“The Plastic Chemicals Hiding in Your Food” by Lauren F. Friedman, Consumer Reports, 4 January 2024
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Giving people the words to say no leads them to feel freer to say yes
Physical healing as a function of perceived time
The anabolic response to protein ingestion during recovery from exercise has no upper limit in magnitude and duration in vivo in humans
These findings demonstrate that the magnitude and duration of the anabolic response to protein ingestion is not restricted and has previously been underestimated in vivo in humans.
The anabolic response to protein ingestion during recovery from exercise has no upper limit in magnitude and duration in vivo in humans: Cell Reports Medicine
https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-3791(23)00540-2
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weedkiller Roundup, is showing up in pregnant women living near farm fields
Cardiometabolic Effects of Omnivorous vs Vegan Diets in Identical Twins: A Randomized Clinical Trial
doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.44457
Findings In this randomized clinical trial of 22 healthy, adult, identical twin pairs, those consuming a healthy vegan diet showed significantly improved low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentration, fasting insulin level, and weight loss compared with twins consuming a healthy omnivorous diet.
Meaning The findings from this trial suggest that a healthy plant-based diet offers a significant protective cardiometabolic advantage compared with a healthy omnivorous diet.
Proprioceptive short-term memory in passive motor learning | Scientific Reports
An astonishing regularity in student learning rate
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2221311120
Students do need extensive practice, about seven opportunities per component of knowledge. Students do not show substantial differences in their rate of learning.
First, across a variety of courses, we found that initial practice performance is quite modest, about 65% correct (i.e., a failing grade), despite the general availability of up-front verbal instruction, such as lectures and readings. Second, we found that reaching a reasonable level of mastery (80% correct) requires substantial repeated practice, typically about seven practice opportunities. These results are consistent with learning theories suggesting induction from examples and doing is prominent in human learning.
That up-front lectures and readings seem to produce limited performance accuracy is surprising given the great efforts educators continue to put into producing lectures and texts and given that most learners advocate explicit learning as the best way to learn. […] A theoretical postulate consistent with limited accuracy after up-front verbal instruction is that human learning is not simply about the explicit processing, encoding, and retrieval of verbal instruction but as much or more about implicit or nonverbal learning-by-doing in varied practice tasks where interactive feedback is available.
Koedinger, K. R., Carvalho, P. F., Liu, R., & McLaughlin, E. A. (2023). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(13). https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2221311120
Association between changes in carbohydrate intake and long term weight changes
Among men and women, increases in glycemic index and glycemic load were positively associated with weight gain.
Association between changes in carbohydrate intake and long term weight changes: prospective cohort study | The BMJ
The fructose survival hypothesis for obesity
“The fructose survival hypothesis for obesity” – 24 July 2023, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2022.0230
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0230
Summary
Obesity and its associated metabolic diseases have had devastating health consequences on modern society. Here, we link these diseases with the activation of a major survival pathway developed in nature to help animals prepare for times of scarcity. Unfortunately, we have unknowingly adopted the foods that activate this switch in our everyday diet, and coupled with the thrifty genes we picked up, we are now suffering the consequences of putting this survival pathway in overdrive. The tragedy of our success is even greater than thought, for newer studies suggest that the fructose pathway may also increase our risk for cancer, pregnancy-related disease and neurological disorders. We recommend proceeding with studies such as outlined above to better understand the role of fructose metabolism in health and disease.
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