Trying to Lose Weight? Go Bananas!

Are you going bananas trying to lose weight? Stop, peel and eat ‘em instead to shed those stubborn pounds.

Bananas are full of fiber begin with, which can help to curb your appetite simply because you feel full for quite awhile after eating one. But, reach for the bunch while they’re still slightly on the green side and you’ve got a weight loss secret weapon on your side known as resistant starch. This fiber is so-named because it’s indigestible and ferments in your large intestine. This results in the formation of butyrates, which inhibit lipid oxidation. In other words, they prevent carbohydrates from being stored as fat. Instead, butyrates encourage the body to burn accumulated fat at an accelerated rate. In fact, a recent University of Colorado study found that making your daily carb intake at least 5% resistant starch can increase fat your burning capacity by 30%--for the rest of the day.

Bananas are one of the best sources of resistance starch, although it’s also found in beans and whole grains. However, bananas offer additional benefits in addition to boosting fat burning, including heart-healthy nutrients such as vitamin C, potassium and B-6. Bananas are also a rich source of protein and vitamin A.

Studies have also shown that eating a banana may help those struggling with their weight due to work-related stress, which can trigger food cravings and unhealthy snacking. According to Austrian researchers, this kind of urge to splurge can be avoided by improving blood sugar levels throughout the day. Bananas contain three simple sugars--sucrose, fructose and glucose.

Bananas can even help to improve your mood. That’s because they also contain tryptophan, a protein involved in the manufacture of serotonin, one of the ‘feel good’ hormones produced in the brain that brings about a state of relaxation. However, the potassium content in the fruit promotes increased alertness at the same time.

As you can see, a banana is the perfect food. Perhaps the old adage ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’ should be revamped to ‘a banana today makes weight loss A-OK.’

Is Your Diet Soda Making You Fat?

How many times have you washed down a cheeseburger and fries with a diet soda? Seems a little silly, doesn’t it? Not to mention pointless, if reducing calories is your goal. But, there’s another side to diet soda that can undermine your dieting efforts—it could be contributing to stubborn weight gain.

Regular soda, as you probably know, is loaded with sugar. The sweetener of the manufacturer’s choice is usually high fructose corn syrup--in an amount equivalent to nine teaspoons of sugar in a typical 12-ounce can. Whoa. Enough said.

Diet sodas, on the other hand, contain artificial sweeteners, which may be low or free of sugar, but carry certain risks all their own, like the as-of-yet unknown long-term effects of introducing chlorine molecules into the body. Diet sodas also contain caffeine, sodium and phosphoric acid, all of which can compromise your health. Phosphoric acid depletes your calcium levels and makes your internal pH too acidic, while high levels of caffeine consumption can promote a variety of problems, including anxiety, insomnia, chronic fatigue and hormonal imbalance.

But, here’s some news about diet soda that really pops: Researchers have found that drinking diet soda can actually contribute to weight gain. There are two main reasons for this, the first being the temptation to think that by saving 150 calories by drinking diet soda, then we can afford to indulge in a sweet reward to go with it. The second reason is due to confused taste buds. That is, artificially sweetened diet soda triggers the taste buds to signal the brain to prepare the body for a glucose fix, but fails to deliver one. This scenario is what gives rise to sugar cravings and addiction.

A recent study involving 1,500 participants conducted at the University of Texas found that obesity was associated with soda drinkers overall. No surprise there. However, they also found a correlation between diet soda consumption and an even higher risk for obesity. In fact, for every can of diet soda chugged down each day, the risk for obesity increased by a whopping 41%. Whoa. Enough said again.

Here’s Your Diet Soda Alternative

What if you could ditch the diet soda without sacrificing taste, or even letting that refreshing fizz go down the drain? What if that sparkling soda alternative were as healthy as pure water…even more so? Sound too good to be true?

It isn’t. Cyclotrim is the first weight loss formula that turns your everyday bottle of water into a powerful fat burning, metabolism-boosting weight loss drink. Cyclotrim contains zero calories, zero carbs and zero fat, but does contain 100% of your daily recommended allowance of vitamins C, B-6, B-12 and chromium. Just drop a tablet into some water and you’ve got a fizzy and fun way to help your body metabolize and burn fat efficiently. Whoa. Way to go!

Lose Weight and Gain Better Health with Green Tea

In the west, the U.S. is second only to Great Britain in tea consumption, brewing more than 2.2 billion gallons each year--enough to fill more than 160,000 swimming pools. But, tea offers more benefits than being a soothing beverage to be served at social gatherings, or to ward off the chill of a winter's night. There is mounting evidence to suggest that drinking tea may also reduce the risks of developing cardiovascular disease and many forms of cancer. In addition, green tea is an effective and easy way to help you lose weight.

Different Cups of Tea

The three most common types of tea manufactured are green tea, black tea (often labeled as pekoe or orange pekoe), and oolong tea. The difference between them lies in how the leaves are processed. Black tea is by far the most popular, comprising 77% of the world's tea production, and is the result of allowing the leaves to ferment before drying. Oolong tea production involves partial fermentation, while green tea is not fermented at all.

Tea leaves are an abundant source of flavonoids (sometimes called bioflavonoids), a group of compounds with antioxidant properties that lend many plants their color. Of specific interest are the flavonoids catechins and flavonols which prevent the synthesis of peroxides and free radicals, agents that can invade cell membranes and damage genetic material. Certain chemicals found in the molecular structure of these beneficial flavonoids, collectively known as phenolic groups, bind with peroxides and free radicals to annul their ability to cause damage.

The fermentation process activates the oxidation of catechins to convert them into the secondary flavonoids theraflavin and thearubigin, also highly oxidant and responsible for the rich color and flavor of black and oolong teas. Green tea, on the other hand, is manufactured without fermentation and the original catechin structure is preserved. The most significant catechin present in tea, epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) is much more abundant in green tea, with a single cup yielding from 40 to 90 milligrams.

British researchers recently published the results of two studies in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which reported that green tea increases fat and carbohydrate oxidation when combined with just 30 minutes of moderate exercise each day.

New Life from an Old Tradition

Tea drinking is an ancient custom with origins in 2737 BC China. Reputedly, the Emperor Shen Nung, known as the great "divine healer," first sampled tea after a gust of wind carried a few stray leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant to an open pot of boiling water. Today, approximately 3,000 varieties of tea are made from this single plant, at least 300 in China alone. Perhaps that's why the old Chinese proverb relates, "Better to be deprived of food for three days, than tea for one."

Being Smart About Food Choices Can Actually Make You Smarter

Believe it or not, scientists have figured out a way to increase the intelligence of gerbils by simply feeding them the right stuff. The hope is that scientists can extrapolate the same results to human beings. “Quite frankly,” says Gerald Weissmann, MD, Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal that published this new finding, “this can't happen soon enough as every environmentalist, advocate of evolution, and war opponent will attest." Hopefully, evidence of this accomplishment will be apparent in such global matters in the future and make dissection of human gray matter unnecessary to prove it. The gerbils should have been so lucky.

Nevertheless, the basic idea is to improve or even restore cognitive ability by increasing the intake of foods that stimulate brain synapse activity. This isn’t a new idea, of course. That’s why herbs like ginkgo biloba have been in the news for at least three decades, and why those of us who are becoming a bit forgetful are advised to play math and word games and puzzles on a regular basis. But, it does seem that this group of researchers may have hit on the right combination of the right stuff to feed the big bean.

Wondering what was on the menu? The gerbils were given a chemical cocktail that contained various combinations of uridine monophosphate (from beets), choline (found in eggs) and docosahexaenoic acid or DHA (obtained from fish oils). Previous research clearly demonstrates that these three substances are necessary for optimal brain functioning. So, a mere four weeks after the supplementation began, changes in cognitive ability were measured.

And the gerbils performed. Suddenly, they were able to steer around complex mazes like Mario Andretti on a racetrack. Of course, being scientists, the researchers were compelled to look for biological evidence of increased intelligence, so they went right to the source—the brains. There, they found various biomarkers indicating a marked increase in brain synapse activity and intelligence.

What are you feeding your noodle? If you’re worried that you may not be getting enough of the right stuff for your brain, you can still make the smart decision to supplement these and other nutrients to help your mind stay sharp and focused. Stop by our Healthy Aging section to learn how today!

Thoughts of Gloom = Diet Doom

What’s more depressing than watching the news on television? How about the fact that doing so makes you want to escape by stuffing your face with food?

That’s the latest news from the Journal of Consumer Research, which published the results of a joint study conducted between Arizona State University and Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The authors of the study give us something rather morbid to chew on: Watching death-related drama on television, witnessing tragic events on the news, or even contemplating our own demise, spurs the appetite and compels us to consume more food. As a chronic fan of CSI-type television shows, I find this revelation more gruesome than anything that can be seen on cable.

Still, the study must have been interesting for the participants, half of whom were asked to write an essay on how they feel about the fact that they’re going to die someday. The other half, or the control group, were charged with the jolly task of writing an essay on a painful medical procedure. Now, in my mind, I find the latter topic just as morose as the first, if not more so. But, it turns out that the group who gave serious thought to their eventual leave of this plane of existence, couldn’t wait to chow down on the cookies the researchers sneakily made available. Even when lacking cookies as bait, other study subjects checked off items on grocery lists as though they looked forward to shopping with abandon in the future—sort of a culinary ‘bucket list,’ if you will.

The researchers also drew the conclusion that those study subjects that suffered from low self-esteem were much more likely to cave in to cravings after pondering death. In particular, considering their own mortality seemed to trigger a need to escape from what the researchers coined as ‘heightened self-awareness’ by gravitating toward over consumption overall, whether it be in the form of eating more or simply overspending on food.

What have we learned from this study? Be happy. Don’t think about dying; live for the moment instead. Go ahead and set your remote for your favorite CSI show…just snap a lock on the fridge first. Simple.

Another interesting observation (and I think that’s all it can be called) that came out of this study was the effect of a little mirror trick on the part of the researchers. They observed that whenever a mirror was positioned in front of a study participant, that person had far less desire to consume anything. Hmm. I suppose that if I could see myself greedily gobbling up potato chips or some other crispy, comfort food, that I wouldn’t be able to stand to watch either.

I have to wonder, though…does the tendency to over-consume apply to avid readers of murder mysteries too? After all, reading a good murder mystery can be just as riveting and jarring as watching the same kind of events unfold on television, fiction or not. I guess we’ll have to wait for someone to come up with the idea (and funding) to put these readers through a study of their own.