Are Most People in Denial About Their Weight?

As I was walking through the gym the other day, I caught a glimpse of an overweight woman across the room. But then I did a double take, and then another. The woman was me — I had seen my own reflection in a distant mirror and, for a split second, hadn’t recognized myself.

This moment of mistaken identity was disconcerting, but it wasn’t all that unusual. Many of us are surprised by our size when reflected in the mirror or a store window — it’s like thinking that a recording of your own voice sounds off. And while psychologists have worried for years that media images of superslim starlets would put the nation’s collective self-esteem at risk, it turns out that something altogether different has happened. As the population becomes fatter, study after study shows that instead of feeling bad about ourselves, we have entered a collective state of denial about how big we’re actually getting.

A team of researchers led by a group from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently asked 3,622 young men and women in Mexico to estimate their body size based on categories ranging from very underweight to obese. People in the normal weight range selected the correct category about 80 percent of the time, but 58 percent of overweight students incorrectly described themselves as normal weight. Among the obese, 75 percent placed themselves in the overweight category, and only 10 percent accurately described their body size. (Notably, a sizable minority who were at a healthy weight described themselves as being underweight.)

The tendency for people to underestimate their body sizes, according to studies in the United States, Canada, Europe and elsewhere, is remarkably consistent across cultures and age groups. So why are so many people in fat denial? Scientists are only now beginning to understand the complicated process in which the brain (in particular, the posterior parietal cortex) integrates signals from all the senses to form our body images. Because our bodies change over time, the brain must constantly adjust its perception.

In the meantime, they certainly know that the brain’s body-perception center isn’t foolproof. In an experiment called the Pinocchio Illusion, a person can be fooled into thinking that his nose is growing. This happens when someone touching his own nose with closed eyes has his biceps stimulated to feel as if his forearm is moving forward. The brain senses the arm movement but also knows that the fingers are still touching the nose. For both sensations to be true, the brain decides that the nose must be growing. 

“One possibility is that, in people who get obese or who have body-image disorders, something goes wrong with that process.”

While researchers admit that some denial may have to do with personal embarrassment, the consistency of the findings suggests that neural processing and psychology probably both play a role. It is also possible that a few extra pounds isn’t an urgent priority for the brain to acknowledge. 



Craving Carbs on an Empty Stomach

Craving Carbs on an Empty Stomach

A new study shows that people who sit down to eat after an overnight fast are more likely to ignore protein, fats and vegetables and head straight for high-calorie carbohydrates and starches first.

Researchers have discovered that you are more likely to crave bread and other carbohydrates when you are hungry.

Have a habit of skipping meals? A new study shows that people who sit down to eat after an overnight fast are more likely to ignore protein, fats and vegetables and head straight for high-calorie carbohydrates and starches first.

The news may not come as a surprise to long-term dieters, or anyone used to bingeing on pasta or potato chips on an empty stomach. But the study also revealed some telling details about food choices and the order in which we eat different kinds of foods. When given the opportunity to eat a salad and a plate of French fries, for example, people who started with the starchy food downed significantly more calories per meal than those who did the reverse.

The findings have implications for people who regularly miss meals, whether because of hectic schedules or for the deliberate purpose of losing weight. Nationwide, about 15 percent of adults say they have fasted to slim down, and a number of popular diets encourage intermittent fasting.

“I think this emphasizes the importance of controlling your environment as far as the types of foods you’re exposed to when you’re hungry and how much of them you can get,” said Aner Tal, a postdoctoral research associate in the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell and lead author of the study, published in Archives of Internal Medicine. “Because otherwise, you will mindlessly choose foods that are less healthy for you.”

Over the course of 12 weekday lunches, the researchers studied the students as they arrived at the lunch table. The subjects had their pick of starches, including dinner rolls and fries, as well as vegetables, beverages and proteins like chicken and cheese. To prevent the foods’ placement from influencing the results, the researchers rearranged the items at each meal. They also measured the amounts the subjects served themselves, using scales embedded in the tables.

Those in the group that had fasted, it turned out, were more likely to begin their meals with starches, eating the bread or French fries before anything else about a third of the time, compared with just over 10 percent of the time with the control group. Those who fasted were also less likely to eat vegetables first. Only a quarter of them did so, compared with about half of the people in the control group.

“Importantly,” the researchers wrote, “starting their meal with a particular food led all participants to consume 46.7 percent more calories of it” compared with other foods. They also found that people who chose not to eat the vegetables first consumed about 20 percent less of them. Those who went straight for the starches ultimately ate about 20 percent more calories over all than their peers.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/category/eat-well/weigh-in/

Small Telescope Helps Make Big Discovery

A small telescope, no bigger nor more powerful than a high-end digital camera, has helped researchers discover two new planets, both similar in makeup to the gas giant Jupiter.

One, named KELT-2Ab, is unique because it is near a very bright star. The bright light from the star will help researchers understand the atmosphere of the planet, said Thomas G. Beatty, an astronomer at Ohio State University who was involved in the research. “It’s the only way to really understand a planet’s interiors and exteriors,” he said. “We can get enough of a signal from the light that goes through or reflects off the planet.”

The second planet, called KELT-1b, is about 30 times the mass of Jupiter. It is so massive that it is being designated a brown dwarf, a category reserved for bodies “too heavy to be planets but not heavy enough to be stars,” Mr. Beatty said.

KELT-1b is so close to its star that a year for the planet is just 29 hours, Mr. Beatty said.

KELT-1b is about 825 light-years from Earth, KELT-2Ab about 360. Each planet receives thousands of times more sunlight from its star than the Earth does from the Sun, Mr. Beatty said.The researchers identified the planets using the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope, or KELT, housed at Winer Observatory, near Sonoita, Ariz., which cost less than $75,000 to build. The most expensive telescopes in the world cost billions of dollars, Mr. Beatty said.

With a 42-millimeter lens, the instrument is “sort of like the little telescope that could,” Mr. Beatty said. “If an amateur astronomer had the money, they could buy the components and assemble this very easily.”

He presented the findings recently at the national meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Anchorage, and the papers have been submitted to journals for publication.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/science/small-telescope-helps-make-big-discovery.html?_r=1&ref=science 

Mosquitoes survive raindrop collisions by virtue of their low mass

In the study of insect flight, adaptations to complex flight conditions such as wind and rain are poorly understood. Mosquitoes thrive in areas of high humidity and rainfall, in which raindrops can weigh more than 50 times a mosquito. In this combined experimental and theoretical study, we here show that free-flying mosquitoes can survive the high-speed impact of falling raindrops. High-speed videography of those impacts reveals a mechanism for survival: A mosquito’s strong exoskeleton and low mass renders it impervious to falling drops. The mosquito’s low mass causes raindrops to lose little momentum upon impact and so impart correspondingly low forces to the mosquitoes. Our findings demonstrate that small fliers are robust to in-flight perturbations.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/05/25/1205446109.abstract

Apple Updates Laptops and Mobile Software

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple on Monday introduced a new version of its mobile operating system for iPhones and iPads that will bring a host of new features, including maps that let users soar over a three-dimensional rendering of a city.  

  The new map software replaces Google data with Apple’s own mapping system, a sign that Apple is further distancing itself from the company that it once considered a close partner. Apple also overhauled its line of Mac computers.

“We are so proud of these products, as they’re perfect examples of what Apple does best,” said Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, introducing the products on the opening day of the company’s developer conference here — a yearly event where Apple shows off its works-in-progress to entice software developers to continue creating software for its devices. This was the first developer conference that Apple has held since the death of its co-founder and former chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, last October.   

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/technology/apple-overhauls-mac-computers-and-introduces-new-mobile-operating-system.html?ref=technology