Archive for March, 2010

Fast food life is more about the way eating habits have shifted, and the way our culture tackles everyday life.

Fast Food

Fast food isn’t only about food, it is about time. This time food is not only bad for your health, but may harm your life in dramatic, but little noticed ways. The idea behind fast food is that time is valuable and if you can quickly order and finish a meal you can move on to more pressing projects.

What was created was a whole new way to keep an active population active. Think again, we are one of the most inactive generations. Exactly what has happened is to disseminate a system for inactivity. Hook line and sinker we buy into the notion that we need more time.

What we bought into is having a greasy fat belly and a membership in the husky club. Eating habits have shifted dramatically over the last few decades, making fast food a multi-billion dollar industry.

Fast Food Nation

Becoming a fast food nation has also seen us become an impatient people. Fast food is instant gratification 

Researchers at the Rotman School of Management have found that the mere exposure to fast food and related symbols can make people impatient, increasing preference for time saving products, and reducing willingness to save.

“Fast food represents a culture of time efficiency and instant gratification,” says Chen-Bo Zhong, who co-wrote the paper with colleague Sanford DeVoe to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science. “The problem is that the goal of saving time gets activated upon exposure to fast food regardless of whether time is a relevant factor in the context. For example, walking faster is time efficient when one is trying to make a meeting, but it’s a sign of impatience when one is going for a stroll in the park. We’re finding that the mere exposure to fast food is promoting a general sense of haste and impatience regardless of the context.”

Fast Food Restaurants

At first sight the fast food restaurants have the secret ingredients that we want high sugar and sodium for our modern day taste buds, low costs, and instant delivery of our order.

It is a symbol of something different from the restaurant industry on the whole.

Restaurants are hyped as a dinning experience, a place to have a time away from the hectic and into the sanguine. A dinning experience that is both food centered and costly. The patrons don’t want to be rushed, but want time to savor both the food and experience.

“Fast food is one of many technologies that allow us to save time,” says Sanford DeVoe, “But the ironic thing is that by constantly reminding us of time efficiency, these technologies can lead us to feel much more impatience. A fast food culture that extols saving time doesn’t just change the way we eat, but it can also fundamentally alter the way we experience our time. For example, leisure activities that are supposed to be relaxing can come to be experienced through the colored glasses of impatience.”

Summary

The fast food industry has overhauled the American culture. At the same time we as a nation put the emphasis on instant gratification, so it is conceivable that fast food is a consequence of our commitment to saving time. We have put the health and time with family on the back burner, for a perceived need established by both the culture and the fast food industry.

The fast food industry serves up unmatched poor quality food at a record pace.

Prostate cancer has a nutty solution, walnut consumption.

Prostate Cancer

With prostate cancer affecting one in six American men information of this nature is important. Diet is one of the environmental factors that play an important role. Diet either boosts your resistance to this, or is the connection to this condition.

Numerous clinical studies have shown that eating walnuts rich in omega 3 polyunsaturated fats, along with other antioxidants in plants decrease the risk for many diseases.

Walnuts

UC Davis and U.S. Department of Agriculture Western Regional Research Center in Albany, California have found that walnut consumption slows the growth of prostate cancer in mice. It also had beneficial effects on multiple genes that control tumor growth and metabolism. The study was done by Paul Davis, nutritionist in the Department of Nutrition and a researcher with the UC Davis Cancer Center. These findings were announced at the annual national meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco recently.

The study showed that when mice with prostate tumors consume an amount of walnuts that a man can easily eat the tumor growth is controlled.

Davis fed a diet with whole walnuts to mice that had been genetically programmed to get prostate cancer. After 18 weeks, they found that consuming the human equivalent of 2.4 ounces of walnuts per day resulted in significantly smaller, slower-growing prostate tumors compared to mice consuming the same diet with an equal amount of fat, but not from walnuts.

Ralph deVere White, UC Davis Cancer Center director and a prostate cancer researcher. “We have to find a way to get these kinds of studies on nutritional products funded so that we can truly evaluate their effects on cancer patients.”

Conclusion

We don’t need studies to improve the quality of our life we need performance. The powers of studies eclipse the simple solution eat healthy foods. State-of-the art studies on state-of-the art naturally growing substances offers no protection, unless we do something with the information. If we wait for trials to see if it is safe and effective to eat whole foods, we will be destined to remain unhealthy.

Weight loss from the sea points to the fact that there are boundless opportunities to find a way to shed those pounds. Novel ingredients in an American diet is anything that is either dyed, fortified, flavor enhanced, preservative loaded, and sweetened to the point of covering any natural taste.

What would really be novel is to use whole foods from land and sea to combat obesity.

Seaweed

Seaweed could hold the key to tackling obesity. New research has found it reduces fat uptake by more than 75 percent.

A team of scientists led by Dr Iain Brownlee and Prof Jeff Pearson have found that dietary fibre in one of the world’s largest commercially-used seaweed could reduce the amount of fat absorbed by the body by 75 per cent.

Kelp

Kelp is a sea plant that has been an addition to many peoples diets. It supplies much needed iodine to the diet. Iodine deficiency can slow down your metabolism.

The benefits of kelp is that it helps control appetite, and is a natural energy producer.

Besides the weight management ability it lowers cholesterol levels, helps with digestion and helps boost immunity,

A Newcastle University team found that alginate – a natural fibre found in sea kelp – stops the body from absorbing fat better than most anti-obesity treatments currently available over the counter.

A team of scientists led by Dr Iain Brownlee and Prof Jeff Pearson have found that dietary fiber in one of the world’s largest commercially-used seaweed could reduce the amount of fat absorbed by the body by around 75 per cent.

Healthy Eating

Now the team at Newcastle University are adding seaweed fibre to bread to see if they can develop foods that help you lose weight while you eat them.”The aim of this study was to put these products to the test and our initial findings are that alginates significantly reduce fat digestion,” explains Dr Brownlee.

“We have already added the alginate to bread and initial taste tests have been extremely encouraging. Now the next step to to carry out clinical trials to find out how effective they are when eaten as part of a normal diet.”

“This suggests that if we can add the natural fibre to products we commonly eaten daily – such as bread, biscuits and yogurt – up to three quarters of the fat contained in that meal could simply pass through the body.

 We seem to forget that the normal diet is anything but normal.

Creative solutions that take naturally occurring raw materials and package it into a chemical concoction are destined to make a profit. However, that is progress for an industry that capitalizes on the cultural shift, which is food is business.

Weight Loss Tips

Real food produces real weight loss, and protects your health from the chemicals, preservatives, coloring, and other ingredients in manufactured substances.

Food has symbiotic relationship with us that can’t be duplicated in the lab.

Real weight loss tips, comes from advice that touts the benefits of using natural sources of nutrients. Using kelp instead of salt, is one way to cut down on water retention, and keep your metabolism in high gear.

Wellness comes into play when you use a natural source for the essential nutrients. Kelp helps digestion, and helps the body cleanse itself of radiation.