The Effects of Fructose

Fructose remains highly controversial because previous studies claimed liver disease was not caused by fructose, but by higher caloric intake. This study sets out prove that all calories are NOT created equal.

Check out this article! http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130619164437.htm

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Debate!: Childhood Allergies

Bailey Jane and Piper Jaimes in their favorite spot: the kitchen.

My gal pal, Bailey and her partner in crime and cuteness Piper, have this great blog called Foodie Patoodie!  (love the use of exclamation points in titles, by the way) where she actually got some heat for giving her 10+ month old baby a PB&J for the first time. This, coupled with my obnoxious obsession with teaching people, made me realize how misinformed... and slightly paranoid... a lot of people are. So, I blog. Hey, any excuse to update this thing, right?

First off: I am not denying that childhood allergies exist. I AM saying that they aren't as prevalent as you would think and a lot of contributing factors to the ones that do have allergies. Now on to the studies!

Some info on Allergies:

While it is true that approximately one in five Americans have allergies, only about 2.5% of Americans have food related allergies. Allergies are your immune systems abnormal response to a harmless substance (like a flower) causing varying reactions from sneezes to rashes.

When a person is exposed to an allergen, a few things happen. First, the body produces antibodies. The antibodies produced attempt to contain the allergen. Then through a serious of really complicated chemical reactions, you get histamines in your blood and you react. WebMD does a great job of explaining the really scientific jargon, but you know me... I don't wanna scare you off that fast!

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The Easiest Way to Burn Fat!

... is apparently to do nothing.

In a recent study, mice that were given high fat diets but kept pretty sedentary were less likely to become obese than their very active, also over fed counterparts. Here is a quote from Nerdy Science Blog explaining:

In order to maintain body temperature, warm-blooded animals, including humans, continuously burn fat. It is believed that by burning more fats, people are less likely to become obese. Leslie Kozak and colleagues at Pennington Biomedical Research Center challenged this prevailing thought showing that burning less fat actually reduces the risk of obesity.

There is a lot more to this, including certain genes involved, but this is the gist: if you stay cool (i.e. don't move around) your body works hard to keep it's temperature up, thus, burning more fat. Sounds easy to me... now whether this actually works... we'll see. You can find out more at The Journal for Biological Chemistry.


Photo is Public Domain and can be found here.

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