A day late and an undergarment short!  The morning after Thanksgiving, I read about a new stress-busting bra that could’ve kept me from, once again, approaching turkey-day as a competitive eating event.

Studies show that we eat more when stressed. We overindulge, fret about weight gain, and soothe frazzled nerves by eating more. This consumption loop moves to high-gear during holiday feasting that starts with Thanksgiving and continues ‘til we toast in the New Year. And, unlike Muslim holidays, the Western ones I’ve imported to my Jordan household aren’t counterbalanced by daytime fasting.

Researchers are tackling new ways to get overeaters to push back their plates; motivated by health concerns but also by profits (Americans alone spend over $60 billion annually on weight loss).

There are stress apps for smart phones, calorie-counting forks, and bracelets equipped with motion sensors. Now, engineers at Microsoft Research have invented a bra that can help regulate stress eating by monitoring the wearer’s moods.

I don’t need a bracelet to alert me when I’m spearing another spud; what makes Microsoft think I need a bra to help me decipher my state of mind?

“It’s mostly women who are emotional overeaters, and it turns out that a bra is perfect for measuring electrocardiogram,” said Mary Czerwinski, a cognitive psychologist and senior researcher in visualization and interaction at Microsoft.

Talking to Mashable, she said (while probably stifling laughter), “We tried to do the same thing for men’s underwear but it was too far away from the heart.”

This miracle bra features built-in sensor pads with a microprocessor powered by a 3.7-volt battery. It can simultaneously sample eight bio-signal channels including heart rate and respiration, skin conductance, and movement, according to Czerwinski’s research paper, Food and Mood: Just-in-Time Support for Emotional Eating.

Data streams to a smart phone app and to the researchers’ computer while users record their own moods (again, on smart phones). Scientists interpret the info, accurately predicting changes in physiology that accompany eating and stress; they can also gauge whether the subjects were happy or angry.

The garment does have problems; they only worked for four hours before needing a battery recharge. Czerwinski’s now looking for another body part to monitor that has similar physiological accuracy, but that doesn’t require as much work.

“Those brave women kept having to run to the bathroom to charge their bra,” Czwerwinski said. “I think an insert in the foot would be good because feet are really sweaty.”  That image alone will curb most appetites.

Not everyone turns to food for stress relief.  Some of us have the inverse reaction; actually cutting back consumption when upset, or skipping food altogether.

“The message should be that people shouldn’t people think too much about their eating,” said Gudrun Sproesser, a post-doctoral student at Germany’s University of Konstanz, “If they feel like eating in a positive situation, they should; if it’s negative, they probably will compensate for that.”

As for me, I think I’ll pass on the high tech bra and, instead, reach for elastic waist pants. Did somebody say “dessert”?

Image of a woman with a tablet from Shutterstock

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Professor Oren Froy of the Agriculture, Food, and Environment department, Hebrew University, says that a high-fat diet may help weight loss. The trick is to include fats in regularly scheduled meals. We’ve written about different food theories here on Green Prophet, including a debate on if organic food is really healthier. Eating according to schedule, wrote Froy in an article published in the journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, helps the body  burn it up instead of packing it away in the tissues.

Considering how many obese Israelis and Americans and obese Gulf State citizens there already are, it’s great to hear of a way people can eat formerly prohibited foods, guilt-free.

Prof. Froy and his research team probed the current theory that obesity results when mammal’s metabolisms are disrupted by irregular eating, or when lots of  fats are eaten. It seems that they proved the first to be true, and the second questionable. Their conclusions are based on an 18-week study conducted on mice.

The researchers observed four groups of mice. The test group was given a high-fat diet and allowed to eat only at the same times and for the same lengths of time, every day. Of the control groups, one was allotted low-fat (presumably high-carb) foods, also on schedule. The second group received the same low-fat diet but was allowed to eat as much and as often as desired. The third control group ate a high-fat diet at will.

The mice eating plenty of fats on a schedule gained less weight than any of those in the control groups. Although allotted the same amount of daily calories, the mice eating a high-fat diet at will gained the most weight.  The scheduled high-fat eaters also metabolized their food more efficiently than any of the others; that is, they burned off fat in the intervals between feedings rather than storing it in their bodies.

Losing weight is less about cutting out fats, concludes Froy, than scheduling when to eat them.

This brings to mind the famous French Paradox of the  1990s, when many theories floated regarding the relatively low incidence of heart disease among the French, who traditionally enjoy conspicuous amounts of butter, cheese, and pork. Among the reasons found for this comfortable state of existence were the moderate amounts of red wine the French drink daily, consuming natural vegetable and animal fats while avoiding trans fats, smaller portions, low sugar consumption, taking time to savor food – and significantly, no noshing between meals. Apparently, like mice, humans burn up their food if they stick to breakfast, lunch and dinner and no snacks.

In the light of Prof. Froy’s theory, it seems that science is proving folk wisdom correct.

Now.

It’s exactly 7:00 a.m.

Breakfast! Pass the croissant and butter, please, and don’t forget the cream for my coffee.

More hopeful food ideas from Green Prophet:

•  Israeli Food Chemist Answers Nutrition Questions
• (Book Review) Food Politics: What Everybody Needs To Know
• Keeping Up With the Food Blogs

Image of croissant with butter via Shutterstock.

The post Fats Help You Lose Weight, Claims Israeli Researcher appeared first on Green Prophet.

Born in an economic boom, kids in oil-rich Arab Gulf States use their silver spoons to up caloric intact.

Blame laziness, love of Western brands, or ample disposable income,  but children across the Gulf region are getting fatter. Recent studies tag 20 percent of children in Dubai as overweight, and another 12% as obese. Their Gulf nations’ cousins in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar are just as hefty.

The core lifestyle of the world’s urban children, zip code be damned, is numbingly similar. Conditioned living spaces and electronic entertainments encourage an increasingy sedentary lifestyle. Children in the Gulf are nothing like their nimble agrarian ancestors. Informal exercise is all but extinct. Internet-based social networking brings the playdate indoors.  Besides, public parks and sports fields are hard to find in modern Gulf cities.

Why sweat outside with friends when you can sit in air-conditioned comfort and Skype and Facebook for hours?  Have mom order in a pizza or a bag of cheeseburgers while you’re at it.  You’re living the fatty-Emirati Dream.

Folks are fast to pin it on “American Eating” – a phenomenon I first heard of when I moved to Ireland.  The Irish and Brits are quick to blame their obesity on American fast-food (conveniently ignoring their starch-based home cuisines and epic alcohol consumption).

In the Middle East, fast-food living arrived about ten years ago. Western franchises are wildly popular; proving the power of advertising.  But the food is awful and, outside the USA, it’s not cheap. No denying that my fat homeland has exported its Twentieth Century fast-food values to the rest of the world.  But I object to American junk food being the only cause of this tubbydemic.

Washing down falafel sandwiches and shawarma with sugar-laden tea is as belly-building as anything Mayor McCheese has on offer.

Money’s not an object in most Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations.

Parents here aren’t ideal role models: over 50% of Gulf men and 70% of Gulf women are overweight or obese. The adults who are employed have jobs requiring miniscule physical exertion. Most GCC countries use oil revenues to provide citizens with reduced rates for the basics like rent and energy, or outright cash payments, leaving families with more money to indulge in convenience.

Home cooking is history when families can eat out easily and affordably several times a week.

Scientists estimate that global obesity among children will rise substantially over the next few years. Presently, 60% of all children living in North and South America are overweight; 38% of EU kids similarly tip the scales. The numbers of overweight kids in the Middle East and Asia are rapidly swelling.

Environmental conditions are squashing poor diet as a predominant root of disease.

Quick urbanization of Arab Gulf states exposes kids to increased air and water pollution.  New planned housing communities provide inadequate space for safe, informal, outdoor play. Ubiquitous passive smoking further jeopardizes their health. And everyone is in cars.

World Heart Federation data suggests that over 66% of the Saudi population is physically inactive and about 25% of those adults are smokers. (Organized sports are not an option for the Kingdom’s females.) The same study shows 63% of Kuwaitis are couch potatoes, trailed by 58% of Emiratis and 47% of Lebanese.

Add it up, and kids in the Gulf region are at greater risk of developing cardiovascular diseases (CVD) than kids in other Arab states, says the World Heart Federation. Overweight kids often become obese adults who’ll face a menu of significant health issues including heart disease, diabetes and hypertension, and obesity-related cancers, including breast and bowel cancer.

Statistics from Syria indicate 3,000 new cases of child coronary heart disease arise annually among the country’s 20 million residents. According to the World Heart Federation, only a third receives the necessary treatment. Cairo’s National Heart Institute reports approximately 9,000 new cases of CVD annually in Egypt, half of them requiring surgery.

Catch that distinction? These stats are for the children.

At the same time, children on the opposite end of the Arab economic scale face severe malnutrition, ironically another critical risk factor for CVD.  Yemen has the second highest rate of chronic malnutrition among children in the world. And in Egypt, 6.8% of children under five are malnourished. Political strife in Syria and Palestine disrupts food supplies. Rich or poor, turbulent or peaceful, these modern realities are hurting the hearts or our children.

Help kids from falling into the eating disorder trap?

With western medicine having a few decades’ head-start, there are some practical and proven remedies:

1. Separate your child’s self-worth from their physical appearance.

2. Become a positive ‘healthy body image’ role model.

3. Balance the constant media barrage by talking to your kids.

4. Tell them what they see in ads is not achievable.

5. Teach that all food is good food in moderation.

6. Don’t skip meals.

7. Become an active family.

8. Eat together, and not on-the-go.

Maybe even cook together?

Good health: it’s the game the whole family can play.

Photo of fat Middle Eastern boy from Shutterstock

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