how many times you tell me that when I want potato chips I should eat celery instead. I'm not buying it. And I LIKE celery.

But it is not and never will be anything like a potato chip. They don't have the same heft. They're different types of crunchy. And, most importantly, they occupy different social spaces. Please make healthy choices more accessible by making less ridiculous suggestions. If you want me to stop mindlessly munching chips, find me something better that I can munch mindlessly - like popcorn. If you want me to make a better appetizer choice, maybe we need to get the dips involved because a plain piece of celery will never have the allure of a plain chip.

Don't think I don't know where this is coming from.

You're looking at a big chart and trying to come up with the combination that gives you the biggest calorie savings, but it's not going to work because really people who are eating don't think like that. Then they read your stupid story and think "oh no, I'll never be healthy because I can't
make that kind of change..." Also, there are crazy trainers out there who multiply the calorie savings by 365 and calculate the weight you would use and I think we all know that's ridiculous.

So please, try to remember when you actually ate like a human and come up with an appealing substitution. You won't get the high score, but you will make good nutrition a little more attainable, and, really, isn't that what you really want?

Thank you.
The management