The title may make no sense, but BBC News reports that eating your meals really fast may be enough to double your chances of obesity. What the report doesn’t say, though, is whether this is simply because those who eat fast also tend to eat more.

I’m actually really only posting this because I thought I’d try the ScribeFire blogging extension for Firefox.

According to a Cornell University study, around 40 percent of deaths worldwide are caused by water, air and soil pollution. That should be about 7 deaths caused by pollution every ten seconds, if I’m not mistaken.

However, perhaps an even more alarming fact presented by the study is that around “57 percent [of the world's population] is malnourished, compared with 20 percent … in 1950″. Even if one considers the fact that the world population has in that time climbed from 2.5 billion to 6.5 billion, and that most of the population growth has happened in the so-called “developing countries”, it still sounds quite sad.

According to a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign study, traditional Chinese exercises Taiji and Qigong “cay increase the antibody response to influenza vaccine in older adults”.

For a few years now I have thought about trying Taiji, but have never quite got around to actually doing it. Maybe I should now, so that I’m ready to boost my immune system once I become an “older adult”.

A recent study suggests that green tea a day boosts your enzyme production, in turn making it easier to fight cancer.

The study mentions that this result was found by using green tea concentrate equal to 8-16 cups of green tea. This makes me wonder whether it may cause some side effects, considering this earlier study that showed how amounts of over 10 cups of green tea a day can cause kidney and liver damage.

A study reported in Science Daily has discovered the following facts about olive oils:

1. Virgin and extra-virgin olive oils are healthier than refined brands.

2. You should not purchase olive oil that was pressed more than a year earlier.

3. Olive oils last for about one to two years when stored in a cool, dark place.

Doctors in Hong Kong have noted that the Chinese game mahjong can cause epileptic seizures. There are now 23 known cases of “mahjong epilepsy”, which is probably caused by the cognitive demands of the game, as well as the sounds emitted by the tile pieces when thrown around on the table.

BBC has the details.