Previously on this site I have drawn attention to the fact that the body mass index (weight in kg divided by the square of someone’s height in metres) is not a particularly good gauge of health status. For a start, the BMI tells us noting about the body’s composition, and it is entirely possible for [...]

I believe that what represents an ideal diet varies from person to person, but one thing I’m clear about is that many health professionals and even our Governments advise intakes of carbohydrate that are greater than is good for us. In particular, while starchy carbohydrates such as bread, potatoes, rice, pasta and breakfast cereals have [...]

The body mass index (BMI) has for a long time been the standard measurement used to determine whether someone’s weight is ‘healthy’ or not. BMIs (calculated by dividing weight in kg by the square of someone’s height in metres) of 25 or more are generally regarded as ‘unhealthy’. The suggestion is there are somehow mortal [...]

Very few people would disagree with the idea that cigarette smoking is generally bad four our health. This habit has strong links with a range of conditions including cardiovascular disease, lung cancer and other respiratory diseases. The only doctors and scientists that dispute the negative effects of smoking seem to be those in the pay [...]

Many individuals who are attempting to lose weight will see hunger as a sign that they have pushed themselves into calorie deficit, and that their body weight will be dwindling as a result. They may be right, but the problem is that getting hungry can make it very difficult indeed for individuals to control what [...]

Overeating is something that many of us will have experienced at one time or another. This phenomenon can, of course, be down to plentiful supply of appetising food, but it can also have a physiological and/or biochemical root too. One cause of overeating is ‘hypoglycaemic’ or low blood sugar. When blood sugar levels drop to [...]

For a long time I’ve been an advocate of tree nuts (e.g. cashews, hazelnuts, walnuts, pecans, brazil nuts, almonds) and peanuts in the diet. One reason for this is that they are a highly nutritious food, and their consumption has been consistently linked in the scientific literature with a reduced risk of heart disease and [...]

One basic nutritional tenet I subscribe to is the idea that the diet should be based on foods that give relatively slow sustained release of sugar into the blood stream. Some of the reason for this thinking comes from the fact that fast sugar-releasing (high glycaemic index) foods will tend to cause surges in the [...]

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is a food ingredient which is used to enhance flavour and palatability. It is the glutamate – an amino acid - part of the MSG molecule that does the job in this respect. MSG (and/or other sources of glutamate) can be found in a wide range of processed foods with the blessing [...]

In the World of nutrition, not everyone shares the same opinion (obviously). And perhaps the most stark and common example of this concerns the relative amounts of carbohydrate and fat we should have in our diets. The conventional view is that the diet should be, generally speaking, low in fat and high in carb. Fat, [...]

At the end of last year I reported on the findings of the mammoth Women’s Health Initiative trial. The trial was initiated in 1993, and recruited a total of almost 50,000 post-menopausal women and followed them for an average of about 8 years. About 60 per cent of these women were allowed to continue on [...]

It’s perhaps one of the most contentious issues in nutrition: should individuals who want to control their weight eat a diet low in fat, or low in carbohydrate? The ‘conventional’ view is that fat is ‘calorific’ and fattening, so low-fat is the way to go. However, some (e.g. Gary Taubes and the late Robert Atkins) [...]

One key to successful weight control is to eat foods that, calorie for calorie, are most satisfying. Two factors that have identified as having some importance here are the glycaemic index of a food and its protein content. Basically low glycaemic index (GI) foods (those that release sugar relatively slowly into the bloodstream) are more [...]

The body mass index (BMI) is the standard and most commonly-used method for assessing body weight by health professionals. It is calculated by dividing an individual’s weight in kg by the square of their height in metres. The fact that some arithmetic is required to ascertain the BMI makes it look quite scientific and robust. [...]

The implicit advantage that artificial sweeteners have over sugar is that, being virtually devoid of calories, they’re a better option for those wanting to control their weight. However, as I described in a recent blog post here, there is no good evidence that artificial sweeteners promote weight loss compared to sugar. Plus, there is actually [...]