Dan's Plan

Brian Wansink does cool studies. Previous studies of his have looked at how a number of factors such as the size of your dinner plate can influence how much you eat (see: http://smallplatemovement.org/).
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His latest cool study, which will soon be published in The International Journal of Obesity, examines how the size of the meals portrayed in paintings of the Last Supper have changed over the years – hundreds of years (see figure below). He found that since the year 1000 A.D., the relative size of bread and plates (compared to the sizes of the heads as a control measure) depicted in paintings of the Last Supper have increased by 23 and 66%, respectively.

Pretty cool study, huh? Sometimes a little creativity goes a long way.

CONCLUSION: Eat a mixture of cooked and uncooked  vegetables and the vitamins will take care of themselves. If you do  cook, steaming is great and microwaving is better for preserving vitamin activity. For vitamin C, raw wins every time.

From Marion Nestle Blog, Food Politics

-EXCESSIVE (notice emphasis on excessive) dietary fructose is a major candidate for causing fatty liver disease.

-Unlike glucose, fructose ingestion can rapidly cause fatty liver disease in animals, and is association with the development of i…ncrease hunger signals, vascular disease, and inflammation.

-In this study, 427 patients with fatty liver disease were assesses to see if increased consumption of high fructose corn syrup was associated with scarring in the liver.

-Reported intake of fructose-containing beverages:

19% - no intake
52 % - 1-6 servings a week
29 % - daily

-An increase in consumption of fructose appeared to be correlated to increased liver scarring in patients that already have fatty liver disease.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

-Fructose is also found in things like honey, fruits, vegetable, maple syrup.

-My 2 cents: Excessive fructose is probably the problem. Replace soda with various none sweetened teas can be useful (Give yourself 2 weeks to adjust to the flavor of none sweetened teas). Still eat natural sources of fructose, like fruits and veggies.

-Lastly, at the last company I worked for, I was responsible for setting up and running a research grant program. Through the program, I actually worked directly with Dr. Abdelmalek whiles he was at University of Florida and also after her transition to Duke. She is one of the top liver disease researchers in the world and was a pleasure to work with.

REFERENCE: Abdelmalek MF, et al. Hepatology. 2010

Http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20301112