Nutritionist experts please help me :)

[Kindguy1990]

Basically, I need to come up with a good research question about Nutrition. It can be anything, but I can't think of a good research method question, to write about.

Any Nutritionist or anyone who knows abit of Nutrition? I really need advice

Really really appreciated if you can help

[InItForFitness]

How about having them research the mythical "no carbohydrates after 6 p.m." theory.
Always makes for a fun time.

[ironwill2008]

Nutritionist experts please help me

It's still a bit early in the day for the real experts to be posting in this forum. High school generally doesn't let out until about 3:30-4:00 PM.

[Jesse_l_g]

Check out the work of Weston Price. He will give you lots of good ideas.

[plateau_max]

When I was getting my undergrad I only had two nutrition classes, just basic and advanced nutrition, and during the advanced nutrition class my senior year I considered a sort of nutrition/psychology experiment based on carb cycling and tests/studying. Over the past 10 years I have heard numerous personal accounts of people on low carb diets experiencing mild to sometimes crippling drops in mental acuity. Some said they only noticed it for an hour or two at a time, while others said it lasted sometimes days at a time.

I never bothered with it because for an undergraduate, research projects were never a requirement for me, and I wouldn't have had the ability to control all the elements reliably. For my masters I didn't touch on nutrition much aside from the occasional mention in my metabolism studies. I have always wanted to try it though if I had the means.

Basically what you would need is a couple of months, likely two phases of 8 week blocks. For repetition just get as many participants as possible to partake in the study, and make sure you have an even balance of men/women, and don't vary the age much unless you have a large number of participants and you can group ages together. Gather up several tests that evaluate mental acuity (check your psychology dept, the professors tend to have things like that), have them take at least 2 of the tests per week for the first 8 weeks on a very low carb diet (think keto). Then have them repeat the process on a normal carb intake (~60% total intake). Then post your results and trends.

The other way to do it, take the same setup, except for the first 8 weeks just have them on a normal carb diet with a series of tests and the end of each 2 week period (4 test periods), then for the second phase, have them severly limit their carbs but then at the end of each two weeks, have them do a carb refeed then take the tests either at the end of the refeed day or first thing the next morning.

The idea here is to take the idea of low carb diets and carb cycling, but apply them to mental acuity and test taking ability as opposed to physical training. Here's what would make this very difficult:

Each person must consume the same number of calories of the same food types each day (VERY hard to control).
Each person must get the same amount of sleep and sleep at the same times each day (this is difficult for almost any adult these days) lack of sleep can really throw off your results.
You will need a wide variety of mental tests so that people aren't solving based on memory or simply just "getting better at it" -this is simply a resource gathering issue.
Lastly, you'd likely need at least 10-12 of each sex for your results to really have any merit.


*note: there is a reason why there have been a number of nutrition experiments done in prisons

[WonderPug]

Ketogenic diets and the futile cycle: energy waste as a hypothesis to (partially) explain recent RCT outcomes.

Now you'll have to do your own work from this point forward.

[MitchyDee]

It's still a bit early in the day for the real experts to be posting in this forum. High school generally doesn't let out until about 3:30-4:00 PM.

Hahahahaahaha too true man. I like the 'no carbs after 6' idea though!

[Mrpb]

Basically, I need to come up with a good research question about Nutrition. It can be anything, but I can't think of a good research method question, to write about.

Any Nutritionist or anyone who knows abit of Nutrition? I really need advice

Really really appreciated if you can help

I have one that I find interesting: Are there health benefits of fasting 16 consecutive hours in one day? If so, what are they?

The Leangains method uses this way of fasting. Some people say it's only preference, some people say there are some health benefits too it.

[C-Los]

"Is a calorie really just a calorie"

Meaning do foods have the same impact on body composition as long as calories are set at the same amount...

[Bema]

It's still a bit early in the day for the real experts to be posting in this forum. High school generally doesn't let out until about 3:30-4:00 PM.

3 points!

[ELLSKIES]

"Is a calorie really just a calorie"

Meaning do foods have the same impact on body composition as long as calories are set at the same amount...

For weight loss (or gain), yes -- a calorie is just a calorie. For favorable body composition improvements, macronutrient and micronutrient composition of the diet matters a great deal.

[thepowerof140]

For weight loss (or gain), yes -- a calorie is just a calorie. For favorable body composition improvements, macronutrient and micronutrient composition of the diet matters a great deal.

Hmm, a surplus or deficit could be determined by the macro calories.

Protein has a TEF of around 20%, that means 20% of all calories consumed in protein are used to digest it. Assuming your maintenance is 2500 and you could physically eat 700g of pure protein (and only protein) to be 200kcal over maintenance, you would actually end up in a deficit of around 300kcal because of that 20% TEF.

This kind of stuff greatly interests me. Actually, delving further, some Sports Nutritionists have found that calories from animal protein are more efficiently used as energy (around 98%) compared to the likes of legumes (around 70%).

[AlwaysTryin]

Hmm, a surplus or deficit could be determined by the macro calories.

Protein has a TEF of around 20%, that means 20% of all calories consumed in protein are used to digest it. Assuming your maintenance is 2500 and you could physically eat 700g of pure protein (and only protein) to be 200kcal over maintenance, you would actually end up in a deficit of around 300kcal because of that 20% TEF.

This kind of stuff greatly interests me. Actually, delving further, some Sports Nutritionists have found that calories from animal protein are more efficiently used as energy (around 98%) compared to the likes of legumes (around 70%).

I really hope you don't over analyse your diet like this and it's just for interest sake

[ELLSKIES]

I really hope you don't over analyse your diet like this and it's just for interest sake

Seriously! But more importantly, your "hypothesis" is incorrect. The thermic effect of protein is already factored into the. "4 Kcals per gram" figure. (Protein is actually closer to 6 cals per gram, but we use 4 to account for its thermic effect.) So again, all calories count. For example, when you drink a scoop of whey that has 110 cals listed on the label, you're getting all 110 of those calories. You don't magically lose 20% of those 110 calories. The 20% lost to the thermic effect is ALREADY FACTORED IN.

[Sharkov23]

Check out the work of Weston Price. He will give you lots of good ideas.

lool