Category Archives: Articles

What is microbial diversity anyway?

We hear about the diversity of our gut microbiota quite a lot nowadays. But what that actually means is often a little vague. Microbiotaologists calculate diversity by borrowing equations developed by those who have spent much longer studying the diversity … Continue reading

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Has modern farming increased the retinol in the liver you eat?

Liver is about the most concentrated dietary source of pre-formed vitamin A (retinol) that you could hope to find, along with a number of other vitamins. Like in us humans, animals store retinol in their liver and the more they consume … Continue reading

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Graphic faecal transplants and obesity

The gut microbiota has been a popular area of research over the past few years and few aspects of this research have gained quite as much attention as the role of the gut microbiota in obesity. One of the studies that started … Continue reading

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What should we eat? A cacophany of advice

Many people want to know what and how they should eat to lose weight, improve their health, avoid illness, live forever, or for any number of other reasons. One popular source of information are books relating to food, diets, and nutrition. However, there … Continue reading

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Hippocratic misquotations: Let thy quotations not be by Hippocrates

  “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” – Hippocrates. This is perhaps one of the best-known quotes on diet and health attributed to Hippocrates, the physician in Ancient Greece considered to be the father of medicine. Only it … Continue reading

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Evolving salt: Did humans evolve on a high salt diet?

Recently I was reading some of a new book called “The Salt Fix: Why the Experts Got it All Wrong and How Eating More Might Save Your Life”. This contains the interesting claim that humans evolved on a diet high … Continue reading

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NOD mice: Gluten-free diets and diabetes

Type 1 diabetes mellitus is an autoimmune disease where both genetic and environmental factors, such as diet, combine to trigger the disease. Type 1 diabetes has been found to occur more frequently in individuals who also suffer from coeliac disease. This may … Continue reading

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On the Pulse of Insulin

Insulin is not simply pumped out of the pancreas in a constant stream or, at least, it shouldn’t be. Like many other hormones, insulin is secreted in short bursts, or pulses, by the beta-cells in the islets of langerhans and … Continue reading

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In the Name of the Fat.

The names of fatty acids that make up the fats in the world around us can be so familiar that we rarely consider where these names came from. While fatty acids now have systematic names and precise scientific names that describe … Continue reading

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A bread too far: Food structure and insulin responses

That the structure of food can influence its effects on our body is an underappreciated area of research and evidence is limited on this subject. The structure of food, sometimes called the food matrix is defined by the USDA as; “The nutrient … Continue reading

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