Last month’s IN THE NEWS highlighted a study published in the British Medical Journal Online First which suggested that those who eat quickly treble their risk of being overweight. Scientists involved in the study believe that the modern manner of eating on the go – and until absolutely full – is a significant factor in the current obesity epidemic because it overrides signals in the brain which normally encourage a little more self control. Now a study of British youngsters by Cancer Research UK, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that teaching children to savour their food will not only help them manage their weight but also help combat cancer.

In the study scientists set about videoing more than 120 sets of twins between the ages of 10 and 12 as they ate sandwiches and fruit salad. They worked out how many bites a minute the children took and compared this with their weight. Fastest eaters were the overweight children, at 4.3 bites a minute; next came those on the heavy side of normal with 4.1 bites a minute. The thinnest youngsters took only 3.8 bites a minute. Although the researchers acknowledged that genes influence our eating rates they came to the conclusion that the faster children eat the more overweight they tend to be and the higher the risk of cancer. As obesity raises the risk of at least five forms of cancer, something as simple as teaching children to eat slowly could have a huge impact on public health.

 

Great dietary gurus of centuries ago stressed the importance of eating slowly and chewing food for a long time and as this study makes clear, this message is even more important today not just for busy adults who bolt down their food, but also for children.

Yet more evidence of the weight loss benefits of eating breakfast to kick start your metabolism (fat burning) for the day ahead have been revealed by a recent study directed by the University of London.

The study of 15,000 children found that one in five was overweight or obese when he or she started school and those five year olds who were not given a bowl of cereal or a slice of toast in the morning were twice as likely to be obese as those who ate breakfast. The researchers suggested that children who miss breakfast are more likely to get hungry before lunch and gain weight because they tend to snack on foods that are high in fat and sugar.

 

This study confirms the results from other studies that suggest that children who skip breakfast tend to perform less well at school and have poorer test results. The message is simple and clear: to reduce their risk of weight gain and improve their performance at school, children need to sit down to a healthy breakfast every morning.

Cutting out carbohydrates from your diet in an attempt to lose weight can lead to memory loss, according to a study published this month in the medical journal Appetite.

The study by scientists from Tufts University in Boston, America – which clearly demonstrates that the food you eat can have an impact on mental performance – found that dieters who avoided carbohydrates do worse in mental tests than those who are allowed some pasta, bread and potatoes. This is because carbohydrates are an important source of energy or fuel for the brain and mental performance drops after just a week on low carbohydrate diets. The aim of the study was to look at the impact of low carbohydrate diets on the brain power of 19 women aged 22 to 55. Volunteers were put on either a low calorie balanced diet or a low carbohydrate diet. Within a week ten women on the low carbohydrate diet were far worse at mental tests than those on a conventional balanced diet. The tests looked at attention, long term and short term memory, visual attention and spatial memory and the low carbohydrate dieters showed a gradual decline in memory tasks compared to the low calorie balanced dieters. Their reaction time was sluggish and their visual memory poor.

 

The researchers believe that low carbohydrate diets reduce the amount of blood sugar or glucose which is carried to the brain and used by nerve cells for energy. The brain needs a constant supply of glucose for energy and diets low in carbohydrates can be detrimental to learning, memory and thinking. Low carbohydrate diets can also be detrimental to long term weight loss because they are not sustainable in the long term and create nutritional deficiencies which can lead to blood sugar imbalances, mood swings and comfort eating.

 

What is not clear from this research is what they mean by low carbohydrate diets.  Fruit and vegetables are also carbohydrates and with the extreme high protein low carbohydrate diets these are also omitted along with starchy carbohydrates.  We do need carbohydrates for ‘brain energy’ but they need to be the right carbohydrates and we can easily omit the added sugar and white flour carbohydrates which will be better for our health generally and will not effect brain function negatively  In fact by not having these in the diet, it can often improve memory and concentration because the blood sugar is not fluctuating wildly.