If your Mama was anything like mine, you no doubt grew up with the constant admonition that “you are what you eat.” And despite the silly position of the AMA back in the early 1980s that there was no evidence to support the idea that diet has any direct relationship with health, almost all mothers know better. Thus it’s not entirely unexpected that medical science should be learning about the many ways that diet does indeed affect health, but it is welcome to wise Moms everywhere.

First up, a paper published in the journal Science by a research team at the University of Wisconsin demonstrates that simply reducing the amount of food eaten works to blunt the effects of aging and significantly delay onset of age-relatted conditions like cancer, diabetes, heart disease and brain atrophy. The research was conducted over 20 years on Rhesus monkeys at the National Primate Research Center at UW-Madison.

Conclusion? A restricted calorie diet will help you live longer and stay healthier.

The American Dietetic Association has also released an updated position paper on vegetarian diets that concludes a well-planned meatless diet is both healthful and nutritionally adequate and can help prevent or even treat chronic conditions like diabetes, obesity, cancer and heart disease.

Vegetarian diets have long been associated with lower blood cholesterol levels, lower risk of heart disease, lower blood pressure and reduced risk of type 2 diabetes. Because such diets are low-fat and generally provide more vitamins and minerals than a meat-based diet, the ADA has concluded that a meatless diet is appropriate for all stages of the human life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy and for athletes.

With ever increasing evidence that fewer calories, less meat and more fruits and vegetables can lead to a longer and healthier life, the number of vegetarians or semi-vegetarians among the population is expected to increase significantly over the next decade. Perhaps the most important take-away lesson from the evidence and research is that indulging in high-calorie processed foods and fatty meats to the point where a majority of the population weighs twice what they should weigh causes a huge chunk of the medical issues people suffer in the U.S.

Most parents know very well how heart-warming their baby’s smile can be, to the point where just doing something silly to get that smile-fix becomes a regular way of life. I’ve heard all sorts of weird philosophies about baby smiles – “it’s just gas,” “they’ve got the intelligence of rats,” etc., etc., things that only non-parents would ever think of.

So it’s cool that researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine have finally demonstrated the addictive quality of baby smiles, as reported recently in the journal Pediatrics. Turns out that baby smiles actually ‘light up’ the reward centers of the human brain, particularly in Moms – it’s what they call a “Natural High.”

Baby’s Smile Is A Natural High

The researchers hope their work will help scientists understand the unique mother-infant bonding so critical for proper child development (and mothers’ mental health).

No doubt this is fine research, and it’s gratifying to know that science is actually looking at phenomena they could have known all along if they’d just asked a Mom. Oh, well. That famous scientific skepticism needs physical ‘proof’ of physical phenomena before it will believe anything most regular people know from direct empirical experience. Maybe they’ll now come up with a pill that mimics this high, which will no doubt be a big item on the black market for pharmaceuticals…

Michael Kramer, a professor of pediatrics at McGill University reported this week that breastfeeding raises children’s IQ and improves their academic performance later in childhood.

Their study evaluated children in 31 Belarusian hospitals and clinics. Half of the women were directly encouraged to breastfeed exclusively, the other half did things the ‘normal’ way (for Belorussia). Six and a half years later the children’s IQs were tested and their teachers submitted academic performance ratings. Scores on both were significantly higher for the children of women encouraged to breastfeed, though there is no indication that the researchers confirmed how many of those mothers actually did breastfeed or for how long.

“Our study provides the strongest evidence to date that prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding makes kids smarter,” Kramer said.

While it is generally accepted these days that it is far better for a baby to be breastfed than raised on infant formula or cow’s milk – for a number of excellent reasons including immunities and strengthened immune systems – the reporting of this particular study makes a fairly standard assertion that association of factors (correlation) must equate to cause. Another study reported this week holds that early consumption of cow’s milk increases risk of Type-1 diabetes.

Still, given the infant deaths attributed to the marketing and distribution of soy-based infant formula to mothers in third world countries (where the water is nasty), any encouragement of the idea that human babies should drink human milk is welcomed. Here in the first world, virtually all women of childbearing age carry burdens of chemicals and heavy metals that are measurable in their breast milk, but generally at a lower level than the water in third world countries contains.

If women – and their doctors – can be persuaded that breastfeeding makes children healthier and smarter, only good can come of it. Someday we might even find ourselves living in a modern first world society that actually views mothers breastfeeding babies as normal and endearing rather than a blatant abuse of sexual organs! That would be a refreshing development.

More obscure facts and scientific oddities that most people haven’t filed in their brains…

31. How Crowded Are We, Really?

10% of all the humans who have ever lived are alive in the world right now.


32. And You Thought Stillness Was a Meditative Virtue…

The planet Earth travels through space in its journey around the sun at a stunning 67,000 miles per hour, and we’re all moving that fast along with it!



33. Good Old Dihydrogen Monoxide

The human body is about 60% water, which is 2/3 hydrogen. All the hydrogen – in our bodies and everywhere else in the universe – was created ~12 billion years ago in the Big Bang.


34. No Burped Compliments to the Chef on the ISS

Astronauts in space cannot belch – without gravity, gas cannot separate from liquids in their stomachs.


35. They’re Just Creatively Falling Down

Actually, there IS gravity in space. It’s just that astronauts in orbit are in a continual state of falling – gravity being equivalent to acceleration. There are no regions of space entirely without gravitational forces, just as there is no true vacuum in space – there are lots of loose atoms and particles out there.


36. And You Thought It Was Watson and Crick

DNA – the molecule of inheritance – was first discovered in 1869 by Swiss biologist Friedrich Mieschler, just a decade after Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution. Mieschler called the phosphate-rich chemical “nuclein.”


37. Mom Knows Whereof She Speaks

While Mom’s chicken soup won’t really “cure” your cold, it will make you feel much better. There are anti-inflammatory properties in the broth that have been shown to reduce congestion and ease fevers.


38. My, That’s a Funny-Looking Chicken

If the brain stem is left intact after beheading a chicken, it can continue to live (with some care in feeding). There is one documented case of a headless chicken living on for 18 months after he was supposed to have become Sunday dinner!


39. Beware the Random Bagel Test!

You will test positive for opiates on a drug test if you eat just two poppy seed bagels (or muffins) for breakfast.


40. Facts Sometimes Come Later Than Fiction

In Jonathan Swift’s immortal Gulliver’s Travels [1726], the author described the size and speeds of rotation for two moons of Mars – Phobos and Deimos – more than 100 years before either were discovered!

The Entire Series:

1-10 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
11-20 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
21-30 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
31-40 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
41-50 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities

That high pitched, musical sing-song gibberish that mothers use to engage their infants has a name I never knew, despite my extraordinary fluency in the language – it’s called “Motherese.” At least, according to researchers at the University of Chicago. Who report that observations of free-ranging macaque monkeys living on an island near Puerto Rico show these monkeys also speak Motherese!

Monkeys Use ‘Baby Talk’ to Interact With Infants reports:

“The calls appear to be used to elicit infants’ attention and encourage their behavior. They also have the effect of increasing social tolerance in the mother and facilitating the interactions between females with babies in general. Thus, the attraction to other females’ infants results in a relatively relaxed context of interaction where the main focus of attention is the baby.”

And you thought it was just pointless, silly gibberish, didn’t you?