Study suggests people’s beliefs about causes of obesity influence their eating habits, weight.
People’s views about what causes obesity may influence both their eating habits and their weight, new research shows.
The finding suggests that public health campaigns may need to factor that into the equation to be effective, the study authors noted.
To examine the issue, the researchers conducted a series of surveys across five countries on three continents. Published recently in the journal Psychological Science, the study found people in Korea, the United States and France all held similar beliefs that either poor diet or lack of exercise was the leading cause of obesity.
When most people talk about eating habits and diet, 9 times out of 10, they talk about what we should eat saying that such and such a food is good for you while another food is bad for you. But it’s not just what we eat that matters, it’s how we eat as well and I don’t just mean should you eat three meals a day, two meals a day or even six meals a day. It’s the actual eating habits that we have that can make a huge impact not only on what we eat but how that food affects us as well.
Registered dietician, Amy Watson has done a very nice article that answers the question, “Are you a mindful eater” and I’m just going to quote one thing from her where she says “Being a mindful eater can lead to better digestion. If your mind isn’t focused on the meal, your digestive process may be 30 to 40 percent less effective. This can contribute to issues such as gas, bloating, and bowel irregularities.”
It then goes on to show us how we can become more mindful eaters and improve both our digestion and our health. See the link below.
Here’s a fascinating little snippy bit of a story which suggests another use for your favorite probiotic drink. Apparently researchers from the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland have been looking at the way that Lactobacillus casei which is commonly found in the human mouth and gut and it should be added is one of the most common ingredient used in many probiotic drinks is affecting the way that cancer tumors grow.
According to their research L. casei as it’s often known could actually inhibit tumor growth. If this is found to be true it obviously opens up a huge range of possibilities of how these bacteria that are generally safe to humans can be used to treat tumors from the inside.
So far the researchers have grown the bacteria in small beads immersed in a growing solution and their understanding today is that the bacteria produced certain molecules that appeared to be toxic to cancer tumors. Wanting to test this further still, researchers then injected this encapsulated bacteria into the tumors of mice that had cancer and apparently the bacteria significantly inhibited the growth of the tumors within the mice.
Obviously if this research tends out to be of further merit then it holds great promise. Of course one of the best ways of diminishing your chances to develop cancer is to follow a low carb way of living. This has the advantage of diminishing the amount of sugar and other carbohydrates that you eat which are the food that cancers thrive on which like a good probiotic is food for thought.
Checking the ingredients on any packet of food is something that we should do just as a matter of course and when you’re looking through those ingredients and you start coming across things you don’t recognize, it’s probably time to put that particular food item back on the shelf.
Processed food by necessity, perhapsly without exception have to contain preservatives and the sad thing is that the cheaper the processed food is the more preservatives it will contain as a general rule. That is simply because not only are cheaper processed foods filled with cheaper ingredients, quite often the price of those ingredients also means that they’re inferior in quality quite a lot of the time.
That means if they are containing a lot of “meat” products you will quite likely find that those meat products were coming towards the end of their useful life when they were actually used to make the food that you’re eating and in order to make sure that those ingredients don’t turn off the manufacturers put just a little bit extra amount of preservatives in so that they’re not faced with an expensive recall situation.
Another reason why cheap processed foods have lots of preservatives in is to give them a longer shelf life. This makes sure that shops don’t find themselves with goods that have gone pass their sell-by date and maybe want to return or at the very least get credit from the manufacturers. At the very least it ensures the stores continue to order the same quantities rather than ordering smaller quantities just in case the goods don’t get sold before the sell-by date.
So what with the quality of the ingredients going into processed foods being inferior, the quantity of preservatives and other questionable ingredients they contain. Continuing to eat processed foods is possibly not the best course of action to take if you want to improve your health.
Below you’ll find a very good explanation of how to eat foods without preservatives.
If you are trying to avoid preservatives in your diet, it is essential to learn how to identify them. Food preservatives are commonly added to slow or prevent undesirable spoilage, discoloration, flavor loss, bacterial growth, mold or microbial growth, and texture loss. Follow the steps below to learn how to eat foods that do not contain preservatives.
Steps
Learn How to Read a Nutrition Label
Always scan the entire ingredient list. Preservatives will be listed with a statement about their intended purpose. For instance, the ingredient list may declare “ascorbic acid to improve color retention” or “sulfur dioxide to prevent rotting.”
Learn common preservative names. Although there are hundreds of food additives that function as preservatives, some of the most common appear in a wide variety of foods.
Once you learn to identify common preservatives you can quickly avoid selecting foods with those preservatives in the future.
Some of the most common preservatives include citric acid, sulfur dioxide, ascorbic acid, propionic acid, nitrates and nitrites, sodium bisulfite, sulfites, and even formaldehyde.
Shop for Foods Without Preservatives
Avoid heavily processed foods. Foods that spoil quickly or that are minimally packaged are unlikely to contain preservatives. Buy fresh, unprocessed produce and natural whole foods to reduce the time you spend reading ingredient lists.
Shop for foods labeled as Certified Organic. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration only allows foods to be labeled as Certified Organic if they are preservative-free and meet other standards for production and processing.
Make a note of preservative-free products you enjoy. After you have identified foods that are free of chemical preservatives, add them to a “cheat sheet” list to take shopping; this will spare you the trouble of re-reading the ingredient list on future grocery trips.
Tips
In the United States, approved chemical food preservatives must be declared on ingredient lists. By carefully reading food labels you can identify and avoid food preservatives.
If you do not live in the U.S., search for a government public health or agricultural website to learn your country’s policies on preservative use and declaration on ingredient lists.
If anyone doubts the correlation between the increased consumption in fast food and the steadily growing waistlines in both men and women would do well to have a quick peek at this rather informative article from Bloomberg. It shows a direct correlation between the influx of fast food chains into many countries around the world in the late 80s and the average weight gain and waist size increase that has been measured in these countries today.
Now while it may be unfair to lay the dietary ills of all these reason converts to fast food at the doors of the likes of McDonald’s and Pizza Hut and Dominoes and fill in the blank, it is certain that the changes in diet encouraged by the successful advertising of these companies has had an adverse effect on the eating habits of the countries that they have steadily been achieving a significant market share within.
When you have been going through the store and seen those tempting organic foods – often on a separate aisle… How many times have you thought “organic foods are too expensive; I can’t afford to go organic”?
Maybe you feel it is just too difficult to wade through all the statistics and information on choosing organic foods and the reasons for preferring it over conventionally grown foods.
So why should you bother even considering Organic produce?
Organic foods are good for you because they are free of many added chemicals and hormones that conventionally grown foods receive as part of the growth cycle. However, it can add up at the cash register to try and keep yourself healthier by eating organic foods. To help you make your decisions in an informed way, here are some simple tips to identify the best choices and stay within budget.
Steps
Understand why organic foods should be an important part of your diet. Organic foods are grown with no or fewer chemical or hormonal additives in their growth cycle than conventionally grown produce and meat. This means that laws on organic labeling in many places ban the use of a wide array of pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, hormone treatments, antibiotics etc. on any produce or meat destined to carry an organic certification.
Choose the crucial dozen organic foods. The dozen foods listed next are considered to be the foods most vulnerable to the addition of too many pesticides, growth hormones, antibiotics etc. This top dozen lists food items where home washing and cooking practices are unlikely to result in reduction of the chemical or hormonal residues:
Beef, chicken and pork
Dairy products: Milk, cheese and butter
Strawberries, raspberries and cherries
Bananas
Apples and pears
Tomatoes
Spinach and salad greens
Coffee
Potatoes
Stone fruits: Peaches, nectarines and apricots
Grapes
Celery
Peppers (capsicums), green and red
3. Shop for seasonal foods. Seasonally available produce is the budget-conscious shopper’s prize. Produce in season is always value for money because it is plentiful and this includes organic produce. In addition, seasonal food often travels less distance as it is grown locally and therefore will keep in better condition (more nutrients), for longer. From a comfort perspective, there is something very calming and traditional about eating the way our ancestors have for centuries; you become attuned to the cycle of the seasons. An added bonus: You are less inclined to overfill your fridge with food that ends up going unnoticed, which saves you money.
4. Eat to be satisfied rather then to excess. The statistics on obesity continue to rise. We do not need huge quantities of food; too much food makes our bodies sick rather than healthy and happy. While eating to satiety means eating less food overall, it most certainly does not mean going without and feeling hungry. Change to eating foods that are more satisfying to the body , such meats, fats and low carbohydrate vegetables You will not need to eat as much of these foods, as unlike processed foods, you will feel full faster and for longer. Your budget will go further simply through choosing prime quality organic foods in smaller amounts. Most importantly, eating in this fashion will result in less intake of chemical and hormonal residues and that can only be a good outcome for everyone.
5. Eat variety. Variety means including all those vegetables and not just living off a limited variety. The more that you vary your diet within seasonal constraints, there is a higher likelihood that you will have less exposure to a build-up of one type of chemical residues. Variety also means an interesting and fulfilling diet, as well as a greater likelihood that you will get all the nutrients, anti-oxidants and fiber that you need to keep healthy.
6. Be realistic. Most nutritionists would still prefer that you eat fruit and vegetables whether they are organic or conventional in origin in preference to highly processed foods. Use the list set out in step 2 to pick the organic foods and then purchase conventional foods for the remainder if you have a tight budget. Taking the simple step of choosing some organics to include in your diet is an important one of taking control over what is potentially affecting your health; whilst you will still be surrounded by the chemical load of our industrial age, you are taking positive action to help yourself and to encourage organic growers at the same time.
Tips
The “harm” discussed in this article that may arise from eating conventionally grown foods arises in particular out of the accumulative effects of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, hormones, antibiotics and other chemicals or additives. Over time, small doses build up in your body, particularly in body fat. This can lead to triggering diseases such as cancer and can cause problems with your immune system, blood and other bodily functions.
Always wash vegetables and fruit well; some stores sell special detergents for this. Just because it is labeled organic doesn’t mean it is safe to eat without a wash; bacteria thrive under all conditions.
Be aware that, depending on the jurisdiction in which your foods have been grown, small amounts of certain types of chemicals may have been used on organic produce. In general, if such chemicals have been certified as allowed for use in the organic sector, they ought to be ones considered to safe for human consumption as a result of scientific testing and observations over a very long period of time and to come with a high level of certainty as to their negligible impacts on human beings. If this bothers you still, do your research to find out just what “organic” labels permit in your part of the world. Some organic producers use natural products that they deem safe, but that have not been tested scientifically. Also organic producers may fertilize their crops with animal manures which have not been properly composted. These foods pose a risk for pathogens that can cause serious illness.
Try to reduce the amounts of processed foods in your diet. You get less nutritional benefits from processed foods, organic or not. *If you really enjoy that cake laden with carbs and sugar (yes it is very processed), have it as an occasional treat – if your particular diet method permits it. Then it becomes a blissful treat rather than something taken for granted.
Warnings
Be wary of industry propaganda aimed at belittling organic efforts. There are some seriously bad side effects from many of the chemicals and hormones used in our food and where profits are at stake, there is also plenty to discourage you from making healthy choices for you and your family. Do your own research; don’t just take this article as gospel either. You are responsible for learning as much as you can about your health and how to protect it.
Some jurisdictions may have more lax laws on what “organic” means. Always do your research first. Read labels carefully; some products try to be organic but contain very little in the way of organic components, such as breakfast cereals. The more processed an item, the more likely it is that you should read the label carefully.
Do not confuse organic and natural. The two terms are different, although they may be used on the same item. Natural by itself means nothing; in most places it is an entirely unregulated term that means nothing other than what the manufacturer wants it to mean.
Study suggests people’s beliefs about causes of obesity influence their eating habits, weight.
