Eats « Weekly Gravy

Even if you’re stuck at home waiting for the coronavirus all clear, you can still keep a healthy lifestyle. “Prevention is key in limiting the spread of coronavirus, and with more people working remotely or limiting their exposure to crowds, it’s important to maintain healthy habits at home,” said Dr. Eduardo Sanchez, chief medical officer for prevention at the American Heart Association (AHA). “Wash your hands often and stay home when you feel sick, but don’t disregard your physical activity and healthy eating habits,” he continued in an association news release. “These are the foundation to maintaining and improving your health.” Here are some tips for keeping healthy at home: Do a workout. Pick some exercises you can do at home like jumping jacks, lunges or jogging in place. Exercise in short bursts and repeat two to three times a day. Cook heart-healthy meals. Canned, frozen and dried fruits and vegetables, frozen meat and dried grains are great options to have on hand for recipes. Try a vegetarian three-bean chili or slow cooker barbecue chicken. Don’t stress out. Take a few minutes each day to meditate, practice good sleep habits and stay socially connected with friends and family via text, videochat or phone call. While the overall risk of getting seriously ill from the new coronavirus right now may be low, the AHA said that… read on >

If you are feeling the aches and pains of what you think is the flu, a trendy diet may be the culprit instead, a new study confirms. Researchers took a dive into what’s become known as “keto flu” — the fatigue, headache, nausea and mental fog that some people develop soon after starting a ketogenic diet. The keto diet, which is loaded with fat and skimpy on carbs, has become a popular way to lose weight. By depriving the body of carbs — its main source of fuel — the diet pushes it to burn fat instead. The tactic “undeniably works” in spurring quick weight loss, said Ginger Hultin, a Seattle-based registered dietitian and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. At the same time, though, it can leave people feeling miserable, at least in the first few weeks. That so-called keto flu has been recognized for some time, and it’s thought to be the result of the radical dietary change. Keto plans typically recommend getting 70% to 80% of calories from fat, 10% to 20% from protein, and a mere 5% to 10% from carbs. “You’re asking your body to shift into a completely different metabolic state,” Hultin explained. For the new study, researchers looked to online forums to see what keto dieters had to say about their short-term side effects. First, they… read on >

Go ahead and crack that egg. Eating one a day isn’t likely to increase your risk of heart disease, researchers say. The three-decade study showed no association between moderate egg consumption and risk of heart disease. The report — led by a team at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston — should help reassure uneasy egg eaters. “Recent studies reignited the debate on this controversial topic, but our study provides compelling evidence supporting the lack of an appreciable association between moderate egg consumption and cardiovascular disease,” first author Jean-Philippe Drouin-Chartier, a visiting scientist, said in a Harvard news release. He’s an assistant professor at Laval University in Quebec, Canada. For the new study, the researchers analyzed data from more than 173,000 women and over 90,000 men in the United States who did not have heart disease, type 2 diabetes or cancer when initially assessed. The study participants were followed for 32 years, during which their diets and other lifestyle habits were recorded. The researchers also analyzed 28 studies with up to 1.7 million people. This meta-analysis supported the finding that moderate egg consumption is not associated with increased risk of heart disease in Americans and Europeans. The investigators also found some evidence suggesting that moderate egg consumption may be associated with lower heart disease risk in Asian populations, but the finding may… read on >

Kids get more calories from the snacks they eat after sports than they burn while playing, which could add up to thousands of extra calories a year, a new study warns. “So many kids are at games just to get their treat afterwards, which really isn’t helping to develop healthy habits long term,” said senior study author Lori Spruance, an assistant professor of public health at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah. “The reward should be, ‘I got to have fun, I got to run around with my friend or score a goal.’” For the study, Spruance and her team tracked the activity levels of third- and fourth-graders during 189 games of soccer, flag football, baseball and softball, along with their post-game snacks. The researchers noted that parents supplied snacks 80% of the time, and nearly 90% of the post-game drinks were sugar-sweetened. While kids burned an average 170 calories per game, they consumed an average 213 calories afterward, the study revealed. On average, that included 26.4 grams of sugar — more than the total daily recommendation of 25 grams. Sugary drinks were the main source. The 43-calorie difference between snacking and what kids burn off while playing might seem trivial, but it could add up to thousands of extra calories a year if a child plays once or twice a week, the researchers… read on >

Your morning cup of coffee may help your focus and problem-solving skills, but it won’t kick-start your creativity, a new study says. “In Western cultures, caffeine is stereotypically associated with creative occupations and lifestyles, from writers and their coffee to programmers and their energy drinks, and there’s more than a kernel of truth to these stereotypes,” said study first author Darya Zabelina, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Arkansas. Increased alertness, heightened vigilance, greater focus and improved motor performance are known to be associated with caffeine, but its impact on creativity is less known, Zabelina noted. She and her colleagues assessed the effects of caffeine on 80 volunteers’ convergent and divergent thinking, working memory and mood. Convergent thinking is used in problem-solving while divergent thinking is used in creativity. Volunteers were given either a 200 milligram (mg) caffeine pill — equivalent to one cup of strong coffee — or a placebo. Caffeine improved convergent thinking but had no real impact on divergent thinking. Researchers also found that caffeine didn’t significantly affect working memory, but it appeared to affect mood — those who took it reported feeling less sad, according to the study in the March issue of the journal Consciousness and Cognition. “The 200 mg [of caffeine] enhanced problem-solving significantly, but had no effect on creative thinking,” Zabelina said in a university… read on >

A new poll suggests that education is all that stops most Americans from embracing plant-based diets that are better for the planet. The poll, of just over 1,000 adults nationwide, found that 51% said they would eat more plant-based foods if they knew more about the environmental impacts of their eating habits, but 70% said they rarely or never discuss this issue with friends or family. Nearly two-thirds said they’d never been asked to eat more plant-based foods, and more than half rarely or never hear about the topic in the media. In addition, more than half said they’re willing to eat more vegetables and plant-based alternatives and/or less red meat. Even though only 4% self-identified as vegan or vegetarian, 20% said they chose plant-based dairy alternatives two to five times a week or more often, and about the same percentage said they didn’t buy products from food companies that aren’t taking measures to reduce their environmental impact. Along with a lack of information, other barriers to eating more plant-based foods include perceived cost, taste and accessibility, according to the survey findings from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the Earth Day Network. For example, 49% of respondents believed a meal with a plant-based main course is more expensive than a meal with a meat-based main course, and many said they would eat… read on >

A specific collection of gut bacteria may be a culprit in the development of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), a new study shows. PAH is a chronic disease marked by the narrowing of arteries that supply blood to the lungs. With constant high blood pressure in these arteries, the right side of the heart is forced to work harder, which can result in right-sided heart failure. Symptoms of PAH include shortness of breath, heart palpitations and fatigue. Microbiota, bacteria found in everyone’s gut, aid in digestion. The study showed that having a particular microbiota profile predicted PAH with 83% accuracy. “We showed for the first time that specific bacteria in the gut are present in people with PAH. While current PAH treatments focus on the lungs, looking at the lung/gut axis could open the door to new therapies centered in the digestive system,” said lead study author Mohan Raizada. He is a distinguished professor in the department of physiology and functional genomics at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville. Stool samples from 18 PAH patients and 12 people without cardiopulmonary disease history were collected for the study. The unique bacteria found in the stool of PAH patients led to the association. The findings were published Feb. 24 in the journal Hypertension. Raizada and his team are eager to learn how this bacteria impacts… read on >

Sugar-sweetened drinks can play havoc with your cholesterol and triglyceride levels, which increases your risk for heart disease and stroke, a new study finds. Specifically, drinking more than 12 ounces (1 standard can) of sugary sodas or fruit drinks a day may not bode well for your cardiovascular health, researchers say. “Think before you drink. There is accumulating evidence linking sugar-sweetened beverages to adverse health outcomes, and this message is clear,” said lead researcher Nicola McKeown, a nutritional epidemiologist at the Jean Mayer U.S.D.A. Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston. According to the researchers, drinks such as sodas, sports drinks and fruit-flavored drinks are the biggest source of added sugars for Americans. “Efforts and policies aimed at reducing sugar-sweetened beverage intake should continue,” McKeown said. “When it comes to alternative beverages, we need more information about what we are putting into our glasses and how that may make a difference in our health, positively or negatively.” McKeown and her team found that drinking more than 12 ounces of sugary drinks a day was linked to a 53% higher odds of high triglycerides and a 98% higher odds of low HDL cholesterol (the “good” cholesterol), compared with drinking less. The findings came from data on nearly 6,000 people who took part in the Offspring and Generation 3 Framingham Heart Study. Participants… read on >

Starting the day with a big breakfast and keeping dinner light may help you burn more calories and keep you trimmer, new research suggests. Eating this way may also keep your blood sugar levels from going too high, the small study found. “Extensive breakfasting should be preferred over large dinner meals,” said study lead author Juliane Richter, of the University of Lubeck’s Center of Brain, Behavior and Metabolism in Germany. “This recommendation can be applied to healthy people to prevent metabolic diseases [such as diabetes], as well as to patients with overweight and obesity to reduce body weight,” she added. How could eating breakfast improve your weight and blood sugar levels? Richter said the reason isn’t clear yet and more study is needed. But it appears that digestion and metabolism keep pace with the body’s internal clock, she said. Another reason may be that if you don’t eat enough earlier, you’ll be more hungry throughout the day, Richter said. That could lead to overeating, or to eating the wrong kinds of foods later in the day. She also noted more calories are burned in the morning, so it just makes sense to eat more when calorie-burning is at its peak. But not everyone is convinced that a big breakfast is a must. Samantha Heller, a dietitian with NYU Langone Health in New York City, reviewed… read on >

Given a choice, seagulls prefer food that’s been handled by humans, a new British study finds. This suggests that the birds may watch you when deciding what to scavenge, according to the researchers. “We wanted to find out if gulls are simply attracted by the sight of food, or if people’s actions can draw gulls’ attention towards an item,” said study lead author Madeleine Goumas. She’s with the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter in Cornwall. “Our study shows that cues from humans may play an important part in the way gulls find food, and could partly explain why gulls have been successful in colonizing urban areas,” Goumas said in a university news release. In the study, researchers placed two wrapped oat bars on the ground in front of 38 herring gulls. A researcher picked up and handled one of the bars for 20 seconds and then put it back on the ground, but did not touch the other bars. Of the 24 gulls that pecked at one of the oat bars, 19 (79%) pecked at the one handled by a researcher. The experiment was repeated with sponges cut into the same size and shape as the oat bars. The gulls’ preference for the handled sponge did not exceed “chance levels.” This suggests that human handling draws their attention to food… read on >