Monday 15 February 2010

A few bits from Intl Jnl Obesity


... which is my favourite journal ...

(a) A paper on "Effects of snack consumption for 8 weeks on energy intake and body weight" - showing that making people eat quite calorific snacks doesn't cause them to gain weight. (These were healthy non-obese young adults). In healthy people, the body compensates quite skilfully and automatically for what you eat or don't eat. It seems to me to be very likely that the converse follows: cutting out snacks doesn't make you lose weight. And snacks, really, are just food. Deliberately not eating doesn't make you lose weight.

(b) A weird one: "Development of diet-induced fatty liver disease in the aging mouse is suppressed by brief daily exposure to low-magnitude mechanical signals". If you feed mice a bad diet, you can reduce the liver disease it causes by vibrating them at 90Hz for 15 mins a day. Time for a trip to the disco?