Year: 2009

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The Facts on High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)

It seems to be human nature to want to find ONE SOLUTION to complex problems.  Obesity is no different.  Every few years something new is blamed as THE CAUSE OF OBESITY.  At least one of those is high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).  Like others before, it has been blamed as the cause of obesity, diabetes/The Metabolic Syndrome, health problems and the breakdown of the nuclear family.

A lot of this idea started with research by Bray who CORRELATED an increase in the intake of high fructose corn syrup with increasing rates of obesity.   Much of this started with a 2004 paper by Bray where he correlated changes in HFCS intake with changes in obesity, suggesting that it was the increase in HFCS intake that was driving obesity.  This was taken, as usual, far out of context into the popular realm of magazines, newspapers and tv soundbites.

Suddenly high fructose corn syrup was THE enemy.… Keep Reading

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Facts About Rapid Fat Loss

It’s taken almost as a matter of faith in the fitness world that slower rates of weight loss are superior to faster rates and that rapid fat loss always cause faster rates of regain and poorer long-term results.   And while there is certainly data to support that, we might ask if it is always the case.  You can probably guess by the title of this article that it’s not.

Note: Most research studies still tend to focus on weight loss despite the fact that fat loss and changes in body composition is a far greater metric of change.  For that reason I will be switching back and forth from fat and weight loss throughout the article.

Slow vs. Rapid fat Loss

While it’s taken as axiomatic that rapid fat loss is always inferior, there is a far amount of data that actually suggests the opposite.  That it, studies routinely show that a FASTER or GREATER initial weight loss is associated with BETTER long-term weight maintenance rather than worse.… Keep Reading