An offer at one of the country’s leading burger joints, which has 550 locations in 35 states: a bacon cheeseburger and large fries combo that weighs in at a whopping 2,380 calories. That’s more than many people should eat in an entire day.

At another eatery is a popular chocolate truffle cake that delivers 1,670 calories and more than two days worth of saturated fat. And that’s just for dessert.

Chinese anyone? According to CSPI, a popular double pan-fried noodles combo at one of the nation’s most popular Chinese chains packs 1,820 calories. The salt it contains is even more outrageous—the equivalent of three teaspoons, the equivalent of five days recommended adult intake of sodium.

If you have an appetite for more eye-popping (make that heart-stopping) statistics on popular restaurant dishes, check out CSPI’s tough and very, very funny Annual Xtreme Eating 2010 Awards.

The first hints that caffeine might have special powers appeared when studies showed that coffee drinkers are less likely to develop Parkinson’s disease, which is caused by a breakdown in normal brain cell function. Then came hints that caffeine consumption also protects against Alzheimer’s disease. Now researchers think that the most widely used psychoactive substance in the world actually normalizes brain function and prevents neurological degeneration in a variety of ways.

There’s so much new research into the benefits of caffeine that the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease has devoted an entire special issue to the subject. Among its conclusions:

• Caffeine improves concentration and sharpens mental focus, mainly by eliminating distractions.
• People who consume higher levels of caffeine are more alert during the day and have significantly faster reaction times.
• Caffeine appears to be particularly effective at counteracting fatigue and sleep loss.
• Caffeine improves mood and boosts cognitive performance, especially in tasks that involve fast reaction time, sustained attention, memory, logical reasoning and simulated driving.
• Most startling of all, preliminary animal studies suggest that caffeine helps keep brain circuitry more nimble, even as animals age.

All this good news follows earlier findings that show that drinking coffee may lower risk of heart disease—in part because coffee beans are rich in antioxidants. Coffee really appears to be good to the last drop.

SOURCE: Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 2010, vol 20

For the experiment, 12 trained cyclists consumed either a sports drink or a whole grain cereal with milk before beginning a two-hour moderate workout at a comfortable pace. “We wanted to understand their relative effects on glycogen repletion and muscle protein synthesis for the average individual,” said exercise physiologist Lynne Kammer, who led the research team. “We found that glycogen repletion, or the replenishment of immediate muscle fuel, was just as good after whole grain cereal consumption and that some aspects of protein synthesis were actually better.” The report appears in this month’s Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition.

For amateur athletes and anyone trying to stay in shape, the researchers concluded, having a bowl of cereal and milk before a workout is a smarter–and less expensive–way to refuel than drinking a sports drink. Whole grains and milk also have the advantage of supplying a rich combination of many vitamins and minerals not found in many sports drinks–including calcium and vitamin D, which are essential to maintaining strong bones.

© 2009 PDQhealth

The evidence comes from research conducted in Golestan Province in northern Iran, which has some of the highest rates of esophageal cancer in the world. The province offers a unique laboratory to study risk because tea drinking is very popular but rates of both smoking and alcohol consumption–two other contributors to esophageal and throat cancer–are very low.

An international team of scientists compared the tea drinking habits of 300 people diagnosed with esophageal cancer to those of 571 healthy controls. These were all serious tea drinker, consuming over one liter of black tea a day. Compared to drinking warm or lukewarm tea, drinking hot tea posed twice the risk of esophageal cancer. Drinking very hot tea posed an eight-fold threat.

The researchers also looked at how soon tea was consumed after being poured. Drinking it within less than two minutes was linked to a five-fold higher risk of cancer compared to drinking it four or more minutes after steeping.

Worrisome, sure. Esophageal cancer is a particularly nasty form of the disease. But it’s also very uncommon in the US. Worldwide, esophageal cancer kills 500,000 people a year.

With plenty of research pointing to the considerable health benefits associated with tea, which is rich in antioxidants and other phytochemicals, it would be a shame to pass up tea. As David C. Whiteman, an investigator with the Queensland Institute for Medical Research in Australia, wrote in an editorial accompanying the new research, “These findings are not cause for alarm, however, and they should not reduce public enthusiasm for the time honoured ritual of drinking tea. Rather, we should follow the advice of Mrs Beeton, who prescribes a five to 10 minute interval between making and pouring tea, by which time the tea will be sufficiently flavoursome and unlikely to cause thermal injury.”

(Mrs Beeton, by the way, pictured above, was a famous cookery writer of the nineteenth century and author of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management.)

© 2009 PDQhealth

The investigation, conducted by economists at the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University, followed a large population of schoolchildren over almost a decade. The data they collected were so detailed that researchers were able to observe changes in the years before and after new fast-food stores opened near schools. Their conclusion: rates of obesity in ninth graders were 5 percent higher in schools within one-tenth of a mile of a a pizza or burger joint, compared to students at schools farther away from temptation.

Not surprisingly, the National Restaurant Association attacked the findings, calling them “slapdash.” But economist Enrico Moretti, one of the papers’ authors, defended the study’s conclusions. “We’re quite confident that these are credible and unbiased estimates of the causal effect of fast food on obesity for the group we focused on,” he told The New York Times.

In a related part of the study, the scientists analyzed data from millions of women who gave birth over the past 15 years in New Jersey, Michigan, and Texas. Those who lived within a half-mile of a fast-food restaurant were more likely to gain more than 44 pounds during pregnancy, the data showed.

Obesity researchers were quick to say the findings support zoning law restrictions on fast-food restaurants near schools. Good luck. Our recommendatons: spend more time at school teaching kids about healthy food choices and the lifelong dangers of getting fat. Make more healthy food choices available at schools. And increase the number of after-school physical activities.

© 2009 PDQhealth

Immunologists have long known that exposing people to very small doses of an allergy-provoking substance can desensitize them, creating a state of immune tolerance. The technique is often used for pollen allergies. This is one of the first studies to look at feeding patients an allergy-provoking food.

The study, begun five years ago by researchers at Duke University and Arkansas Children’s Hospital, included 33 children with severe allergies to peanuts. Most couldn’t tolerate as little as one-sixth of a peanut without a reaction. Closely monitoring them, researchers began giving them increasing amounts, starting with as little as one-thousandth of a peanut. Eight to ten months later, many of the kids were eating the equivalent of up to 15 peanuts a day without problems.

Even their immune systems had adapted. Allergies are triggered by an immune substance called immunoglobulin E (IgE). “If you have it you’re likely allergic, if you don’t, you aren’t,” explained Wesley Burks, MD, chief of pediatric allergy and immunology at Duke University. The kids in the study started with IgE levels of more than 25. “At the end of the study, their peanut IgEs were less than 2 and have remained that way since we stopped treatment,” said Dr. Burks.

The results herald good news for the estimated four million Americans with food allergies. An estimated 75 Americans every year die from eating peanuts and an equal number from other food allergies. But if you’re allergic to peanuts, don’t go nuts quite yet. Even the scientists who announced the findings at the American Academy of Asthma and Immunology meeting in Washington, DC, caution that this form of desensitization therapy needs to be tested in follow-up studies before it is used in practice. Their results include only 33 children, they point out, too small a group for researchers to know if the treatment worked or if the children simply outgrew their allergies. And not all of those children stuck with the study protocol.

“In my clinic, I would do the same things I’ve always done,” Dr. Burks said. “Once diagnosed with a food allergy, I would recommend that they avoid the food. We have to wait for studies to show the treatment is safe, and to see desensitization start to work. We also want to know the therapy works long term.”

 © 2009 PDQhealth

Dozens of experiments, in fact, have confirmed that cranberries can prevent urinary tract infections.  A 2009 study by scientists at the University of Dundee in Scotland, for example, found that cranberry juice was very nearly as effective as a leading antibiotic treatment, and with none of its side effects. Most researchers have credited the high acidity of the berries. But new findings from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts show that chemicals in cranberries called proanthocyanidins (PACS) prevent bacteria from sticking to the lining of the urinary tract. The longer bacteria are exposed to cranberry juice or PACS, the researchers found, the more trouble they have adhering to the lining.

Even if you don’t suffer urinary tract infectons, cranberries stand out as a remarkably rich source of antioxidants, recent research shows. Studies also suggest they may possess cancer-fighting capacities.

© 2009 PDQhealth

When a group of four-year-olds were offered “X-ray vision carrots” instead of garden variety carrots, they ate almost twice the amount with their school lunches. “Cool names can make for cool foods,” said the lead author of the report, Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell University Food & Brand Lab. Kids continued to eat more carrots even on days when they weren’t labeled with space-age names.

The same effect works on adults–the reason Whoppers are called Whoppers and Big Gulps are called Big Gulps. A related experiment at a restaurant found that when the standard seafood filet was re-named “succulent italian seafood filet,” the eatery sold 28 percent more of the item. Not only that, customers gave it a 12 percent better rating. “Same food, but different expectations, and a different experience,” said Wansink, author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think.

Maybe the same technique could work in reverse. Instead of calling that dessert “triple rich chocolate mousse,” call it “fat thighs fudge.” Care for a piece?

The findings come from an eye-opening study by Brian Wansink, PhD, a nutriton expert at Cornell University, who tracked the evolution of 18 recipes published in all seven editions of Joy of Cooking over the past 70 years. All but one of the recipes significantly increased the number of calories they contain, he found, averaging 77 extra calories per serving, a 40 percent increase. Part of the jump is the result of ingredient changes (more sugar and fat, typically). Part is due to larger estimated serving sizes. The same amount of chicken gumbo that yielded 14 servings in previous editions, for example, now yields only 10 servings.

The findings were announced, appropriately, at the annual meeting of the Obesity Society. They also appear i the current issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

A related study, this one conducted several years ago by Lisa Young, an adjunct nutrition professor at New York University, also spotted examples of portion size creep in America’s classic cookbook. In one example, the same brownie recipe that in the 1960s and 1970s yielded 30 individual brownies by the 1997 edition was divided up into only 15. The serving size had doubled.

Joy of Cooking isn’t the only culprit, of course. The book just happens to be the classic that researchers turn to as an example of a growing trend. But the fact that even servings of home-cooked meal recipes are bigger than they need or should be points out how pervasive the problem of over-sized portions has become.  Resisting the trend isn’t easy. One useful tip: start with a smaller-than-average serving. After you’re finished, take a moment to think about whether you’re still hungry. If not, get up from the table.

© 2009 PDQhealth

Wannabe losers know there’s no shortage of advice out there, from Caveman diets to the latest low-carb regimens. A lot of the tips on offer are, well, pretty light-weight. Susan B. Roberts, author of The Instinct Diet: Use Your Five Food Instincts to Lose Weight and Keep it Off Workman Publishing, 2009), enters the crowded weight loss arena with some hefty credentials. She’s a professor of both nutrition and psychiatry at Tufts University. And while her diet plan won’t guarantee success, it represents just about the best scientific approach to smart weight loss you’ll find.

Roberts’ premise isn’t groundbreaking (despite her breathless description of when the idea first hit her: “Bingo!” she writes. “There it was. Eating and weight control are all about our food instincts.”) People get fat because they eat too much of the wrong things, she goes on to explain, and eating is driven by the five basic “food instincts” that give her book its title. Hunger (natch). The availability of food. The calorie density of many of the foods most readily available. Familiarity (her term for comfort food). And finally, variety. 

Some of the advice she offers as she explores these five instincts will be exasperatingly familiar to many dieters. Serve up smaller portions. Eat slowly. Keep a food diary of everything you eat. Adapt favorite recipes to lower their calories.

But some of her advice, especially relating to taming hunger, is to the point and worth repeating. In her chapter on hunger, she emphasizes the importance of eating high fiber foods, for example. Citing research she’s conducted at Tufts, she notes that volunteers who consumed 35 to 45 gams of fiber per day felt more satisfied during weight loss and lost more weight than those who ate less. (That amount of fiber is almost three times what the average American diet includes.) She also makes a fresh pitch for choosing low-glycemic carbohydrates, acknowledging that “even if you don’t lose more weight, there’s more body fat in the weight you do lose.” Both pieces of advice add up to a healthier diet, which is ultimately more important than pounds on the scale.

Roberts also makes a pitch for creating healthy rituals to supplant those that lead us into temptation around fattening foods. Here, too, the details aren’t rocket science. Her examples include getting into the habit of serving raw vegetables with a low-fat yogurt as a snack before dinner and dishing up berries instead of pie for a weekday dessert. But the point is a good one, and chances are you can think of a few personal tweaks that will work for you. We are all creatures of habit, after all, and with a little bit of patience it’s possible to replace bad food habits (a sugary pastry for breakfast) with good ones (a bowl of oatmeal), and to make those healthier habits second nature after a while.

The rationale and outline of Roberts’ diet program occupies the first third of the book. The remainder is devoted to meal plans and recipes. Admittedly, most of us don’t turn to weight-loss tomes for recipes. But many of the dishes included here are surprisingly appealing. And they cover a wide range of different cuisines, from Mexican to Middle Eastern. Examples include crisp fennel salad (with red radishes and arugula) and a mushroom and barley risotto that sounds just right for a cold winter night. Almost all are abundant in vegetables and fruit, and even the meat dishes often include vegetarian alternatives.

In the preface of the book, Roberts boasts that some of the volunteers in her studies have lost up to 50 pounds and kept most of those pounds off. They’ve also seen substantial decreases in cholesterol levels and blood pressure. Good for them. Unfortunately, findings from dozens of studies published in the past few years suggest that most people can’t expect to lose that much weight. The data are even more discouraging when it comes to maintaining weight loss over time.

But there is solid evidence that the healthier food choices promoted here really can lower the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and perhaps even some forms of cancer. That’s important no matter how much you weigh. If you’re overweight and you manage to shed even a few pounds following Roberts’ advice, consider that the icing (sugar-free, of course, and low-fat) on the cake.

© 2009 PDQhealth