New research, in “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think,” shows that most holiday overeating, is due to the cues around us — family and friends, packages and plates, shapes and smells, distractions and distances, cupboards and containers. Dubbed the “Freakonomics of food,” the studies in “Mindless Eating” also show how we can reverse these cues to eat less and enjoy it more.
Children who were allergic to eggs were able to essentially overcome their allergy by gradually consuming increased quantities of eggs over time, researchers at Duke University Medical Center and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences have found in a small pilot study.
An environmental drama played out on the world stage in the late 18th century when a volcano killed 9,000 Icelanders and brought a famine to Egypt that reduced the population of the Nile valley by a sixth. A study by three scientists demonstrates a connection between these two widely separated events, and is the first to conclusively establish the linkage between high-latitude eruptions and the water supply in North Africa.
Volcanic eruptions in high latitudes can greatly alter climate and distant river flows, including the Nile, according to a recent study funded in part by NASA.
Within the next 10 years the EU-funded Diabetes Prevention study, part of an international study called TRIGR (Trial to Reduce IDDM in the Genetically at Risk), coordinated at the University of Helsinki, Finland, will generate a definite answer to the question whether early nutritional modification may prevent type 1 diabetes later in childhood.
Being exposed to high levels of nutrition before birth can influence the development of networks within the brain that regulate appetite to permanently set a pattern of appetite for life, according to researchers from the University of South Australia.
On the occasion of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Centennial year, the FDA hosted an inaugural international summit of heads of medical products regulatory agencies in Washington, D.C., November 16-17, 2006.
An international, interdisciplinary team of researchers led by professor Xiangming Xiao of the University of New Hampshire is taking a novel scientific approach in an attempt to understand the ecology of the avian influenza, develop better methods of predicting its spread, and provide an accurate early warning system.
In new work, researchers report that the ability of plants to defend themselves by accumulating high levels of a toxic element can be overcome by some insects, and that such adaptation potentially echoes in the food web as other predators and parasites may in turn evolve to deal with high levels of the toxic element.
Researchers at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station used RNAi to reduce the toxic compound gossypol from cottonseed to a level that is considered safe for consumption, but left the compound in the rest of the plant to ward off insects and disease. Once commercialized, seed from these plants could provide a new, high-protein food available to 500 million people a year.