Like a hefty helping of tomatoes with your meal? Then you're in luck. A new study from the UK's Reading University shows that tomatoes may help control hunger.

If you thought BPA was only hiding in your plastic, here's a health update: the December 2009 issue of Consumer Reports tells us BPA is in a variety of name-brand canned food items including Progresso Vegetable Soup and Campbell's Condensed Chicken Soup.

Now for a light-hearted link we love: 10 workout videos to get you LOLing at your desk, if not well, exercising. Hey, laughter burns calories too.

Photo: sleepyneko, Flickr

Tough day at the office? Nothing a pint of Häagen-Dazs chocolate-chocolate chip can't fix, right? Think again. A new study suggests that foods high in saturated fat can trick our bodies into eating more -- and that the effect may last for up to three days.

The UT Southwestern Medical Center study, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, found that fat from certain foods heads straight to the brain. The fat molecules, in turn, prompt the brain to send signals to the body's cells to ignore appetite-suppressing signals from insulin and leptin, hormones involved in food intake and body-weight regulation.

We already know that saturated fat raises cholesterol levels and increases our risk of heart disease, but these findings indicate that fat intake also disrupts weight-regulating hormone activity. Palmitic acid, a saturated fat found in beef, butter, cheese and milk, appears to be the worst offender.

Jonny Bowden, author, nutritionist and weight loss coach cuts through all the misconceptions about diet and fitness to help you transform your body, your health and your life.

Photo: Hachimaki, Flickr

Over the last few years, a great deal of information has been uncovered about how the tobacco companies knowingly engineered their cigarettes to become more addictive, usually by adding chemicals to cigarettes that increase the addictiveness of nicotine and keep smokers hooked. What if the food industry was doing the same thing?

According to Dr. David Kessler, that's exactly what food manufacturers have been doing for years, and that's at least partially responsible for the epidemic of overeating and obesity we're now witnessing.

Kessler, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, has written a terrific and compelling book called "The End of Overeating." The book makes several arguments:

1. Food has been "engineered" to contain various combinations of fat and sugar and salt that have never before been found in the human diet.
2. These combinations -- particularly fat and sugar together -- are designed to stimulate brain chemistry in a way that makes it virtually impossible to resist these foods (Remember "betcha can't eat just one"?).
3. These foods "amp up" the neurons in the brain, getting them to fire more. "The message to eat becomes stronger, motivating the eater to act more vigorously in pursuit of the stimulus," he writes.
4. The most important goal of food "design" is not nutrition but to create a feeling of anticipation and desire by activating the pleasure centers of the brain.
5. Once the pleasure centers of the brain have been "hijacked" by these foods, our desire for them no longer has anything to do with hunger and more resembles addictive behavior than anything else.

Now there's a lot more to the book than that, and I strongly recommend that you read it. But a few points that Kessler makes are worth mentioning here.

When it comes to losing weight, is controlling your appetite your biggest issue? Here come the scientists to the rescue. They've created an olive-oil based emulsion that can help reduce appetite. In testing, a milkshake was served to volunteers, and it had the results they were hoping for. The mixture maintains a higher level of volume in the stomach -- giving a longer-lasting feeling of being full. More testing is needed, but the next plan is trying to add the emulsion to processed foods to see if it has the same effect.

Martin Wickham, from the Institute of Food Research (the developers of the emulsion), told the Daily Mail, "It is important to keep weight down, and this is a more acceptable way of doing it than restricting your food intake on a diet."

But there's a fly in the emulsion.

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New research from Monash University identified key appetite control cells in the human brain. These cells are attacked after eating, but the attack is bigger and stronger following a meal rich in carbohydrates and/or sugar.

"The more carbs and sugars you eat, the more your appetite-control cells are damaged," said Zane Andrews, MD, the lead researcher on the study. The result? You eat more.

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I love this kind of news. I don't really believe it ... but I love it. Apparently, eating a little dark chocolate can help you keep your weight down.

In one study, 16 men participated in two sessions. In the first, participants ate dark chocolate after fasting for 12 hours. Then, they reported on their appetite for the next five hours. In the next session, they repeated the experiment with milk chocolate. In both sessions, two and a half hours after eating the chocolate, the men were instructed to eat as much pizza as necessary to make them comfortably full. (Chocolate and pizza? Where can I sign up?) The men ate less pizza after eating dark chocolate than after eating milk chocolate. Researchers felt the findings were significant and reported that the men felt like eating less sweet, salty and fatty foods after having dark chocolate.

I don't know. Sounds too good to be true to me. On the other hand, a small amount of dark chocolate can actually be good for your health. So if you want to have an ounce or two a few hours before eating, then give it a try.

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Wish you didn't have such an appetite, especially during this calorie-filled holiday season? RealAge offers a trick for curbing that thing -- and it doesn't have anything to do with eating. This strategy has everything to do with exercise.

Seems that the right combination of physical activity has the power to make you eat less. All it takes is cardio and strength training -- not just one, but both.

Men in one small study engaged in aerobic exercise and weight training for 16 weeks and found they ate significantly less than guys who went with one or the other or didn't exercise at all. Experts think the combo approach has a positive effect on blood levels of fats, glucose, amino acids and satiety hormones. Basically, the well-rounded fitness plan produces hunger-controlling physiological changes. Believe it? Give it a try and see if it's true.

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Here's a tongue twister for you. Say N-acylphosphatidylethanolamines. Can't pronounce it? Yeah, neither can I. But this unpronounceable family of hormones -- which, thankfully, are nicknamed NAPEs -- might prove to be a good friend in fighting obesity.

NAPEs are natural substances released in the body which help us to feel full. New research indicates that varieties of this hormone might one day be effective in controlling appetite, which would make it an important soldier in the fight against obesity.

Research is still in its early stages -- tests have only been conducted on rats and mice at this point -- but researchers are cautiously optimistic. In the study, rats who were given NAPEs consistently ate less and lost weight. Though results aren't firm, research indicates that some people may have abnormal releases of NAPEs in their systems, which could potentially contribute to obesity.

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I don't know about you but when I overeat, it's rarely about being hungry. I overeat because I'm out with friends, because it tastes good, because it's fun, and sometimes, just because it's in front of me. If they ever come out with a willpower pill, I'm all over it.

If you're the kind of person who overeats because you have trouble controlling you're appetite, help may be on the horizon. Researchers are looking into creating new kinds of foods that might actually suppress the appetite. Based on fat digestion, these foods take longer to digest, which signals to the body that it's had enough to eat.

Of course, you don't have to wait for these foods to come out to try this trick. Check out the gallery below for foods that you can add to your diet today to help you stay full.

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When I was in junior high, my best friend's mother swore by an appetite suppressant with the unfortunate name of Ayds. (It's no wonder that product went off the market!) Funny thing is, by the time I graduated from high school, my friend's mom didn't seem to have lost any weight during those years. Hmm...

While that particular product has long since vanished, there are plenty of odd-sounding options to suppress your appetite. Everything from lozenges to nasal spray to pickle pops to little "shots" that look and taste like coffee creamer. Women's Health reviewed some of the options and surprisingly found that some of them actually work.

Call me old-fashioned, but I'd rather just opt for a small, healthful snack to curb my hunger.

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I'm not one to buy into claims that a pill can suppress my appetite or a chocolate shake can keep me full from morning until dinnertime. I prefer natural remedies for feeling full -- like eating healthful foods.

There's another natural way to suppress appetite, says RealAge. It also happens to burn fat, fight disease, strengthen bones, and improve mood. Any guesses?

It's exercise.

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If you've been eating (or feeding your kids) oatmeal for breakfast with the understanding that it's one of the healthiest choices you can make, you need to rethink your strategy.

While oatmeal can provide good nutrients, a recent study showed that kids who only ate instant oatmeal for breakfast experienced increased appetites and calorie consumption throughout the day. In fact, when compared to having a vegetable omelet and fruit, oatmeal increased appetite and calorie consumption by more than 80%. Steel-cut oats didn't have as drastic an effect as instant oatmeal, however.

The researchers attributed their findings to fluctuations in blood sugar resulting from a meal of processed grain products. Adding some protein at breakfast is essential in keeping blood sugar (and appetites) from fluctuating wildly throughout the day.

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Here at That's Fit, we've talked a bit about the merits of sunlight and Vitamin D, but a recent article at Prevention really sums up a number of reasons to "light up your life." You'll likely be well aware of some of the benefits of getting the right amount of light, but I think some of them will surprise you -- at least, they surprised me!

For example, did you know that you can use sunglasses to prevent jet lag? Or that using bright lights at night can affect your sleep?

Check out the gallery to see how light can help you improve your health.

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God created appetites as a way to make sure we wouldn't forget to eat and starve to death, but somehow over the years it's turned into almost the opposite -- instead of helping us live our appetites are contributing to one of the biggest killers of our generation: obesity.

Although many work to retrain appetites and are successful, many people (me included) fight it on a pretty much daily basis -- I'm not so much training myself not to be hungry for certain things as I'm training myself to recognize when that hunger is legitimate and when it's not.

But sometimes it gets the better of me.

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