Virtual Food Mimics Real Food
FOOD presented in a virtual reality (VR) environment can cause the same emotional responses as real food.
Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Annals of General Psychiatry compared the responses of people with anorexia and bulimia and a control group, to the virtual and real-life snacks, suggesting that virtual food can be used for the evaluation and treatment of eating disorders.
Alessandra Gorini from the Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy, worked with an international team of researchers to compare the effects of the exposure to real food, virtual food and photographs of food in a sample of patients affected by eating disorders.
She said, "Though preliminary, our data show that virtual stimuli are as effective as real ones, and more effective than static pictures, in generating emotional responses in eating disorder patients."
Good Nutrition Key to Slowing Macular Degeneration
No Link between Childhood Obesity and Exercise
LATEST research suggests physical activity plays little or no role in child obesity. Obesity is a key factor in diabetes, some cancers and heart disease. Researchers at the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth, UK have been following school children in the city for the last 11 years. It is well known that less active children tend to be fatter, however that does not necessarily mean -- as most people think -- that inactivity leads to fatness. It could equally well be the other way round: that obesity leads to inactivity.
As data was collected annually over several years from a large range of children, the study could finally ask the question -- which comes first? Does the physical activity of the child precede changes in fatness over time, or does the fatness of the child precede changes in physical activity over time?
And the answer, published recently in Archives of Disease in Childhood, was clear. Physical activity had no impact on weight change, but weight clearly led to less activity. While portion size, calorie-dense snacks and sugary drinks are all important factors in handling obesity, early feeding errors seem particularly crucial -- and physical activity is not the answer.
STUDIES by scientists are showing that regularly eating a combination of protective nutrients and a low-glycemic-index diet may protect people from vision loss due to age-related macular degeneration.
A food's glycemic index is an indicator of how fast the carbohydrate it contains will spike blood sugar levels. The macula is a 3-millimeter-wide yellow spot near the center of the retina responsible for the central field of vision.
Researchers analyzed dietary intake and other data from more than 4,000 men and women, aged 55 to 80, who had participated in the long-term Age-Related Eye Disease Study, or AREDS. Researchers ranked intake of each of several nutrients consumed during the AREDS study, then calculated a compound score to gauge their combined dietary effect on the risk of AMD.
The scoring system allowed them to evaluate associations between individual -- and combined -- dietary nutrients.
