August 2, 2011, TIME, Meredith Melnick
Lose weight. That’s often the first advice from doctors to their pre-diabetic patients. But while losing excess fat can help reverse Type 2 diabetes risk factors like insulin resistance and high blood-sugar levels, a new study finds that increasing muscle mass may also help lower risk of the metabolic disease.
According to lead researcher, Dr. Preethi Srikanthan, this may be good news for many people with pre-diabetes — a condition that results in higher-than-normal blood sugar, but does not qualify as diabetes — who have difficulty …

June 14, 2011, Harvard School of Public Health
Watching television is the most common daily activity apart from work and sleep in many parts of the world, but it is time for people to change their viewing habits. According to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers, prolonged TV viewing was associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and premature death.
The study appears in the June 15, 2011, edition of theJournal of the American Medical Association.
“The message is simple. Cutting back on TV …

February 1, 2011, by Liesbeth Smit
The new USDA American Dietary Guidelines are released. While the general public and scientists were anxiously waiting which major topics would be addressed, it turns out we should all eat much less sodium and added sugar. This would mean we are not supposed to eat most breakfast cereals, and ban sugary drinks (and juices) and canned soups. They even point out that we should eat REAL FOODS, that means foods that are not procesessed, packaged and to which other nutrients are added.

One thing that is …

Reuters, Bill Berkrot, Novemner 23, 2010
More than half of Americans will have diabetes or be prediabetic by 2020 at a cost to the U.S. health care system of $3.35 trillion if current trends go on unabated, according to analysis of a new report released on Tuesday by health insurer UnitedHealth Group Inc.
Diabetes and prediabetes will account for an estimated 10 percent of total health care spending by the end of the decade at an annual cost of almost $500 billion — up from an estimated $194 billion this year, according …

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 …

Food and Health News, November 13, 2010
In the second paper in The Lancet Series on Chronic Disease and Development, experts show that in the UK everyone eating a healthy diet would deliver big health effects with minimal knock-on effects to domestic agriculture and trade. But in a middle-income country like Brazil, it’s a different story. There, healthier eating (both in Brazil or the UK) could have a major impact on agriculture, trade, and, by definition, jobs. The second paper is by Professor Richard Smith, London School of Hygiene and Tropical …

Food and Health News, November 13, 2010

In a Comment linked to the Series, federations representing the four priority chronic diseases (cancer, cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease, and diabetes) say that “If governments and aid agencies continue to ignore this threat, we will sleepwalk into a future in which healthy people will be in a minority, obese and unhealthy children die before their parents, and economic development and already vulnerable health systems are overwhelmed. Non-communicable diseases have no borders or boundaries—they are the world’s number one killer and devastate the bottom …

Food and Health News, November 6, 2010
Older Americans are less healthy than their English counterparts, but they live as long or even longer than their English peers, according to a new study by researchers from the RAND Corporation and the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London.
Researchers found that while Americans aged 55 to 64 have higher rates of chronic diseases than their peers in England, they died at about the same rate. And Americans age 65 and older — while still sicker than their English peers — had a lower …

Cleveland.com, Evelyn Theiss, October 24, 2010
Move over, trans fat. There’s a new nutritional pariah.
It’s high-fructose corn syrup, a moniker that has become so unappealing that the industry trade group behind it — the Corn Refiners Association — made a bid to the Food and Drug Administration in September to change the name to “corn sugar.”
The group says that “corn sugar” is more accurate, because “high-fructose corn syrup” incorrectly implies that the product, which is used in foods as a sweetener, is high in fructose when actually its proportion of …

A new study has found that regular consumption of soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages is associated with a clear and consistently greater risk of metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes. According to the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers, the study provides empirical evidence that intake of sugary beverages should be limited to reduce risk of these conditions.
The study appears online October 27, 2010, in the journal Diabetes Care and will appear in the November print edition.
“Many previous studies have examined the relationship between sugar-sweetened beverages and risk of diabetes, …