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Genetics and healthy diets matter more for longevity. To those who enjoy the pleasures of the dining table, the news may come as a relief: drastically cutting back on calories does not seem to lengthen lifespan in primates. The verdict, from a 25-year study in rhesus monkeys fed 30% less than control animals, represents another setback for the notion that a simple, diet-triggered switch can slow ageing. Instead, the findings, published this week in Nature1, suggest that genetics and dietary composition matter more for longevity than a simple calorie count. “To think that a simple decrease in calories caused such...

The future health of Natives may lie in the scatological remains of the past—a vanguard study of ancient excrement has offered fresh new ways of thinking about the prevalence of diabetes among Native people of the American Southwest. Karl Reinhard, a professor of forensic science and environmental archaeology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has studied the fossilized feces, or coprolites, of ancestral Pueblo people and documented typical Pueblo diets prior to European contact. He has determined that the overwhelming prevalence of diabetes among Pueblo descendants may stem from their radical departure from the healthy diets of their progenitors. According to...

Oh oh! Lady M just read What Really Makes Us Fat in the NYT: From this perspective, the trial suggests that among the bad decisions we can make to maintain our weight is exactly what the government and medical organizations like the American Heart Association have been telling us to do: eat low-fat, carbohydrate-rich diets, even if those diets include whole grains and fruits and vegetables. Wow! This is huge: if it’s right it means that Lady M’s signature No Child’s Fat Behind program is on the wrong side of medical history... ...Anyway, on another front, have you heard our...

A Canadian gym has banned slim gym rats -- and it's not the only one to do so. As anybody with a gym ID mouldering in their wallet, purse or glove compartment can tell you, there are a lot of obstacles to going to the gym regularly. There’s just not enough time in the day. Gyms are just too expensive. There’s that Real Housewives marathon on Bravo. And then there’s one of the hardest reasons to admit: what if your gym just has too many skinny, healthy people in it? For some gymgoers, a plethora of thin, peppy gym rats...

Yves Sauve and his team at University of Alberta Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry discovered laboratory models fed DHA did not accumulate a toxic molecule at the back of the eyes. The toxin normally builds up in the retina with age and causes vision loss, Sauve said.

THE first time I questioned the conventional wisdom on the nature of a healthy diet, I was in my salad days, almost 40 years ago, and the subject was salt. Researchers were claiming that salt supplementation was unnecessary after strenuous exercise, and this advice was being passed on by health reporters. When I spent the better part of a year researching the state of the salt science back in 1998 — already a quarter century into the eat-less-salt recommendations — journal editors and public health administrators were still remarkably candid in their assessment of how flimsy the evidence was implicating...

Cooksey v. Futrell, et al. Can the government throw you in jail for offering advice on the Internet about what food people should buy at the grocery store? That is exactly the claim made by the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition. In December 2011, diabetic blogger Steve Cooksey started a Dear Abby-style advice column on his popular blog (www.diabetes-warrior.net) to answer reader questions. One month later, the State Board informed Steve that he could not give readers advice on diet, whether for free or for compensation, because doing so constituted the unlicensed, and thus criminal, practice of dietetics. The State...

Have you heard the saying “strong is the new skinny”? What if you could have both? It may be as easy as taking a fresh look at the past. The Paleo Diet, or the caveman diet, means eating and acting like a caveman. To sustain the diet, you can only eat things you gather, hunt or pick. Pinecrest resident Thad Foot, 38, said the diet gives him strength to do stand up paddle boarding. “I want to get stronger,” he said. Tara Grant, 37, did the same diet for a different reason. “I had polycystic ovarian syndrome,” said Grant. “Now,...

It was a big week for John Besh, even by his eventful standards.... Apparently, several attendees of the “workshop” took Besh to task for lecturing about healthy eating on one hand while serving high calorie food at his restaurants on the other. “I went on to address a complex issue in very simple terms only to only be heckled by those that feel we can regulate restaurants to the point that our children will be happy and healthy,” Besh writes in his blog, which appears on epicurious.com. “In response to these suggestions, I pointed to a variety of other options...

First Lady Michelle Obama got rock-star treatment Friday night as she visited a Central Florida family on a tour celebrating the second anniversary of her Let's Move! diet-and-exercise campaign. Neighbors of the Halls family, who hosted Obama at their home, lined up to catch a glimpse of the first lady. Cheers erupted from the crowd as Obama left about 8:15 p.m. and waved before being whisked away in a waiting sport utility vehicle. (snip) In the next leg of her Orlando-area tour, Obama will speak Saturday morning at Northland, A Church Distributed in Longwood with representatives of religious groups from...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Hold the mystery meat: Military bases will soon be serving more fruits, vegetables and low-fat dishes under the first program in 20 years to improve nutrition standards across the armed services. First lady Michelle Obama and Pentagon officials planned to announce the effort Thursday during a visit to Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas, where the military has been experimenting with the idea through a pilot program designed to improve the quality and variety of foods served on base. It's not just about giving members of the armed services a more svelte profile.

[snip] Bread and rolls are the No. 1 source of salt in the American diet, accounting for more than twice as much sodium as salty junk food like potato chips. That surprising finding comes in a government report released Tuesday that includes a list of the top 10 sources of sodium. Salty snacks actually came in at the bottom of the list compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Potato chips, pretzels, and popcorn - which we think of as the saltiest foods in our diet - are only No. 10," said CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden. Breads...

They say there is mounting research that it is the type of oil used, and whether or not it has been used before, that really matters. The latest study, published in the British Medical Journal, found no association between the frequency of fried food consumption in Spain - where olive and sunflower oils are mostly used - and the incidence of serious heart disease.

Editor's note: Andrew Weil is the director of the integrative medicine program at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, and professor of Medicine and Public Health, author of "Eight Weeks to Optimum Health," "Healthy Aging," "Spontaneous Happiness" and the forthcoming "True Food." (CNN) -- "I'm just gonna put a little more butter in there, y'all," she said as she plopped a large chunk into the skillet. "Oh my," she added, "I've gone and put a whole stick in by now." I was watching Paula Deen on the Food Network, whipping up a shrimp sauté to go over pasta. I...

Gwyneth Paltrow released her GOOP newsletter, Jan. 5, promoting her GOOP cleanse kit, which costs $425, but doctors interviewed by HollywoodLife say cleanses have ‘no scientific proven’ value and are ‘complete bunk’! Don’t spend your money or your effort subjecting yourself to actress Gwyneth Paltrow‘s “cleanse” or anyone else’s, say top NYC doctors. “‘Cleansing’ is the equivalent of ’snake oil,’” says NYC internist, Dr. Robert Bos. He adds that “there is no scientific proof” that a cleanse will help give your digestive system a break, eliminate toxins, rebuild beneficial bacteria or give you more energy, as Gwyneth promises in her...

I had a bit an epiphany yesterday, but it seems so contray to what I've been told about eating all my life, I'm having a hard time believing my analysis is corret. I've been working on changing my diet. One of the things I ran across was the fact that eating carbohydrates spikes your blood sugar. Then I heard someone make the comment (and it was almost a throw-away side comment) "of course, carbohydrates are just complex forms of sugar." Really? The following lines are pulled from here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/161547.php, my insertions are in brackets [my comment]. Saccharides, or carbohydrates, are...

Someone mentioned this movie earlier today in another thread. I watched it on Amazon streaming video this afternoon(also avaialble on Netflix) and it was excellent! Its motivating me to lose some weight and there are stunning facts that literally made my wife get up and grab a hunk of peperoni from the fridge and eat it! She hasn't eaten pepperoni or bacon in over two years because she worries about cholesterol. This is essentially a response to the Super Size me movie. It debunks the the twisted information in that movie as well as the whole government anti-obesity movement. The...

I’m a huge fan of documentaries, especially those about food, health, and the physiology of the human body. I’ve recently been suggested by a number of users to check out “Fat Head,” a documentary by Tom Naughton made in response to “Super Size Me” by Morgan Spurlock. As noted multiple times by Naughton, the purpose of the film is committed to proving that everything you think you know about food is, well, probably a load of bologna. A Couple Great Points Naughton drives home a couple good points about people’s perception on food. First, he brings out some good...

Ten years ago, science writer Gary Taubes exercised an hour a day. He avoided fat in his diet, never even using milk in his oatmeal. But he kept gaining weight. As an experiment, the self-described carnivore tried the high-protein, low-carbohydrate Atkins diet - eating bacon and eggs for breakfast, pepperoni with melted mozzarella for lunch, and a steak for dinner - and lost 20 pounds in six weeks. Since then, Taubes, an award-winning journalist and best-selling author, has stuck with the diet and spent countless hours collecting evidence to prove that it's not how much we eat but what we...

As the annual spectacle of celebrities eating jungle nasties draws to a close this weekend, what's the nutritional value of an I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! style diet?There was a woman who swallowed a fly. Then a spider that wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her. The thrill of this nursery rhyme - and its TV equivalent, the bushtucker trial on I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! - is the excruciating thought of eating something icky and unlikely. But what would a diet of spiders and flies, mouse tails and camel toes do to the...