diet

Taxing Sugary Water Works

- Adam Clare

Beverages infused with copies amounts of sugar like Pepsi or Coke aren’t good for you health. When an entire nation consumes too much then public health suffers greatly. This has many governments looking into how they can stymie this overconsumption of unhealthy drinks. One solution is taxing soda sales.

in 2014 the Mexican government started such a tax and consumption has dropped. To prove its effectiveness researchers looked into how much of an impact the tax had on people drinking pop.

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A study published Wednesday in the British Medical Journal suggests the tax is working: After one year, sales of sugar-sweetened drinks in Mexico dropped by 12 percent. And among poor households, which have the highest levels of obesity and untreated diabetes, sales fell by 17 percent.

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These results are not surprising, but their empirical confirmation is of the greatest importance for governments that have opted to use taxes on sugar sweetened beverages as part of public health strategies, and those considering to do it,” wrote Franco Sassi, head of the public health program of the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation.

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Thanks to Delaney!

International Year of Yum

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

2016 is the year of the pulse. Pulses are the edible seeds of plants in the legume family and they are delicious! Pulses are super easy to cook with and really good for the environment. They are really good for your healthy to. This means you should hop on the pulse bandwagon!

To launch the year off to a healthy start you can take the Pulse Pledge.

EATING PULSES CAN HELP MAINTAIN A HEALTHY BODY WEIGHT
Pulses are rich in protein and fibre, and a low in fat, which can all help with body weight management. Protein and fibre help you to feel fuller longer. In addition to fibre, pulses also have other carbohydrates that are complex and take longer to break down compared with other carbohydrates (simple sugars). This means they provide energy for a longer time after you eat them compared with a quick energy source like sugars. The carbohydrates in pulses include oligosaccharides and resistant starch which can increase production of good bacteria for a healthy gut.

Learn more about pulses.

Cut Out Sugar and Improve Everything

- Adam Clare

Some new research points out by simply cutting out sugar one can improve basically all that ails them. In a recent research study children gave up sugar for nine days and found that much about their health improved. This implies that it might be more important to monitor one’s sugar intake more than one’s caloric intake for some aspects of increasing health.

“The whole goal was that they don’t lose weight when they switch over to the diet. It’s just they’re removing sugar to see what that effect will be,” explained Lin.

“They noticed everything got better.”

Blood pressure decreased, cholesterol decreased, liver function tests improved, and even fasting blood sugar and insulin levels in their bodies dropped.

“The freaky part of this study was that it was only nine days long,” Lin said.

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Eating Less Meat is Getting More Popular

- Adam Clare

Having a vegetarian or vegan diet can be difficult for some people even though such a diet can make you happier than meat eaters. The message that eating less meat is being heard though – the benefits of a reduced meat diet are huge.

By eating less meat you can: save wildlife, save the environment, live longer, and even help save our forests.

To help people eat less meat (even though it’s already easy) there’s a new movement that people can identify with: reducetarian.

According to Mintel’s report, though, the rise of vacillating, part-time vegetarians who are actively trying to reduce their meat consumption is more significant than the growing number of categorical, self-identifying “vegetarians” or “vegans.” This has led to an evolution on the supermarket shelves—the number of food products carrying a “vegetarian” claim has apparently doubled to 12 percent, while one in eight meat buyers would now consider buying half meat and half vegetable protein across a week’s shopping. Even the less obviously meat-containing products like chocolate or sweets are playing to this growing market, with 11 percent now alleging to be animal-free.

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Finally Americans Are Eating Less

- Adam Clare

The obesity problem in the USA may start to shrink. After years of constantly increasing they caloric intake Americans seem to be getting the message that eating too much can be bad for you. This is the first year that caloric intake has decreased and hopefully it’s a trend of things to come.

As calorie consumption has declined, obesity rates appear to have stopped rising for adults and school-aged children and have come down for the youngest children, suggesting the calorie reductions are making a difference.
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The reversal appears to stem from people’s growing realization that they were harming their health by eating and drinking too much. The awareness began to build in the late 1990s, thanks to a burst of scientific research about the costs of obesity, and to public health campaigns in recent years.

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