About Dr. Gourmet

My name is Timothy Harlan and I am both a physician and a chef. This blog is a general collection of information and random ideas on eating great food and eating healthy.

You can find out more at the Dr. Gourmet web site. Eat well, eat healthy, enjoy life!

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Fast Food No Better (But at Least No Worse) : Dr. Gourmet's Health and Nutrition Bites

I know from talking to my patients that people eat a lot of fast food, but I hadn’t realized that over 25% of adults in the United States eat fast food at least twice a week. Overall, fast food accounts for 15% of food consumed in [...]

Proceed with Caution : Dr. Gourmet's Health and Nutrition Bites

Your gut is full of microscopic creatures known as microbes. Among other things, they are critical to digestion. You’ve probably seen yogurt advertised as containing “live active yogurt cultures,” and these do help your gut microbes to thrive, keeping everything running smoothly. This is also [...]

Mediterranean Diet and Esophageal Cancer : Dr. Gourmet's Health and Nutrition Bites

Less than 10% of those diagnosed with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma survive for 5 years or more past diagnosis. (By way of comparison, 84% of women diagnosed with breast cancer in the UK survive 5 years or [...]

Everybody Else Does It.... : Dr. Gourmet's Health and Nutrition Bites

Peer pressure isn’t just about school children pushing each other into smoking cigarettes or other risky behaviors. It works in eating, too – and even when those peers aren’t peers, really, or even present.

Researchers in [...]

Grocery Store Advertising Circulars : Dr. Gourmet's Health and Nutrition Bites

Do you clip coupons or look for deals in those weekly grocery store newspaper inserts? You’re not alone. Four out of five newspaper readers at least look at those ads, while 2 out of 3 use coupons clipped from those newspaper circulars. That makes those [...]

Calories vs. Minutes : Dr. Gourmet's Health and Nutrition Bites

If you live in the United States, there’s a good chance that you’ve already seen calorie information listed on a restaurant menu. The state of California and both Philadelphia and New York City already require it, and many restaurants are already doing it voluntarily. If [...]

Overweight vs. Obese: Body Mass Index and Risk of Death : Dr. Gourmet's Health and Nutrition Bites

The media talk about “the epidemic of obesity” in terms one might associate more with a zombie apocalypse and the immediate destruction of civilization as we know it, so if you’re a little tired of hearing about it, that’s understandable. It’s the media’s job to [...]

Breakfast: Correlation is Not Causality: Dr. Gourmet's Health and Nutrition Bites

I’ve been saying for years that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Here at Dr. Gourmet we’ve reported on research with a variety of results, including:

1. Protein at breakfast will help you [...]

Women, Soft Drinks, and Stroke : Dr. Gourmet's Health and Nutrition Bites

Long-time readers of Dr. Gourmet are probably well aware that I think that you should avoid soft drinks in favor of water, tea, or coffee. Earlier this year I reported on the link between soda and the risk of stroke (Bite, 5/16/12), and there’s research [...]

Eating Healthy is About More than Dessert : Dr. Gourmet's Health and Nutrition Bites

One of the reasons I started the DrGourmet.com web site is because the amount of nutrition information available to people these days is just staggering. Governments issue complicated guidelines and tax or otherwise limit some foods (but not others). Newspapers report on nutrition research. Television [...]