Hot MedFax

Here's the thing.  Food just tastes better to obese people. Or, putting it a different way: obese people need more sweets to be satisfied.  Which, obviously, make them eat more, right? According to a new study , "Obesity may alter the way we taste at the most fundamental level: by changing how our tongues react to different foods." Research has found that being severely overweight impaired the ability of mice to detect sweets, newswise.com reports. "Compared with slimmer counterparts, the plump mice had fewer taste cells that responded to sweet stimuli. What’s more, the cells that did respond to sweetness reacted relatively weakly." ". . .no one had ever looked at the cells on the tongue that make contact with food,” the Web site quotes lead scientist Kathryn Medler, PhD, UB associate professor of biological sciences. “What we see is that even at this level — at the first step in the taste pathway — the taste receptor cells themselves are affected b...

Maybe it was all those low-fat yogurts.  Or the diet soda.  Or maybe just the cutting out the M&Ms.  Maybe this explains why my son (who, granted was born at 8.15 pounds) now is considered underweight, at 12. A new study has found that bad (or good) eating habits start in the womb. According to Kristin Wartman at the NYT, "Babies born to mothers who eat a diverse and varied diet while pregnant and breast-feeding are more open to a wide range of flavors. They’ve also found that babies who follow that diet after weaning carry those preferences into childhood and adulthood. Researchers believe that the taste preferences that develop at crucial periods in infancy have lasting effects for life." So my trying not to gain too much weight in pregnancy resulted in my skinny son? Not so sure.  I did eat a wide variety of foods when I was pregnant.  But why does Phillip eat only white foods, to this day?  Pasta.  Rice.  Noodles.  Did I...