Archives for the 'diet' tag
This Week in Bacon
This is a GREAT week for bacon, as a recent study reveals this deliciously crispy treat actually makes you smarter! University of North Carolina researchers found that starting your baby on a diet of bacon while in the womb actually contributes to better memory later on in life. Well, kind of. Daily Mail reports,
Women are usually given a list of foods to avoid during pregnancy and it is well documented that a pregnant woman’s diet can affect her unborn baby.
But the new study suggests that a chemical in pork products and eggs can help the baby’s growing brain to develop.
Scientists at the University of North Carolina have discovered that the micronutrient, called choline, is vital in helping babies in the womb develop parts of their brains linked to memory and recall.
In a study of the effects of choline on the brains of baby mice, those fed small doses of choline while in the womb had genetic differences to those given large amounts.
Dr Gerald Weissmann, editor-in-chief of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology journal, which published the research told The Telegraph: ‘We may never be able to call bacon a health food with a straight face, but [similar studies] are already making us rethink what we consider healthy and unhealthy.’
Other products high in choline include soy, nuts, liver, chicken, and milk (although I would likely just stick with copious amounts of bacon and the occasional side of eggs). While I do love the results of the study, I have just one question: Bacon may help your child’s memory, but what about her heart?
This Week in Bacon
It’s 2009. The most common New Year’s resolution people make is probably to get healthy or to lose weight. Deciding how to accomplish this is the hard part. You could do Atkins or South Beach or the Tabasco sauce/water/lemon diet. But those aren’t enjoyable, and they require too much effort. What if your diet could consist of something you actually LOVE to eat, like, say, bacon! Well, that’s exactly what a San Diego man decided to do: an all bacon, all the time diet.
The San Diego resident has embarked on a month-long “nothing but bacon” diet. He’s eating just over a pound of bacon a day–that’s bacon for every meal for all of February. Why? Well, as explained in an NBC video report, he’s an SD website personality, and the site’s readers have joined the rest of the country in having an obsession with the divine pork product. The fondness for pork fat inspired Nelson to go on a bacon-y trip down memory lane and then the idea of “the bacon diet” was born.
“There can never be too much bacon,” says the man who admits he’s “not a huge fan of vegetables.”
Sure, this sounds like a great diet, but the point of a diet is to get healthy, right? Is this realistic on a nothing-but-bacon diet?
Well, Nelson says he’s lost weight and his blood pressure has gone down. He attributes this partly to his getting full pretty fast and not leading him to eat starches. Nelson also rationalizes that “pork fat is very similar to olive oil,” so you’ve got “perfect proportion of protein and fat.”
It’s worth a try, right? Bacon: cheap, easy, and delicious. And if I can lower my blood pressure and lose weight . . . sounds like the perfect diet to me! Now, all I have to worry about is my cholesterol. And I’m pretty sure it’s not safe to continue the diet past a month . . . you remember what happened to Morgan Spurlock, from Super Size Me. You don’t want to end up like that.
We Who Are About to Eat Salute You
The latest Archaeology has a story sure to horrify the WHO, CDC, MeMe Roth, and food nannies everywhere. Roman gladiators, it turns out, were not the lean, mean Djimon Hounsous of cinema but rather tubby tubby two-by-fours:
Gladiators, it seems, were fat. Consuming a lot of simple carbohydrates, such as barley, and legumes, like beans, was designed for survival in the arena. Packing in the carbs also packed on the pounds. “Gladiators needed subcutaneous fat,” Grossschmidt explains. “A fat cushion protects you from cut wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight.”
Grossschmidt and Kanz’s isotopic analysis underscores what archaeologists and classicists have suspected for a while: spectacle and theatricality in the arena were emphasized over martial prowess. Gladiators’ carb-loading and minimal animal-protein intake suggests they lived to fight another day through bulk and endurance over technical strength and speed. Audiences, according to contemporary reports, would turn angry if fights ended too quickly, and attempts to recruit gladiators into the military were disastrous because of their incompetence in actual battles.
I recently wrote an article for Dig on the gladiators’ graveyard at Ephesus and how the various head wounds suffered by its residents correlate to historical records.
