Update to @ScholarlyBot: Push Papers to Mendeley

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Last month I posted about @ScholarlyBot, a bot I wrote that checks for full texts on Google Scholar through twitter. If you use Mendeley, thanks to their great example client, I was able to add the ability to push papers from links to your Mendeley library. This can make for a nice to-read list in Mendeley, or enable you add things if you don't have Mendeley installed. To do so, first you must authorize @ScholarlyBot to access your library. Follow these steps (you only need to do this once): Follow Read more [...]

Scrambled messages about eggs

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Headlines plastered across the web in the last couple days said that eating eggs is almost as bad for your heart as smoking: "No yolk: eating the whole egg as dangerous as smoking?" writes the LA Times "Eggs found to be as dangerous for the heart as smoking, new study suggests" says the Global Post "Eggs move back to the naughty list" notes The Globe and Mail Along with many more These were prompted by a press release from The University of Western Ontario titled "Research finds egg Read more [...]

A twitter bot to monitor for pubmed links and check for full papers: @ScholarlyBot

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I am trying to improve my coding skills, so I pieced together a python script that sarcastically replied to people to wrote "Dr Oz" and "great" in a tweet. That account was quickly suspended, so I made something a little more useful- one that checks for full texts of research papers indexed by Google Scholar using twitter as the interaction medium, through the account @ScholarlyBot. It does 2 3 4 5 things: You can @ it a Google Scholar query and it will check if the first result has an Read more [...]

Westerner energy expenditure compared to a hunter-gatherer population is equivalent

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Last year I wrote of a meta-analysis on energy expenditure in industrialized countries vs developing countries, that counter-intuitively found that it was on average not different. Today a study by Herman Pontzer and colleagues published in PLOS ONE adds to this debate on whether food or being sedentary is primarily fueling societal obesity, by comparing a Western population with a modern hunter-gatherer population, the Hadza. And again the results are unexpected. Here is a summary of the study Read more [...]

“Something To Chew On” by Mike Gibney [Book Review]

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Dr. Mike Gibney, an accomplished researcher (mainly now in the really fascinating area of nutritional genomics) and professor who has served on high-level committees/advisory boards and is involved in other cutting-edge science projects has published a new book titled "Something to Chew On: Challenging Controversies in Food and Health." You can find summaries of each chapter and places to purchase on his blog. With such an interesting background, there is no surprise that this book does not Read more [...]

“The Cure for Everything” by Timothy Caulfield [Book Review]

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There is no shortage of junk diet and fitness books on the market that try to persuade you to follow their vision of perfect health. Tim Caulfield's "The Cure for Everything: Untangling Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness, and Happiness" is not one of those books. In my search for books to recommend for science-based information on health, this will be among the top of my list. It is an easy read at about 200 pages but still packed with information. Caulfield, a distinguished academic in Read more [...]

When quackery masquerades as “free choice”: comment on nutritional counseling licensure debate in Forbes

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Several weeks ago I came across a troubling article in Forbes titled "Is the American Dietetic Association Attempting to Limit Market Competition in Nutrition Counseling?" by Michael Ellsberg. It intends to put forth a case against legislation that restricts nutrition assessment and counseling (medical nutrition provisions) to practitioners licensed by the American Dietetic Association/Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (ADA/AND) (e.g. RDs) and legislation trying to restrict the term "nutritionist," Read more [...]

Salivary amylase gene variation and glycemic response to starch

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In the May issue of The Journal of Nutrition there is an interesting new study on salivary amylase variability and postprandial glycemic response to starch consumption by Abigail Mandel and Paul Breslin. It has a very small sample size so we should be reserved about drawing conclusions until further research is done but the results sure hint at a pretty extreme example of individual genetic variability to starch consumption. Salivary amylase of course is the first step in starch digestion, but Read more [...]

Artificially sweetened beverages are not associated with an increased risk for heart attacks

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The same day as the last post on diet beverages and metabolic syndrome, another relevant paper was published in Circulation by the Harvard group. This is the same group using the same cohort that found no link to artificial sweeteners and diabetes last year. This time they analyzed for heart attacks as the endpoint, which is more similar to the recent paper that found a positive association with cardiovascular events, so it is worth commenting on. Design The Health Professionals Follow-up Read more [...]

Diet beverages inconsistent on metabolic syndrome components

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Last month I wrote about a paper that linked diet soda to an increase in cardiovascular events. The authors (at least first author Dr. Gardener) gave some notes of caution in interpreting the results to some journalists, but overall I strongly disliked how it was covered. It is one study with important limitations that many don't seem to understand. Aside from Yoni, I didn't see any critical vetting of the paper. Luckily we didn't have to wait much longer for a stronger research design. A new Read more [...]