The study in the Journal of Applied Physiology begins by telling us “The content of meals consumed after exercise can impact metabolic responses for hours and even days after the exercise session.” But then what should we eat after a good workout to get the best results? That’s what they wanted to find out.

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While many researchers have been looking to exotic plants of the tropics and Far East for life extending and enhancing compounds, it turns out that one of the hottest areas for research is a humble fruit native to North America. Cultivated since the 1800s and harvested wild from bogs and forests by Native Americans for centuries, the blueberry has long been known to be loaded with vitamin C and more recently been noted for a variety of other beneficial plant compounds. Blueberries are fairly low calorie and carry a low glycemic load and should be on the shortlist of anyone looking for a healthy snack.

Recent years have seen volumes of research on the compounds in blueberries. Our friends at the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry have published no less than 53 papers in last year on the berry. Topics have been wide ranging, most recently they’ve found some interesting effects on vision and memory. Read the rest of this entry »

How many times have you heard female friends complain that their husbands have an easier time losing weight. All he has to do is hit the gym and his weight just comes off, she kills herself working out and the weight is slow to come off if at all? It’s a complaint I hear all the time in the clinic. I’ve often written it off as formerly more athletic men rediscovering their muscle memory and such.

It turns out there’s something to this. Enough something that Todd Hagobian and Barry Braun gathered all the studies they could find looking at sex differences and exercise into a review article in the current issue of Exercise and Sports Medicine Reviews. Read the rest of this entry »

A huge European research project called ISAFRUIT is trying to figure out the science behind why fruits are good for us, and it goes way beyond vitamins and minerals. It turns out that eating apples — specifically apple pectin — encourages the growth of “good bacteria” in the guts.

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Roughly 17% of dairy cows are dosed with something called recombinant bovine growth hormone, or rBGH, sold under the trade name Prosilac. This is done so each cow will produce 7-8 more pounds of milk daily — about a gallon. Clearly this is good for the dairy farmer! But is it good for the cow? What about the human who consumes that milk?

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