Food Variety, Calorie Intake, and Weight Gain

Let's kick off this post with a quote from a 2001 review paper (1):

Increased variety in the food supply may contribute to the development and maintenance of obesity. Thirty-nine studies examining dietary variety, energy intake, and body composition are reviewed. Animal and human studies show that food consumption increases when there is more variety in a meal or diet and that greater dietary variety is associated with increased body weight and fat.

This may seem counterintuitive, since variety in the diet is generally seen as a good thing. In some ways, it is a good thing, however in this post we'll see that it can have a downside.
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Food Reward Friday

This week's lucky "winner"... ice cream!!

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Book Review: Salt, Sugar, Fat

Michael Moss is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist who has made a career writing about the US food system. In his latest book, Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, he attempts to explain how the processed food industry has been so successful at increasing its control over US "stomach share". Although the book doesn't focus on the obesity epidemic, the relevance is obvious. Salt, Sugar, Fat is required reading for anyone who wants to understand why obesity is becoming more common in the US and throughout the world.

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Food Reward Friday

This week's lucky "winner"... energy bars!

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Glucagon, Dietary Protein, and Low-Carbohydrate Diets

Glucagon is a hormone that plays an important role in blood glucose control. Like insulin, it's secreted by the pancreas, though it's secreted by a different cell population than insulin (alpha vs. beta cells). In some ways, glucagon opposes insulin. However, the role of glucagon in metabolism is frequently misunderstood in diet-health circles.

The liver normally stores glucose in the form of glycogen and releases it into the bloodstream as needed. It can also manufacture glucose from glycerol, lactate, and certain amino acids. Glucagon's main job is to keep blood glucose from dipping too low by making sure the liver releases enough glucose. There are a few situations where this is particularly important:

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Coronary heart disease and chicken roll fats

Studies carried out on some Americans, Eastern people, and Mideastern and found that fried food including chicken rolls have a relation with heart disease and that may not including the risk of developing an existing heart disease for people who suffering from cardiovascular diseases.

Because of quantity of saturated fats in chicken rolls it may be considered as a non healthy food, however most of daily meals in Mediterranean’s and most Americans of fried foods and including chicken sandwiches and chicken pastries and chicken rolls as well,
The thing that may hurt our diet and its influence reflect on our health at the end. 

Nutritional Value of some sorts of chicken roll and fried chicken:

You can see the high Fat content in each type, which will impact on your blood vessels and lead to heart disease:

Light Meat Chicken Roll

Per 1 serving - Calories: 88 kcal | Fat: 4.21 Grams | Carbohydrates: 1.39 Grams | Protein: 11.13g

Other sizes: 1 package - 262 kcal, 1 oz - 44 kcal, 100 g - 154 kcal

Chicken Breast Roll (Oven Roasted)

Per 1 2 oz serving - Calories: 75 kcal | Fat: 4.28 Grams | Carbohydrates: 1.00 Grams | Protein: 8.17g

Other sizes: 1 oz - 38 kcal, 100 g - 134 kcal

Bacon, Chicken and Tomato Club Sandwich with Lettuce and Spread on Multigrain Roll

Per 1 sandwich - Calories: 433 kcal | Fat: 20.87 Grams | Carbohydrates: 26.19 Grams | Protein: 34.42g

Other sizes: 1 Horde’s Turkey Club - 500 kcal, 1 serving - 433 kcal, 100 g - 223 kcal

Broiled Chicken Fillet Sandwich with Lettuce, Tomato and Spread on Whole Wheat Roll

Per 1 sandwich - Calories: 330 kcal | Fat: 8.49 Grams | Carbohydrates: 39.05 Grams | Protein: 26.54g

Other sizes: 1 Horde’s Sandwich - 330 kcal, 1 Jack-in-the-Box sandwich - 392 kcal, 1 serving - 330 kcal

Broiled Chicken Fillet Sandwich with Cheese, Lettuce, Tomato and Non-Mayonnaise Spread on Whole Wheat Roll

Per 1 Wendy's sandwich - Calories: 380 kcal | Fat: 11.56 Grams | Carbohydrates: 36.30 Grams | Protein: 33.95g

Other sizes: 1 serving - 380 kcal, 100 g - 197 kcal, 1 oz - 56 kcal

Chicken Roll-Ups (Zoë’s Kitchen)

Per 1 serving - Calories: 610 kcal | Fat: 22.00 Grams | Carbohydrates: 54.00 Grams | Protein: 47.00 Grams   

Lifestyle and food habits in countries like European countries such as Spain and France consuming a lot of non-red meat in their food and frying process carried with Oils like olive oil and sunflower oil and leave trans fat residues after frying chicken or meat or other foods like potatoes…, saturated fats and trans fats also has an impact on our blood vessels, that trans fats coating the inner walls of blood vessels and cause cardiovascular problems such as coronary heart disease and thrombosis which means trans fats hardening and narrowing blood vessels the make a resistance for normal blood streaming and that matter make blood pressure be higher and that represents a high risk factor on our heart and increasing high cholesterol levels, finally may be lead to coronary heart disease, and may be lead to heart attacks or heart stroke as well, also trans fats is a heart high risk factor due to it is not processed by liver and cannot excreted by gallbladder, so that trans fats stored at body and cause Obesity while the Obeisant persons have high incidence of death due to increase heart disease and heart attacks rates.

Many deaths world wide have been recorded by having fried food a lot of times in their daily meals, but the studies told us that the fried chicken as an example of fried food dose not an risk factor alone on our heart health, so the advice to you to maintain food that boiled or baked or steamed, those ways are the best to keep foods healthy and away from risk of heart or digestion problems, and steamed way is a best cooking way to make chicken rolls due to the steam will not affect the integrity of proteins in chicken meat and will not leave trans fats after cooking, but if you follow a diet method you should maintain you daily calories.

A cup of steamed rice is about 242 calories, while a cup of fried rice is about 390 calories and 10 additional grams of fat. Regardless of the recent study's findings, the additional calories and fat grams that fried foods add to your diet can have a negative impact on your health if eaten regularly and in large portions.

Eat just a small amount of deep-fried food, and pair it with healthy foods, such as fruits and vegetables, which are low in calories and will not affect your heart health.

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Are Animal Crackers Paleo?

Every child loves animal crackers, those sweet and crunchy animal-shaped biscuits. But are they compatible with a Paleo diet? Some people might think they already know the answer, but consider this: our ancestors evolved on the African savanna, eating the plants and animals found there. Inside each box of animal crackers is an assortment of tiny savanna creatures such as giraffes and elephants.

To get to the bottom of this, I interviewed Robert Pearson, CEO of Animal Cracker Products Inc., who explained to me how these crackers are made.

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