Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
Eating a sandwich made with real bread and real cheese burns almost twice as many calories during digestion as one made with white bread and processed cheese, even if both have the same number of calories.
Quantitative
If overweight people swap soda for water, they gain less weight—but if they swap water for milk or juice, they gain more weight, showing what you drink matters more than just how much you drink.
Correlational
Giving kids or adults water instead of soda doesn’t usually make them lose weight if they just eat more food to make up for the missing calories.
When overweight people on a diet drink more than a liter of water a day, they tend to lose more weight—even if they don’t eat less—possibly because water helps their body use insulin better and reduces cellular stress.
When you drink water instead of sugary drinks while resting or walking, your body burns more fat because sugar in drinks tells your body to stop burning fat and start storing it.
When overweight or obese people drink a glass of water on an empty stomach while sitting still, their body burns a few extra calories, possibly because the water makes their cells swell and wake up their metabolism.
When people drink water instead of soda, juice, or milk with their meals, they tend to eat less food overall, so they take in fewer calories.
The combo of L-arginine and sodium butyrate raised the appetite hormone more than L-arginine alone — but we don’t know if that difference was real or just luck.
Descriptive
Even though the supplements raised a hormone linked to fullness, people didn’t feel any less hungry or more full after eating.
Taking L-arginine or L-arginine plus sodium butyrate didn’t change blood sugar levels after eating in obese people — even though it raised one appetite hormone.
Taking just L-arginine before a meal might slightly raise the appetite-regulating hormone GLP-1 in obese people, but the result was too weak to be sure it wasn’t just random chance.
Giving obese people a one-time mix of L-arginine and sodium butyrate before eating made their body release more of a hormone (GLP-1) that helps control blood sugar and appetite — but only for that one meal.
Even though hunger and fullness hormones are different in older women, those differences don’t match up with who eats less—so the problem probably isn’t the hormones themselves.
Older people, no matter how well they eat, have more of a fullness hormone in their blood than young people—but that doesn’t explain why some older people eat less.
When people eat a small snack before lunch, most people eat less at lunch—but undernourished older adults don’t cut back, even when they’ve already eaten something.
Even though undernourished older women have more of the hunger hormone in their blood, they still don’t eat more—so high hunger signals don’t always make people eat.
Older women who aren't eating enough feel less hungry than younger women, even though their bodies are making more of the hunger hormone, which might explain why they eat less as they age.
After eating the same meal, older people’s bodies release more insulin than younger people’s, which could mean their metabolism works differently as they age.
When people have more of the fullness hormones (CCK and insulin) after eating, they feel less hungry — this is true whether they’re young or old.
When young people eat, their body releases more of the fullness hormone than older people do, which might help them feel satisfied faster.
Frail older people have less of the hunger hormone in their blood even before they eat, which might make them less interested in food.
Older people don’t feel hungry after eating because their body doesn’t release the right hunger hormone the way younger people do.
Mice given GLP-1 drugs tend to avoid nicotine, suggesting these drugs might reduce the appeal of nicotine.
When mice get both nicotine and liraglutide, several parts of their brain light up with activity, suggesting the two drugs work together in the brain.