calories Archives - usatoday24

how the industry sold us empty calories in exchange for destroying our satiety

January 18, 2026 by usatoday24

There was a time when buying whole milk or “full fat” yogurt was considered nutritionally reckless. Dietary guidelines, obsessed with reducing saturated fat, for decades pushed consumers toward pale, liquid, skimmed versions of what was once a staple food. Eating “light” became synonymous with eating well. However, the narrative starts to crack. The story of María Branyas, the woman who lived to be 117 years old and who consumed several full-fat yogurts a day, is just the tip of the iceberg of a deeper change of outlook. The researchers who studied his case warn that yogurt alone does not explain his longevity – genetics, lifestyle and environment come into the equation – but it could play a relevant role in the balance of his intestinal microbiota. The focus, today, is no longer just on the calories we subtract, but on how much processing we add along the way. The processing error. For more than half a century, health authorities encouraged limiting red meat and fatty dairy products, warning that its saturated fats They raised LDL cholesterol and, therefore, the risk of heart disease. This premise fueled a massive industry of “light” and “0%” products. However, the problem was not the cow. As Dr. Montse Prados Pérez explainsmember of the Spanish Society of Endocrinology and Nutrition (SEEN), when natural fat is removed from a food, its texture, flavor and nutritional profile are altered. To compensate for this loss of flavor, many manufacturers turn to sugars, starches, sweeteners or additives. The result is a product with less fat, yes, but also more processed, less satiating and potentially harmful to the intestinal microbiota and appetite regulation mechanisms. Added to this phenomenon is a possible metabolic rebound effect. Nutritionist Laura Isabel Arranz warns that Sweeteners, common in low-fat yogurts, send a sweet signal to the brain without providing real energy. This discordance can confuse the metabolism and favor a more “saving” response, preparing the body to more efficiently store the energy that arrives later. Why doesn’t whole fat act the same? There is a technical irony in the dairy aisle: we take the skimmed jar to maintain the line, but we forget that for the body to use it, it needs precisely the fat that has just been removed. Vitamins such as A or D They are fat soluble; Without that natural fatty vehicle, absorption is a chimera. In the end, trying to enrich a 0% yogurt is like trying to make a car run by pouring gasoline into it. The industry adds the nutrient, but has removed the mechanism to make it work. All this is explained by the “dairy matrix”. Unlike other fats, milk fat occurs naturally wrapped in a complex structure. known as dairy fat globule membrane (MFGM), rich in phospholipids and bioactive proteins. This biological “envelope” is essential because it appears to positively modulate the way our body processes cholesterol. In fact, recent research published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition have observed that the consumption of yogurt and cheese maintains a neutral—and even potentially beneficial— relationship with cardiovascular health, unlike what would be expected if only their saturated fat content were analyzed in isolation. Whole yogurt and metabolic risk. The evidence is also beginning to materialize in clinical trials. a study published in 2025 compared the consumption of full-fat yogurt (3.25% fat) versus skimmed yogurt in adults with prediabetes. After three weeks, those who consumed full-fat yogurt showed a significant reduction in blood triglycerides compared to the group that consumed nonfat yogurt. Although it is a short-term study and in a specific population, its results add to an increasingly consistent scientific literature. Along these lines, cardiologist Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, maintains that dairy fats are not intrinsically harmful and that there is “ample evidence” of the benefits of fermented dairy products. For its part, natural yogurt and kefir provide satiety, promote intestinal health and help avoid the subsequent consumption of empty calories. Back to real food. The conclusion for the consumer begins to be clear: the fear should not be in natural fat, but in artificial processing. The new dietary guidelines in the United States already reflect this paradigm shift by insisting, for the first time explicitly, on the need to prioritize real foods and avoid ultra-processed foods loaded with sugars, sodium and additives. This does not mean that full-fat dairy products should be consumed without limit or that they are suitable for all profiles. Institutions like Harvard remember that dairy fat It is still mostly saturated and that moderation continues to be key, especially in people with cardiovascular disease or familial hypercholesterolemia. But outside of those clinical contexts, as Dr. Prados Pérez summarizesfull-fat natural yogurt makes sense again: it is more satiating, preserves its original matrix and requires less industrial intervention. In the end, perhaps the secret was not in reformulating foods in a laboratory, but in something much simpler: opening a natural yogurt and eating it as it always was. Image | freepik Xataka | The woman who lived to be 117 had a favorite yogurt: a yogurt that thousands of people are now searching for

How to use artificial intelligence to know the calories and nutritional values of what you eat

July 24, 2025 by usatoday24

Life is not made to count calories, but if you want to have greater control of what you eat the artificial intelligence It can help you. For that, let’s tell you How to look at the calories other data of what you eat Using artificial intelligence, so that you can have more information and consciousness. We are going to start with a series of prior tips to be able to do this, so that you can also understand The limitations of AI To count calories. Then we will tell you two ways to proceed, using conventional artificial intelligence chatbots or specific applications. Before starting, some notes Both the generals and the specialists in the task of giving you the nutritional value of an element will use the photo of what you have sent, they will recognize the food or the dish that appears, and will make an estimate of their calories or the information you ask. Here, you should know that The information will not be accurate when you teach something cookedsomething that is not a commercial product. In these cases it will recognize what it is, and will tell you an estimate of its nutritional data and calories based on the ingredients that it usually has or in which he recognizes inside the photo. But there may always be variations, and cannot calculate how much of each thing you have thrown, that is, it is not something precise. The simpler the dish you teach more precision. For example, it is not the same to teach you a paella as a loin and cheese snack, because in the second case the approximate ingredients and proportions of each are clearer, so they will adjust the level more. A trained for this will always have more precision than the generals. Therefore, it may be interesting to lower an app created for this function or Use accessories for general AIsuch as Chatgpt GPT or the Gemini Gemstrained versions for concrete functions of these AI. Accuracy will improve a lot When asked about commercial productsby a product with supermarket with brand and label that the AI can recognize, and from which it can extract the official nutritional information of the Internet. Finally, In all cases you can ask about specific ingredients At an informative level, or to know if it contains something that may affect some disease or intolerance you have. You will only have to ask him next to the photo or after asking him the first question about that product. Food information with generative We are going to start telling you how you can look at the calories and information of what you eat using a generative AI such as Chatgpt, COPILOT, Gemini or similar ones. Using these apps that have already entered our day to day, you will save and register in others, but The information will be less accurate And there may be more mistakes, since they have not been specifically trained for this. We will use chatgpt in the example, but you can use another. All you have to do is Send a photo of the food asking you to tell you the calories and nutritional information in a Prompt. Something like “Tell me how many calories this also has its nutritional value”. You can also ask for other data that you consider. If you do it with a handmade food, The AI will identify what the typical ingredients will be and consider that the recipe usually has. And when you do, you will tell you the information of this dish that you have taught. Of course, it will not be the information of what you have taught exactly, but of a portion of what this dish usually has. It will also notify you of the factors that may vary. When asked about simpler things, like a snack where all ingredients are clearly seen, then precision will increase. You can even ask for several things at once that appear in a photo, and will give you a nutritional value of the complete ration. Of course, then you can reject you to tell you that of one of the concrete elements. When they are products Packaged, out -of -processed and/or with a visible brandthen the AI is easier to identify what is exactly, and search the Internet what are the ingredients and the complete nutritional value of that. And as we have told you, you can also search GPTS of ChatgPT or Gemini Gems specialized in detecting food composition and value in order to have more reliable information. Use nutritional apps with AI There are nutritional applications that use artificial intelligence, such as Healthify, Snapcalorie or the Chilean Otter. These applications seek to help you make weekly planning or diet, analyzing and adding the calories of what you eat throughout the day. Its operation is simple, and first you have to configure your data as age, sex, height and weight, and say what your goals are. Depending on your goals, you will make a plan of the calories that you must eat during the day, and for each meal you will upload photos of what you eat. When you do, the calories of what you have ever eating will be added And it helps you visualize what you eat more. In each of the meals, you can add what you eat drawing a photo or adding one that you have In your gallery. Some apps will ask you to describe what it is to have a better idea. Then, the internal AI of these apps will analyze what it is and will tell you how many calories it has, adding it to what you have eaten that day. In Xataka Basics | 22 useful and not so well -known free artificial intelligence tools

We have been using sweeteners that provide zero calories. Now we understand why they don’t always help lose weight

April 5, 2025 by usatoday24

Sugar is one of the most daily foods and one on which food controversies do not scarce. Excessive sugar consumption can be linked to various problems, from the oral to diabetes. The artificial sweeteners that we sometimes use to reduce the consumption of conventional sugars can be healthier, but no less controversial. Less sugar, more hungry. A recent study He has found that some artificial sweeteners could be affecting the signals that manage our appetite at the brain level. The team responsible for the study observed that the Sucralosa had a less satiating effect than sucrose, conventional or table sugar. The Sucralosa. Sucralosa is a artificial sweetenera disaccharide or compound sugar such as the union of two simple sugars. Its sweetest capacity is up to 600 times higher than that of sucrose, but our body does not absorb it in the same way. This implies that this sweetener has no caloric contribution to our body. This could explain the observed phenomenon: our body would perceive the sweet taste and prepare for calorie ingestion. The body would simply be responding to the absence of energy received. 75 participants. In the study, 75 participants who worked as both of the experimental group and control group in two sessions separate days or weeks from each other took part. Participants, men and women, some with “healthy” weight, others overweight or obesity, consumed three drinks prepared in the experimental sessions to which they underwent. These preparations were a sweetened drink with sucralose, another with conventional sugar (sucrose), and another simple water. The order in which they assigned each drink was random. The team later studied the participants’ response to each drink. Before and after the test they carried out functional magnetic resonances, they took blood samples and asked the participants for their feeling of hunger. They observed that the sucralose increased appetite and activity in the hypothalamus and that it did it to a greater extent among the participants with obesity. The team also detected changes in how the hypothalamus communicated with other brain regions. The details of the study were published In an article In the magazine Nature Metabolism. Old acquaintances. The key can be in the hormones that our body produces when eating, hormones such as insulin and LPG-1 (Glucagon -like peptide 1). This last hormone is produced in the stomach when we eat and fulfills a double function: on the one hand warns the pancreas that we will need insulin to manage digerida glucose; and by transmits to our brain the message that we have fed and satiated. “The body uses these hormones to tell the brain that you have consumed calories, to reduce hunger,” Explain in a press release Kathleen Alanna Page, co -author of the study. “The Sucralosa did not have that effect, and the differences in hormonal responses to the sugar compared to sugar were even more pronounced in participants with obesity.” Much to investigate. According to the team itself, there are still some unknowns to solve in this context. One question, for example, is how this sweetener affects our brain activity in the long term. To do this, they explain, longitudinal studies will be necessary that also analyze the weight and food behaviors of the patients. Another issue to solve is how other factors affect, such as sex, this relationship. The team indicated that during the experiment, the brain activity of women showed greater variability than that of men, which implies the possibility of differences to study. In Xataka | Some researchers have analyzed the impact of sugary drinks on world health. They have taken their hands to the head Image | Faran Raufi

Media Spain has gone crazy with the question of whether olives fattening or not. But its biggest problem is not calories

March 22, 2025 by usatoday24

“Do olives fattening?” In recent days, this question has run like gunpowder online and should not surprise us. It is one of those things that becomes viral from time to time: it is a typical case of very common product at the gastronomic level, but deeply unknown at the nutritional level. Let’s see what the science of olives and the rest of the pickles say. An urban myth. As the nutritionist Pablo Ojeda pointed out a few days ago, the idea that “the olives fattening” is close to the urban myth. And not only because, in short, food does not fattening or thinning for themselves (that is something that has to do with the general caloric deficit and not a specific product). It is an urban myth because it arises from a truth: that, According to the Spanish Food Composition Database92% of the energy provided by an olive It is fat. It is the nutrient that they contribute most with a lot of distance on carbohydrates or proteins. And that (even if that fat is “good”) destroys the nutritional profile of any product. However, if we look at other parameters we will see that, for example, the caloric density of these products is not very high. That is, you have to eat many olives so that that contribution is really noticed. Is the same thing with the rest of the pickles? In fact, olives are surely the most caloric pickles. In general, these types of products have very few calories. Classic pepinillos have about 12 calories per 100 grams, onions about 30. In comparison, it is true that olives have a greater caloric contribution: 120 green and up to 289 blacks. The real problem is salt. Because seen that, it may seem that pipinillos are a nutritional jewel. And, although they do not have many calories, what is certain is that they are very uploaded. To get an idea, WHO advises that salt consumption Do not exceed 5 grams a day. Well, only pipinillos are 2.3 grams per 100. In a context in which salt consumption does not cease to rise (promoted, above all, by the ultra -processed), care must be taken because it is a very important risk factor of cardiovascular diseases. And the probiotics? Here is some confusion because, although it is one of the fashion themes, still We know very little about the microbiota of our digestive system. On the one hand, yes: there are traditional products that are fermented in brine and, indeed, these They can have microorganisms to help us with the microbiota (although either much). However, “pickles” comes to mean ‘conserving in vinegar’ and in that environment it is difficult for interesting probiotics to remain. Most of what is sold in the market, in fact, has none. Beyond, this is, we must remember that the evidence that sustains probiotics is still scarce. It is not worth obsessing with them because, in most times, Its impact on health is zero. What matters As we often rememberIt is wanting to eat better. Everything else is literature. Image | Marius Haakestad In Xataka | In Belgium the authorities have asked their citizens not to eat the Christmas tree. And they have good reasons

The copita before sleep to reconcile the dream has a very high price. And goes beyond empty calories

February 9, 2025 by usatoday24

Alcohol is something cultural. We provide as a way to celebrate any event and, although it seems that new generations have given a Volantazo to consumption habitsin America, Asia and Europe we drink a lot, a lot of alcohol. So much that The seven countries that lead the list They are European and there are even those who traditionally have a drink – or two – as a tool to reconcile sleep. Ignoring Other implications in our body And overlooking the alleged benefit because it acts as a sedative, making us reconcile the dream before, the studies confirm that drinking alcohol to sleep is a terrible idea. Well. It is curious, but for a while, “there was the idea that drinking in moderation was good for health.” Are the words to National Geographic by Ian Colrain, president and director of a research institute that he has published various studies about insomnia and alcohol consumption before sleeping. Now, it may seem exaggerated, but popular culture is full of references to how a suck of alcohol before sleep is beneficial. Also, the advertising He took care of this, just as there were studies that claimed that tobacco was Well. It is always interesting to look where the financing of these studies comes from. But well, Colrain completed his speech commenting that the approach had changed thanks to the studies, pointing out that “there are no real health benefits in drinking.” And that includes fighting insomnia. Cup before sleeping. Insomnia is a problem for millions of people. Although the idea we have to ‘sleep well’ is related to ‘sleep of the pull’, It seems that it is a myth and that we are entering and leaving the different stages of sleep. Even waking us several times during the night without realizing. But reconciling the dream, as we say, is a problem and a nuisance, something that there are adults who seek to remedy with a drink before sleeping. AND No milkprecisely. Although it is demonstrated that Coffee, alcohol and tobacco are our enemies When we want to fall asleep, among many othersColrain argued that, although many seems to have a good idea before bedtime, the price to pay is a worse quality in sleep. Sleep worse. Logic seems overwhelming: a -o some- drinks before sleeping can have a sedative effect, which helps us reconcile the dream before when we get into bed. The problem is that, although there are sleep -related myths, which is a repairing activity is not one of them. In fact, in sleep deprivation experiments that have been carried out with animals, Most die After a month. “The dream is designed to provide us with a kind of heart holiday, reducing heart rate or blood pressure,” said Colrain. The problem is that “with alcohol, the heart rate rises and, if you take several glasses before bedtime, you will go to bed with a high heart rate.” How many glasses are necessary. In a study Published in 2021, Colrain and his team compared the effects of high, low and zero consumption in alcohol from half an hour to two hours before bedtime. High supposed four drinks for men and three for women; Bajo were two drinks for men and one for women. The group that took placebo ingested without alcohol. What they discovered was that both high and low consumption increased heart rate. Others studies They have focused on ReM sleep, which is the phase in which most dreams occur and it is a fundamental part of those “vacation for the organism” that we have during the night. If that ReM dream does not fulfill its purpose, We will wake up worse. Not a single test. Researchers and sleep doctors have argued in recent years that there is no evidence that any amount of alcohol improves sleep quality. As we say, what they have discovered is that, although drinks may help us sleep more deeply due to the aforementioned sedative effect, Rem sleep cycles are going to be constantly interrupted during the night, so you will really have slept worse. Irony. In the long run -although it depends on the person, since each one metabolizes alcohol in a different way -alcohol can produce precisely the opposite. Sleep disorders have been related to alcohol consumption, which forms a vicious circle in people who have left alcohol. According to Colrain, “sleep disorders are a clear route of relapse” by making people who have depends again on the promise of that better dream thanks to the cup before sleeping. Solutions. Obviously, they are not in alcohol. For years, science has tried to answer the question of How to fall asleep fasterwith multitude of tricks and strategies. The problem is that there is no clear answer. Colrain told National Geographic that something we can do is drink a glass of milk or an infusion without tein or caffeine. It also helps to have routines with the same schedule every day before sleep and we can Listen to a podcastbut nothing too lively like one of crimes. And, of course, forget a copazo before going to bed. Images | Jeff Siepman, Solving Healthcare In Xataka | There is an optimal way to control our alcohol consumption (at least according to this group of scientists)

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