Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
One of the main types of trans fat in people’s blood — called vaccenic acid — dropped by more than half in just nine years, showing that people were eating less of these harmful fats overall.
Descriptive
In 2009, the 'bad' cholesterol levels in white American adults were about 7% lower than they were in 2000, which could mean less risk for heart disease — but other factors might have contributed too.
In the U.S., the amount of harmful fats from processed foods in people’s blood dropped by more than half between 2000 and 2009, likely because food labels and restaurant rules changed to cut down on these fats.
Even though parents felt less anxious after doing sensory activities with their preemie, they didn’t feel significantly more connected to their baby or more confident as parents after six months.
Causal
Even if parents don’t do the sensory activities perfectly every day, just doing them during feeding a few times a day still helps them feel less stressed and depressed.
When parents use touch, voice, eye contact, smell, and feeding to connect with their preemie at home for six months, their anxiety and depression stay lower for the whole six months.
Dads who spend time touching, talking to, and looking at their premature babies during feeding feel much less anxious after six months than dads who don’t.
Parents who do gentle sensory activities like touching and talking to their preemie during feeding for six months are much less likely to feel depressed after leaving the hospital.
When parents gently touch, talk to, and look at their premature babies during feeding for six months, it helps both moms and dads feel much less anxious and stressed out.
Even though ginger made people burn more calories right after eating, that effect didn’t last long enough to add up to more total calories burned over the whole 6 hours.
Quantitative
Ginger slightly raised a hunger hormone called ghrelin after eating, but this wasn’t strong enough to be certain, and it didn’t change the active form of the hormone.
One dose of ginger didn’t change blood sugar, insulin, fat levels, or inflammation markers after a meal in overweight men.
People who ate ginger with their breakfast felt less hungry and thought they could eat less afterward, compared to when they didn’t have ginger.
Adding a teaspoon of powdered ginger to a hot drink with breakfast might help the body burn a little extra calories after eating, compared to just drinking hot water.
Mice that ate lard had more muscle relative to their total weight than mice eating camellia seed oil, even though they weighed the same or more.
Mice that ate lard had less oxidative stress (less cell damage from free radicals) and more natural antioxidants in their fat tissue than mice eating plant oils.
When scientists added TCA (a bile acid) to fat cells and immune cells in a dish, it made the fat cells store less fat and the immune cells become less inflamed, mimicking what was seen in mice that ate lard.
Mice that ate lard had more of a bile acid called TCA in their blood, and the more TCA they had, the smaller their fat cells and the more their bodies were breaking down fat and calming inflammation.
Correlational
Mice eating lard had more of a type of immune cell in their fat tissue that calms inflammation, and fewer of the type that causes inflammation, compared to mice eating plant oils.
Mice that ate lard had their bodies activate more genes and proteins that break down fat and turn off genes that make new fat, compared to mice eating plant oils.
When mice ate a diet with a moderate amount of lard (pig fat), they stored less fat in their fat cells and had smaller fat cells than mice eating plant oils, even when both diets had the same number of calories.
Exposure to sunlight can stimulate appetite via serotonergic activation in specific physiological contexts, such as illness-induced anorexia.
Assertion
Nicotine acts as an appetite suppressant via central nervous system activation of hypothalamic satiety pathways independent of tobacco-derived toxins.
Methylene blue selectively mitigates excessive oxidative stress during fasting while preserving adaptive hormetic responses.