Nutrition

The most healthful time to eat is just before or after you exercise. When you eat any source of sugar, it is used for energy and a small amount is stored in your muscles and liver. All the rest is turned into a fat called triglycerides that is stored as fat, forms plaques in your arteries and blocks insulin receptors which can cause diabetes.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is concerned that the mercury levels in some fish and shell fish may be harmful to you, particularly for pregnant women and growing children, so they have published a chart classifying fish by mercury concentrations. Too much mercury can damage the brains of children and babies, and the nerves and brains of adults. Women can pass mercury to their babies during pregnancy or breast-feeding. The general rule is that the older and larger the fish, the more time it has to accumulate mercury and the greater the chance for it to have larger amounts of mercury in it.

The American Heart Association reports that dementia is strongly associated with a pro-inflammatory diet. Dementia means loss of brain function, and your chance of having dementia increases as you age. A new study from Greece found that people who eat a pro-inflammatory diet are far more likely to suffer from dementia, compared to those eating an anti-inflammatory diet.

I have reported before on TMAO (trimethylamine N-oxide) that is produced by certain bacteria in your gut when you eat foods that contain lecithin, carnitine and choline, such as meat, eggs and dairy products. High levels of TMAO in the bloodstream have been associated with increased risk for heart attacks, strokes, clots, diabetes and certain cancers.

If you take a sugared drink while eating meat, the animal protein reduces your ability to burn off the calories from sugar by more than a third. In this elegant new study, 27 healthy-weight adults spent two full days in a sealed "metabolic room" that measured how many calories their bodies burned each minute by tracking their intake of oxygen and outflow of carbon dioxide and measuring calories lost in their urine.

Should you avoid white potatoes and eat sweet potatoes instead? Both white potatoes and sweet potatoes contain a variety of nutrients. Here’s the comparison:

Organic fresh produce sales in 2020 were $8.54 billion, an increase of over $1 billion from 2019. A very sobering study of 55 rice types found that organic rice contained significantly more arsenic than non-organic rice. More than half of the rice samples were "unfit to feed to infants."

Many processed foods are full of sugar and salt that raise blood pressure, increasing risk for heart attacks, strokes, and premature death. Most dietary salt does not come from the salt shaker and most dietary sugar does not come from the sugar bowl.

The widely-advertised supplement Garcinia cambogia has not been shown to help people lose weight and keep it off, and may not even be safe. The main ingredient is extracted from the rusty-red fruit of a small tree that grows in Asia.

Sugar-added to foods, but not in whole fruits, increases risk for diabetes, heart attack and premature death, according to a new summary of animal and human studies, clinical trials in humans and epidemiological human population studies (Mayo Clinic Proceedings, published online January 29, 2015). The report shows that adding sugar to foods and processing...

A review of 79 randomized and controlled studies of more than 110,000 men and women, with or without heart disease, shows that omega-3 fats in fish oil or in cod liver oil pills, taken for one to six years, do not prevent heart attacks, strokes or deaths in general. Fish oil pills did lower triglycerides which may be healthful, but they also lowered blood levels of the good HDL cholesterol, which may be harmful.

In a new study from Japan, researchers found that both a low-carbohydrate/high animal protein diet and a high-carbohydrate/low animal protein diet were equally associated with increased death rates

Forty-two percent of North Americans have vitamin D levels below 20 ng/mL, which makes them deficient by most standards. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with increased risk for developing many diseases

Nobody has presented good evidence that eating meat from grass-fed animals is more healthful than the meat from corn-fed animals. The main health arguments for eating grass-fed meat are its lower fat content and higher content of omega-3 fatty acids.

Virtually all scientists agree that North Americans need to reduce their intake of sugar, but their views on artificial sweeteners are not as clear. Increasing evidence is showing that artificial sweeteners are not benign substitutes for sugar. In a new study, people who took sucralose (an artificial sweetener) for just one week developed signs of insulin resistance and diabetes.

On February 27, 2023, Fox News reported, “Add an egg (or 3) to your daily diet for heart health. Eggs may significantly reduce heart health risk, a recent study finds.” The Fox News report said, "The study found that eating one to three eggs per week could reduce the risk for cardiovascular disease by up to 60 percent. Those who consumed four to seven eggs per week cut their risk for heart disease by 70 percent."

In light of the overwhelming evidence that extra dietary calcium does not prevent fractures, it is very puzzling that many medical and public health organizations still recommend extra calcium

A study from Rush Medical School in Chicago shows that a special diet can reduce the risk for Alzheimer's disease by 53 percent in those who follow the diet rigorously, and by 35 percent in those who follow it and cheat some of the time.

A team of 17 internationally recognized scientists published a paper supported by more than 169 journal references, proposing that the current obesity epidemic is not caused just by taking in too many calories. They believe that obesity is caused primarily by hormonal changes brought on by eating refined carbohydrates and sugar-added foods.

You go to a body wrapping salon where an attendant measures and weighs you, rubs a cream on your fatty areas and then wraps you in cloth. You feel alternately hot and cold and one hour later, they remove the cloth wrap, measure your waist circumference and show you that you have lost a couple of inches. You are delighted, pay your money and go home. The next day, you are very upset because you measure your waist again and find that your waist circumference has returned to its previous size and that you have lost no weight at all.

A review of 17 different studies involving more than 560,000 people who suffered 37,000 heart attacks and strokes, followed for 10 years, found that compared to those who ate the lowest amount of fried food per week, those who ate the most suffered a 28 percent greater risk of a major heart attack or stroke, a 22 percent higher risk of heart disease, and a 37 percent higher risk of heart failure.

A study of 4125 patients, 65 years or older, followed for an average of almost 11 years, found that higher total fiber intake from grains, fruits and vegetables was associated with lower inflammation rates.. The reduction in markers of inflammation improved even more in patients who ate an additional five grams per day of fiber from grains.

Nuts are full of fat, but it appears that eating nuts does not increase risk for obesity or diabetes. Almost 1000 people who did not have diabetes or metabolic syndrome were followed for six years. Those who ate nuts at least twice a week were 32 percent less likely to develop metabolic syndrome than...

A study from the Netherlands suggests that vegetarian and vegan diets may not be preferred for older adults because they are often deficient in protein, and that can increase the rate of muscle loss with aging. This muscle loss increases risk for falls, heart attacks, heart failure and premature death.

People who take one diet soda a day are nearly three times more likely than non-diet soda drinkers to suffer a stroke or to become demented, according to a study published in Stroke (April 20, 2017). Both sugar drinkers and artificial-sweetener drinkers were at increased risk for having smaller brains and advanced brain aging.

A review of 83 scientific studies covering almost 600,000 current alcohol drinkers in 19 higher-income countries shows that men and women who take in as few as six drinks a week (100 grams of alcohol) are at increased risk for death from strokes, heart failure, heart disease and aortic aneurysms, but not heart attacks.

The American Heart Association recommends that you eat two servings of non-fried fish twice a week to reduce your risk for congestive heart failure, heart attacks, strokes, and sudden death from heart disease.

It is well-known that taking large doses of the fat-soluble vitamins -- A, D, E and K -- can harm you. You may also be harmed by large doses of the water-soluble B vitamins or vitamin C.

You have probably seen ads telling you that spirulina, chlorella or blue-green algae are wonder foods that "may help increase energy, decrease fatigue, enhance brain function, oxygenate the blood, nourish the nervous system, improve memory and concentration, increase muscle mass, speed healing, protect against pollutants and radiation, purify the blood, relieve kidney stones, and improve over-all health." Should you believe these claims?

Several papers have raised concerns about the long-term health effects of artificial sweeteners. In one study, researchers showed that a sweeter-tasting, lower-calorie drink caused people to eat more food, to have higher blood sugar levels and to be more likely to gain weight and become diabetic than a less-sweet, higher-calorie drink.