Speaking in Lisbon on October 5

My friend Pedro Bastos graciously invited me to speak at a conference he organized in Lisbon on October 5 titled "Food, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases".  I will give two talks:

• "Ancestral Health: What is Our Human Potential?"  This talk will explore the health of non-industrial cultures in an effort to understand how much of our modern chronic disease burden is preventable, and it will briefly touch on one major aspect of non-industrial life that may protect against the "diseases of civilization".  This presentation will focus on age-adjusted data from high quality studies.  
• "Why Do We Overeat: a Neurobiological Perspective."  This talk will attempt to explain why most of us consume more calories than we need to maintain weight-- a phenomenon that is a central cause of morbidity and mortality in the modern world.  It will touch on some of the brain mechanisms involved in ingestive behavior, and outline a framework to explain why these mechanisms are often maladaptive in today's environment.

Pedro will speak about dairy consumption, vitamin D, and chronic disease.  

The conference is targeted to health professionals and students of nutrition, however it's open to anyone who is interested in these topics.  It's sponsored by NutriScience, a Portuguese nutrition education and consulting company.  Sadly, I don't speak Portuguese, so my talks will be in English.  

Access the full program, and register for the conference, using the links below:

Program

Registration

Is Refined Carbohydrate Addictive?

[Note: in previous versions, I mixed up "LGI" and "HGI" terms in a couple of spots.  These are now corrected.  Thanks to readers for pointing them out.]

Recently, a new study was published that triggered an avalanche of media reports suggesting that refined carbohydrate may be addictive:

Refined Carbs May Trigger Food Addiction
Refined Carbs May Trigger Food Addictions
Can You be Addicted to Carbs?
etc.

This makes for attention-grabbing headlines, but in fact the study had virtually nothing to do with food addiction.  The study made no attempt to measure addictive behavior related to refined carbohydrate or any other food, nor did it aim to do so.

So what did the study actually find, why is it being extrapolated to food addiction, and is this a reasonable extrapolation?  Answering these questions dredges up a number of interesting scientific points, some of which undermine popular notions of what determines eating behavior.

Read more »