Fats

If you're planning to join the holiday travel crush - or already looking ahead to 2016 vacations - there's good news about your eating options en route. "I actually think that airport choices are beginning to improve a bit, both in terms of take-out and sit-down options," says Jeanne Goldberg, PhD, professor at Tufts' Friedman School and director of the Nutrition Communication Program. "The onus is to choose among the better options."

Do you want a candy bar with that diet soda? University of Illinois researchers report that people who drink diet beverages are more likely to allow themselves treats, sometimes referred to in technical terms as "discretionary foods."

Two of the nations leading nutrition experts have some advice for the federal government: Stop worrying about total fat. Nutrition research has shown that the emphasis on restricting total fat intake is outdated, yet these limits affect everything from Nutrition Facts labels to school lunches to supermarket products. In recent opinion pieces in JAMA and the New York Times, Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, DrPH, and David S. Ludwig, MD, PhD, argue, Its long past time for us to exonerate dietary fat.

Most of the soaring popularity of protein in US supermarkets can be dismissed as marketing hype. Although a new report from Packaged Facts says protein is currently the hottest functional food ingredient trend in the US, the truth is that most Americans get plenty of protein without any special dietary boosts.

Artificial trans fats, in the form of partially hydrogenated oils, once hailed as a healthy alternative to butter and shortening, will all but disappear from the US food supply by June 2018. Following up on a preliminary 2013 ruling, the US Food and Drug Administration announced this summer that artificial trans fats would no longer be considered generally recognized as safe (GRAS) The agency gave the food industry three years to reformulate products without artificial trans fats or to petition for specific, limited uses, such as in sprinkles atop ice cream.

The humble egg has been on a roll lately. First, the US Department of Agriculture recalculated the amount of dietary cholesterol in a typical large egg downward-from 215 to 185 milligrams-and vitamin D upward (to 41 IU, 10% of the Daily Value). Then, earlier this year, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) concluded, given current intakes of dietary cholesterol in the US, it was no longer necessary to recommend that most people limit dietary cholesterol to 300 milligrams daily. (See the May newsletter for details.) That limit had led many people to avoid eggs.

A newly published followup to findings from a study of the so-called Mediterranean diet adds to the evidence that such an eating pattern, especially when it includes nuts and olive oil, may help protect the aging brain. Results from a subgroup of the Spanish PREDIMED study showed that those assigned to a Mediterranean diet held steady in cognition while a control group declined. While previous observational studies have linked a traditional Mediterranean-style dietary pattern to cognitive protection, this is the first such evidence from a large randomized clinical trial.

Not since the TV-cartoon heyday of Fred Flintsones modern Stone Age family have cavemen been so in vogue. The Paleo Diet, a book by Loren Cordain, PhD, has been a bestseller since it was first published in 2002, and it has spawned a pile of cookbooks and a glossy magazine devoted to modern day primal living. A Google search for Paleo diet retrieves 7.7 million hits. Actor Chris Pratt credits the Paleo diet for getting him in shape to star as the buff hero in the Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

Eating a more plant-based diet could reduce your risk of colorectal cancer-and especially so if it includes regular consumption of fish. Surprisingly, the latest findings from the Adventist Health Study-2 report that pescovegetarians-people who are otherwise vegetarians but also eat fish at least once a month-were at the lowest risk of such cancers. Adding fish to a vegetarian diet was associated with less risk than any other type of vegetarian diet, including a vegan regimen.

A trip to the supermarket can feel like running a gauntlet of buzzwords. This product promises its reduced sodium, while that one is natural and gluten-free. Is a food made with extra fiber better than excellent source of fiber, or vice versa? Just how low in calories does a food have to be to boast that its low-calorie-and should you pick that label over one thats lower calorie or light?