Michael Pollan’s Simple Rules for Eating
What if eating right wasn’t actually all that complicated? What if you read enough to see patterns develop, to realize that when you stripped away all the confusing bits that maybe the skeleton …
Nutrition
Gary Taubes on What Really Makes Us Fat
We’ve been told for decades that dietary fat makes us gain weight, yet research suggests refined carbohydrates are to blame. It’s time to turn the food pyramid upside down. Let’s examine the …
The Seven Books Bill Gates Thinks You Should Read This Summer
Bill Gates is out with his annual summer reading list and, while longer than last year’s, it’s a great place to kick off your summer reading. “Each of these books,” Gates writes, …
Miracle Grow for Your Brain
Right now the front of your brain is firing signals about what you’re reading and how much of it you soak up has a lot to do with whether there is a proper balance of neurochemicals and growth factors …
Ancient Wisdom For Lifelong Health
I was excited to read John Durant’s book The Paleo Manifesto: Ancient Wisdom for Lifelong Health. Whether or not you’re interested in paleo, it’s full of interesting nuggets. …
Vaclav Smil: Should We Eat Meat? Evolution and Consequence of Modern Carnivory
What can and should be done about human carnivory? Vaclav Smil answers in this adapted excerpt from Should We Eat Meat?: Evolution and Consequences of Modern Carnivory: There is no doubt that human …
Coevolution and Artificial Selection
“The ancient relationship between bees and flowers is a classic example of coevolution. In a coevolutionary bargain like the one struck by the bee and the apple tree, the two parties acton each …
What Animals Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing
Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, a cardiologist at the University of California Los Angeles, believes that her fellow human physicians have much to learn from their veterinary counterparts. These are not …
The Science of Addictive Junk Food
Michael Moss, a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter at The New York Times, just wrote a book called Salt Sugar Fat. Every year, the average American eats thirty-three pounds of cheese …
What Facts Do We Know About Food?
A summary of a recent talk by Michael Pollan about what we know about food. We are ignoring the elephant in the room when we only talk nutrients — this way of eating is killing us. For example by …
Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think
Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think will change the way you think about your next meal. According to eating behavior expert Brian Wansink the mind makes food-related decisions, more than …
Why you eat too much: The Delboeuf Illusion
The size of dinnerware influences how much people serve and consume. When plates and bowls are large enough that capacity is not a constraint, we consistently serve more onto relatively larger than …
Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
“The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to accept another, and the judgment leading to that decision involves the comparison of both paradigms with nature and …
The Science of Obesity
One thing that has always baffled me is how we get fat. Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes unearths the biological truth around why we’re getting fat. In the process, Taubes dispels many accepted …
Gary Taubes: Is Sugar Toxic?
In Robert Lustig’s view, sugar should be thought of, like cigarettes and alcohol, as something that’s killing us. But can sugar possibly be as bad as Lustig says? Lustig’s argument is that sugar …