General Nutrition

You dont have to become a vegetarian to protect your heart, but recent results from a large study in the UK suggest that eating more like a vegetarian could help.

Some people assume that, since vitamins from your diet are important for your health, taking even more vitamins in pill form must be even better for you. But thats not necessarily the case.

The term natural on food labels, already meaningless

Combining calorie counts with traffic-light

…and how to make them stick. The secret? Understanding your habits and the dual drivers of your behavior.

A flurry of new studies is raising hope that green tea may someday be a potent weapon in the fight against Alzheimers disease and other forms of dementia. Although the studies differ widely in technique, ranging from scan-ning peoples brains to forming Alzheimers plaques in a test tube, all focus on ways polyphenol compounds in green tea affect important areas of the brain.

A lpha-carotene, the often-overlooked cousin of more familiar beta-caro- tene, may help you live longer-and further explain the health benefts of eating vegetables and fruits. Researchers at the CDC, studying data on more than 15,000 adults from a national nutrition survey, report that people with the highest blood levels of alpha-carotene were 39% less likely to die from all causes over almost 14 years.

I f you want to eat a healthier diet, cut out the fat-right? Wrong, according to experts at the American Dietetic As- sociation (ADA) Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo, in a panel on The Great Fat Debate. If you replace dietary fat, even saturated fat such as butter and whole milk, with sugar and other carbohydrates, you could actually be increas- ing your risk of heart disease.

Can foods, beverages or dietary supplements really increase your mental energy? Scientists at the Life Sciences Research Organization (LSRO) recently reported the results of a review of the scientific evidence for such claims regarding ginkgo biloba, ginseng, glucose and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. They defined mental energy as consisting of mood (transient feelings about the presence of fatigue or energy), motivation (determination and enthusiasm) and cognition (sustained attention and vigilance)

The good news from a new pooled analysis of 57 studies is that, despite some red flags from previous research, vitamin E supplements are safe and dont increase the risk of death. But neither do the once-highly touted supplements help you live longer, the review reports, despite hopes their antioxidant effects might fight chronic disease. Calling their meta-analysis the largest and most inclusive to date, scientists concluded in Current Aging Science that vitamin E supplementation cannot be endorsed as a means of reducing mortality