Chuck Norris cheers link between good food, good behavior
Points out how we really are what we eat
2015.09.04

Next month, Fred Kummerow, nutrition expert and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois, will celebrate his 101st birthday.

As I pointed out in June, Kummerow has a long and distinguished history as a leader in the fight to ban trans fats. He first published research warning about the dangers of the artery-clogging substance in 1957. In 2009, he filed a petition to ban trans fats, an action that ultimately led to a fundamentally new take in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the Food and Drug Administration’s recent ruling that trans fats are no longer “generally recognized as safe” for use in human food.

Nutritional thinking now places the emphasis on fat quality rather than on total fat in the diet, which I would think also sits well with Kummerow. For years, he has started his day by eating a fried egg – a notion that defied popular nutritional thinking. Now come findings that suggest that eating an egg (or maybe two) a day not only can be part of a healthy diet but also just might provide you with a healthy attitude adjustment.

According to researchers at Leiden University, eating eggs could make you a more generous person. In a study published in Frontiers in Psychology last December, researchers found that a nutrient in eggs called tryptophan had the curious effect of increasing the likelihood that participants in a control group would donate to charity. This do-gooder behavior was traced to tryptophan’s crucial role in producing serotonin, also known as the feel-good hormone.

The study also points to earlier work that has linked serotonin to charitable giving, as well as other behaviors that benefit others. It also seems to lower the level of a hormone connected to social isolation and aggression.

“In a way, we are what we eat,” noted Laura Steenbergen, who led the Leiden University study.

How many times have you heard that old axiom? Maybe we’ve heard it so many times that we stopped seriously considering its meaning. The saying is traced back to the 1800s, when many great thinkers believed that the food one eats has a bearing on one’s state of mind and health. Among them was Ludwig Feuerbach, a German philosopher and anthropologist who may have been the one to coin the phrase. He wrote, “Man is what he eats.” In 1942, nutritionist Victor Lindlahr, a strong believer in the idea that food controls health, said: “Ninety percent of the diseases known to man are caused by cheap foodstuffs. You are what you eat.” In the 1960s, the concept of the importance of maintaining a macrobiotic whole-foods diet was strongly associated with Adelle Davis.

.........................................

More:

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/chuck-norris-...VLpqeZ72rqql.99