Fats

You already know to avoid added sugars, but now the evidence is mounting that another type of carbohydrate may also be implicated in weight gain and diabetes risk - starch. That's tricky, because identifying high-starch foods requires doing a little arithmetic on the Nutrition Facts label. But the health rewards may be worth breaking out the calculator.

Americans are eating healthier - resulting in an estimated 1.1 million fewer premature deaths since 1999 - but still have a long way to go.

Is the slice of bacon on your BLT really as dangerous as smoking a cigarette? That was the implication of some of the scary headlines about the World Health Organization's recent report stating that processed meat raises the risk of colon, stomach and other cancers.

The advice to "eat everything in moderation" has long been popular wisdom, though without much scientific evidence to support it. Now a new study has put that dictum to the test.

Eating eggs occasionally probably wont raise your risk of heart attack, stroke or heart failure. That's the latest good news for egg lovers from a Swedish study following two large groups of men and women for 13 years.

While theres something to be said for clean eating, the "detox" fad needs a reality check. "First, your body already has a highly effective system for removing toxins, principally the liver and kidneys," explains Irwin H. Rosenberg, MD, University Professor of Medicine and Nutrition at Tufts. "Second, diets and products that claim to detox the body do not identify what supposed toxins are being targeted."

Q. I read in your newsletter that nuts are not completely digested and pass through the body without some of their calories being absorbed. Does it also follow that not all their protein is used by the body?

No matter the color of your pepper, the macronutrient (protein, fat, carbohydrate) and fiber content wont differ much. Red, yellow and orange bell peppers are simply the ripe forms of different green peppers, which is why they tend to cost more.

Older adults whove been loading up on calcium - either in their diets or in supplement form - to protect their bones recently got a shock on the nightly news: Extra calcium, according to two new headline-making reviews published in BMJ, was not associated with meaningful benefits for improving bone density or reducing fracture risk.

A new long-term study from Sweden bolsters the evidence that the type of fats you consume is more important for your health than the total amount of fats in your diet. Rather than relying on sometimes-inaccurate self-reported food intake, the study actually measured blood serum levels of the most important types of polyunsaturated fats. Health outcomes were then tracked for an average of 14.5 years.