Desinflate

First Lady Michelle Obama jointly with Tom Vilsack, current agriculture secretary, just announced the new food icon, "MyPlate". The new icon will replace the traditional food pyramid. The concept of illustrating the various food groups on an image of a plate is very simple and concrete. I think this is a great idea for educating our future generations. The MyPlate icon places strong emphasis on consuming larger portions of vegetable and grains, and smaller portions for fruits and proteins.

A publication of a study from researchers at Purdue University has interesting findings that are opposed to conventional wisdom on the consumption of food with fat substitutes. The consumption of fat substitutes in conjunction with high-fat diets had an increased effect on weight gain compared to the control group. These results are consistent with previous findings demonstrating that weakening the predictive relation between sweet taste and calories can also produce positive energy balance, depending on the sweetness of the maintenance diet.

Readers, please take a look at this brief article at The Harvard Crimson.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/6/23/weight-gain-study-associated/