The Carb-Sane Asylum

A bit of a random thought post ... one I meant to make at the time, but got distracted.  I've talked a lot about the USDA Food Pyramid, and less so about My Plate, both of which are intended to "translate" dietary recommendations to a visual form.  In this regard, My Plate is a great improvement, but still lacking.   I don't wish to rehash the whole guidelines again in this post, but I believe if certain foods were "properly" classified -- e.g.  potatoes and corn grouped with the grains/starches -- the recommendations are hardly radical.  If Americans actually followed them as intended, we wouldn't be in this pickle, but we don't, and we are. Here is the original food pyramid

Have you just stumbled upon an old book, blog post, interview, etc. from your favorite guru only to have someone exclaim how old that is and how your guru's opinions have changed?  It might be time for a new guru. Quick background here.  First, no I haven't dropped the Paleo ApprovED issue, but there are some things related and lots of stuff unrelated going on that have eaten up time and energy to blog on the subject.  It is a sensitive issue and needs more "care" than your run of the mill blogging.  It is also rather stressful and defeats one of the purposes of this blog as an outlet for my sarcastic side -- for which a post such as this is perfectamundo!    So that said, as I was looking for a post on Robb Wolf's blog ( this one ) my search also popped up the following post: Insulin: Anorexic?

A comment I read on PaleoHacks led me to this article on Livestrong:  Does Coconut Oil increase your appetite?   It cites the following study:  Ingested Medium-Chain Fatty Acids Are Directly Utilized for the Acyl Modification of Ghrelin . ABSTRACT: Ghrelin, an acylated brain and gut peptide, is primarily produced by endocrine cells of the gastric mucosa for secretion into the circulation. The major active form of ghrelin is a 28-amino-acid peptide containing an n -octanoyl modification at serine that is essential for activity. Studies have identified multiple physiological functions for ghrelin, including GH release, appetite stimulation, and metabolic fuel preference. Until now, there has not been any report detailing the mechanism of ghrelin acyl modification. Here we report that ingestion of either medium-chain fatty acids (MCFAs) or medium-chain triacylglycerols (MCTs) increased...

Thanks to MM, I now have the full text of the following study.  I'm going to do a test for sharing this with y'all through Google Docs.  Please let me know if it doesn't work: Acute compensatory eating following exercise is associated with implicit hedonic wanting for food   (I'm going to intersperse quotations from all over this paper) The efficacy of exercise to promote weight loss could potentially be undermined by its influence on explicit or implicit processes of liking and wanting for food which in turn alter food preference. The present study was designed to examine hedonic and homeostatic mechanisms involved in the acute effects of exercise on food intake.