The New York Times, Jane E. Brody, July 26, 2010
Vitamin D promises to be the most talked-about and written-about supplement of the decade. While studies continue to refine optimal blood levels and recommended dietary amounts, the fact remains that a huge part of the population — from robust newborns to the frail elderly, and many others in between — are deficient in this essential nutrient.
If the findings of existing clinical trials hold up in future research, the potential consequences of this deficiency are likely to go far beyond inadequate bone …

Telegraph.co.uk Rebecca Smith, June 21, 2010

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) says that unhealthy foods have wreaked a “terrible toll of ill health” on the nation and placed a “substantial” strain on the economy.

For the first time, the organisation publishes landmark guidance on how to prevent the “huge number of unnecessary deaths” from conditions such as heart disease that are linked to the consumption of ready meals and processed food.
It calls for sweeping changes to food production and government policy to encourage lifestyle changes, and to reduce significantly the amount of …

The New York Times, May 29, 2010
With salt under attack for its ill effects on the nation’s health, the food giant Cargill kicked off a campaign last November to spread its own message.
“Salt is a pretty amazing compound,” Alton Brown, a Food Network star, gushes in a Cargill video called Salt 101. “So make sure you have plenty of salt in your kitchen at all times.”
The campaign by Cargill, which both produces and uses salt, promotes salt as “life enhancing” and suggests sprinkling it on foods as varied as chocolate …

The New York Times, Roni Caryn Rabin, May 31, 2010
Obesity increases the risk of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other illnesses, but a surprising new finding suggests it may not affect one’s health until after age 40.
The study compared medications taken by normal weight, overweight and obese Americans ages 25 to 70 who participated in National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys from 1988-1994 and 2003-6. The surveys included 8,880 men and 9,071 women.
While obese people of all ages took slightly more medications than those of normal weight, the …

Reuters, Lynne Peeples, May 28, 2010
If milk does the heart good, it might do the heart better if it comes from dairy cows grazed on grass instead of on feedlots, according to a new study.
Liesbeth A Smit, Ana Baylin, and Hannia Campos.Conjugated linoleic acid in adipose tissue and risk of myocardial infarction AJCN 2010.
Earlier experiments have shown that cows on a diet of fresh grass produce milk with five times as much of an unsaturated fat called conjugated linoleic acid CLA than do cows fed processed grains. Studies in animals …

Associated Press, Alicia Chang, May 26, 2010
Holy fish sticks! Scientists finally have some good news about fat in our foods.
Contrary to fears, most food manufacturers and restaurants did not just swap one bad ingredient for another when they trimmed artery-clogging trans fats from products and menus, an analysis finds.
Even the french fry, a longtime dietary scourge, got a healthier remake. But theres still room for improvement, particularly for some items sold in supermarkets, which replaced heart-damaging trans fat with its unhealthy cousin, saturated fat.
A Harvard researcher and a consumer advocacy …

HealthDay, Ed Edelson, May 24, 2010
Even a small reduction per day in sweetened soft drink intake could improve your blood pressure, researchers report.
In an 18-month study, researchers found a measurable reduction in blood pressure — 1.8 points in systolic pressure, the higher of the desired 120/80 desired reading, and 1.1 points in diastolic pressure — when intake was reduced by about a can of sweetened beverage a day, said the report published May 24 in Circulation.
“We found a direct dose-response relationship,” said study leader Dr. Liwei Chen, assistant professor of …

The New York Times, Roni Caryn Rabin May 17, 2010
Eating about two and a half airplane snacks’ worth of nuts every day helps lower total cholesterol and “bad” LDL cholesterol, and improves the ratio of total cholesterol to “good” HDL cholesterol, a study reports.
Researchers pooled the results of 25 clinical trials that involved 583 participants over all. The study reported that eating just 2.4 ounces of nuts of any kind was associated with declines of 10.2 milligrams per deciliter in bad cholesterol, a drop of about 7.4 percent, and 10.9 milligrams in …

The Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2010, Ron Winslow
Maybe that juicy steak you ordered isn’t a heart-attack-on-a-plate after all. (But still raises the risk of colon cancer sic.)
A new study from the Harvard School of Public Health suggests that the heart risk long associated with red meat comes mostly from processed varieties such as bacon, sausage, hot dogs and cold cuts—and not from steak, hamburgers and other non-processed cuts.
The finding is surprising because both types of red meat are high in saturated fat, a substance believed to be partly …

NZ Herald, Geoff Cumming, May 8, 2010
Salt may be a hidden killer but as health campaigners call for regulations, the picture keeps shifting. Geoff Cumming sifts through the evidence
Give the food police credit for trying. Knocked back on calls for maximum sugar limits, junk food advertising bans and school tuckshop restrictions, some health experts now want a government clampdown on the amount of salt we eat.
A call by the United States Institute of Medicine for the Obama Administration to impose maximum limits for salt content – and progressively lower them …