SHR

According to the abstract of Freese et al’s latest study, “returning to our Paleolithic roots may have positive effects on risk factors commonly associated with metabolic disorders.” This conclusion is based on the data obtained from sending 13 healthy men and women into a National Park for 4 days and 3 nights. The goal was to return them to a “metaphorical paleolithic hunter-gatherer condition of living.” Accordingly, they lived and slept outdoors with no shelter. And just like all other hunter-gatherer tribes before them, water was available every morning from a nearby holiday apartment. Food was also provided to the participants, including a morning ration of fruit, nuts, and tubers alongside instructions not to eat before noon, and “paleo meals” supplied at night. At the end of the 4-day intervention, the participants showed significant reductions in fasting glucose (-18%), fasting insulin (-50%), and HOMA-IR (-58%; proxy for insulin resistance), as well...

Effective fat loss strategies are necessary for individuals with obesity and other conditions in which excessive fat tissue may pose a health risk. One commonly recommended strategy is to eat breakfast, and there has been a tremendous amount of research investigating the effects of eating various types of breakfasts on satiety, metabolism, and health. Yet, there has also been an increasing number of studies showing that breakfast is not king. For instance, in August of 2014, David Levitsky from Cornell University published an editorial where he rightly pointed out that breakfast is the most important meal of the day only if you are selling breakfast cereals. This editorial was spurred in part by research examining the effects of breakfast consumption or omission on all components of energy balance and health in lean men and women over the course of six weeks. The results of which showed that there are no metabolic...

I would never have guessed that chewing a piece of sugar-free gum after eating could boost diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT) and fat oxidation. I’m of course talking about the 25-50% increase in DIT observed in a small group of healthy men from Hamada et al’s latest study in the journal Obesity. These researchers recruited 12 healthy, normal-weight young men and had them complete four experimental trials in a randomized crossover design (figure 1). Each trial involved 20 minutes of baseline measurements (gas-exchange variables, splanchnic circulation, and blood samples), followed by consuming a test meal as rapidly or slowly as possible, and completed with 180 minutes of post-meal measurements. Additionally, for 15 minutes after finishing the test meal, 3 kcal of sugar-free gum was chewed or 3 kcal of sugar was consumed. Accordingly, the four trials were rapid-eating with gum (RG), rapid-eating without gum (RN), slow-eating with gum (SG), and slow-eating without gum...

It’s common knowledge that protein is the most satiating macronutrient, and there is bountiful research to support this conclusion. Yet, most all of this research has one major caveat: the content of two macronutrients is varied while the third is held constant. After all, you can’t change the protein content of a meal without changing its fat or carbohydrate content, at least not if you want calories to remain equal. The problem with this approach is that is prevents definitive conclusions about what caused what. Was it the increase in protein that reduced appetite, or was it the simultaneous reduction in carbohydrates or fats? We can of course make sound conclusions based on the literature as a whole, which is how we arrived at our current belief that protein is the most satiating macronutrient. But the keystone study that shows without a doubt that protein is king when you want to...

Consider all the paleontological research that gives us insight into the diets of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. When you combine this with research about the diets of contemporary hunter-gatherers, an ugly picture of inconsistencies begins to show that basically states each tribe had their own diet, both in terms of food selection and macronutrient distribution. Accordingly, it has become commonplace to state that there is no single paleo diet. Regardless, commonalities do exist. For instance, nearly three-fourths of the worldwide hunter-gatherer population derive over half of their subsistence from animal foods (hunted and fished), whereas only 13.5% of worldwide hunter-gatherers derived more than half of their subsistence from gathered plant foods. This led to estimated macronutrient intakes of 20-40 % protein, 20-40 % carbohydrates, and 25-50 % fat. Now what if I told you that these numbers and our current understanding of hunter-gatherer diets is bullshit. Because it is, and we now...