Seth Roberts of the University of California, Berkeley, has published a paper with ten "new ideas" about how sleep, mood, health, and weight relate to each other. From the abstract:
Little is known about how to generate plausible new scientific ideas. So it is noteworthy that 12 years of self-experimentation led to the discovery of several surprising cause-effect relationships and suggested a new theory of weight control, an unusually high rate of new ideas. The cause-effect relationships were: (1) Seeing faces in the morning on television decreased mood in the evening (>10 hrs later) and improved mood the next day (>24 hrs later), yet had no detectable effect before that (0–10 hrs later). The effect was strongest if the faces were life-sized and at a conversational distance. Travel across time zones reduced the effect for a few weeks. (2) Standing 8 hours per day reduced early awakening and made sleep more restorative, even though more standing was associated with less sleep. (3) Morning light (1 hr/day) reduced early awakening and made sleep more restorative. (4) Breakfast increased early awakening. (5) Standing and morning light together eliminated colds (upper respiratory tract infections) for more than 5 years. (6) Drinking lots of water, eating low-glycemic-index foods, and eating sushi each caused a modest weight loss. (7) Drinking unflavored fructose water caused a large weight loss that has lasted more than 1 year. While losing weight, hunger was much less than usual. Unflavored sucrose water had a similar effect. The new theory of weight control, which helped discover this effect, assumes that flavors associated with calories raise the body-fat set point: The stronger the association, the greater the increase. Between meals the set point declines. Self-experimentation lasting months or years seems to be a good way to generate plausible new ideas.
Although Connie Bennett is freaking out about fructose and claiming it's dangerous, fructose is a natural sugar that's found in many foods, such as "honey; tree fruits; berries; melons; and some root vegetables, such as beets, sweet potatoes, parsnips and onions".
Here's more of the theory on "What makes food fattening?".
(HT: Tyler Cowen.)
People should just put down the soda instead of freaking out about fructose and other pure natural sugars. I consume a lot of fruit (even during the winter, thanks to the freezer section of the supermarket) and drink lots of fruit juices... and I don't drink soda. I don't gain weight from all the fructose I'm undoubtedly consuming.
Fruit and most vegetables are just too good. Whether it's Rainier cherries, Michigan blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, honeydew, canteloupe, kiwi, fresh squeezed orange juice, watermelon, peaches, etc...... they're all good. Savory items like onions, green beans, garlic, carrots, celery, radishes, cucumber, sweet potatoes, blue and Yukon Gold potatoes, etc.... they're all good too.
All of these fresh produce items were around and being consumed in quantity long before America had a weight problem. And so, they're not the things we should be trying to eliminate from our diet. Fast food with a 5-gallon bucket of some kind of cola, and inexpensive processed foods loaded with the wrong kinds of fats and carbs.. combined with less physical activity and a tendency towards eating unbalanced meals are the real culprits.