Ultra-processed foods that contributed the most dietary energy for Aussies included ready-made meals, fast food, pastries, buns, cakes, breakfast cereals, fruit drinks, iced tea and confectionery.
You can’t exercise away a poor diet.
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Exercise can’t make up for a poor diet, but it can help change eating habits. Regular exercise improves the brain and cognitive processes that help regulate junk food consumption and reduces stress.
Research reveals links between the irritability, explosive rage and unstable moods that have grown more common in recent years, and a lack of micronutrients that are important for brain function.
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Ultra-processed foods high in sugar, fat and empty carbs are bad for the mind as well as the body. Lack of micronutrients affects brain function and influences mood and mental health symptoms.
British Columbia introduced a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages in April.
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B.C. recently began taxing sugary drinks. Examples from Europe show the scientific basis for taxing unhealthy foods may have little impact on whether these taxes are adopted or remain in place.
During the pandemic, Australians have been using food delivery apps more than ever. We’ve assessed how healthy the options available to us are — and the news isn’t good.
Conflicting injunctions, shaped locally, constantly reinvented: food in the cities of the global south escapes the narrative of Western standardisation.
Eating lots of fruits and vegetables will boost the immune system.
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Popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram fail to protect children from the marketing tactics of junk food advertisers. This needs to change.
We surveyed over 100 Coles, Woolworths, Aldi and independent stores around Australia and found supermarkets are promoting unhealthy food much more often, and more prominently, than healthier products.
The teenage brain has a voracious drive for reward, diminished behavioural control and a susceptibility to be shaped by experience. This often manifests as a reduced ability to resist high-calorie junk foods.
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Excessively eating junk foods during adolescence could alter brain development, leading to lasting poor diet habits. But, like a muscle, the brain can be exercised to improve willpower.
Lobbyists try to water down policies that could restrict the public’s access to their harmful products.
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The steady flow of politicians and government staffers switching sides to lobby for powerful food, alcohol and gambling companies is a threat to public health.
Bill Maher suggests that fat-shaming may help people lose weight.
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Fat-shaming is as ineffective as it is cruel. The bullying tactic also ignores the biological factors underlying obesity, which are not always under a person’s control.
To understand how healthy a food is, we often look at fats and proteins, vitamins and minerals. But this approach overlooks one property that’s a key part of a food’s health potential – its structure.
One of the lesser-known effects of a poor diet: blindness.
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Our new study finds in Australian supermarkets, the lower the health star rating, the higher the discounts. The time is ripe for a national conversation about making discounts healthier.
Modifying the types of food available to young adults can impact on their dietary behaviour.
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Students gain up to 4kg in their first year at university and all the junk food on campus doesn’t help. Universities have a responsibility to make healthier foods available to students.
Lecturer in Environmental Sustainability, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, Engineering & Built Environment, Deakin University