Tag: nutrition

Jun10201710th Jun 201711th Jun 20170 Commentby Marika

WANT TO LIVE FOREVER? POP OVER TO ICELAND!

By Marika Sboros

The title is one of Queen’s greatest hits: Who wants to live forever. It’s the annual conference of the Icelandic Health Symposium (IHS) in Reykjavik in September 2017. It brings together global experts in health and longevity.

They will reveal what science says about lifestyle for health and lifespan. They will gives talks on how your genes control your fate. And they will show how your species can achieve longevity in a way that harmonises with nature.

That’s the path to a long, sustainable future for both humans and the planet. And what better place to learn about that than Iceland? It is, says Icelandic cardiologist Dr Axel Sigurdsson, home to some of the planet’s strongest, healthiest humans.

Oct0520165th Oct 20166th Oct 20160 Commentby Marika

Sugar barometer: how much sweetness are you eating?

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

The Sugar Barometer™ is a sweet idea whose time has come. It’s a labeling product that aims to change sugar consumption patterns in South Africa and globally

It’s the fruits of the Noakes Foundation’s education arm, the Eat Better SA campaign. The Barometer follows the debate around whether a sugar tax can realistically reduce obesity rates:

Oct0120161st Oct 20161st Oct 20162 Commentsby Marika

Science in crisis: not just sugar souring faith in experts

Posted in Uncategorised

It should be no surprise that there’s a global crisis in science. Scholars of history and philosophy of science predicted it 40 years ago. Yet it is surprising how many scientists are more interested in profit than universal truths.

Revelations that the sugar industry paid top Harvard scientists to downplay sugar’s harms for decades are but one example. US science writer Nina Teicholz, author of The Big Fat Surprise, makes a more important point in the LA Times: sugar only ‘got a pass’ while dietary fat and cholesterol were blamed for heart disease because other industries and, surprisingly, many of the country’s leading scientists colluded.

Here, Andrea Saltelli, a researcher at the European Centre for Governance in Complexity, sheds light on a growing lack of faith in experts, and how best to stem it. – Marika Sboros

Aug24201624th Aug 201625th Aug 20160 Commentby Marika

Calorie craziness: dishing up the real dirt on CICO!

Posted in Future of Food

What’s with our obsession with the calorie? Do we even really know what we are talking about when we fuss about calories? My favourite health blogger and ‘reluctant nutritionist’ Sammy Pepys dishes up the dirt on the CICO model – calories in, calories out. Here’s why calories can’t make you fat – even if they wanted to. And what you really need to fuss about. – Marika Sboros

By Sammy Pepys*

Have you been eating all those tasty calories again? Recent media headlines such as: Is it our fault if we eat too many calories? (an article in The Conversation) and Britons under-report calorie intake (on BBC TV show how the ‘C’ word dominates our thinking on diets, obesity and many other health matters. Let’s get some things straight about calories:

Jul31201631st Jul 201631st Jul 20167 Commentsby Marika

Why is microbiome so important? Gut instinct tells you

Posted in Living well

The ancient Greeks believed all disease begins and ends in the gut. South African Jessica le Roux is on board with that thinking. She is doing a masters degree in nutrition. A focus the role of the bugs in our bodies that promote health and are vital for proper physiological function.

In an introduction to a series on gut health, Le Roux says in our fervour to purify our environment of all microbial creatures, we are in danger of throwing the baby bugs out with the bath water. – Marika Sboros

By Jessica le Roux*

If your ear is anywhere close to the ground in the health world, you’ll have heard an unusual word. Some might say it seems more fitting of an Avatar homestead in a Spielberg movie than your general health news fodder.

But the research is showing it’s a word worth knowing about:

Jun17201617th Jun 201617th Jun 20161 Commentby Marika

Physician, heal thyself, learn nutrition!

Posted in Living well

Here’s a brilliant blog everyone should read – doctors, patients, perfectly healthy people. It’s why doctors need to be frogmarched back to school if necessary to learn nutrition. I’ve always been puzzled (shocked really) that doctors aren’t taught nutrition in medical school. That they don’t routinely ask patients what they are eating that is keeping them fat and sick. It’s as if the medical powers that be (who are wedded to the pharmaceutical model) don’t want doctors to know food can be the most powerful, safest medicine or slowest poison (as Lithuanian–American holistic health practitioner Ann Wigmore once said). My ancient forebear Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, must be gyrating in his grave at how doctors defer to dietitians – and both defer to food and drug industries. Below is a shortened version of the blog by British health journalist and author Jerome Burne. Scroll to the end for a link to the full version. – Marika Sboros

By Jerome Burne*

Here’s a really bad idea. Send a dozen nutritionists to work alongside regular doctors in a Medecins Sans Frontières team providing emergency treatment to the wounded in a war zone:

May11201611th May 201612th Jun 201711 Commentsby Marika

Low-carb works for diabetes – why don’t more doctors advise it?

Posted in Diabetes

By Marika Sboros

Diabetes treatment is quietly undergoing transformation.

Here’s food for thought: there is evidence to show that low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) diets work very well for people with type 2 diabetes. Growing evidence shows that LCHF diets can reverse the symptoms of diabetes completely. Many diabetics can also come off all medication altogether.

Yet many doctors, dietitians and government health services still won’t advise LCHF for diabetics.

Why ever not, you might well ask?

The writer of an article on diabetes.co.uk asks that question and suggests answers.

Apr25201625th Apr 201616th Jun 20163 Commentsby Marika

What’s really feeding fat phobia if it’s not science?

Posted in LCHF

FAT phobia is still rampant. Cardiologists and dietitians still routinely tell patients that saturated fat increases the risk of heart attack. That’s despite growing and compelling science to the contrary that is documented in The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz. If you haven’t read it, go out and get it. Fat phobia is based on the belief (it’s just that – a belief, unsupported by science) that fat in the diet equals fat in the arteries. That conventional nutrition ‘wisdom’ is the result of the so-called ‘diet-heart hypothesis’ in the 1970s, the brainchild of American scientist Dr Ancel Keys. Keys has a flock of loyal followers among doctors and dietitians who regularly dish up this belief without bothering to check if his own research backs it up. (It doesn’t. Teicholz explains why.) Here, a British sports scientist gets to the heart of why the diet-heart hypothesis doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny, and what’s REALLY behind fat phobia. – Marika Sboros

By Craig Scott, University of Hull

THE CONVERSATION – Government nutrition guidelines recommend a high carbohydrate diet regardless of

Apr15201615th Apr 201614th Jan 201712 Commentsby Marika

You need 5-a-day fruit and veg? No you don’t! – Zoë Harcombe

Posted in Living well

5-A-DAY fruit and veg servings – it’s a mantra doctors and dietitians repeat to patients as if it’s written in stone somewhere. They even say you can drink most of those servings, and that fruit and veg juices are instant boosts for your health. Yet 5-a-day has no science behind it whatsoever, says British obesity researcher Dr Zoë Harcombe. It’s a number plucked out of thin air, a memorable number, she says, the same as the digits on one hand. (Presumably, those who came up with it think that makes it easier for people to count servings?) The campaign is a different number-a-day across more than 25 countries, she says. Some say three, others four, five or more. Harcombe’s not saying you shouldn’t eat fruit and veg. Just don’t believe the magical health benefits doctors and dietitians promise you because there isn’t any science to show there will be. During my last visit to London, the British government told its citizens that fruit juice should no longer be part of 5-a-day servings – because of the high sugar content. Harcombe says’s she’ll only drink a toast to that advice when …