Janet Chrzans work falls at the intersection of nutrition and anthropology. Im interested in how our social worlds channel food choices that contribute to health outcomes, says Chrzan, an adjunct assistant professor in Penns School of Nursing and in the Department of Anthropology in the School of Arts & Sciences.

In the past, shes studied and written about subjects including organic farming and alcohol consumption. Recently, she published a book about fad diets with colleague and psychology professor Kima Cargill from the University of Washington, Tacoma. These diets arent really about the food, Chrzan says. Theyre about identity, status, control, and transformation. They have power because we believe they will fulfill our desires for self-improvement.

Following is an excerpt from that book, Anxious Eaters: Why We Fall for Fad Diets, published in August 2022 by Columbia University Press.

Youve heard of them and may have one or more friends on them; maybe youre on one yourself. With these diets, you sharply limit certain foods because you want to lose weight, avoid illness, reset your body, eat a biologically ideal diet for our species, or live your best life. They come and go, gaining and losing popularity in a somewhat predictable social cycle and changing namesif not practicesas new advocates rediscover and capitalize on their re-creation of the new-old craze. One decade might abjure fats, the next lives in fear of carbohydrates.

Cookbooks pop up in quick and easy abundance to offer simple, family-friendly recipes that supposedly eliminate the forbidden food category (these same cookbooks will populate the shelves of charity thrift stores in a few years). Celebrities and health gurus endorse the diet, and it becomes the only way to demonstrate how much you value health and well-being to your friends, family, and Instagram followers.

These are the diets that define fad diets: they promise easy solutions and rapid fat loss only if you remove an entire category of food from your diet. Why is this particular type of fad diet so appealing?

Food removal diets are often branded and ask the dieter to spend money on special foods, membership in an organization, or the services of a professional nutritionist, personal trainer, or coach. Paradoxically, these food removal diets often wind up adding foods, albeit special ones intended to replace the foods that are supposed to be removed.

These diets appeal to a uniquely American practice of shopping to solve problems, following a widely held belief that consumption solves, rather than creates, problems. It is the commodification of inadequacythe ways in which brands and the consumer marketplace remind you of all the ways you could be better. We suspect that buying things to solve problems creates a sense of agency among dieters: Purchasing special foods makes them feel more efficacious than if they just ate a little bit less all the time.

Shopping, spending, and eating are all part of a faith in consumption that influences our culture, but our attempts to solve the problem of being overweight through more consumption mistakes the disease for its cure, perpetuating a confusing pursuit of good health in a world of consumer goods. Even one of the oldest and most successful diets, Weight Watchers, relied on membership subscriptions well before its branded foods and online services developed.

In the 1960s a woman named Jean Nidetch, after losing significant weight herself, had the idea to create a support group with attendance fees for people who wanted to lose weight (what became Weight Watchers). Scoffers said, Oh please. No ones going to pay money to lose weight. Weight Watchers proved them wrong.

Chrzan has enjoyed hundreds of conversations with people on fad diets, and most of those diets eliminate one or more foods rather than decrease the amount of food eaten. People say they adopt the diets to decrease caloric intake, reset metabolism, restore health, or simply lose weight quickly. These diets are so popular that eliminating a food type may be the archetypal diet in the minds of Americans, rather than, for instance, eating less or less frequently or replacing high-calorie foods like fatty snacks with low-calorie options like fresh fruit.

It is even possible that the concept of food reduction has come to mean reduction of a food group (or macronutrient) rather than reduction of the overall amount of food. Two examples stand out as typical and interesting because the people involved were self-aware and conflicted about the dietsAtkins and Whole30and their efficacy. The former diet eliminates most carbohydrates, and the latter eliminates most carbs and many fats, gluten, all sugars, and alcohol, promising a fast health reset. Both tout their capacity to cause rapid weight loss.

Once when Chrzan was at a pet store, the clerk recommended an all-protein, no-carbohydrate food as the best option for cats: This food has no carbs, which is good. We shouldnt be eating any carbs, and neither should our cats. They are very bad for us. Janet responded that while cats were obligate carnivores and didnt require large amounts of carbohydrates, humans were omnivores and absolutely needed to eat a balanced diet with differing forms of carbohydrates. The clerk asked why everyone knows that carbs are bad if they arent, and then asked what Chrzan meant by different kinds of carbs.

A few minutes later, after discussing simple and complex carbohydrate biochemistry, the clerk said his girlfriend was often on a diet and that most required cutting out carbs. She did Atkins for a while, and now shes on and off Whole30. He admitted that it made dinner much less enjoyable: You know, I do like my pasta and the occasional pizza, and if she cant share with me, its not a real meal. And then he said that she never seemed to lose weight on the diets, that shed take it off, and then as soon as she stopped the dietor went to a new onethe weight would all come back, plus more. Shed look for the next diet, one that was even more restrictive, something that was sure to work because it made sure she couldnt eat all the bad foods.

Chrzan then talked about how the body physically compensates with weight gain after experiencing a starvation episode and why and how avoiding carbs causes rapid weight lossand rapid weight gain after. The clerk eventually agreed that what works for a carnivore probably doesnt work for a species that evolved from fruit-eating primates.

The second example is from a conversation with friends who were anticipating doing the Whole30 as part of a sober January, to clean the body and lose the holiday weight. They explained that they always went on Whole30 in January, to get rid of the toxins from the holiday excess. But, they said, Its really hard, because we get together with friends every week for dinner and so its difficult to have a shared meal. Sometimes were all on Whole30 and so we can agree on the food, but we really enjoy having a glass of wine; we dont get drunk or anything, just its nice to have a relaxing evening. And the food, well, that gets boring too, doesnt it? I mean, there are lots of recipes out there for Whole30 meals, but its just missing something after a while, isnt it?

Chrzan asked why they adopted Whole30 if it wasnt pleasant, and the response was Well, its the best way to lose it, isnt it? You just avoid all the bad foods, and it gets rid of the inflammation and the toxins from the body. But the food is really hard to keep doing; you really start to miss having a pasta dinner or some good sourdough bread. But the diets really good for you, so we do it for a month to get rid of the Christmas weight.

She asked if they lost weight on the diet, and they told her they werent sure they did, but thats not all its about; its about resetting the body, getting a good clean start to the year, getting rid of all the toxinsoh, but then in February we sometimes eat and drink enough to make up for January! Planning a month of sobriety and conscientious eating is a good ideamany cultures embrace fasting to encourage health, reflection, and renewalbut this example demonstrates that embracing a diet that makes socializing difficult could be counterproductive.

Several themes stand out from these conversations.

One is that the diets might not work and may also cause compensatory behavioral overindulgence leading to weight gain. Two, they are difficult because people miss certain foods. Three, they are difficult because they disrupt valued personal and social habits. Four, they make socializing difficult or more complicated because people cant share food easily. And five, they are perceived to be difficult by their users and are unpleasant as an everyday food regime.

They disrupt commensality and food habits enough that maintaining the diet becomes complicated and difficult. Furthermore, people justify their use with a variety of reasons that might not be accurate, because removal of toxins or a perceived decrease in inflammation isnt necessarily something the diets accomplish.

We are left with the question of why people do them if they are difficult and unpleasant, and after many conversations, Chrzan suspects that people justify their adoption because they are unpleasant and difficult. Indeed, she has come to suspect that the difficulty is linked to a mental perception of efficacy and that sacrifices might equate with a magical thinking that such great unpleasantness will produce correspondingly profound wished-for outcomes. Like Benjamin Rushs adoption of heroic medicine, because the cure is so extreme, shocking, and painful, it has to result in a similarly robust positive outcome.

These diets arent really about the food. Theyre about identity, status, control, and transformation.Penn nutritional anthropologist Janet Chrzan

Kima once worked with a couple who fell on and off the diet and exercise wagon with regularity. When they were on, the regimen teetered on masochism. They drank no alcohol and ate only poached chicken breasts, steamed broccoli, and other bland foods that they perceived as healthy. They paid hundreds of dollars per month to a boutique gym with a personal trainer and took boot camp classes whose routines sounded byzantine. They described running through tires, climbing a rope to ring a bell, coming down a zip line, and then doing a lot of jumping jacks and crunches. Because they werent used to eating or exercising this way, the diet resulted in boredom and noncompliance within a couple of weeks, and the exercise program resulted in injuries, soreness, and exhaustion within a month.

Once they fell off the wagon, they ate most of their food from fast food chains, drank both cocktails and wine nightly, and stopped exercising completely. Of course, the weight came back quickly, along with a crushing sense of defeat. What was striking was the difficulty they had achieving something in between these two polarities. Kima could never convince them to go on a daily walk in their neighborhood or enjoy a simple, tasty dinner of chili and one or two beers. They dismissed this middle ground because it wouldnt be efficacious enough, and instead repeatedly opted for episodes of an extreme but unsustainable lifestyle that mirrored what they saw on blogs and social media feeds.

We have heard, again and again, that people simply cant continue on fad diets, that they fail because they are abandoned. Something just doesnt seem right with their meals, and theyre hard to maintain for a long time. That might be why so many of the carb-reduction diets tout a 14- or 30-day plan and then allow users to gradually increase carbohydrates.

But we also suspect that they fail because they interfere with the concept of the meal and with commensality, two deeply embedded cultural practices that define eating for many people. After all, people eat meals (not single foods) even though they often write and think about food as some type of nutrient package, or with some other individualized classification system that separates food from the everyday lived practice of eating. Leaving out a macronutrient may become difficult over time because our brains, cultures, and dining expectations tell us that our meal must include carbohydrates or fat to be conceptually complete.

Our cultures train us to eat a certain way, and if we do not, we feel that something is vaguely wrong. Similarly, most of us also value eating together, and our preferred mental image of how to eat involves food sharing. After all, we valorize the family meal, and people treasure eating out with friends. Many of our cultural rituals require celebrating together over a table groaning with special foods.

The idea of eating together is baked into our understanding of how to feed ourselves, and so adopting a diet that makes it difficult to enjoy a meal with the people we care about makes that diet much less attractive over time. We suspect that these two cultural constructsthe structure of the meal and eating togethermake the practice of these diets difficult and likely to be abandoned.

Janet Chrzan is an adjunct assistant professor in Penns School of Nursing and in the Department of Anthropology in the School of Arts & Sciences. Kima Cargill is a professor in the Social, Behavioral, and Human Sciences division of the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Tacoma. The text above was excerpted from their book Anxious Eaters: Why We Fall for Fad Diets 2022 Columbia University Press. Used by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.

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The allure of fad diets, and why they fail | Penn Today - Penn Today

Losing weight is no easy featbut keeping it off? That's even harder. If you want to maintain a lean body for life, experts say the most important thing is adopting smart, sustainable eating habits.

"What helps you lose and maintain weight are the habits that you incorporate into your daily life and that you follow consistently," explains Blanca Garcia, RDN, who is a nutrition specialist at Health Canal. "Overly restrictive habits give you quick results. However, the problem with this approach is that once your reach your weight goal, you return to your old eating habits and gain that weight right back. Then you jump back on the restrictive diet and start the cycle all over again."

In other words, there's no reason to deny yourself the foods you enjoyin fact, consistently doing so may just make you more likely to binge on them later on. Instead, dietitians advise adopting the following habits to keep that lean physique without all the yo-yo dieting.

Most Americans do not have enough fiber in their diet, according to Juliana Tamayo, MS, RD, LDN, who is a clinical dietitian at FitnessClone.

"Fiber comes in many forms, from vegetables and fruits to legumes and whole grains," says Tamayo. "Fiber can not only help your gastrointestinal tract stay healthy and regular, but it can also boost immunity and help remove cholesterol from your body. Because most fad diets eliminate carbs, they also remove fiber, which can cause problems including constipation, indigestion, fatigue, deficiencies in certain vitamins, and even poor immunity."

While fiber has a lot of important health benefits, Tamayo notes that it's helpful for weight loss because it keeps you feeling full for longer, thereby preventing overeating. Aim to consume at least 2125 grams of fiber daily if you're a woman and 3038 grams if you're a man.

Here are just a few high-fiber foods to consider adding to your diet:

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"Volume eating is a fascinating and relatively new concept to eating a balanced, nutrient-dense, low-calorie diet pattern without sacrificing hunger," explains Trista Best, a registered dietitian at Balance One Supplements.

This approach centers around eating large volumes of foods that are low in calorie density. As a result, you can avoid those hunger pangs that often come with dieting.

"I've been following this diet pattern for a year and have found great success in weight loss and feelings of overall improved well-being," adds Best. "My personal experience aside, volume eating can cause weight loss due to increased satiety from meals and lower calorie intake overall."

Remember, with volume eating, calories do not need to be counted.

"You'll simply want to eat according to your true hunger and stop eating when you've reached fullness," adds Best.

To follow this approach, try prioritizing low-calorie, high-fiber foods like vegetables, beans, and legumes, at every meal. You can also try swapping high-fat protein sources for alternatives that are lower in fat.

"Protein is essential for maintaining muscle mass, and it's also more filling than other macronutrients," says Krutika Nanavati, NSNZ, a sports dietitian and registered nutritionist with ClinicSpots.

That's why Nanavati recommends incorporating lean protein at every meal.

Here are a few examples to get you started:

When snacking straight out of the bag, it's all too easy to overindulgeeven with healthy foods.

For this reason, Nanavati suggests starting to pay more attention to portion sizes. When packing snacks for work or even to enjoy at home, you may want to pre-portion them out into Ziploc bags or Tupperware, so you don't feel tempted to go overboard.

When it comes to calorie-dense foods like nuts and seeds, nut and seed butters, dried fruit, and cheese, it can be helpful to bust out the measuring cups and spoons. The idea is just to get used to seeing what one serving size looks like, so that eventually you won't have to measure them anymore but instead be able to visually tell what one portion really is.

In addition to helping you lose weight and keep it off, one of the best things you can do to support your overall health is to ditch processed foods and replace them with more nutritious alternatives.

"Processed foods are often high in unhealthy fats and calories, and they can sabotage your weight-loss efforts," says Nanavati. "Stick to whole, unprocessed foods as much as possible."

Here are some examples of some simple swaps that can help you achieveand maintaina lean body:

There's no reason to fear fat when you're trying to maintain a lean bodyit adds to the satiety of your meals, just like protein and fiber do. That said, not all fat sources are created equal.6254a4d1642c605c54bf1cab17d50f1e

Ideally, Nanavati says you'll want to stick with just the hearty-healthy fatsmonounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids. Whereas artery-clogging saturated fat is found in many animal products like bacon, steak, and cheese, unsaturated fats tend to be found in plant-based foods like nuts, seeds, avocados, and olive oil.

Since veggies are low in calories and high in fiber, they're an excellent choice whether you're trying to lose or maintain your weight. So, make it a point to pile them on for at least two meals a day.

"Aim for half a plate of vegetables at lunch and dinner," advises Eva De Angelis, a dietitian nutritionist and health and nutrition writer at Health Canal.

De Angelis suggests incorporating a wide variety of vegetables in both raw and cooked forms in order to get the most diverse range of nutrients. For example, you might have raw carrot and bell pepper sticks with lunch, and then steamed spinach or roasted asparagus at dinner. And while you may not think to eat your veggies at breakfast time, remember that it's easy to sneak some mushrooms or tomatoes into an omelet or some kale and carrots into a fruit smoothie.

The ideal foods for keeping your body lean are high in protein and fiber and low in fatand a food type that definitely fits this bill is pulses. These are edible, dried seeds that come from plants in the legume family and include beans, lentils, chickpeas, and peas.

"A good idea is to add pulses to a salad, or curries, or make some homemade dips," says De Angelis. "If you're not used to eating pulses, start slow, and aim to include them into one or two meals per week. From there, gradually increase your intake. If you tolerate a high-fiber intake well, you can eat them every day."

There are endless ways to integrate pulses into your meals. Try adding some black beans to your morning scramble, mixing chickpeas into your tuna salad at lunch, or tossing some lentils onto your salad at dinner.

Read more:
Want a Lean Body for Good? Adopt These 8 Eating Habits - Eat This, Not That

What if plant-based food was the norm in massive cities like London, Beijing, and Los Angeles? The organizers behind the Plant Based Treaty (PBT) say the world would be in much better shape in many ways such as animal welfare, human health, and, importantly, mitigating the climate crisis by transitioning the global food system away from environmentally damaging animal agriculture.

This week, the Los Angeles City Council took the first step toward this reality by unanimously voting to adopt the PBTa doctrine that lays out a transition to a more sustainable, plant-based food system. LA Councilmember Paul Koretz introduced the resolution with Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson on September 6 and this weeks vote is a major step forward for the city and the world at large.

LA is historically known to lead the nation in environmental trends, Jane Velez-Mitchell, UnChainedTV founder and veteran journalist, said in a statement. What happens in LA spreads to the rest of the world.

If the city councils vote is concurred by Mayor Eric Garcetti, LAwhich has a population of nearly 4 millionwill become the largest city in the world to sign the PBT.

The PBT is based on three principles: Relinquish (freeze expansion of animal agriculture to halt environmental destruction); Redirect (shift toward a plant-based food system); and Restore (rewild natural habitats to restore balance).

Co-created by activist Anita Krajnc, the PBT is modeled after the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and is meant to accompany the Paris Agreement as a roadmap to make meaningful progress toward mitigating the climate crisis.

California is a major dairy-producing state with 1,400 dairy farms and approximately 1.7 million cows. Should a city the size of LA implement the tenets of the PBT, the environmental implications would be vast and set a global precedent.

Earths clock is at 100 seconds to midnight, Ren Rowland, chair of animal protection group PawPAC, said in a statement. The impacts of climate change are upon us, and we are already experiencing its devastating effects. The importance of every locality joining to reverse this crisis cannot be stressed enough.

The LA City Council vote comes ahead of the C40 World Mayors Summit, which will take place from October 19 to 21 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. There, mayors from the worlds largest cities will gather to discuss climate mitigation strategies.

Earlier this week, an open letter signed by 200 groupsincluding PBT, Compassion in World Farming, Humane Society International, and Pro Veg Internationalwas sent to the 100 Mayors participating in the C40 summit demanding accelerated action when it comes to plant-based food solutions to the climate crisis.

With the renewable energy transition now underway in most major cities, reducing overreliance on animal-sourced food is the next frontier in tackling climate change, Allie Molinaro, Campaigns Manager, Compassion in World Farming, said in a statement. If C40 leaders are serious about upholding the Paris Agreement, they must turn their attention toward transitioning to a plant-based food system.

The 200-group coalition specifically called upon the C40 Mayors to immediately implement best practices on plant-based food solutions to the climate emergency; sign and take concrete steps to implement the Good Food Cities Declaration, which includes a commitment support a shift toward sustainable, plant-based diets; and endorse the PBT as a critical part of climate crisis mitigation strategies.

LA follows Buenos Aires as the second C40 City to support the PBT and Koretz urges others to follow. This landmark resolution marks a vital cultural shift as Americans prioritize both combating climate change and improving their health, Koretz said in a statement. As over 2,200 municipalities did with climate emergency declarations, I invite other cities to join us and endorse the Plant Based Treaty.

Anna Starostinetskaya is the Senior News Editor at VegNews and is always keeping an eye on all things vegan in her home city of San Francisco, CA and everywhere else.

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Los Angeles Just Became the Largest US City to Join the Plant Based Treaty - VegNews

One of the most popular diet/exercise combos in the fitness community might do more harm than good, according to a new study. Particularly popular among weightlifters, its called bulk and cut dieting, and its goal is to get you jacked. The two-part regime involves eating a whole lot of food during phase one to bulk up, and then drastically reducing calories during phase two to cut excess fat while maintaining muscle mass. In other words, bulking and cutting means getting big, then paring down so youre just muscle. But bulking and cutting can be dangerous for your health.

The bulk and cut diet is common among young adults nearly half of men and one in five women and transgender individuals aged 16 to 30 reported having engaged in it in the past year, according to a new study. That study, published in the journal Eating and Weight Disorders - Studies on Anorexia, Bulimia and Obesity, shows that bulking and cutting is also linked to disordered eating.

Any engagement in bulk and cut dieting in the past year was linked to a greater risk of eating disorder and muscle dysmorphia, or an obsessive concern with muscularity and leanness, says lead author Kyle Ganson, Ph.D., an expert in eating disorders among boys and men and an assistant professor of social work at the University of Toronto.

For the study, researchers collected data from 2,762 Canadian participants between the ages of 16 and 30. The researchers asked them in an online survey, among other questions, whether they had engaged in bulk and cut dieting, and if so, how often in the past year. The researchers defined bulking and cutting as a period of caloric overconsumption and caloric underconsumption.

Gansons team found that the cisgender men and women who engaged in bulking and cutting were more likely to have an eating disorder than those who didnt bulk and cut. The transgender participants who followed the diet were not more likely to have an eating disorder than the trans people who didnt, and its unclear why. Ganson says not that everyone who engages in bulking and cutting will have an eating disorder, but engaging in the diet is likely an indication of often unattainable body image goals.

Bulking and cutting is not necessarily unhealthy in and of itself. But it may be a warning sign that a person is at greater risk of disordered eating. And some trainers advise against bulking and cutting, which seems to be more about looking muscular than actually enhancing athletic performance.

One athletic coach told BBC, for example, that he never recommends the diet because, for his players, across the board this has been seen to have detrimental effects on athletic output. When a large amount of body weight is cut through drastic intervention, the effects on performance are very clear. Aerobic endurance, maximal oxygen uptake, and muscular strength generally fall after rapid body weight reduction, but can be increased with gradual weight loss.

And there may be other negative effects on physical health. The idea of bulking, or eating a ton of calories to get big, means youre more likely to store fat because theres no guarantee that youll lose all the fat you gained once you enter the cutting phase. Thats an issue because deposits of unhealthy fat can increase your risk of type 2 diabetes.

Not to mention that the cutting portion of the diet means that, in some cases, you may not be getting enough calories, which can actually slow down your metabolism by putting your body into survival mode. Low-calorie dieting involved in cutting also increases production of the stress hormone cortisol and decreases testosterone production. And theres no guarantee that people who engage in bulking and cutting are eating healthy, nutritious foods while doing so.

Ganson contends that social media plays a huge role in facilitating these sometimes problematic diet and exercise behaviors. A number of influencers and trainers on social media drive their followers to try bulking and cutting, often without ever consulting trained professionals. Algorithms feed this need. If a young person is interested in gaining muscle mass, their feed is going to show them this narrative, he says.

Parents have to be wary of engaging in these types of diets because their children are likely to mimic them, says Ganson. Parents who are constantly commenting on body image, whether its their own or that of others, can have an outsized impact on whether their children engage in these behaviors. If dad is constantly weight training and engaged in rigorous dietary restrictions, a teenage boy may pick this up, he says.

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Migraine headaches can be painful and difficult to manage.

The specific symptoms and timing are different for each person affected.

Experts are still working to understand why migraine headaches happen and what preventative steps people can take.

A recent study published in Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain reports that dietary intake of the B vitamin thiamine may help prevent migraine in some people.

Experts say the information gained from this research indicates a protective factor that may help improve outcomes for people who experience migraine.

Migraine is a neurologic condition that causes severe headaches that are typically localized to one area of the head.

The pain can be intense and people sometimes can experience other symptoms such as nausea or vomiting. Migraine headaches can be related to specific triggers, such as stress or hormonal changes.

Diet is one area that can affect migraine headaches. However, the specifics are something that experts are still working to understand. Specific food triggers or preventative measures can be different for each person.

Dr. Clifford Segil, DO, a neurologist at Providence Saint Johns Health Center in California, noted a few examples of this to Medical News Today:

Dietary triggers are common for migraine. Wines, cheeses, and caffeine can trigger a migraine headache. I ask patients on their first visit with me to keep a headache journal to see if there are any medications that trigger headaches. Caffeine can both cause and help headaches, so it is hard to generalize if something like this causes or helps headaches.

People who experience migraine may work with their doctors and other specialists to identify headache triggers.

As more data emerges about the relationship between diet and migraine headaches, clinical recommendations for treatment may continue to change.

Researchers in the new particular study examined the association between two B vitamins, thiamine (vitamin B1) and riboflavin (vitamin B2), and the experience of severe headaches or migraine.

Researchers looked at data from participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 1999-2004 in their cross-sectional study.

Researchers included more than 13,000 participants in their analysis. Of these participants, 2,745 had experienced either a severe headache or migraine within the past three months. The researchers studied the 24-hour dietary intake of thiamine and riboflavin by looking at data collected from computer-assisted interviews of the participants.

They accounted for several factors, including participants ages, lifestyles, demographics, and comorbidities.

Researchers reported that higher amounts of thiamine in the diet were associated with lower chances of migraine. This was particularly true among female participants. However, the researchers did not find a significant decrease in risk related to riboflavin.

Dr. James Giordano, a professor of neurology and biochemistry at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the study, noted the following to MNT:

This study provides important data to support that nutritional factors can be influential upon the induction of migraine headache. Of particular note is that this study demonstrated a statistically significant role of thiamine (vitamin B-1) in mitigating migraine. Thiamine has been shown to be particularly important in regulating brain levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin; abnormalities in serotonin function have been directly implicated in the pathophysiology of migraine.

The study did have some limitations.

First, the data relies on self-reporting from participants, which can be inaccurate. For example, when evaluating the incidence of migraine, there is some assumption that participants who reported a severe headache likely experienced a migraine. The 24-hour recall method also has the potential for errors in data collection.

In addition, the interviews did not include questions about all intestinal diseases and researchers did not look into dietary patterns.

Researchers also did not look at the intake of dietary supplements, which could have impacted the intake of thiamine and riboflavin.

Finally, there is the risk of errors based on the analysis techniques used and this type of study cannot prove that lack of thiamine causes migraine.

Overall, the study notes the impact thiamine may have on migraine headaches. It could open the door to further research in this area and later guide specific clinical recommendations.

Giordano noted the following:

Taken together, it may be that thiamine could provide a useful dietary supplement for migraine-suffering individuals who may be mild to moderately magnesium deficient or who have metabolic disturbances of calcium and magnesium metabolism.

He also noted the following areas for continued research:

While research is most certainly interesting and important, additional studies should be conducted to determine more specific roles for thiamine, as well as other vitamin co-factors that may be clinically useful in preventing or lessening migraine.

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New research suggests that the closest extinct relatives of humans, the Neanderthals, may have been carnivores. The diets ofHomo neanderthalensishave been a topic of debate for a long time.

Neanderthals showed high levels of carnivory, lending more weight to the theory suggesting thatour extinct relatives may have been primarily meat eaters, according to a new study.

Researchers in the new study examined a molar belonging to a Neanderthal individual found in Iberia using a less explored technique. The individual was found at the Gabasa site in Spain.

Read more:A Neanderthal tooth discovered in Serbia reveals human migration history

Analysis showed that the individual did not consume the blood of their prey, the study published in journalProceedings of the National Academy of Scienceshighlighted. However, the individual ate the bone marrow of their prey.

Some previous studies examining the dental tartar of remains from the Iberian Peninsula show that Neanderthals were majorly herbivores.

Other studies conducted outside the Iberian Peninsula, according to the researchers, indicate that our extinct relatives feasted on a meat-heavy diet.

Another study recorded evidence of cannibalism at two Iberian sites. But this may be due to nutritional stress.

"I wanted to see how different their diets were from those of modern humans and how to explain it," Klevia Jaouen, the lead author from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), toldDown To Earth.

This is important because the disappearance of this species is frequently attributed to their subsistence strategy orhow they sourced food and other raw materials from their environment.

Previous techniques analysed nitrogen isotopes in the bone collagen. However, this method is suitable in temperate environments, the experts stated. They are less likely to work on samples over 50,000 years old as collagen degrades over time depending on the environmental conditions, the paper said.

But the Gabasa site in Spain could not meet the required conditions. So Jaouen and her colleagues decided to use zinc isotopes in the molar sample. Their analysis showed that this individual switched to an adult diet from the mothers milk before age two.

The Neandertal individual from Gabasa, according to the study, showed a zinc isotope signature of a top-level carnivore.

The researchers ruled out cannibalism due to the absence of cut marks on hominin (a group consisting of modern humans, extinct human species and all our immediate ancestors) and carnivore bones.

A low zinc value suggests that the species ate muscle and liver from deer and rabbits, leaving out their blood and bones.

Read more:Neanderthals died out 40,000 years ago, but there has never been more of their DNA on Earth

Other carnivores like red foxes, wolves and lynxes have been known to gnaw or partially digest bones. They also consume blood, said the study. These trends suggest that the Gabasa individual might have been on a diet distinct from other carnivores, the researchers wrote in the study.

Jaouen could not document any plant consumption based on the zinc-isotope analysis. But if they ate fruits from time to time, we could not detect it because fruits do not contain a lot of zinc, the expert explained.

Plant consumption was probably not a substantial part of their diets, she added. The researchers are also unsure whether Neanderthals showed regional differences in food consumption.

We would like to confirm these conclusions by analysing more specimens. We are working on it, she said.

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Were Neanderthals carnivores? A tooth offers new insight into their diets - Down To Earth Magazine

Leroy Creasy 60, M.S. 61, whose research on the health benefits of grapes and red wine has spurred decades of public interest and scientific inquiry, died June 15 in Aurora, New York. He was 84.

Creasy, a professor emeritus of pomology in what is now the Horticulture Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, was best-known for his work on resveratrol, a natural compound found most abundantly in red and purple grapes. In the early 1990s, Creasy identified resveratrol in red wine and posited that this heart-healthy, cancer-fighting compound might explain the French paradox why Mediterranean populations that had relatively high smoking rates, high-fat diets and higher wine consumption also suffer fewer heart attacks and lived longer than populations with ostensibly healthier habits.

Resveratrol is a type of secondary metabolite a compound created by a plant to ward off insects or fight disease. More than 70 species of plants produce resveratrol, including peanuts, cocoa beans and blueberries, but it occurs in highest amounts in the skin of red and purple grapes. Grapes produce resveratrol in response to disease pressure, especially from mildew a common plague of grape growers in New York and Creasy found that New York-grown grapes were higher in this beneficial compound than grapes grown in sunnier climates. Later research showed that resveratrol production can also be triggered by UV radiation.

Creasys discoveries drew tremendous public attention, including features on 60 Minutes and in the New York Times, said Marvin Pritts, professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science, Horticulture Section. They also drew controversy, as some public health officials and other researchers warned against the negative effects of increased alcohol consumption. Proving or disproving a connection between red wine and heart health will always be difficult, because such studies rely on correlational observations, Pritts said.

Resveratrol was getting loads of press; Les phone was ringing a lot, Pritts said. Resveratrol is definitely beneficial for health, but the jury is still out on whether wine is good for you.

Even so, Creasys findings boosted the fortunes of wineries across the country, especially in New York, as people sought out red wines, said Glen Creasy 88, Leroy Creasys son and a viticulturist and co-owner of Terre des 2 Sources, a vineyard and winery in the south of France.

His work created some controversy, but it also certainly generated a lot of other research into the healthful and not-so-healthful components of wine, said Glen Creasy, who worked for 19 years as a lecturer in viticulture in New Zealand before moving to France. He made a really significant impact, from both a scientific and a public perspective.

Leroy Creasy was a member and past president of the Phytochemical Society, the American Society for Horticultural Science and the Scientific Advisory Board of the California Table Grape Commission.

After his retirement from Cornell in 1998, Creasy and his wife, Min 60, bought a 160-acre farm in Aurora, where they grew table grapes (grapes meant to be eaten fresh, rather than processed into jam, juice or wine) and published together. Creasy continued experimenting in his vineyard and established procedures to increase resveratrol levels in his grapes, Glen Creasy said. Father and son also co-wrote two editions of the book, Grapes, a crop production handbook published by the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International.

Leroy Creasy was born Feb. 21, 1938, and grew up in the outskirts of New York City. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis, then spent one year as a National Science Foundation fellow at the University of Cambridge, England. He joined the Cornell faculty in 1965. Creasy is survived by Min, his wife of 62 years; sons James 86 and Glen; and four grandchildren.

Krisy Gashler is a writer for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

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Leroy Creasy, touter of red wine's health benefits, dies at 84 | Cornell Chronicle - Cornell Chronicle

Northern Michigan University researchers were involved in a recent collaborative study of the gut microbiome of Alaskan brown bears, which showsthat the microbial life in bears' guts allows them to achieve comparable size and fat stores while eating widely different diets.

Fecal samples were collected from 51 adult brown bears in three National Parks and Preserves: Katmai; Lake Clark; and Gates of the Arctic. Previous researchdemonstrated that theirdiets vary by location.

Bearsat Lake Clark generally eat a lot of berries, salmon and mammals, such as moose. Bears at Gates of the Arctic tend to eat seasonal vegetation and mammals, but have less access to fish. And bears on the coast of Katmai have the most diverse nutritional landscape, including a variety of vegetation, fish, and a wide range of marine species.

The fact that these populations have distinct diets is valuable, because it allows us to understand the role that the gut microbiome plays in helping bears extract nutrition from very different food sources, says Sarah Trujillo, corresponding author of the study and a former graduate student at NMU. We found that bears benefit from having diverse dietary niches, and the gut microbiome does play a role in extracting nutrition from those diets. Ultimately, that means that the bears in these parks were able to achieve very similar body conditions, despite eating very different things.

And because the parks are protected, well-conserved environments, this study can serve as a baseline for future research, says Diana Lafferty, co-author of the study and an assistant professor of biology at NMU. For example, researchers will be able to compare the gut microbiomes of bears in more disturbed systems such as areas where bears have more access to garbage and human foods to the data from this study.

Erin McKenney,co-author of the study and an assistant professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University, said the workfunded by NMUsheds light on the role of the gut microbiome in supporting health in wild omnivores.

"We think of bears as having simple digestive tracts, so it's easy to slip into thinking that they therefore have simple gut microbiomes, McKenney added. "But this study shows there can be tremendous diversity in the gut microbiomes between individual bears, and that this variation can be very important to the physical condition of these animals.

For example, the amount of fat that bears are able to store is absolutely critical to the health of wild populations, says Grant Hilderbrand, co-author of the study and associate regional director for resources for the National Park Service in Alaska. If female bears are able to reach levels where 19-20% of their body mass in the autumn is fat, they'll reproduce. And knowing that they can take different dietary paths to reach those fat levels is a valuable insight.

"Knowing what bears are eating, and that diverse diets can all be used to reach similar body conditions, can help us detectemerging challenges for these animals. It can also help us understand how many bears these ecosystems are capable of supporting, even as those ecosystems change.

The study, Correlating gut microbial membership to brown bear health metrics, is published in the open-access journalScientific Reports. The paper was co-authored by Kyle Joly and Buck Mangipane of the National Park Service; Lindsey Mangipane, David Gustine and Joy Erlenbach of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and Matthew Rogers of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

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NMU-Funded Bear Study Results Published | Northern Today - Northern Today

Folake Oyewoles doctoral thesis project was inspired, in part, by the potential health benefits of arefreshing drink: Zobo, a hibiscus-based beverage that is popular in Oyewoles home country of Nigeria.

People consume Zobo as a cold beverage in Nigeriabecause its refreshing and claimed to provide many health benefits, says Oyewole, a chemical engineering PhD candidate in the University of Torontos Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

I wanted to ascertain whether these drinks actually add micronutrients to the body, and if they didnt, whether we could make it so that they did in a way that could be absorbed and used by the body.

Supported by theSchlumberger FoundationsFaculty for the Future Fellowship,Oyewole says she has alwaysbeen interested in value-added processing of food and beverages, particularly ones with ingredients sourced from Nigeria. Her passion led her to join the lab ofLevente Diosady, a professor emeritus in the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry, who specializes in food engineering.

Diosadys lab group is developing a new way to fortify beverages like Zobo with iron a mineral that manyacross Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly women, are lacking in sufficient quantities. The new iron-fortified beverage will make use of hibiscus sourced from Nigeria.

Iron deficiency is the leading cause of anemia world-wide.Forwomen of reproductive age, iron-deficiency anemia can lead to poor health outcomes and pregnancy complications such as preeclampsia, postpartum infection and low infant birth weight. In Nigeria alone, theWorld Health Organization estimatesthat 55 per cent of women of reproductive age have anemia.

Thats why fortifying foods with iron has been a key focus ofDiosadys Food Engineering Laboratory for years. Past projects have included adouble-fortified salt,which in trials of60 million consumersin India was found to significantly improve the iron status of women.

Folakes work continues our goal of improving the iron status of women and infants by providing a natural fortification of a locally produced beverage, says Diosady. If properly marketed, this fortified beverage could improve the iron status of women of reproductive age, without medical infrastructure or any change in dietary habits.

Hibiscus calyces are used to make Folake Oyewoles cold beverage, which is then fortified by adding ferrous sulphate heptahydrate, an iron salt that tops up the iron already present in the drink(photo bySafa Jinje)

Creating an iron-fortified beverage isnt as simple as adding some mineral salts into the recipe. Oyewoles new product needs to account for the unique challenges associated with the dietary habits of the population she is working with.

The human body absorbs iron from well-rounded diets that include meats, eggs and leafy greens, as well as foods fortified with iron. But in Sub-Saharan Africa, many households are limited to eating mostly plant-based diets with very little varietydue to the prohibitive cost of iron-rich meat.

On top of this, many plants have an abundance of polyphenols. This family of naturally occurring molecules which includes flavonoids, phenolic acids and resveratrol has many disease-fighting properties,including inhibiting cancerous tumor generation and growth. But polyphenols also bind to iron in a way that prevents the latter from being absorbed by the body.

Oyewoles fortified hibiscus beverage needs to address both the inadequate dietary iron intake, as well as the reduced iron uptake that results from a diet rich in polyphenols.

The most at-risk groups who are dependent on plant-based diets often dont realize that they cant absorb iron efficiently, says Oyewole.

This is why when addressing micronutrient deficiencies at the population level through food fortification,its really important to choose the right food vehicle. We want to reach this population with something they are familiar with, something they already produce and consume widely so we can predict the consumption pattern of the population.

Its also important to choose a foodthat can be centrally processed so that the iron dosage can be controlled, adds Oyewole. And the fortification process shouldnt be so expensive that it significantly raisesthe cost of the food.

Oyewole began her research by analyzing the iron content of the hibiscus calyces the part of the plant that protects the bud and supports blooming petals used to make Zobo. While Oyewole found it to be relatively rich in iron, 70 per centis lost during the extraction process since most of the iron is bound to the residue that is not transferred into the beverage. She also found that the calyces contain 25 times more polyphenols than they do iron.

Oyewole then fortified the beverage by adding ferrous sulphate heptahydrate, an iron salt, to top up the iron already present. Her goal was to provide a total of six milligrams of iron per 250 milligrams 30 per cent of the target recommended daily allowance for women of childbearing age.

To prevent the iron-polyphenol interaction, she introduced disodium EDTAinto the beverage. Previous results in the lab suggest that this substance can release iron from the iron-polyphenol complex and make it available to be absorbed by the body.

Oyewole is also working on ensuring that her iron fortification method will preserve the organoleptic properties of the original beverage that is, the flavour, texture and colour.

Iron has a very distinct, metallic taste, so another layer of my work is to make sure that the sensory properties of the fortified beverage the taste, mouthfeel, aftertaste and colour matches the original, she says. Otherwise, we risk formulating a fortified beverage that will be rejected by the consumer.

Once this is achieved, the next step will be to form partnerships with stakeholders, including government agencies in Sub-Saharan Africa, to make the fortified beverage accessible for the target population.

Working in the Food Engineering Laboratory has been a great privilege, Oyewole says. From an outside perspective, it may seem like we just add micronutrients to food and thats it. But there are a lot of complexities with the materials we are dealing with, including preventing unwanted interactions between the food vehicle and the added micronutrients.

Our research outcome has the potential for significant impact globally. Invariably it challenges poverty, increases productivity and promotes health it is all intertwined.

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To address iron deficiency in Africa, researcher develops fortified version of popular hibiscus drink - University of Toronto