Tag: diet

Ditch the wheel: scientific secret for slimmer, sexier mice

After a canker sore medicine caused this mouse to lose weight without dieting or exercise, LSU lab assistants can't resist touching his new six-pack.
After a canker sore medicine caused this mouse to lose weight without dieting or exercise, LSU lab assistants can’t resist touching his new six-pack.

You know, we keep hearing about all these great things science was supposed to do for us, but it sure seems like it’s fallen short in recent years. Personal jetpacks, flying cars and exterminating everyone over 30 are all now 13 years overdue. Basically, thanks for the microwave ovens, scientists, but what have you done for us lately?

Well, science delivered, and it delivered big. Get ready for slimmer, sexier mice, because doctors at Louisiana State University have found the secret to exercise- and diet-free weight loss.

LSU researchers injected mice that they had fattened up with amlexanox, a drug normally used to treat canker sores in humans. The mice lost the weight through increased metabolism, not by moving around more or eating less. Once off the drug, the mice gained the weight back, but it was too late for their young, sexy new spouses to dump them.

The next step is to test this treatment on obese humans, who look forward to getting that wheel out of their living rooms.

Diet drinks: more evil than previously thought

There's such a thing as too much dieting ... or too drunk.
There’s such a thing as too much dieting … or being too drunk.

We already knew that diet drinks — especially diet fruit punch — are depressing. (Or that depressing people drink them.) But, now we’ve discovered that diet drinks are also trying to get you drunk.

A recent study found that using diet drinks as a mixer gave drinkers a higher BAC than those drinking the same amount with regular mixers. The key is calories, which help absorb alcohol and slow down its release into the bloodstream. Diet drinks, however, have reduced or no calories, which means the alcohol is on an expressway to Karaoke Town (population: you and Randy Newman songs).

What concerned researchers is that women are more likely to order diet mixed drinks. We should have known: diet drinks are trying to get your girlfriend drunk.

Poop your way to longer life

Have we got good news for those of you who fear dying, ever! According to data from the National Institutes of Health and the AARP, people who consume high fiber diets have a lower risk of death.

The trade-off is that most of that extra time on Earth will be spent on the can.

Now, before you get all excited and take up dangerous deathsports:

1. “Lower risk of dying” does not mean there’s a chance you won’t die at all. This is why doctors aren’t allowed to write childrens’ books. (Seuss flunked out for a dame.)

2. It has to be real fiber: grains like oats and wheat. Leave your grandmom’s basket collection alone.

Reabsorbed? Didn’t see that coming

We’ve all heard of Jenny McCarthy and her anti-vaccination rants. But, did you know that there are many other actors who endorse dangerous health ideas? It’s true! Well, science shall no longer tolerate the reckless endangerment of people who take medical advice from abdominal support systems.

We’d like to single out one item in this year’s Sense About Science list, and that’s cage fighter Alex Reid’s semen absorption (“I’m serious; stop laughing, guys!”) scheme:

“It’s actually very good for a man to have unprotected sex as long as he doesn’t ejaculate. Because I believe that all that semen has a lot of nutrition. A tablespoon of semen has your equivalent of steak, eggs, lemons and oranges. I am reabsorbing it into my body and it makes me go raaaaahh.”

Mr. Reid, while this in no way makes us question your sexuality, we’d like to bring up a story about this one guy we heard about in high school who tried to have sex with his girlfriend, and she wouldn’t let him finish, and he died.

… Seriously, though: that “raaaahh”-ing? Probably a prostate cancer flare-up.

Naked women are the new sexy

Much like Larry Craig at a gentleman’s club, we get that Fox News is trying hard to look like it cares about women. If you were a network that hires cheerleaders to support an anti-abortion, it’s-only-sexist-if-it’s-about-Sarah-Palin narrative, you’d worry about the average empty-nester switching channels to her stories, too.

But, there’s trying, and then there’s trying too hard. Case in point: “Voluptuous Is The New Black!” (Exclamation theirs.)

Look, Fox. Christina Hendricks? Yes, she’s hot. Other voluptuous women? Many of them are hot, too, and some of them are fat. But, are skinny women out? No. Like voluptuous women, some are hot, and some are coat racks. And some women in both categories? Ugly, with very little to do with the body.

Basically, here’s the code to understanding what’s attractive to men: if we want to see her naked, she’s in the Attractive Women’s Club.

(Special thanks to James.)

Diarrhea no substitute for bulimea

Taco Bell–which was represented by a chihuahua in their ads until she was ground into chalupas–has unveiled their new campaign: dieting.

If the past decade has been categorized by gritty, violent remakes of crap from the ’90s, then consider this the s#%tty remake of Jared’s Subway diet. TB claims that a woman lost 50 pounds by ordering from their “Fresco” menu daily, keeping her caloric intake below 1300.

Oh, there are so many jokes here …. Let’s just post them in a list:

  • The Fresco menu? You’d lose weight if you ate paintings of food, too.
  • It wasn’t the Taco Bell that was low calorie, but the Tic-Tacs she ate for the rest of the day.
  • In the burrito’s defense, it doesn’t stay in your system long enough to pack on the pounds.
  • Before Taco Bell, this woman never ate lettuce.
  • The Taco Bell diet encourages you to exercise more so that dates can focus on your six-pack abs, even when you smell like you s#%t your pants.
  • We always go for a run after a Gordito … to the bathroom.
  • C’mon, have you ever seen a fat Mexican?
  • We can’t tell you Taco Bell’s secret blend of 11 herbs and spices; however, we can tell you that one of those spices is not not tape worm eggs.
  • Why would this woman lie about the dietary benefits of a multimillion dollar international chain of restaurants?

Look, we’re not saying it’s impossible to lose weight by eating Taco Bell. We’re just saying that you might lose even more by not doing so.

An end to torture?

Well, here we are in the first 24 hours of Barack Obama’s presidency, and what story do we have to present to you? More torture, but this time of American citizens.

In a study to learn how the brain reacts to dieting and food cravings, scientists ordered 23 male and female volunteers, who weren’t even obese, to fast for 17 hours! If you think the food deprivation is the worst part, then put on your outrage galoshes:

“During that period, he and his team interviewed them about their favorite foods and asked them to rank each on a 1-to-10 scale. The researchers then selected one food for each subject, the only requirement being that it scored 7 or above in desirability. When the 17 hours were up, the volunteers were injected with a nuclear tracer, placed in a brain-imaging PET scanner and presented with a food they craved.”

Oh, they’re not done yet:

“‘If you said you liked barbecued ribs, we’d put a big portion of them in front of you,’ says [Dr. Gene-Jack] Wang. ‘We’d warm them in a microwave first so you couldn’t get away from the smell, and we’d give you a cotton ball with a bit of the food on it so you could taste it. Then we’d have one of the nurses describe how the food was made.'”

And did the patients then receive the food? No, they were told to think of something else and were required to keep their eyes open.

So, what did they learn in the name of science? That people have a hard time sticking to diets when tortured with juicy, succulent ribs. Way to let us down, President Obama.