Sugar in the Morning

I've never really been a big fan of the whole artificial sweetner thing. And now it seems as if replacing the sugar in your diet can be a bad thing.

A study by Purdue University researchers that came out in February links artificial sweetners to weight gain.

Why would a sugar substitute backfire? Swithers and Davidson wrote that sweet foods provide a “salient orosensory stimulus” that strongly predicts someone is about to take in a lot of calories. Ingestive and digestive reflexes gear up for that intake but when false sweetness isn’t followed by lots of calories, the system gets confused. Thus, people may eat more or expend less energy than they otherwise would.

Now to be fair this research was done on rats, and not humans but as Cliff Mintz of BioJobBlog notes

Although this study was conducted in rats, its findings are consistent with the observations that increased use of artificial sweeteners can contribute to human weight gain.

As always more study is going to be needed on this and in particular human studies, so time will tell.

Thanks to Science to Life for the hot tip

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Its about time

It appears that Obama has finally beaten Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Why on Earth did this process take so bloody long, why can't all those little states get their acts together and vote over a time period that isn't 6 months.

Seriously they could do it all on one day (as we will see in November) but if they want to take a bit of time, why not 1 - 2 weeks, surely with all the campaigning that happened before the the first of the primaries would that not be enough time to shake some hands and kiss some babies? Or if you are a republican shake some babies and kiss some hands.

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Dirty Limericks and Skeptics

Well I'll be that sounds like just the best combination ever and it can be found in the 87th skeptics circle of at Action Skeptics, go and enjoy if you dare.

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The latest skeptic's circle

The latest edition of the skeptics circle is up Archaeoporn, read and enjoy.

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A few things to think about

Well courtesy of the Scienceblogs weekly round up email I found several posts that I just had to share with you all.

Firstly Living the Scientific Life gives reason why more science education (especially biology in this case) is needed.

Secondly Pharyngula highlights possible the best comeback to a creationist statement ever! (from Mike the Mad Biologist).

And finally again from Pharyngula something that just has to be watched.

Enjoy and stay tuned for when I actually get back to blogging again lol.

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New skeptics circle is up

Well here is most recent skeptics circle hosted by Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes. Read and enjoy

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Love is in the air at the skeptics circle

Well at least the Valentine's Day edition of the skeptic's circle is out at Bug Girls Blog.

Check it out as usual the quality is good and the quackery is busted.

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Homeopathy the way it should be sold

Here is a site that sells homeopathy the way it should be sold with plenty of disclaimers as to the actuall effects and lots of winks and nods to the placebo effect. Now if only I had thought of it sooner.

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Diet Water

Hmmm well i guess someone had to try and sell it after all people will buy anything it seems

http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=23701

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Science Based Medicine

Orac has kindly made us aware of a great new group blog looking at Science-Based Medicine.

As he succinctly puts it:

It's a new year, a year that I, as an advocate of science- and evidence-based medicine hope will be less filled with dubious claims and quackery than last year. (I'm ever the optimist.) To that end, Steve Novella has asked me to announce a new blog to the Skeptics' Circle mailing list as well as to bloggers who are alarmed by the proliferation of non-evidence-based medicine. It is a blog that many of you, I hope, will be interested in and find to be of value in the never-ending battle against woo.

I hope you join with me in enjoying what the big guns of the medical/skeptical blogosphere have to teach/share with us.

First up is a great article on the false dichotomy between herbs and drugs, or to put it another way Herbs = Drugs, so why should they be treated differently?

Oh and on a similar note the latestest skeptics circles is up at Whitecoatunderground.

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