General Nutrition

Youve seen the TV commercials. A daily multivitamin supports heart and breast health, boosts your immune system and protects your eyes. A smiling couple feel pretty darned smart after learning that a study showing multivitamins reduce cancer risk used the very brand shes been making him take.

Q. Are there actually health benefits from drinking yerba mat tea? What is yerba mat, anyway?A. Diane L. McKay, PhD, an assistant professor at...

A. Anastassios G. Pittas, MD, professor of medicine in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism at Tufts Medical Center, responds: The quick answer...

If you believe the bestseller lists, the biggest bad in the supermarket aisles is not fat or sodium or sugar but wheat. Its not just the booming popularity of gluten-free products, which are important for the small percentage of people diagnosed with celiac disease but whose benefits for the general population are questionable. (For a full discussion of the pros and cons of gluten-free products, see our October 2013 Special Report.) Bestselling books have warned that wheat consumption is a key contributor to abdominal fat (wheat belly), as well as triggering diseases ranging from diabetes to autism, and that eating wheat is linked to Alzheimers, depression, headaches, epilepsy and ADHD.

By their own report, Americans ate less healthfully last year than any time since 2008. A daily poll by Gallup and Healthways, totaling more than 150,000 adults over a years polling, asks whether respondents ate healthfully the previous day.

Frozen produce is just as nutritious as fresh-and superior in vitamin and mineral content to fresh produce stored in the refrigerator for a few days.

After one of the most comprehensive risk assessments of aspartame ever undertaken, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has concluded the artificial sweetener is safe at recommended levels of consumption.

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.