June 12, Globe and Mail, Alex Hutchinson
At a public debate in May on the relative importance of exercise and diet in battling obesity, Yoni Freedhoff began his opening arguments with some basic physics.
Dr. Freedhoff and Robert Ross, the director of the Centre for Obesity Research and Education at Queen’s University, argued for diet and exercise, respectively, at the “forks v. feet” debate at the University of Ottawa. But this wasn’t a clash between burger-and-beer scarfing exercise junkies and gym-phobic calorie counters. In fact, it’s increasingly clear that the two factors …

June 14, 2011, New York Times
After 33 years of consideration, the Food and Drug Administration took steps on Tuesday to sort out the confusing world of sunscreens, with new rules that specify which lotions provide the best protection against the sun and ending claims that they are truly waterproof.
The F.D.A. said sunscreens must protect equally against two kinds of the sun’s radiation, UVB and UVA, to earn the coveted designation of offering “broad spectrum” protection. UVB rays cause burning; UVA rays cause wrinkling; and both cause cancer.
The rules, which go …

June 13, 2011,  Reuters
Women with heart disease who down a few cups of coffee each day tend to live as long as those who avoid the beverage, according to a study.
The results, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, add to already mixed findings on whether caffeinated coffee is a hazard for people at high risk of cardiovascular problems.
The study, which followed nearly 12,000 U.S. nurses with a history of heart disease or stroke, found that those who regularly drank caffeinated coffee were no more likely to die than …

Reuters, June 8, 2011
Even if Germany finds the source of the E.coli outbreak that has infected thousands of people since early May, it may be too late for Erika.
The 66-year-old chain smokes in the grounds of a Hamburg hospital as she waits to learn if an apparently healthy salad has given her a rare and deadly disease.
“I had prepared a salad with cucumbers and tomatoes,” recalls Erika, whose husband died late last year and who asked not to be identified by her full name because the symptoms she has developed …

Harvard Nutrition Source
The US government has scrapped the much-maligned food pyramid icon and replaced it with a fruit- and vegetable-rich plate, seeking a simpler way to show Americans how to eat right. While it’s a major improvement, the new icon still falls short on giving people the nutrition advice they need to choose the healthiest diets.
The new logo, dubbed MyPlate, shows a circle divided into four brightly-colored wedges. Vegetables and fruits take up half the plate. Proteins and grains each get one quarter of the plate. Just off to the side …

The Nutrition Source, Harvard School of Public Health
The long-awaited new U.S. dietary guidelines are a step in the right direction, but they don’t go quite far enough to spell out what Americans need to do to stay healthy—not a surprise, some critics say, given the strong influence of the food industry on U.S. food policy.
The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, released on January 31, 2011, are used to direct federal nutrition and education programs that reach tens of millions of Americans, including school lunch and food assistance programs. The 95-page …

January 18, 2011, Stephan van Duin, New Science Journalism

We all enjoy our cocktails as a guilty pleasure, but it now seems to be actually healthy to drink a Bloody Mary from time to time.
This Friday night-friendly discovery was made by Italian researcher Lorenzo Nissen of the University of Bologna, when he investigated one of the components of Tabasco, a key ingredient of the Bloody Mary cocktail. The Tabasco component, capsaicin, is observed to have antimicrobial activity against some of our major food pathogens: the bacteria Campylobacter jejuni and Escherichia …

Reuters, November 28, 2010
The benefits for heart health of eating fish may outweigh concerns over the potential negative impact of increased exposure to mercury as a result, according to a study.
But restrictions are still needed in connection with fish high in mercury, which include species such as perch, shark, swordfish and halibut, said a Swedish team whose results were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Maria Wennberg, a public health researcher at Umea University in Sweden, and her colleagues studied more than 900 Swedish men and women who answered …

Time Magazine, Erin Skarda, November 24, 2010
Two common conditions — depression and diabetes — frequently appear together, and a new study by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health suggests that each illness may be both a consequence and a contributor to the other.
The 10-year study followed 65,381 women, ages 50 to 75, who were participating in the Nurses’ Health Study. Over the course of the research, depression and new cases of Type 2 diabetes were monitored: 2,844 women from the group were diagnosed with diabetes and 7,415 women …

USNews, Hanna Dubansky, November 24, 2010
The thrust and details of the 2010 guidelines won’t be known until they are released, a change from before, when the government simply adopted the recommendations of an advisory panel. This time DOA and HHS are hammering out the final version behind the curtains, with a 13-member advisory panel providing input rather than dictating the content. But the report and recommendations released by the panel in June are bound to carry heavy weight. If the panel’s input foreshadows the shape and scope of the guidelines …