Can you ever imagine that you can finish eating all forty cookies, one bucket of pretzels, two packs of chips, one pot of boiled milk, one jar of nuts, half of the pomelo, and two chocolate pies just in an hour without a second of rest? And can you also imagine even after you finish all of that food, your brain still craves for food though your belly is so swollen that you are about to puke? You may think that the person who can eat all of these must be a monster. Unfortunately, that’s not necessarily the case
Kung Fu Panda ate 103 dumplings
(though you may recall the scene Kung Fu Panda ate 103 dumplings). Or you are probably going to think of those competitive eaters. They can shovel so much food into their stomach in a short period of time. However, what might surprise you is that many people, myself included, even including those skinny, ripped athletes, can finish the amount of food all at once, roughly equivalent to nine meals for an adult. And this behavior is neither normal nor beneficial for people’s mental and physical health. So, what is this uncontrollable, torturous, and unstoppable action of food-intaking? The answer is binge eating disorder (BED), which is defined as the uncontrollable consumption of a large amount of food. Then what led to the creation of “glutton”? Why can’t these people control themselves from eating normally and healthily? And what are some treatments for the abnormal cravings and intaking of food?
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I bet you remember as a kid being told by your parents to “eat your veggies, even the greens.” But I bet you don’t remember your parents telling THEIR parents to eat their veggies. The vast effects from eating vegetables and having a healthy diet in younger developmental stages are enumerable, but consequences of diet on elderly populations are often overlooked.
Figure 1. Vitamin K can be naturally found in several leafy green vegetables, as shown above.
What is in these magical green veggies (lettuce, kale, spinach) anyway? Amongst other things, a notable compound present is vitamin K. This vitamin is most notably used in the body to promote protective blood clotting. However, other potential roles of vitamin K in the brain have been examined in rats. Vitamin K is present in high levels in the brain, and proteins that rely on vitamin K to function are also found in the brain. These same studies found evidence for vitamin K to specifically have effects in the aging brain. Older rats that were fed a vitamin K rich diet had better spatial learning memory than those fed a low vitamin K diet. This phenomenon was only observed in older rats, not the younger populations. Read more…
Think back to your favorite food. Is it sweet? How sweet? Do you think that you could pick this prized food out of a lineup of nine different versions of this food of varying sweetness, texture, and aroma? Maybe you think you have a discerning palate that will assist your accuracy, despite the fact that you forgot to actually take note of these factors while eating. A recent study examines food memory and our accuracy at recalling certain sensory aspects of food that many of us take for granted when we eat. Findings suggest we may not remember all the aspects of our favorite food as accurately as we might presume.
Food memory is a complex area of study that psychologists still struggle to understand. There have been a variety of studies examining memory about certain aspects of foods. Researchers have examined foods ranging from orange juice to yogurt, and examined sensory aspects such as bitterness to thickness. These results have not all supported one clear way people remember aspects of food, as people report certain food descriptors more accurately than others depending on the food.
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