Science Is The Best Tool We Have: Updated

As you may have guessed, I love science. While it's not perfect since it's done with technology that has limitations, and more importantly is done by humans, it's the best tool we have to understand our universe.

I've wanted to write about the scientific method for quite awhile but could never feel like I would do it justice. Then, yesterday, I actually did science and thought I'd start there. See, we all use the scientific method in our daily lives, without even thinking about it. It's not some foreign thing that only people in white lab coats are allowed to do.

I'm trying to lose weight and get fit. I've become a bit roly poly over the years, eating too many calories, spending too many hours in front of my monitors, and no time exercising. So on January 7, my mom and I decided to start a friendly competition. That's not really the right word. It's more like we're encouraging each other and spurring each other on. My husband Butch joined in too. So it makes it much better for all of us to work together.

Anyway, since Jan 7 till last week, I had lost 15 pounds. The weight is getting harder to lose now, but I was still making slow progress until last week. Then, alarmingly I put 1.5 lbs on in one day!

I am not on a "diet". I've tried fad diets before, denial diets, etc. They don't work. They are gimmicks. Usually you lose in the beginning but after a short time it no longer works, then as soon as you go off of these fad diets, the weight comes back on with a vengeance. 

More Groovy Science 6

Big Bear Solar Observatory have the New Solar Telescope (NST) which took the picture you see of our sun. This is the most detailed picture of a sunspot ever taken in visible light. The resolution of the telescope is just 50 miles of the sun's surface. Science and technology are amazingly cool. The NST should help researchers better understand the complexities of solar weather and its impact on the space climate in our neighborhood of the solar system. Found Here.

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Delusions of Calories Dance In Our Heads

As a typical person trying to watch my weight, I count calories. Not obsessively, but I try to keep an eye on how much I eat. Like a lot of people, even though I watch what I eat, I'm still always fighting to not gain weight, and getting more frustrated all the time.

New Scientist put together a 3 page article called The Calorie Delusion: Why food labels are wrong today and I wanted to share it with you. Here are the main points that I got out of it:

• Basically, it's good to balance calories in and calories out to maintain your weight. Common sense, right?


• Some food labels over or underestimate how much energy your body will get from a food by as much as 25%


• Eat a meager 20 kcal a day more than you need and you'll gain about a kilogram - or about 2.2 lbs - of fat per year


• Wilbur Atwater, a chemist, came up with how to calculate energy in food in the late 19th century, and we still use that system today
  
  
  
  • The Atwater method determines the energy content of food through incineration, not digestion
  
  
  
  


• Dietary Fiber: provides energy for gut microbes (which is good), is more resistant to mechanical and chemical digestion than other kinds of carbs, and therefore gives us lower energy than previously thought  (The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol 51, p 617)


• Protein also apparently takes more energy to convert to amino acids than previously thought (British Journal of Nutrition, vol 85, p 271)


• Softer foods lowers the energy cost of digestion! Food texture can greatly affect weight gain
  
  
  
  • A 2003 study in Japan found that feeding one group of rats hard pellets and the other group soft pellets (same flavor and calorie content), after 22 weeks the rats on the softer food were obese with more abdominal fat (Journal of Dental Research, vol 82, p 491)
  
  
  • A similar study in people had similar results: women who ate the hardest foods had significantly slimmer waistlines than those who ate the softest foods (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol 86, p206)
  
  
  
  


• The Atwater system assumes that the proportion of food that doesn't get digested is more or less constant, around 10%, but actually we've known for the last 60 years that this isn't the case
  
  
  
  • So while processed foods like white flour and white sugar are able to be almost completely converted to energy in the body, complex carbohydrates like course-ground wheat flour will only give up about 30%