Junk Diet Rewires Rat Brains

Choosing a user name starting with a letter appearing earlier in the alphabet is just one scientifically vetted way to increase the odds of turning an online encounter into a first date. Christopher Intagliata reports 

Parkinson’s patients derived more benefits from a salt solution they were told was an expensive drug than from the same solution when it was described as being cheap medication. Karen Hopkin reports 

Of studies presented at conferences, those that found a cognitive benefit to bilingualism were almost twice as likely to get published in journals as were studies finding no benefit. Karen Hopkin reports   

This is Brain Awareness Week. In this episode, you can learn more about what you eat affects the health of your brain. Dr. Lisa Mosconi, Alzheimer's researcher, and nutritionist gives us a step by step guide to what foods to eat and what foods to avoid for best brain health. Lear ... Show More

Calories are ubiquitous across most of the world and have been used to help people manage their weight for more than a century. But have we been counting them wrong all along? In this episode, Emily Thomas finds out how the calorie is a lot more complex than many of us realise. H ... Show More

Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a controversial new paper that estimates how many rodents are used in research in the United States each year. Though there is no official number, the paper suggests there might be more than 100 million rats and mi ... Show More

Bringers of plague, schleppers of pizza slices, garbage gobblers. Rats have adapted over the millennia to survive and thrive in human company, much to our amazement and (often) disgust. But love them or hate them, our past and our future is bound up with these little hustlers. Fo ... Show More

We live in a nation awash with cheap, easy-to-get calories, mostly from highly processed convenience foods. Now, some researchers argue that these foods may actually be addictive – just like cigarettes or alcohol. Ashley Gearhardt, PhD, of the University of Michigan, talks about ... Show More

Today, I’m talking to Mindy Gorman-Plutzer, Certified Functional Nutrition and Lifestyle Practitioner and Eating Psychology Coach.   Mindy’s life experience and training inspired her to create a framework that combines functional nutrition, positive psychology, and mind/body scie ... Show More

New York Times bestselling author and weight loss pioneer Geneen Roth was one of the first people to link compulsive eating and perpetual dieting with deeply personal and spiritual issues that go far beyond food, weight and body image. Geneen believes that our relationship to foo ... Show More

Jana addresses more of the details on her recent break-up. And it’s tough to figure out what foods are “good for you” and “bad for you”, so Jana is talking to science researcher Max Lugavere to get the real story on what we should be eating.   Learn what to eat to have more energ ... Show More

Do you feel hungry all the time? Abnormally hungry? If so, it’s worth trying to figure out why. Potential drivers of abnormally high hunger include insulin resistance, gut and microbiome issues, low blood sugar, and food addiction—just to name a few. In this episode, Lara explore ... Show More