The Weekly Skinny: All the healthy news you need (7-9-10)
Had any inulin lately? That added fiber in your favorite foods could be giving you stomach problems. FatFighterTV has a look at this story and other diet and fitness headlines making news this week.
Popular food additive can upset your stomach
It's in chocolate, drinks, even yogurt. Inulin is showing up in more processed foods to add fiber to them. For most people, it is not a problem. But a new report from the University of Minnesota at St. Paul shows it can cause stomach problems - gas, bloating, flatulence, and diarrhea - if you have too much of it.
Inulin is a dietary fiber naturally found in lots of common plant foods like artichokes, wheat, and bananas. It's also in chicory root, which is being used more often as a way to get inulin into processed foods.
Will new diet pills be safer than in the past?
Despite a checkered past with diet pills, the first of three new weight loss drugs will get reviewed by an FDA panel next week. If it is approved, Qnexa would be the first new prescription diet drug in a decade in the United States. Other obesity pills either did not get approved, got pulled from the market, or came with severe warnings. Besides Qnexa, two other diet drugs will soon ask for FDA approval.
Could neck size help ID childhood obesity?
Measuring a child's neck circumference could become the new way to screen for weight problems. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends doctors use the screening on children starting at the age of six instead of using body mass index, or BMI, to gauge whether a child is overweight or obese.
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