Green Options

Common dieting advice suggests eating breakfast because it can jump start your metabolism and helps prevent you from eating more later in the day. Researchers in London may have finally figured out why — skipping a morning meal can fool your brain into thinking the body actually wants high-calorie foods, which, if eaten too often, can inhibit weight loss.

So What Is This Study Exactly?

A team from Imperial College London presented these findings at the Endocrine Society’s 91st annual meeting held in Washington D.C. in July. Scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, which measure blood flow in the brain, to see how eating impacted the brain’s reward center.

The study involved 20 healthy people who took an fMRI scan on a morning when they skipped breakfast and on a morning when they ate breakfast. During each test they were shown photos of high-calorie foods like pizza and cake, and low-calorie foods like salad and fish. On the morning they had breakfast, the participant’s reward center lit up more in response to the high-calorie foods. On the morning when they had breakfast, the reward center didn’t show any difference between high- and low-calorie foods.

While other endangered species in Australia have been hit hard by the recent fires, a new study reveals that the broad-headed snake may actually benefit from them — and could actually need more of them to survive.

“Broad-headed snakes are only found living in small pockets within 200 km of Sydney, and those small communities are fast becoming extinct or increasingly more rare,” said Professor Rick Shine of the University of Sydney, who co-wrote the study.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is reporting that a recently-published study by Health Canada found that the vast majority of canned soft drink and energy drinks contain bisphenol A, a known endocrine disruptor and estrogen mimic.

The study, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry in January, tested 72 canned drinks purchased in 2007 and found detectable levels of BPA in 69 of them.  The levels are within the limits of what Health Canada considers “safe,” however, some critics believe that there is no safe level of this chemical, pointing out that studies in peer-reviewed science journals have shown that BPA can increase breast, ovarian, and prostate cancer cell growth in animal testing even at very low doses.