For twenty years I subscribed to SA, but then it went downhill when it was purchased by a new publisher that took it more mainstream to compete with Omni, Discover and others. In other words it’s now just a sensationalizing rag like it’s competition. Sorry, It’s a sore point with me because it was so good in the old days, and I suppose it might be better than the competition, but still, I’d take what they say with a grain of salt, to say the least (and you can see by the headlines what I mean, ie “Everything you know about calories is wrong” sensational crap if there ever was any). The only decent science news that I know of is the news section (and review articles) of Science. Nature, I expect is good too, but I haven’t read it lately. The NY Times Health section is pretty good too. There all expensive. By the way, all calorie counts are inaccurate, not just packaged food, and it’s obvious that labels would underestimate.

A couple of weeks ago Science had an article about the study in which they took colon bacteria from twins in which one twin was obese and the other normal, and transferred them to mice in which the colon bacteria had been wiped out. Interestingly, the mice who got the transplant from the obese twin got obese, while the mice who got the bacteria from the normal twin stayed thin. There was a lot more to the study, but it’s pretty new stuff, so not really useful yet.

couscous

i read this magazine in my library & just gave up

4 a healthy calorie counter it was ugh

@ least we r counting

which is better than nottin

that is why i cook everything but i’m not a scientist

just try 2 live a healthy life

i live in pa & when i was young we used 2 slide down those black hills when there was no snow

now there r’nt any due 2 fracking. the article about drinking water is so true but they r finding out that bottled water is no different

so where 2 we go from hear?

it’s almost like no matter how hard u try something harmful
will come like my mom

however, the fatalistic way of thinking is just a rationalization 2 not eat healthy

if we @ least try will get there
won’t we?

but

sometimes information is 2 much info

mayb we should just guess what it is the cals?

i always give 10% error rate which is allot

@ least they found the youth protein Sirt1

4 couscous video

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=calories-why-counts-are-wrong

Hi Wilt,

Great documentary. They have good science docs. on TV over there. But you see the one thing they didn’t mention is the gut bacteria, not pathogens, but like probiotics. Gut bacteria is all the rage now because they’ve figured out that several alimentary canal diseases like c-dificile and crones’ disease and some other things can be treated very successfully this way. The trouble is they don’t actually know which bacteria are the right ones. The successful experiments are just “fecal transplants”, and could also transmit pathogens. The concept is however, that you would have your own gut bacteria wiped out with antibiotics, and then have new ones from a “fecal transplant” from a skinny person. It would be good if this person were young and healthy as well as skinny. It worked in mice. Obviously, cultured strains of bacteria would be less yucky, and less dangerous, and maybe you could do it without the antibiotics. But the study author said that for treating obesity, it appears the good gut bacteria like fiber in the diet and that the transplants might work in mice via a hormone feedback which suppresses appetite (which sounds promising). So the take home is eat more fiber, and maybe someday they’ll have an effective probiotic.