Food for Thought Now that sweater weather has arrived for much of the country, working to keep up vitamin D levels becomes even more important. After all, the sunshine vitamin is not only important for bone health but has also been tied to a lower risk for certain cancers, heart conditions and depression. That said, where you get your vitamin D matters. Researchers from Australia and the United Kingdom reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (July 2017) that when study volunteers received 600 IU of vitamin D daily via fortified juice or biscuits for 3 months, vitamin D3—the form found in animal foods like fish and eggs, as well as some supplements—was nearly twice as effective at raising blood levels of the nutrient than was vitamin D2, a plant-based form typically used to fortify vegan foods like dairy-free milk and vegetarian-friendly supplements. A separate study, published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2015, discovered that after supplementation stopped, vitamin D levels declined less rapidly when participants had been taking D3 than when D2 was the supplement of choice. The upshot is that those relying on vitamin D2 to keep up their levels during the winter gloom will likely need more of it than those who get their fill from vitamin D3.
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I found this article to ring true. In multiple studies meditation has been found to help reduce feelings of anxiety. I particularly like the app called Head Space, the speaker is quite good. For people with anxiety, just 10 minutes a day of mindful meditation is enough to prevent the mind from wandering, according to a preliminary study reported in Consciousness and Cognition (2017; 51, 157–65). Mind-wandering disrupts productivity and contributes to accidents, and it’s particularly an issue for people with anxiety, as they tend to worry and ruminate about negative events that are not happening in the present moment. University of Waterloo researchers in Waterloo, Ontario, conducted the study to determine the effectiveness of a mindfulness practice on clinical anxiety. “Our results indicate that mindfulness training may have protective effects on mind-wandering for anxious individuals,” said Mengran Xu, a researcher and doctoral candidate at Waterloo University, to IDEA Fitness Journal. “We also found that meditation practice appears to help anxious people to shift their attention from their internal worries to the present-moment external world, which enables better focus on the task at hand.” Researchers recruited 82 college students with characteristics indicative of clinical anxiety. Investigators randomly assigned subjects to a control group or a meditation group. After 10 minutes of either listening to a book or practicing a breathing meditation exercise and then (for all) completing a sustained-attention task, those in the meditation group reported fewer mind-wandering episodes but a greater number of external distractions. Study authors observed the significance of this last finding, noting, “Mindfulness training seemed to switch the focus of attention from internal information to external stimuli in the ‘here and now,’ which likely has very important implications for methods of remediation used to treat worrying in anxious populations.” Xu added, “Although we haven’t collected empirical data on this, many people find it helpful to start their day with a 10-minute mindfulness meditation. Doing a 10-minute meditation before an exam or an anxiety-provoking situation would also be helpful [to improve concentration or reduce anxiety].” Since the study looked only at subjects with anxiety, the findings are not conclusive for the general population. by Brian Wansink, PHD on Feb 12, 2016
Family-Style Seconds and Thirds Some families serve family-style meals and crowd all their serving bowls onto the table. Other families pre-serve their food directly off the stove or counter. We found that people who served from the stove or counter ate 19% less total food compared with those serving themselves right off the table (Payne, Smith & Wansink 2010). Having to get up and walk another 6 feet for the food was enough for people to ask, “Am I really that hungry?” The answer’s usually “Nope.” On the other hand, if you want to eat more salad, plant that salad bowl right in the middle of the table. If eating family-style—piling all of the serving dishes on the table—is a nonnegotiable must in your house, there might be a workaround. Serving out of bowls with lids might cut down on seconds or thirds. In one of our candy dish studies, simply putting a lid on a candy dish cut down how many Hershey’s Kisses people ate by about a third (Painter, Wansink & Hieggelke 2002; Wansink, Painter & Lee 2006). When food is out of sight, it’s out of mind. The same idea might work if you cover the casserole instead of temptingly leaving the top off. These tablescape changes are easy. What keeps us from making them, however, is that we think we’re smarter than a bowl. As a result we think, Oh, now that I know this, it won’t happen to me, so we don’t make any changes. But during the day’s chaos, our automatic behaviors lead us to make the same mindless eating mistakes we’ve always made. |
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