“Finish your dinner or there’ll be no dessert for you!” — it’s a cry heard at dinner tables around the world, as mothers battle to convince their sons about the importance of eating properly. Sorry lads: mum’s right on this one.
We’ve told you before about the effects of sugar on your brain and body. A controversial paper in Nature argues that the impact of sugar on global health is such that it should be subject to similar restrictions as alcohol. Australian medical experts aren’t particularly convinced we should go that far, but agree that sugar represents a major health threat and we need to moderate our consumption.
The news that McDonald’s will be stopping the use of ‘pink slime’ — essentially random beef offcuts mixed with ammonium hydroxide — in its burgers has been the subject of fervent online coverage. But local Maccas fiends shouldn’t panic: the additive isn’t (and hasn’t ever been) used in the Australian product.
When attempting to lose weight most nutritional guidelines limit the amount of calories consumed in one day. To help cut down on snacking and build self-control, consider challenging yourself to maintain a state of mild hunger until it is time for your next meal.
iOS: Packaged foods include nutritional information such as fat and salt levels, but it’s often in tiny print that’s hard to read. FoodSwitch lets you scan the barcode on groceries using your iPhone camera and then displays key nutritional data on screen.
One of the more disgusting news stories doing the rounds at the moment concerns a lawsuit against Pepsi claiming that a dead mouse was found in a can of Mountain Dew. Pepsi’s defence? The mouse would have dissolved and turned into jelly, apparently. That’s a disgusting thought and a weird legal strategy, but what’s less clear is whether it would happen in Australia.
New draft versions of the Australian Dietary Guidelines have been released by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). How do these differ from previous versions? We’ve highlighted the key differences (start throwing out those soft drink cans now).
When we tackled the topic of food myths last month, our inbox and comments filled with more reader-submitted follow-up myths than we could debunk at one time. We asked our nutritionists back to debunk some more common misconceptions about food, health and nutrition that are still widely believed, even though there’s overwhelming evidence to the contrary. We also asked them some of your questions. Here’s what they said.
iPhone: The Eatery is a free iPhone app that aims to improve your eating habits. It starts with an approach we’ve seen several times: Every time you eat something, you snap a picture of it. From there, The Eatery takes a novel approach that may actually help you eat better without pulling out your scale and calculator, hunting for a calorie counter, or dealing with other tedious food logging tools.
We already know that highly sugary soft drinks can do all sorts of bad things to your health, but could they actually make you more violent? A recent study suggests they might, but local scientists caution that more research is needed.
