Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
Wakame works a bit like other high-fiber foods to slow down sugar absorption after meals.
Descriptive
Wakame starts working to lower blood sugar and insulin just 30 minutes after you eat it with rice.
Quantitative
Adding a tiny bit of wakame to your rice or pasta might be an easy way to keep your blood sugar from shooting up after meals, especially if you’re at risk for diabetes.
When you eat wakame with rice, your body doesn’t need to pump out as much insulin to handle the sugar, which might help your cells respond better to insulin.
Causal
Adding a small amount of wakame seaweed to rice helps keep your blood sugar and insulin from spiking too high right after eating.
Cooking eggs makes your body able to use almost twice as much of their protein as eating them raw.
Well-cooked beef helps older people build more protein in their bodies than rare beef, even if both are digested the same amount.
Ground beef gets digested faster than a steak, so your body can use its protein more efficiently, especially as you get older.
How milk is turned into yogurt or cheese changes how fast your body absorbs its protein—some forms digest faster than others.
Overheating milk, especially with sugar, can damage an important amino acid called lysine, making your body unable to use it properly.
Breaking down protein into smaller pieces before you eat it makes your body absorb the amino acids faster and triggers more insulin release.
Eating certain types of fiber may help lower blood sugar in people with type 2 diabetes by feeding good gut bacteria, but it doesn’t work the same for everyone, especially if they’re already taking metformin.
Taking certain good bacteria supplements may slightly lower blood sugar and HbA1c in people with type 2 diabetes, but the effect isn't the same for everyone and depends on the type and amount of bacteria taken.
An imbalance in gut bacteria may cause the gut to leak toxins into the body, triggering inflammation and making it harder for the body to use insulin properly in people with type 2 diabetes.
Mechanistic
Even though they were sweating a lot in the scorching desert, the hunters didn’t lose so much water that they were at risk of dying from dehydration.
People who hunt by running all day in the desert burn a lot of calories and lose a lot of water—but not so much that they get dangerously dehydrated, similar to other desert-dwelling hunter-gatherers.
People didn’t need to run the whole time to catch antelopes—sometimes they just walked, especially if the animal was already hurt.
Even in extreme desert heat, humans didn’t overheat while chasing antelopes, but the antelopes did overheat and collapsed from heat stress.
People running after antelopes in the desert for hours got way more energy from the hunt than other ancient food-gathering methods, making it a very efficient way to get food.
The hunger hormone ghrelin doesn’t seem to affect how the body burns fat vs. carbs after eating, how active someone is, how fit they are, or their eating habits like restraint or hunger feelings.
Correlational
Women with more ghrelin — the hunger hormone — actually eat less each day, which seems surprising but was observed in this group.
Women with more of the hunger hormone ghrelin tend to burn fewer calories at rest and after eating, even when you account for their body size and insulin levels.
Eating sugar before a workout makes your body burn more sugar during the workout—instead of fat.
After a workout, your body burns more calories for a while if you ate protein before you started—more than if you ate sugar.