Dieting these days is simply assumed to be an ongoing lifestyle activity to fit into our lives alongside our work, our social obligations and everything else which makes up the bedrock of our ongoing routines.

This is what it has come to. Continual dieting is there alongside the conversational commonalities of everyday life, on a level with marital/partnership status, car ownership and whether or not one keeps a cat.
It is high time to look again at what is driving this dieting thing as an activity of everyday normalisation, with it frequently not even being mentioned any longer in the context of a temporary behaviour very specifically related to an outcome of permanently reigned-in weight.

All of this matters so much because the tendency is now to treat as an accepted banality an issue which has in fact become a largely unnoticed but major tension point between state encroachment and personal choice. Worse than that, it is not just about liberty, it is also about bad science and poor advice.

Milk protein showed to be more beneficial for building muscle mass in weightlifters than drinking a soy drink according to a new study. Researchers from McMaster University’s Department of Kinesiology reported their findings first in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The study researched how much muscle protein young men would gain after a heavy weightlifting workout. They had given equal amounts of protein after their workout. Either they would receive milk or a soy drink.

“Our thinking going into the study was that milk would be better than soy. We suspected this would be the case because of work done by French researchers. However, we were really impressed by how much greater the gains in muscle protein with milk were,” said Sarah Wilkinson, lead researcher and a graduate student in the department of kinesiology.

More evidence suggests that a diet with extra fruits and vegetables can reduce the risk for head and neck cancers. The study involved 500,000 retired American men and women. The researchers followed the participants for a 5 year period and documented the cases of head and neck cancers.

Just one extra serving of a fruit or vegetable can greatly reduce the risk of cancer. Participants who ate 6 servings of fruits and veggies daily per 1000 calories, were 29% less likely to develop head or neck cancer. This is the 6th leading cause of cancer death in the world.

“It may not sound like news that vegetables protect from cancer, but there is actually some controversy in the literature. It is important that we do these large studies,” said Dr. Alan Kristal, associate head of the cancer prevention program at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.