General Nutrition

You might not think that eating smart for your heart would have anything to do with also protecting your bones. But a new study finds that following the American Heart Associations diet and lifestyle recommendations is also associated with better bone health.

When the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association released new guidelines for preventing cardiovascular disease in November, the headlines all focused on their controversial recommendations for statin use. Almost lost in the coverage was another set of ACC/AHA recommendations, which looked at diet and physical activity rather than drugs for reducing cardiovascular risk. Whether your physician has prescribed statin medications or not, these Lifestyle Management Guidelines can help protect your heart.

If you think of cranberries as strictly Thanksgiving fare, you're missing out on the unique health benefits of this tart red fruit. "The profile of cranberries' biologically active constituents is distinct from that of other berry fruit," says Jeffrey B. Blumberg, PhD, director of Tufts' HNRCA Antioxidants Research Laboratory. Blumberg and colleagues recently authored a comprehensive review of cranberries' bioactive compounds and their effects on human health, published in Advances in Nutrition.

Dating back millennia, fermented foods are among humanity's oldest attempts to preserve food. But today these foods are newly popular for their purported health benefits. Fermented foods, ranging from sauerkraut to yogurt, are increasingly being seen as a boon to the gut - and in turn to benefits not only for digestive health but possibly also for allergies and even weight loss.

A. Bess Dawson-Hughes, MD, director of Tufts HNRCA Bone Metabolism Laboratory, answers: The amount of calcium present is very small and so not very consequential. The other ingredients have negligible nutritional value, are commonly used, and I know of no evidence that they are unsafe.…

A. Sugar is sugar is sugar, cautions Diane L. McKay, PhD, an assistant professor at Tufts Friedman School about making such a switch. Per tablespoon, granulated (table) sugar has no vitamins or minerals, and honey has slightly higher, but still negligible amounts, while the same amount of maple syrup actually has about 15% of the Daily Value (DV) for riboflavin and 30% of the DV for manganese. Honey and maple syrup also contain several different…

Q. We have been hearing about the benefits of lycopene. Is it true that red and yellow tomatoes have different types of lycopene, and that the type in yellow tomatoes is more easily absorbed by the human body?…

A.Touted as the strongest natural antioxidant found to date and also promoted for anti-inflammatory benefits, astaxanthin is a naturally occurring plant pigment. Like many such compounds, its a type of carotenoid. When microalgae containing astaxanthin are eaten by salmon or shellfish, the compound turns their flesh pink; the same effect is seen in the feathers of flamingos who consume astaxanthin via algae. Supplement producers seeking to cash in on recent publicity for astaxanthin, including the…

If youre eating a balanced diet and have no special health concerns, you probably dont need extra vitamin A of any kind. According to the Office of Dietary Supplements of the National Institutes of Health, Vitamin A is available in multivitamins and as a stand-alone supplement, often in the form of retinyl acetate or retinyl palmitate [preformed vitamin A].

Is your household throwing away hundreds of dollars worth of usable food every year? Thats the conclusion of a new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, which warns that $165 billion of edible food is tossed in the trash annually and 40% of US food production never gets eaten. The leading culprit? Confusing food date labels, according to the report.