The Food Additive That Helps Stop Weight Gain

…and other items from this week’s health science news:

Interrupting the weight-gain process

Rather than reversing weight loss, a newly-approved compound called inulin propionate ester (IPE) is designed to help prevent the slow, long-term weight gain caused by small daily calorie surpluses.

Randomized controlled trials found that approximately 10g per day of IPE can regulate appetite and help prevent weight gain.

How it works: IPE delivers propionate directly to receptors in the colon, stimulating appetite-regulating hormones and enhancing the natural effects of gut bacterial fermentation, helping people feel fuller for longer, without the adverse side effects associated with GLP-1 drugs (with the tradeoff being that IPE isn’t intended for use for weight loss, just for avoiding putting weight on).

Longer-term studies suggested that IPE may also help preserve lean body mass, reduce liver fat, and improve aspects of immune and metabolic health, albeit research in those regards is still ongoing, to be sure.

Read in full: Special food additive that helps prevent weight gain is approved in the EU

Related: The Food Additive You Do Want

How sitting increases cancer risk

Or rather, it is strongly associated with such—causality is not outright proven, though the numbers are rather damning:

❝This study included 91,292 UK Biobank participants with valid accelerometer data. Participants were followed for a median of 12.38 years.

After adjusting for sociodemographic and lifestyle factors, each additional hour of prolonged SB was associated with a higher risk of overall cancer mortality (hazard ratio [HR] HR_1hour 1.09; 95% confidence interval [CI] [1.06, 1.11]; p < 0.001).❞

Or to put that in words: each additional 1 hour of sitting was associated with a 9% increase in dying of cancer.

And for context, the participants were healthy at baseline (in studies like this, “healthy” means “no relevant disease diagnoses” and is not necessarily a comment on their fitness or such).

Read in full: Long sitting bouts linked to increased cancer risk

Related: Stand Up For Your Health (Or Don’t) ← this is about reducing the damage done by sitting, including if for whatever reason you have to spend a lot of time sitting, including if you physically cannot stand and/or cannot walk.

The non-gambling gambling for kids

“Blind boxes”, where children (or others) can buy a mystery product without knowing what exactly it is (for example Pokemon cards, Labubus, and Kinder Surprise) avoid being legally classified as gambling based on a technicality (because you’ll always get something for your money, it’s just that it could be a super-rare collector’s item or a super-common trifle you already have a near-worthless pile of), but hijack the same dopamine pathways as those involved in gambling (anticipation, uncertain rewards, losses that feel like they could have been wins and maybe next time will be it, short-term pleasure means going back for another hit soon).

There are ways to rein these tendencies in, including:

• Deciding rules (for example limits) in advance
• Waiting until away from the point of sale (e.g. back home from the store) to open it
• Managing disappointment by naming the feeling instead of rushing to try to compensate
• Watching out for blind boxes shifting from being an occasional frivolity to a constant preoccupation
• Redirecting that energy into healthier dopaminergic activities (e.g. creative projects, sports, time with friends, or collecting in ways where the outcome is more predictable)

Read in full: Blind boxes are a game of chance: How to keep kids from getting hooked

Related: The Dopamine Myth ← including a section on healthy dopaminergic activities that use the same neural pathways for good rather than for ill

Take care!