Healthy eating for older adults Archive

News briefs

Here's an idea to make vegetables more enticing: give them names that make them seem indulgent. An observational study published online June 12, 2017, by JAMA Internal Medicine found that diners in a large university cafeteria were more likely to put vegetables on their plates when the foods had less health-conscious names. Each weekday during the fall academic quarter, researchers took a batch of cooked vegetables and labeled them in one of four ways: basic (such as simply "green beans"); healthy restrictive (such as "light 'n' low-carb green beans and shallots"); healthy positive (such as "healthy energy-boosting green beans and shallots"); or indulgent (such as "sweet sizzlin' green beans and crispy shallots"). During the study period, diners usually went for vegetables with less healthy labels: 25% more people chose the indulgent option over basic labeling, 35% more people selected indulgent instead of healthy positive labeling, and 41% more people chose indulgent over healthy restrictive labeling. The indulgent label also led to people piling up to 33% more vegetables on their plates. The study didn't prove that the labels triggered the vegetable selections, and didn't prove that people actually ate their veggies. But the authors say using enticing food names appears to be a simple strategy to promote healthy eating.

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Need a little motivation to get more active? Owning a dog may help, suggest authors of a small observational study published June 9, 2017, in BMC Public Health. Researchers looked at the self-reported activities of 43 pairs of dog owners and non-owners, all of them ages 65 or older. Three times during the yearlong study, participants wore fitness monitors for a week and noted their activities. Compared with non-owners, dog owners took an extra 2,760 steps per day and got an extra 22 minutes of moderate-intensity walking per day. Scientists didn't notice a difference between the groups when it came to the total amount of time spent sitting. But 22 minutes of daily walking meets the public health guidelines of a minimum 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity activity. If you have trouble with balance or walking, however, owning a dog that can potentially get in your way could be a fall hazard.

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The type and amount of fat, carbohydrate, sugar, and salt in our food supply has changed over the years — for better and for worse.

Remember when packaged foods emblazoned with the words "fat free" seemed to be everywhere? Then came labels boasting "zero grams of trans fat." "Sugar free" and "low sodium" claims soon joined the chorus. These days, gluten-free foods are all the rage.

For the most part, these food industry trends echoed the nutritional mantras of the time and were designed to improve our health — especially cardiovascular health. Not only is heart disease the nation's leading killer, there's overwhelming evidence that better dietary choices could prevent many heart attacks and strokes. But just how successful have these efforts been?

Research we're watching

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New research suggests that eating plenty of nitrate-rich vegetables — such as lettuce, spinach, and beets — may lower your risk of dying of a stroke or heart attack.

During digestion, your body converts nitrates into nitric oxide. This compound relaxes and widens blood vessels, which helps lower blood pressure. But does that translate to a longer life? To find out, researchers studied the diets of 1,226 older women who had no signs of fatty plaque in their arteries (atherosclerosis) and tracked them for 15 years.

Scientists used to think that brain connections developed at a rapid pace in the first few years of life, until you reached your mental peak in your early 20s. Your cognitive abilities would level off at around middle age, and then start to gradually decline. We now know this is not true. Instead, scientists now see the brain as continuously changing and developing across the entire life span. There is no period in life when the brain and its functions just hold steady. Some cognitive functions become weaker with age, while others actually improve.

Some brain areas, including the hippocampus, shrink in size. The myelin sheath that surrounds and protects nerve fibers wears down, which can slow the speed of communication between neurons. Some of the receptors on the surface of neurons that enable them to communicate with one another may not function as well as they once did. These changes can affect your ability to encode new information into your memory and retrieve information that's already in storage.