Diet and nutrition Archive

A heart-healthy lifestyle is strongly associated with better memory and lower risk of Alzheimer's disease.

The health press is full of claims that "superfoods"—like fresh berries and leafy greens—can keep your memory sharp and hold the threat of Alzheimer's disease at bay. But for now, the evidence is preliminary at best. Your safest bet is to lead an overall heart-healthy lifestyle—including eating a plant-based diet and getting regular exercise—rather than drawing up a shopping list of alleged brain-boosting superfoods.

Meeting fiber goals improves overall nutrition and helps with regularity, even without dramatic dietary changes.

Foods such as kale, cantaloupe, and quinoa can boost the amount of nutrients you consume without increasing calories.

Getting enough nutrients through diet is challenging as we age. Our bodies don't absorb nutrients as well as they once did, yet we tend to need fewer calories and eat less. So it's important to make the most out of the foods we do eat. One way is by choosing more nutrient-dense foods, which provide more nutrition bang for the calorie buck. "They contain an abundance of nutrients and other healthful substances—vitamins and minerals, fiber, lean protein, and unsaturated fats—but are not excessive in calories. This is compared with foods of low nutrient density that are high in calories," says Liz Moore, a registered dietitian at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Drinking sodas and other beverages sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup may boost levels of harmful LDL cholesterol and triglycerides in your blood, according to a study in the June 2015 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Researchers assigned 85 healthy adults to four different groups. One group drank beverages containing the artificial sweetener aspartame, while the others drank beverages sweetened with various percentages (10%, 17.5%, and 25%) of high-fructose corn syrup. After two weeks, LDL cholesterol levels held steady in people who drank aspartame-sweetened drinks. But among those who drank beverages with high-fructose corn syrup, LDL cholesterol rose in tandem with the percentage of sweetener.

A healthy person needs 30 to 50 ounces of fluid per day.

More evidence that plant-based diets can help you stay healthy.

In particular, nuts and peanuts are getting attention for their heart benefits. A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine on March 2, 2015, found that among 72,000 Americans in the southern United States and 135,000 people in China, eating peanuts (a legume) and nuts (such as almonds and walnuts) was associated with a reduction of 17% to 21% in the risk of dying from any cause, especially heart disease. This study was not a randomized trial, and therefore it cannot prove that a regular diet of nuts has such positive health effects. However, two previous randomized trials did find that such a diet was heart-healthy. "Nuts and peanuts are rich in unsaturated fatty acids, known for reducing inflammation, improving blood vessel function, and lowering LDL cholesterol," says Debbie Krivitsky, director of clinical nutrition at the Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Center at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital. The American Heart Association recommends eating four servings of unsalted, unoiled nuts per week. A serving size is a small handful (1.5 ounces) of whole nuts or 2 tablespoons of nut butter.

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Don't be misled by well-intentioned advice. Some processed foods offer nutritional value and convenience.

Nutrition gurus often urge us to spurn processed foods in favor of whole ones. But not all processed foods are necessarily bad. "Most food needs to go through some sort of processing for it to even be edible and digestible," says Stacey Nelson, a registered dietitian and manager of clinical nutrition at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital. "The minute you cook something, you are processing it."

Substantial research proves the Mediterranean and DASH eating plans offer important health benefits for men.

If you feel run-down, lack of iron is probably not the cause. You can easily get enough of this key mineral in your diet.

Decades ago, advertising for the liquid vitamin and mineral supplement Geritol warned against "iron-poor, tired blood." It's a reference to the fact that red blood cells need iron to make hemoglobin, the molecule that grabs oxygen and transports it around the body.