The best part about the holidays is not religion, visiting the family or having a respite from school. It’s the God-given license all of us seem to inherit at the end of December to cram our gaping cake-holes full of food as fast as our digestive mechanisms will allow. Even though our midsections—already bloated from four months of St. George fast food and library-bound immobility—will swell to alarming, buttery proportions, there’s something in the shopping-season air that makes tinsel and torte and menorahs and marshmallows inseparable. Thus, we present the Varsity Science guide to holiday noshing—and dealing with the aftermath. —Paul Tadich
Ramming that stuffing down your gullet will mean one thing come January—you’re gonna pack on the lard, chubbo. The human body isn’t really designed for the care-free, calorie-laden Western lifestyle, and any food energy that you consume that doesn’t get burned up by your metabolism will be converted to fat for later use. Keep in mind that your body will convert excess sugars to fat, so just cutting out the post-Xmas butter may not solve the paunch problem.
Getting your body to break down fat is a big challenge. When you finally slog off to the gym, your body will prefer to burn its supply of glycogen first—think of it as high-octane muscle food. The average person has to work it for about 20 minutes before all of their glycogen is burned away. Only then will your fat cells begin to kick out their cargo for consumption.
Dark meat or white? It’s not just a question of cosmetics. The legs and thighs at turkey time are typically composed of red muscle tissue while the breast is made of white muscle fibres. Since turkeys are ground-dwelling birds, their leg muscles are built for near-continual use. The red fibers located there are coloured so because they contain lots of fat and sugar for energy. Breast tissue, on the other hand, is used rarely by the bird—so these energy compounds are largely absent.
Source: medbroadcast.com
