WGBH - Fitness & Nutrition RSS

The Significance of Picky Eating

Wed, 09 May 2012 10:48 AM +0000

May 9, 2012

Ms. Shoubash's students test the bitter/sweet properties of various plants in her Foods class. (Lori L. Stalteri/Flickr)

Danielle Renee Reed is a researcher at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. She explains why sensitivity to bitter tastes has been a key to good health for many species.

Watch Neil deGrasse Tyson meet a genetically modified mouse that can't sense bitter tastes.

Watch Video Short: Blocking Bitter Taste on PBS. See more from NOVA scienceNOW.

How Work Is Messing Up Your Sleep

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 21:48 PM +0000

People working more than one job or working more than 40 hours a week are sleeping less than most. Divorced and separated people are short on sleep, too, while working the night shift can wreck your sleep habits and hurt your health.

Brave New Snacktime: Edible Packaging, Breathable Caffeine

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:11 PM +0000

Harvard professor David Edwards has been known as a bit of a mad scientist — a Willy Wonka — who generates fascinating, amazing, and sometimes strange inventions.

The Aeroshot, a puff of inhalable caffeine, comes in a small tube.

Most recently, he has rolled out the Aeroshot: inhalable caffeine and vitamins. And he is currently at work on WikiCells, a natural shell which he hopes will replace ubiquitous plastic food packaging. How about drinking your individually-wrapped orange drink and then, instead of throwing away the container, you just eat it?

We ask Edwards about his inventions.

Guests:

David Edwards, biomedical engineering professor, Harvard; Founder, director, Le Laboratoire (Paris)

Run! It's Good For Your Health

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 13:18 PM +0000

Feb. 29, 2012

mikebaird/Flickr

Daniel Lieberman, professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, explains how closely connected our health is to our level of activity.

A woman in Cambridge is known to yell, "There goes Charlie in his Angels!" at Lieberman when he goes running. Watch the interview below to hear Lieberman talk about barefoot running, persistence hunting and why you shouldn't run with an iPod.

A Picture That's Worth 1,000 Calories

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:46 PM +0000

Nov. 16, 2011

Show me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are: a mock-up of the PlateMate diet smartphone app. (PlateMate)

BOSTON — With the holiday season upon us, Americans' collective attention turns to food &mdash and for some, the challenge of how to keep all that feasting in check. Two former Harvard University engineering students may have the answer. They've developed a smartphone app they say could make dieting and weight loss as simple as taking a picture.

The PlateMate application uses what’s known as crowdsourcing to give a dieter real-time feedback on the number of calories contained in a plate of food so they can better keep track of what they eat.

According to PlateMate co-creator Jon Noronha, the user simply takes a photo of the food on the plate and the software does the rest.

“The idea was that a user would just look at their plate, snap a photo, send it to the internet and get an answer back. And from their perspective it should be as simple as that,” Noronha said. “The process works through crowdsourcing, which means getting a bunch of people on the internet to do small pieces of the work together.“

Noronha said the idea started as a research project on human-computer interaction at Harvard. After much testing and revision, the software now provides accurate feedback on the calorie content of foods.

But, Noronha said, he and his cohorts are still working on a business model that would make the software affordable — and, of course, profitable.

FDA Probes Link Between Food Dyes, Kids' Behavior

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 09:55 AM +0000

The Food and Drug Administration is meeting Wednesday and Thursday to examine whether artificial food dyes cause hyperactivity in children. Recent studies have drawn this link, causing some experts to call on the FDA to ban the dyes — or at least require a warning label.

Rolfing Back In Vogue, But With Shaky Evidence

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 11:15 AM +0000

A deep massage technique, called Rolfing Structural Integration, was last popular in the 1970s. Now, it's hip with the yoga-Pilates-acupuncture crowd. But scientists say the research supporting its effectiveness is limited.

Food, Inc.

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 17:09 PM +0000

Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. "Food, Inc." reveals surprising - and often shocking truths - about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

Healthy Habits Kitchen: A different kind of take-out

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 11:00 AM +0000

It isn’t just the cooking that makes healthy eating untenable. It’s also the shopping, organizing, and clean up that needs to happen in addition to the cooking.

Those are exactly the things that Susan Schochet and her staff at Healthy Habits Kitchen do (exceptionally well, I might add). Healthy Habits Kitchen in Wellesley offers meal assembly and preparation services for individuals and families, which removes the stumbling blocks from regular healthy eating.

“Meal assembly” works like this. You schedule a time to come to the Kitchen. You choose which meals you want to prepare. When you arrive — as I did last week, along with my two children — your station is set, your ingredients are portioned, and you’re ready to fly into the preparation of healthy, quick meals.

The process goes super-fast. The ingredients are at your fingertips and the recipe is right in front of you, printed out and standing in a plastic clipboard. And you aren’t expected to clean up. And –bonus — the average price per person for a meal at Healthy Habits Kitchen is less than $4.

Susan Schochet holds an assembled meal kit that her customers take home and store until they're ready to cook the meal.

There were unexpected bonuses from my trip to Healthy Habits Kitchen, both during the assembly and during preparation at home. First, the kids loved being at the Kitchen. It’s a neat, organized space, their roles were clear, and Schochet clearly has a lot of experience dealing with young people.

Leo takes a break from meal assembly to lick a spoon of honey.

A second bonus is the peace of mind when you know you won’t be home to cook for your family. Anyone at home is empowered to put a healthy meal on the table. All of the ingredients are there, plus clear instructions for cooking the meal, all stickered to the Ziploc bag holding the kit.

The third bonus was a certain sense of confidence. You start to think, “It really isn’t so hard to cook good, healthy food.” You can imagine getting the hang of it. And maybe, little by little, you start taking steps to replicate the process for yourself. That would be the healthy habit-forming part of a Healthy Habits Kitchen experience. And it’s a consequence Schochet, with her passion for sharing healthy cooking, wouldn’t mind one bit.

Cathy Huyghe writes the WGBH Foodie blog. Read new WGBH Foodie posts every weekday, in which Cathy explores myriad ways and places to experience good food and wine.