Did You Miss The Greatest Interview of the Rio Olympics?

If you didn't see this chat with two fantastic Irish rowers then yes, yes you did miss Rio's greatest interview.

Today's Funny Friday video is here to fix that for you.

Have a great weekend!

We're Giving Away 5 Free Spots for Our Office's New Distance Program!

It's been over a dozen years since we opened our weight management office.

In that time we have worked with literally thousands of patients and while they were each unique and had their own sets of medical concerns and life challenges, they did share one thing in common - they all lived in or near to Ottawa.

In the beginning, that was a necessity. The technology to work with patients remotely simply didn't exist.

I'm thrilled to report that it does now.

For the past few months we've been working with a smartphone app that lets us reach our patients even when they're not sitting in front of us. The app allows us to create customizable and trackable goals that we can monitor remotely (and reach out if we see someone's struggling), and more importantly, the app provides two-way communication - both by way of quick text messages, but also by way of video conferencing, between patients and our office's professionals. While so far we've pretty much only been using the app with our Ottawa based patients, we're about to open our virtual doors and in so doing, use the app to work with anybody, anywhere.

We've designed a 12 week program that will be delivered by our office's registered dietitians to help people with their weight loss and behavioural change goals (and once formally launched, there'll be ongoing support options available once completed). During those 12 weeks people will have regular videoconferences with our RDs and work with them on creating personal goals that are designed to target each individual's specific needs, concerns, and barriers. They will also have access to our RDs by way of the app supported (and both PHIPA and HIPAA compliant) text messaging for quick questions and words of support.

While we will soon offer access to this program to everyone, right now we're looking for 5 volunteers to work through our new program with us and help us iron out the kinks in its delivery. In return for our best efforts to help you achieve your Best Weight, we’re looking for individuals who are comfortable giving us honest feedback on what’s helpful in our program and just as importantly what’s not.

Because the supporting program curriculum is still being developed (videos and articles that will accompany the 12 weeks and serve as offline resources) there is the requirement that those interested own and read my book The Diet Fix: Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work as it will serve in the offline course curriculum's stead. As well, for the beta-testers only, we need to restrict the offer to those with iPhones as we’re still working out some of the issues with the Android operating system.

If you're interested in being considered as a beta-tester, please send us a letter telling us a bit about you and your history with weight loss (please limit the letter to no more than 400 words), and in 2 weeks we'll contact those who our RDs select. We're looking for divergent people and issues and consequently can't simply take the first 5 people who write. That said, if you do write in and you're not selected, we'll be sure to put your name in the queue for when our program formally launches and make sure you’re at the top of the list.

Please send your emails to distance@bmimedical.ca.

We're so excited to be rolling this out!

Will Personalized Genetic Risk Knowledge Lead People to Change Their Diets?

Image Source: ThinnerGene

Certainly that's the notion behind the rise of the for-profit personalized medicine genetic testing industry. The thinking is that if people are made aware of their personalized genetic risks, and if those risks are modifiable by way of diet, that said knowledge will motivate people to affect dietary changes.

But does it?

That's the question a recently published randomized trial sought to answer. The study, The effect of the apolipoprotein E genotype on response to personalized dietary advice intervention: findings from the Food4Me randomized controlled trial, randomly assigned 1,466 participants to a 6 month trial of one of 4 interventions.

1. Standard non-personalized dietary and physical activity advice
2. Personalized advice based on dietary intake
3. Personalized advice based on dietary intake, physical activity, and standard blood biomarkers
4. Personalized advice based on dietary intake, physical activity, standard blood biomarkers, and genotyping

The genotyping was for apolipoprotein E (APOE) which in turn is thought to be a key regulator of cholesterol and lipids. It's also thought that differing APOE genotypes influence lipid responses to dietary fat and therefore given the known increased risk of certain APOE genotypes with coronary heart disease and on lipid responses to dietary fat, that risk carrying individuals if told about their genotypes, might be more likely to adopt gene-based personalized nutrition recommendations.

The study's findings aren't particularly heartening for personalized medicine as it pertains to individual behaviour change.

Personalized advice was found to be better than non-personalized advice, but there was no additional benefit to change found with those whose personalized advice warned them that their unique genetic makeups conferred greater risk.

There is a silver lining here though. Personalized advice based on an individual's dietary intake alone was just as likely to inspire change. So rather than spending your money on all sorts of tests, if you're worried about some diet related aspect of your health, go see an RD (but maybe not one who tries to sell you personalized genetic testing), and with the money you save on all that other testing, you can book a few follow ups and likely get an even bigger bang for your buck.

Saturday Stories: Killers, Words, and The Longest Hatred

David Armstrong in Stat with more on Fentanyl, the stealth killer that's gaining ground.

David Schraub in The Tablet on how words and Black Lives both matter.

Richard Landes in Fathom on the left's Venn overlap between anti-zionism and anti-Semitism.

Squirrels are Surprisingly Polite

At least judging from today's Funny Friday video they are.

Have a great weekend!

Another Great Not Junk Food Fundraising Program!

Thanks to my friend and med school classmate Christine Gibson for sharing this with me.

It's called Raise a Patch and it's an Australian initiative that I adore. It's fundraising (school, sports team, whatever) by way of selling "veggie patches", herb pots, and flower gardens.

Healthy foods, beautiful flowers, and the joy of gardening? What's not to love. Hope this catches on globally.

(and if you're looking for more healthy fundraising inspiration, here's a compiled list of other Aussie programs)

Anthocyanins And Flavonones Aren't Fruit!

For the most part, supplement sales and hype are built off of extrapolations. Extrapolations of animal studies to people, extrapolations of basic science to clinical utility, extrapolations of small studies to general conclusions.

And here's an example of another extrapolation - the extrapolation of presumed causality.

The study, Habitual intake of anthocyanins and flavanones and risk of cardiovascular disease in men, is amazing.

Not in that it's a great or conclusive study, but rather that despite the very clear first sentence,

"Although increased fruit intake reduces cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk, which fruits are most beneficial and what key constituents are responsible are unclear."

a sentence that spells out the fact that while we know fruit consumption is healthful, we genuinely don't know why, the article goes on to conclude, despite not in fact testing for it, that certain fruits' anthocyanins and flavonone content reduce heart disease risk in men.

How'd they come to that conclusion?

Well they estimated how much anthocyanins and flavonones were consumed as a function of how much anthocyanin and flavonone containing fruit was reported in food frequency questionnaires and then looked at cardiovascular disease risk as a function of same.

Of course fruit contains more than simply anthocynanins and flavonones, so to suggest those were the causal agents of the study's findings is purely a guess.

So putting aside why the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published an article with a hugely misleading title and conclusion (and how it passed through peer review as is), why did the authors of this US Blueberry Highbush Council funded study (blueberries contain anthocyanins) focus on presumptive causal factors rather than the berries themselves?

Hard to say. Though it's certainly not impossible that the study's lead author's 2013 patent, meant to provide phytonutrients (including anthocyanins and flavonones) to nursing mothers might have had some influence (and is probably something that should have been included in the study's confict of interest statement).

Regardless, one things's certain. For folks selling anthocyanin and flavonone supplements, studies like this one are a gold mine.

Saturday Stories: Supplement Science, CIA Votes, and a Starving Venezuela

Alex Hutchinson in Runner's World with a case study of the slimy salesmanship of science by supplement sellers.

Former CIA director Michael J. Morrell in The New York Times on his endorsement of Hillary Clinton and why Trump would be a disaster as President.

Fabiola Zerpa in Bloomberg on the nightmarish realities of life in Venezuela - a 30 day hunt for food in a starving land.

"You're Never Too Old to Follow Your Dreams"

Honestly, this is a very sweet Funny Friday video.

Have a great weekend!

Sorry Corn Refiners Association, Chocolate Milk Doesn't Increase Intelligence

From the annals of corporate sponsored research comes this gem that was sponsored by the Corn Refiners Association,

"No Effect of Sugar Sweetened Milk on Performance of a Battery of Cognitive Assessment Tests".

Unfortunately for the Corn Refiners, no amount of p-hacking saw chocolate milk increasing brain function.

While undeniably there's great research out there that is and was funded by industry, including the food industry, there's really only one purpose for research like this - sales.

There's no doubt that if even the tiniest change had been found, the finding would have served industry as a talking and marketing point, just as was the case with the Welch's study that had them claiming grape juice gave working mothers better memories.

Those ends certainly aren't a mystery to the researchers who run these studies. And probably not a my$tery either as to why researchers agree to run them.

Maybe by way of a blind universal fund, or by way of sugar-sweetened beverage tax revenues, or by more innovative approaches (see below), we need to find new ways to fund research because clearly, research funding is broken, and it needs fixing.

I think we've found a solution to the #research funding i$$ue #phdlife #gradschoolproblems pic.twitter.com/DufmBNmMl3

— Kevin C. Klatt (@Nutrevolve) August 4, 2016

Why Does @HealthCanada Allow Chocolate Syrup To Be Enriched With Iron?

I took this photo at my local supermarket a few weeks ago.

It's a rather mind boggling product.

As is evidenced by the photo up above (and by common sense) this "iron enriched" Nesquik is meant to be added to a glass of milk.

So what's my issue?

Firstly a glass of milk, by way of both its casein and its 300 or so mg of calcium impairs iron absorption so what's added isn't the iron your body will be getting by a long shot.

Second it's vitamin fortified chocolate syrup with a front-of-package designed to infer good-for-you-ness.

That Health Canada allows a product designed to be added to milk to be enriched with iron is bizarre.

That Health Canada allows the enrichment of candy with vitamins, and then allows that vitamin enriched candy to be marketed as healthy, is just plain wrong.

Saturday Stories: ISIS, Alzheimer's, and Addiction

Image by Psychonaught

Abe Greenwald, in Commentary, presents a blistering indictment of Obama's foreign policy as it pertains to the Middle East and ISIS.

Jann Arden, on Facebook, with a candid, heartbreaking, glimpse into her experiences caring for her mother who has Alzheimer's

Eli Saslow in the Washington Post with a long read on what it's like to live with addiction.

Sir David Attenborough Meets Pokemon Go

Today's Funny Friday will appeal to both players and non-players alike!

Have a great weekend!

Kudos to Pita Pit. Really! Healthy Help From A Fast Food Joint.

Thanks to Middlesex County's Anita Cramp for sending this photo my way!

It's one she took in a local Pita Pit and as she puts it, Pita Pit has,

"made water the easy and free choice"

So much better than the choice of more expensive bottled water vs. less expensive soda.

Thanks Pita Pit! Would love to see all fast food restaurants follow suit.

The Food Industry Spends A Cancer Moonshot On Advertising Every 3 Weeks

Some perspective.

Did you hear about the "Cancer Moonshot 2020"?

In their words,

"The Cancer MoonShot 2020 Program is one of the most comprehensive cancer collaborative initiatives launched to date, seeking to accelerate the potential of combination immunotherapy as the next generation standard of care in cancer patients."

And so what's the cost of this ambitious program over the course of the next 5 years?

$1 billion.

Sound impressive?

Maybe less so when you consider that according to AdAge, in 2014 alone, the top 25 US food industry brands spent just shy of 15x that amount advertising their products.

That's a moonshot worth every 3 weeks!

Spread that out over the billion dollar moonshot's 5 year duration and suddenly you realize that through 2020 the food industry will spend 75 times more money trying to get you to buy Coca-Cola, KFC, Cheerios, Dunkin, etc., than the government will be spending on their "MoonShot" to cure cancer.

If we want to see population level improvements to diet, no doubt that part of the requirement will be food industry advertising reform. Banning advertising that targets kids altogether, reforming front-of-package claims, cracking down on deceit, and more, because with a cancer moonshot of food industry advertising every three weeks, consumers don't stand a chance if we don't.

[And of course the other issue worth noting is how incredibly irresponsible it is to promote a 5-year, billion dollar investment as a cancer moonshot.]

Saturday Stories: Syrian Hell, Vegan Restaurant Review, False Tests and Cooking

That this photo from the Atlantic of Aleppo, Syria is over 4 years old is terrifying

Dr. Samer Attar in the New England Journal of Medicine on the hell of Syria (warning, this is a very tough read - and you should read it anyways)

Michael Deacon, on a much lighter note, with his review in the Telegraph of a new, trendy, London, vegan restaurant.

Ryan Gabrielson and Topher Sanders in ProPublica with the awful story of the regularly false test that's sending people to jail.

My friend Darya Rose on her Summer Tomato blog on "The Real Reason You Don't Cook". Darya also kindly offered up a $15 discount code for Weighty Matters readers who want to sign up for her online course on how to cook without recipes in just 30 days (I don't get any cut or referral bonus) just enter COOKINGMATTERS15 at checkout.

Muscle Beach' Strongest Grandpa

Loved today's Funny Friday video.

That won't be me though one day.

Have a great weekend!

JCPenney Airs The Fat Acceptance Ad That Everyone Should See #HereIAm

This new ad campaign from JCPenney is wonderful.

Watching it, and hearing its messages, has me wanting to hear them more often.

Fat or skinny, weight doesn't define a person. Shocking how challenging it is to make that point. Kudos and thanks to JCPenney for making it so phenomenally well.

It's More Important To Teach Your Kids to Cook Than to Play Soccer

Photo courtesy of yoshiyasu nishikawa 

Yes, I know there will be people whose challenges and circumstances are real and severe enough that they genuinely can't ensure their kids learn how to cook before leaving home. This post isn't for them. This post is for everyone else.

For the first time in history the average American family is spending more money in restaurants than they are in grocery stores.

Kids are leaving home now knowing more about how to play soccer or hockey than they do about how to cook meals from fresh whole ingredients.

That's so incredibly unfortunate, not only for those kids, but for their future families.

Cooking is a life skill and it's a parents job to teach those before they leave home. If you aren't comfortable with cooking yourself, take the opportunity to learn with your kids. Your kids learning how to cook will serve not only to help them in providing themselves and their futures with healthful meals, but will also save them money during their lean years and will likely reduce their risk of developing a myriad of diet-related, chronic, non-communicable diseases.

Whether by way of the ridiculous amount of online recipes and resources, or enrolling in a cooking course or supper club, cooking, like any skill, is obtained by way of practice. It doesn't matter if you're not good at cooking now. Take the time, and there's no doubt you'll get there.

Saturday Stories: Disclosure Paradox, Bad Yogurt, and Fat Bias

Sunita Sah in the New York Times on the inconvenient paradox of disclosure.

Gabriella Paiella in NYMag's The Cut with a history of bad yogurt commercials targeting women.

Louis Peitzman in Buzzfeed explains how if you're gay it gets better - unless you're fat.