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8A – Daily News – Monday, January 17, 2011 Vitality & health Nutrition Quiz: Whip it good (MCT) Last week, a grateful nation celebrated National Whipped Cream Day. But, we confess, every day is whipped cream day at The Quiz's house. Take our test on this tasty and caloric treat. 1. When was National Whipped Cream Day established? a) 1954 b) 2004 c) 2010 2. According to the website www.foodrefer- ence.com, no one is cer- tain how whipped cream was created. One "origin story" put forth by the website is this ... a) World War I pilots carried tankards of cream in the cockpit and, when the plane reached a cer- tain velocity, the cream partly congealed and whipped to a froth. b) Someone on horse- back was carrying a half- full container of cream and riding fast – and that partially whipped the cream. c) In Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales," the Wife of Bath angrily stirred a vat of cream to Sources: www.foodref- erence.com; www.wired.com; nutri- tiondata.self.com. CARE TO COMMENT? At redbluffdailynews.com, scroll to the end of any story, click the link and type away. make butter so vigorously that it got whipped, pleas- ing the townsfolk during a subsequent feast. 3. True or false: Cream must be below 50 degrees to whip; at 50 degrees or higher, it churns into but- ter rather than whipping. 4. One cup (60 grams) of whipped cream has 154 calories. The real crime, though, is its percentage of daily value of saturated fat, which is what? a) 29 percent b) 41 percent c) 96 percent 5. Contrary to popular belief, Kraft Cool Whip does contain some cream, but its main ingredient is hydrogenated oil. Wired magazine reports it also contains polysorbate 60, which can be found in what other product? a) Detergent b) Sexual lubricants c) Both a and b. (MCT) It seems so sim- ple: Too much food and too little activity make people fat. But the actual processes that create and perpetuate that imbalance are proving to be astoundingly complex. Biology, physiology, psychology, genetics and environment figure in the obesity equation to varying degrees. Scientists are try- ing to understand how, in recent decades, the popula- tion has bloated to a point that lean people are a minority. "There is no simple answer," said Bernard Fuemmeler, a Duke Univer- sity researcher who is studying the mind-body link in obesity. "People tend to think that it may be willpower or just a lack of control. And these may be reasons, but not explana- tions for what is driving the epidemic." In their quest for expla- nations, researchers at Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, Wake Forest and East Car- olina universities are dis- covering or are building upon findings that prove just how intractable a foe fat can be: Rich foods work much like heroin on the brain, making it hard to stop eat- ing them. A recent study indicates a genetic link between overeating and drug addiction, explaining why obese people have such intense cravings and build up such tolerance. Depression and obesity MCT photo Heba Salama and husband Ed Brantley, not shown, do circuit training at Arrichion in Raleigh, NC.Two years ago, they appeared on TV's "The Biggest Loser" and lost a combined total of 277 pounds. can be so tightly linked, it's hard to tell which comes first. Some of the same hor- mones and neurotransmit- ters are active in both, which could explain a ten- dency to eat when not hun- gry. And as people gain weight earlier in life, they not only get chronic dis- eases sooner, they also set the course for a lifetime of weight battles. Growing evidence points to biologi- cal changes in obese people that means they must work harder to keep weight off than those who never gained. The consequences are huge. Obesity is estimated to directly kill 112,000 peo- ple a year in the United States and to contribute to the deaths of many hun- dreds of thousands more. Health costs associated with the epidemic are tabbed at $147 billion a year, accord- ing to an analysis by RTI International. "We evolved from species that have lived for the last millions and mil- lions of years in environ- ments in which food was hard to come by," said Wayne Pratt, a behavioral psychologist at Wake Forest University who has explored the connection between food and addic- tion. "And the food environ- ment has changed in the last 50 years." Those changes — cheap, abundant and tasty food that requires almost no physical effort to obtain — have upset an intricate equilibri- um within the body that is at the very essence of exis- tence. Food is life; every sys- tem in the body depends on it. But too much of any- thing, even a basic necessi- ty, can create a poison. *** Well-educated and moti- vated, Jennifer Joyner began every day determined to lose weight. By noon, she was off course. "I used that failure to go ahead and eat (poorly) the rest of the day," said Joyner, 38, who lives in Fayet- teville, N.C., with her hus- band and two children. At her heaviest, she carried 336 pounds on her 5-foot-5-inch frame. Joyner firmly believes she was addicted to food. "Nobody is that heavy because they don't know how many calories they should limit themselves to," Joyner said. "That's absurd." There's growing evi- dence she might have a case. High-energy foods hit the same pleasure centers of the brain that heroin and cocaine activate, recent research has found. Wake Forest's Pratt said that very brain circuitry was once an evolutionary benefit. Humans were pro- grammed to like sweets and fatty foods so they'd eat more of them during those fleeting moments of abun- dance — finding a berry bush or a trove of tree nuts. "It makes sense to eat more than you'd need for that day, so you could put down a layer of fat to sur- vive" during the inevitable periods of scarcity, Pratt said. "The reward system is there to take advantage of things that are beneficial to us." Even though people are hard-wired to find rich foods pleasurable, most are not addicted in the sense of becoming increasingly compulsive and self- destructive. But in an unprecedented environment of food abun- dance, a steady diet of cheeseburgers, pizzas and doughnuts can trigger in some the same cravings and tolerances that an addict gets from heroin or cocaine. Recent brain studies show that drug addicts and people who are obese have similar neurobiological circuitry. Studies with rats show why we start craving fat. Rats on high fat and sugar diets begin craving the foods because the reward centers in their brains grow numb to the pleasure sig- nals, much like the addict develops a tolerance to cocaine that fuels more and bigger binges. As a result, the rats eat more and more, growing obese. Adding to the biological evidence, a team of scien- tists that included UNC- Chapel Hill researchers reported in 2009 that they had found a gene, NRXN3, associated with obesity in some people. The same gene previously was identi- fied as playing a role in sub- stance abuse. Keri Monda, an epi- demiologist at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and one of the study's authors, said the finding draws a strong inherited link between overeating and drug addic- tion — problems character- ized by difficulties limiting enjoyable experiences. "We do know there are common underpinnings," Monda said, adding that additional studies are need- ed to make a definitive asso- ciation. For Joyner, the science only confirms her experi- ence. In March 2008, she had weight-loss surgery and has since dropped 150 pounds and written a book about her experience, "Des- ignated Fat Girl." But over- coming her addiction, she said, has taken counseling and work beyond the opera- tion. "You don't treat addic- tion with a diet-and-exercise plan," she said. "There needs to be intervention, family support, ongoing counseling." *** As anyone who has bat- tled obesity knows, the struggle is as much mental as physical. Sadness, self- loathing, disgust and frus- tration often accompany weight gain. Bad health begets a bad frame of mind, which begets more bad health. *** Most people gain their greatest amount of excess weight between ages 18 and 35. There are lots of rea- sons — people go to school or work and don't exercise as much, eat con- venience foods, party more, keep odd hours, have children. The weight inches up by an average of 30 pounds over that 17- year period of young adult- hood. It can be a dangerous accumulation, giving a head start to diabetes, cardio-vas- cular disease, hypertension and other diseases once associated with old age. The yo-yo effect is one dieters know all too well. Most people gain all their weight back within five years, and 33 percent have some weight return in the first year after a successful diet. Scientists attribute this to basic physiology. For the same survivalist reasons the brain is hard-wired to favor rich foods, the body's cells are programmed to sock away extra fuel as a hedge against famine. That extra fuel is stored as fat. And once the body has created a fat bank, it fights to protect it, perceiv- ing a successful diet as a heist. Mark's Fitness *Get into Shape, Get Healthy, & Enjoy a Good Quality of Life!* * Private Personal Training - FREE Consultations! ! * Public Spin Class: M-W-F @ 6 PM - Ask about monthly FREE classes! ACE Certified & Senior Fitness Assn. Certified Personal Trainer (530) 941-2832 821 Walnut St. Red Bluff fitness Your body is thwarting your weight-loss ANSWERS: 1: a; 2: b; 3: true; 4: b; 5: c.