Dace Medical

 At least one advertisement for reduced-fat yogurt has scantily-clad thin people walking about eating out of yogurt pots. They don't actually say that eating low-fat yogurt will make you thin, but that is the implied message. But what is the reality? In general, high protein, high fat foods keep you feeling full for longer, whereas sugars and starches (which are broken down rapidly into sugar) enter the bloodstream rapidly as sugar. What is not used as an immediate energy source is converted into fat, and likely to be added to belly fat. As this happens quickly, you will feel hungry again soon. So from the point of view of weight management, low fat is not necessarily helpful. Next time you are shopping for yogurt, read the very small print somewhere on the carton that tells you the ingredients. In some reduced-fat yogurts, this tiny print will tell you that corn starch or fructose has been added. These are readily absorbed carbs, and precisely what you don't want if you are tr...

We all like to indulge, especially on holiday. But then the weight goes on, we struggle to lose it, and then comes Christmas, and the whole cycle starts all over again. What to do?  There is a signal that tells us we have had enough, and we can learn to heed it. When the sugar in our blood reaches a certain level, part of the brain called the hypothalamus senses this and switches off the feeling of hunger. If we stopped eating then, we would be a good way towards keeping our weight stable, and even, with some effort, losing some.  This is why we tell children that if they eat too many sweets it will spoil their appetite. The sugar has gone in, hunger is switched off, and they won't eat the food that their bodies actually need. The excess sugar gets turned into fat. Children often burn it off, adults not so much. Ultra-processed food is like eating too many sweets. Ultra-processed food is designed to make you want to eat more of it. It tends to be full of sugars and starches. T...