BEST DIET : LOSE WEIGHT WITH BEST TRICK

One of the most peculiar findings in obesity research is that exercise — even if vigorous and regular — doesn’t reliably lead to weight loss. The reason, as I wrote last year, has to do less with physiology than psychology: people who exercise tend to reward themselves with desserts and snacks that they would never consume otherwise. Exercise helps you stay fit, but it also makes you hungry, so it usually doesn’t turn fat people into thin people. Call it the paradox of the gym.

A new paper just published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology offers another weight-loss conundrum: if you show people a plate of unhealthy food — say, a burger and fries — and then add some steamed broccoli to the same plate, most people will say the second plate holds fewer calories, even though it demonstrably has more food on it. The author of the new paper, Alexander Chernev of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, calls this “The Dieter’s Paradox.” (More on Time.com: See a special report on overcoming obesity)

Chernev begins his paper with a great question: Why, after 20 years of public outcry about obesity — federal, state, and local government spending on weight-loss programs; widespread media coverage of what is routinely called the obesity “epidemic”; the opening of tens of thousands of new gyms since the 1980s — why, after all this, do we keep getting fatter?

One reason, according to Chernev, is that people think that if they eat an apple, they are entitled to eat a pack of potato chips. “People behave as though healthy foods have halos,” he writes. “Because healthier meals are perceived to be less likely to promote weight gain, people erroneously assume that adding a healthy item to a meal decreases its potential to promote weight gain.”

Chernev has found that this misperception is actually stronger among those of us who are more weight-conscious. In an online experiment, he asked 934 people to estimate the caloric content of four meals. Roughly half were shown unhealthy meals: bacon-and-cheese sandwiches; meatball-and-pepperoni cheesesteaks. The other half were shown the same meals with a healthy side item: celery sticks, say, or an apple. (More on Time.com: The ‘Other’ Salt: 5 Foods Rich in Potassium)

Respondents estimated the first meal at 691 calories; they estimated the one with the healthy side item at 648 calories. Those who considered themselves weight-conscious were even worse at estimating the calories, according to the study. “Adding a healthy option decreased the perceived calorie content of the combined meal by an average of 96 calories for weight-conscious individuals but only 26 calories for those less concerned with weight,” Chernev writes. (Health.com: How the Pros Curb Food Cravings)

These findings have major implications for how we conduct weight-loss programs: encouraging people to eat more vegetables may be the wrong strategy. Just as people reward themselves with a muffin after they go to the gym, they will reward themselves for eating some celery with their French fries. A better approach may be to persuade people to stop at certain intervals during meals to ask themselves if they are full. As Chernev writes, “the negative calorie illusion [is] less pronounced when individuals pay attention to the quantity of the combined items instead of focusing on the healthy/unhealthy aspects of the items.”

In other words, eat the cheeseburger if you want it. But don’t think that a side of steamed kale will make it better for you.

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When it comes to preventing cancer, can what you eat make a difference?

Certain foods are high in antioxidants, which mop up the free radicals that contribute to cancer. But in studies it’s been a challenge to tease apart the effects of diet alone on cancer risk, since people who eat foods rich in antioxidants also tend to exercise more and avoid smoking, other factors that are known to lower the chances of developing cancer.

Now, in a small study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research, researchers uncovered more intriguing evidence that diet may influence the cancer process, even before it begins. Among three dozen participants at high risk of developing esophageal cancer in China, it turned out that eating strawberries helped prevent early lesions from developing into tumors. That’s right — strawberries.

Tong Chen, a cancer researcher at Ohio State Comprehensive Cancer Center, decided to look at strawberries as a cancer-preventer in humans after animal studies showed that the fruit had anti-cancer effects. With plenty of dried fruit supplied by the California Strawberry Commission, which also funded the study, she focused her trial on 36 participants from three provinces in central China that have among the world’s highest rates of esophageal cancer. She gave the volunteers freeze-dried strawberry powder, which was mixed with water into a drink. The freeze-dried form tends to concentrate whatever beneficial properties the fruit might have. (In her animal work, Chen had tested black raspberries as well, but because that fruit isn’t as common in China, the current trial included only strawberries.)

In many cases, esophageal cancer progresses from pre-cancerous growths that are graded as mild, moderate and severe for their likelihood of advancing into malignancy. Among the participants in the new study, 29 saw their lesions revert to a less dangerous state — from mild to ungraded, or from moderate to mild — after six months of consuming the equivalent of two ounces of strawberries a day.

“We are very excited about this result,” Chen says. “I think this study is very important because we found that strawberries may decrease the histological grade of precancerous lesions and also may reduce some cancer-related events including cell proliferation, inflammation and gene [activity].”

She’s quick to point out, however, that gulping down pints of strawberries isn’t the answer to fighting cancer. A larger, more rigorous trial that includes both people at risk of esophageal cancer and healthy, low-risk controls, who are randomly assigned to dosing with strawberries or a placebo, needs to be conducted.

But in the case of a cancer in which half of those with moderate pre-cancerous lesions go on to develop malignant tumors, and 25% of those with mild lesions do, finding ways to halt their march can have a major impact on the incidence of the disease, especially in areas like central China where rates are high. “This shows us that strawberries may be an alternative or work together with other chemopreventive drugs in the prevention of esophageal cancer,” says Chen. And preventing cancer is always preferable to treating it.

Eating certain foods can help people lower their cholesterol levels, even without the aid of medication, a new study finds.

In the study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, patients who started out with high or borderline high LDL, or bad cholesterol, levels (anything above 158 mg/dL) were able to lower their LDL by 14% over six months by sticking with a diet rich in cholesterol-lowering foods.

That diet cut participants’ LDL three times more than a standard low-fat diet.

So what foods were effective against artery-clogging fat? According to study leader Dr. David Jenkins, chair of nutrition, metabolism and vascular biology at the University of Toronto, there are four pillars of a cholesterol-lowering diet: plant oils or sterols such as margarine; viscous fibers including oats, barley and psyllium; nuts; and soy.

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For most people, Jenkins says, it wouldn’t require that much effort to boost consumption of these foods enough to achieve a cholesterol-reducing effect. In fact, he says, it would be sufficient to substitute oat bran or psyllium cereal in the morning in place of your regular breakfast, and to try soy milk products instead of dairy.

The six-month study was the first to look at the potential impact of a real-world diet on cholesterol levels. Rather than providing their 345 participants with foods to eat, researchers counseled them on how to shop for and incorporate more cholesterol-lowering products into their diet on their own. (The only food given to the study participants was plant sterol-based margarine, which was not permitted to be sold in Canada, the site of the study, at the time.) One group of participants received two nutritional counseling sessions of 40-60 mins. each, while another group received a more intensive schedule of seven sessions over six months. The control group got advice on how to eat a low saturated fat diet.

At the end of the six months, the two intervention groups showed an average 25 mg/dL drop in their LDL levels, compared with an 8 mg/dL decline in the low-fat-diet group. Both groups that received counseling on cholesterol-lowering diets showed similar reductions, suggesting that people were able to change their diets after just two sessions of instruction.

“The results show that we do have something worthwhile to add to the dietary formula,” says Jenkins.

He notes that the majority of people in the study were recruited through advertisements, which may have targeted people with a pre-existing interest in lowering their cholesterol levels, so they might have been particularly keen on adopting the necessary dietary changes to keep their lipid levels in check.

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Jenkins suggests that the results could be even more impressive among people who aren’t paying much attention to their diet at all and may therefore have more to gain. “The implication from our point of view is that if we take the couch potato, and they were to bite the bullet and adopt these changes, they could do much better in terms of reducing their cholesterol,” he says.

How much more tofu and oat bran would it take to make a difference? Based on an average 2,000-calorie daily diet, Jenkins said the study participants were instructed to aim for 2 g of plant sterol, nearly 20 g of fiber, and 40 g each of soy and nut products daily.

Only about 40% of the volunteers reached this target, but Jenkins says anyone can easily start adding some of these foods into their diet gradually. “To eat more oats, for example, change your breakfast cereal and try some desserts made of oat bran with fruits and nuts,” he says. He acknowledges that boosting soy intake could be a little more difficult, particularly among westerners who still aren’t accustomed to the protein that’s such a staple of Asian diets.

But the effort may be worth it, especially for those who aren’t eager to start popping pills to lower their cholesterol, Jenkins says. In the first study his team did on these foods, in 2003, they showed that in a lab setting, when participants were provided with the adequate amounts of fiber, nuts, soy and plant sterols, they were able to lower their LDL levels by nearly 30% — with the reductions associated with early cholesterol-lowering statin drugs.

Jenkins says his next step is to follow-up with his diet-study patients to see whether the change in their eating habits translates to cleaner arteries and therefore to fewer heart events. He plans to conduct imaging studies of the major arteries to document any changes the diet may have on blood vessels.

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In the meantime, he says, “I don’t think it’s that difficult” to switch to a more powerful cholesterol-lowering diet. “You don’t have to hold your nose, but just change as much as you can and look for substitutes for high-fat foods that often fill the gap very, very well.”

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.