BEST DIET : LOSE WEIGHT WITH BEST TRICK

If you’ve ever sat at your desk scarfing a vending-machine lunch, then you’d probably agree with the authors of a recent editorial in the journal PLoS Medicine, who wrote: “[U]nhealthy eating could legitimately be considered a new form of occupational hazard.”

The authors are referring mainly to night-shift workers — doctors and nurses, for instance — who work in 24/7 industries. Off-kilter shift schedules are notorious for encouraging bad eating habits, and they also disrupt circadian rhythms and prevent adequate sleep — all of which conspires to make workers fat and increase their risk of Type 2 diabetes, among other ills.

The editorial writers cite the results of a recent study, also published in PLoS Medicine, and which we reported on Healthland earlier this month, that involved nearly 177,000 participants of the Nurses’ Health Studies. That study found that women who had rotating night shifts were more likely to develop diabetes over a 20-year follow-up, compared with women who worked during the day.

The longer women worked nights, the higher their risk: those who had rotating night shifts for 1 to 2 years had a 5% increased risk of diabetes; working nights on and off for 10 to 19 years upped the risk to 40%; and women who pulled graveyard shifts for more than 20 years were 60% more likely to develop diabetes than those who never worked at night.

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The study authors, led by Dr. Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health, had multiple theories for why night work might lead to bad health. For one thing, shift workers are more likely to grab junky foods on the go — out of the aforementioned vending machines or from fast-food restaurants — which leads to weight gain, a risk factor for diabetes. They’re also less likely to get regular exercise, because of their screwy sleep schedules.

Previous research has shown that even going to bed mere hours later than normal — at 3:45 a.m., instead of 12:30 a.m. — can lead to unhealthy eating and weight gain. We reported on a study by Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine researchers in May:

Being a night owl appeared to do more harm than good: for starters, people who stayed up late got less sleep overall (5 hrs. 33 mins. versus 6 hrs. 38 mins. for normal sleepers). Worse, compared with early-to-bed-early-to-risers, late sleepers had a much less healthful diet: they ate more fast food (five meals per week, compared with the normal sleepers’ three), drank more full-calorie soda (4.5 servings per week versus 1.3) and got significantly fewer fruits and vegetables (1.9 servings per day versus 3.4).

Notably, the late sleepers ate roughly the same number of calories per day as normal sleepers. … However, they ate a larger proportion of their food later in the day — at dinner or after 8 p.m. On average, late sleepers’ dinners contained 825 calories, while the normal sleepers’ suppers totaled 630 calories. Those who stayed up late consumed 754 calories per day after 8 p.m., while the normal sleepers ate only 376 calories.

The findings fall in line with animal research on the same phenomenon. A 2010 study found that when light-dark cycles were tampered with, so that mice were exposed to continuously dim light when they should have been sleeping, mice gained 50% more weight than animals living in a natural light-dark environment, even though all the mice ate and exercised the same amount.

Turns out, the animals exposed to late-night light — equivalent to the glow of a TV or computer screen for humans — ate most of their food during their normal sleeping hours, suggesting that it’s not only what you eat, but when that matters.

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Further, disrupted sleep itself — either not getting enough sleep or sleeping at the wrong time — interferes with your circadian rhythm, which may in turn wreak havoc with your appetite and metabolism, and increase blood sugar levels and insulin resistance, according to Hu. These factors also increase risks for obesity and diabetes.

The problem of shift work is no small matter: some 15% to 20% of the working population in the U.S. and Europe is engaged in night work. “As the world of work becomes increasingly 24 hour, shift work will become more common,” the editorial authors write, suggesting that it “has the potential to accelerate the progression of the global epidemic of obesity and diabetes.”

There may not be much to mitigate the effects of shift work — especially if it’s inconsistent — on the body’s internal clock, but workers’ eating habits are “obvious targets for intervention,” the authors note. Perhaps workplaces, particularly those that employ shift workers, can lead the way in improving workers’ diets and making sure it’s easier and cheaper for them to eat healthily than not, the authors said.

Many heroic efforts to change people’s eating behaviors have been launched and failed over the years, but the authors suggest that the field of occupational health now has reason to enter the fray.

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There’s never a shortage of news about the merits of exercise. In the latest, researchers found that you reap benefits even when you’re not the one working out: for example, your cranky boss — the one who habitually lies, humiliates and generally makes her employees’ lives hell — behaves a lot more kindly when she’s working out.

Interestingly, only a moderate amount of exercise — just one to two days per week — was needed for Evil Boss to chill. But you don’t have to be in management to benefit from the magic powers of raising your heart rate.

This week, I began month three of my early-morning boot camp. Four days a week, I rise before my kids, lace up my running shoes, scrape the ice off my windshield and zoom to a neighborhood gym, where I run, jump, twist and squat with a gaggle of other fitness nuts. Not that I would have considered myself in that league before December.

I kind of hate gyms, the monotony of the elliptical trainer, the stink, the smartly spandexed bodies that show off at every corner. But boot camp has held my interest — it’s fast-paced, it’s different every day and I can actually feel my stomach getting firmer.

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This morning, we push-upped, lunged, jumping-jacked and pounded out sit-ups on a Bosu ball in 30-second increments; earlier in the week, we’d jumped rope, wall-sat and remained in plank position for a minute and a half.

So why, oh why, have I not dropped at least two sizes by now? The answer eludes me. Ian, the boot camp guru, initially suggested that participants keep a food diet. I did that for about a day (has anyone actually succeeded in doing this for a week or longer?). Was it too time-consuming, as I told myself, or did I simply not feel like jotting down that I’d just tossed back a handful of white chocolate chips?

I know, I know — it’s dark chocolate that’s supposed to be good for you. Well, I’m no slouch when it comes to that either. Think it’s time to give that food diary another go-around.

When it comes to chocolate, you might just be able to have your sweet and eat it, too.

That’s what researchers report in the first study to balance all of the known health benefits and harms of chocolate. Publishing in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Dr. Beatrice Golomb and her colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, say that the sweet’s extra calories may be more than offset by its positive effect on other conditions, such as heart disease, blood pressure and glucose control.

Most notably, the team found that people who reported eating chocolate more frequently were thinner than those who ate less, as measured by their body mass index (BMI). Golomb says that based on previous studies documenting the health benefits of chocolate, she expected that these metabolic benefits might, at best, compensate for the extra calories. “I wasn’t expecting that BMI would be favorable,” says Golomb. “That was a nice surprise.”

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Golomb’s team asked 1,000 men and women how much chocolate they consumed in a week, and recorded how much exercise they did over the same time period. Eating chocolate five times a week was linked to a 1-point drop in BMI, though the amount of chocolate the participants ate did not seem to have a significant effect on weight. The chocolate-lovers’ lower BMI also could not be accounted for by exercise or eating less overall. It “clearly wasn’t explained by the fact that people who ate chocolate ate less food, because they ate more. And they didn’t exercise more than those who didn’t eat as much chocolate,” says Golomb. “So there is no evidence that this effect can be explained by any confounder we looked at.”

The results certainly don’t prove that eating chocolate every day will make you lose weight, but they do raise interesting questions about how better to interpret the benefits of chocolate. Previous studies have focused specifically on its individual benefits, such as the ability of its antioxidants to lower LDL, or bad cholesterol, levels, or the role that chocolate’s flavenols can play in lowering blood pressure and improving blood flow by inhibiting clotting processes. Even the primary fat in chocolate, cocoa butter, isn’t such a health problem because it is made up of stearic acid, which does not raise cholesterol levels, says Golomb. She says it’s important to consider all of these metabolic effects together to get a sense of the net effect that chocolate has on the body. Overall, that effect seems to be a positive one.

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Golomb is hoping to conduct further research on whether different types of chocolate, such as dark or milk chocolate, may have stronger or weaker effects on BMI, but in the meantime, she says the results “should reduce the guilt associated with regular modest chocolate consumption. We should feel a little better about eating chocolate until there is additional data.” Sometimes, it seems, (chocolate) dreams do come true.

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Alice Park is a writer at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @aliceparkny. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

Eating a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids — from fish, soy or nuts, for example — may help stave off Alzheimer’s disease, the authors of a new study suggest.

The researchers, from Columbia University Medical Center in New York, looked at 1,219 people over age 65 who were free of dementia. The participants filled out questionnaires about their eating habits for the previous 1.2 years. The researchers focused on the participants’ dietary intake of 10 different nutrients, including saturated fatty acids, omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acid, vitamin E, vitamin C, beta-carotene, vitamin B12, folate and vitamin D.

The researchers also took blood samples from the participants to test for levels of beta amyloid, a protein found in the amyloid plaques in the brain that are a telltale sign of Alzheimer’s disease. Because beta amyloid is difficult to measure in the brain, however, the researchers looked at blood levels instead, which is thought to be a marker for Alzheimer’s risk.

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They found that the more omega-3s a person consumed, the lower their blood levels of beta amyloid. Most of the omega-3s consumed by study participants came from fish, chicken, margarine, nuts and salad dressing. The study looked at nutrients that came only from food, not supplements.

Consuming 1 gram of omega-3s per day — the equivalent of eating about half a fillet of salmon a week — was associated with 20% to 30% lower blood beta amyloid levels. On average, people in the study weren’t getting this much omega-3s.

Out of all the nutrients studied, only omega-3 consumption was associated with lower beta amyloid levels. The result held even after researchers accounted for the participants’ age, gender, ethnicity and educational background.

“There is no threshold here,” says study author Dr. Nikolaos Scarmeas. “The more omega-3s one eats, the less the beta amyloid levels are. Previous studies have found this association in animals, but not in humans. It’s a good thing we see it in humans.”

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Although the study did not determine why omega-3s are associated with lower beta amyloid levels, the researchers are hopeful their findings will lead to further understanding of how diet can influence Alzheimer’s. “In this study, we were able to relate something that we eat with a very specific mechanism in the body that is very strongly related to Alzheimer’s,” says Scarmeas. “Our next step is to get even closer to the true biology of Alzheimer’s.”

Scarmeas says further research is needed to look at how nutrients directly influence beta amyloid in the brain, possibly using brain imaging to do so.

The study was published online in the journal Neurology.

The first new prescription diet drug in 13 years won Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval on Wednesday, offering a new alternative to aid weight loss for the nearly one in three Americans who are considered obese. The new drug, called Belviq (lorcaserin), is made by Arena Pharmaceuticals. Here’s what you need to know:

How does Belviq work?
The drug works by controlling appetite — specifically by activating brain receptors for serotonin, a neurotransmitter that triggers feelings of satiety and satisfaction. Serotonin is also involved in mood; many antidepressant drugs work by preventing the reuptake of serotonin and keeping brain receptors bathed in the chemical. Researchers at Arena say their drug is designed to seek out only the serotonin receptors that affect appetite.

How effective is it?
According to clinical trial data submitted by Arena to the FDA, nearly half of dieters without Type 2 diabetes who used the medication lost at least 5% of their starting weight — or an average of 12 lbs. — over a year, compared with 23% of those taking a placebo. For best results, dieters are advised to use the medication together with a healthy diet and exercise program. The approved labeling for Belviq also recommends that people discontinue the drug if they fail to lose 5% of their body weight after 12 weeks; longer treatment is unlikely to lead to meaningful weight loss.

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Who can take Belviq?
The FDA approved the medication for people who are obese (with a body mass index, or BMI, of 30 or higher) or who are overweight (with a BMI of 27 or above) and also have at least one weight-related health condition such as Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure or high cholesterol.

Are there any side effects?
The most common side effects of Belviq in non-diabetic patients are headache, dizziness, fatigue, nausea, dry mouth and constipation; in patients with diabetes, side effects include low blood sugar, headache, back pain, cough and fatigue.

There was also some concern that Belviq caused tumors in animals and heart-valve defects in people. A similar serotonin-based drug that had been approved for weight loss — fenfluramine — was removed from the market in 1997 because of the same heart concerns.

In 2010, the FDA rejected Arena’s first request for approval, asking for more evidence of its safety. New data provided by the company showed that heart problems would not occur at the low doses at which Belviq would be prescribed. The FDA won’t require patients taking Belviq to be monitored for heart-valve damage, but the company is required to conduct six studies once the drug reaches the market to determine whether it causes heart attacks or stroke in people  who take it.

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Why did it take so long to get a new weight-loss drug approved?
The history of diet pills has been plagued by safety problems. Since 1999, when the last prescription weight-loss medication, Xenical (orlistat), was given the green light, one weight loss drug, Meridia (sibutramine) was taken off the market when users began showing increased risk of heart problems, and two others, Belviq and Qnexa, were rejected by the FDA over safety concerns. Manipulating the body’s weight-controlling pathways can have long-term consequences on the heart and other metabolic systems, so drug developers have a high bar to clear to prove their compounds are safe.

Read the FDA’s announcement on Belviq here.

Alice Park is a writer at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @aliceparkny. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

I have a paunch, but I hide it pretty well. Like lots of men, I collect calories in my belly—what scientists call the visceral region, my gut. It’s easy to conceal: many ordinary men’s shirts are pyramid-shaped, so they fit neatly at the shoulders and then billow a bit as they go south. But they can also hide a health problem: even if you’re not overweight, having excess belly fat can lead to serious cardiovascular disease and other illnesses. In fact, as new research shows, those who have normal weight but concentrated “central” fat are more than 50% more likely to die earlier from all causes than those who are obese.

A team of eight scientists presented the research in Munich on Aug. 27 at a European Society of Cardiology meeting. Led by Dr. Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic, the scientists examined data for 12,785 Americans who had been tracked for approximately 14 years for a major CDC study. Lopez-Jimenez and his team reviewed information on both body-mass index (BMI)—a measure of how fat you are in proportion to your height—and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), the circumference of your belly in relation to the circumference of your hips. (You can calculate your BMI here and your WHR here.)

The researchers divided the survey participants into three categories of BMI—normal, overweight, and obese. They also divided them into two categories of waist-to-hip ratio—normal and high. (They defined normal as less than .85 for women and less than .90 for men and high as .85 or higher for women and .90 or higher for men.) That left them with six subgroups: normal BMI/normal central fat; normal BMI/high central fat; and so on. This all gets confusing, but the chart here shows all six groups.

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At the end of the 14-year follow-up period in the CDC survey, 2,562 people in the sample had died. When Lopez-Jimenez and his colleagues analyzed the deaths, they found that those with a normal BMI but excessive belly fat had the highest risk of mortality of all six groups, even after accounting for early-death risk factors such as age, sex, race, smoking, hypertension, and diabetes. In fact the normal BMI/high central fat group had a higher death rate than all of the participants who were obese, irrespective of waist-to-hip ratios.

The risk of dying during the CDC survey was 2.1 times higher for those with normal BMI and high waist-to-hip ratio than for people of normal weight and waist ratio. For obese people, the risk of mortality was still high—about 1.4 times higher than normal—but, says Lopez-Jimenez, “The level of risk attributed to normal weight [but] central obesity appears to be similar to that of smoking a pack a day.”

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That’s a substantial risk, and the reasons central fat is so hazardous to our health aren’t entirely clear yet. But Lopez-Jimenez says there are three main theories to explain the connection:

1. Previous research shows that belly fat is metabolically different from other types of fat. Visceral fat cells are more likely to release certain hormones that promote insulin-resistance, a condition that can lead to diabetes. “The fact that visceral fat is next to the gut makes it highly active from a metabolic standpoint,” says Lopez-Jimenez. “So that, by itself, would cause inflammation [and] insulin resistance.”

2. As some recent data is showing, other kinds of fat—particularly fat in the legs and buttocks—is associated with a healthier metabolic profile. “It seems to be exactly the opposite of visceral fat,” says Lopez-Jimenez. “The more fat in the legs, the better the profile: better cholesterol, lower glucose, lower triglycerides, and lower insulin.” He admits that this research is “very new and very strange,” but at least two studies (one here and one here) have found that lower-body fat may offer some metabolic benefits, especially in comparison with belly fat.

3. Lopez-Jimenez speculates that people with lots of abdominal fat have less muscle mass, possibly because they exercise less. Muscles are fed by glucose, so they tend to soak up the fat we eat far more efficiently than fat cells. That’s one reason exercise can help people from gaining weight (although exercise alone contributes little to weight loss).

The new study is fascinating but controversial. As my colleague Alice Park has written, previous research suggests that BMI and waist-to-hip ratio have about the same predictive value in assessing risk for heart disease. The data presented in Munich does go a step further—evaluating not only risk for heart ailments but the likelihood of death from all causes—but the analysis will have to be replicated before the debate can be settled.

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In the meantime, what this means for your diet isn’t so different from any other nutrition advice. As writer Michael Pollan has said, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” As for my own paunch, I’m trying not to kid myself. Even though I still fit into my low-slung jeans, my belly now hangs over. I’m not obese, but I may be worse off.

Is there anything sadder than the foods of the 1950s? Canned, frozen, packaged concoctions, served up by the plateful, three meals per day, in an era in which the supermarket was king, the farmer’s market was, well, for farmers, and the word locavore sounded vaguely like a mythical beast. We knew far less of flavor or freshness or artisanal excellence than we do now. We were culinary rubes and too clueless even to know it.

Of course, the food of that primitive era was affordable and nutritious. It was easy to prepare and it was always there. You loved it as a kid, and, be honest, you still love a lot of it now. What, you’re suddenly too good for peanut butter? For tuna salad? For jars of pickles and cans of baked beans and a carton of perfectly delicious ice cream that isn’t priced like truffle oil? Becoming food savvy is one thing, but it’s amazing how fast savvy turns to snooty, and snooty leaves you preparing three-hour meals that break your budget and that the kids won’t even eat.

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When our culture shifts, it tends to overcorrect, throwing out everything associated with an era we’ve moved past, rather than saving what was good and combining it with what is new. And when it comes to diet, a whole lot of what’s old and good involves the ordinary supermarket and some of the familiar foods on its shelves. Nutritionists and menu planners have increasingly been taking a second look at what we’ve dismissed as dreary, down-market and somehow below us, and coming to the rather surprising conclusion that there is plenty of room for a lot of it in our recipes and on our tables.

Take a block of frozen vegetables for instance. The flash-freezing method introduced in the 1920s by inventor Clarence Birdseye (yes, that’s how they got the name) works so quickly and at such low temperatures that it prevents water and flavor from being extracted because of the formation of taste-robbing ice crystals. Meantime, all but the most water-soluble vitamins — basically C and the various B’s — survive the freezing process perfectly well, and the B’s and C degrade only a little, particularly if the food is steamed instead of blanched before freezing. It worked then, it works now, and it tastes just fine.

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Canning is a little dicier, particularly since not all foods (think asparagus) take to the canning process so well. But the overwhelming majority do, and most manufacturers also offer lower-sodium alternatives, which is a big improvement over the almost lethally salted brands of the past. Canned tuna, salmon and chicken similarly retain virtually all their nutritional octane and are a whole lot easier to prepare than their higher-end, butcher-counter raw versions. An April study conducted by researchers at Tufts University looked at a range of canned foods — including corn, tomatoes, pinto beans, spinach and tuna — and found that in every case, the nutrition was terrific and the cost savings were considerable.

“There is increasing conversation around ‘fresh foods,’ especially fruits and vegetables, as being more nutritious,” said lead author Cathy Kapica when the report was released. “Yet this supposition has not been supported by evidence.”

Up and down the supermarket aisles, the same thing is turning out to be true, as other familiar comfort foods are enjoying a sort of public rediscovery and acceptance. It’s the 99% diet — cheaper and healthier than you think — perfectly suited to an era of both tightened belts and expanding waistlines. Yes, there are still things to avoid. It will never be a good idea to load your supermarket cart with Fluffernutter, pork rinds,  frozen corn dogs and Twinkies (O.K., that last one may have taken care of itself). But with a little smart label reading and a little self-restraint, everything (or at least most things) old can be very new — and tasty — again.

Read the full TIME cover story on rediscovering the nutrient-rich foods on grocery-store shelves, available to subscribers, here.

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