Healthy Eating

Pork and plums are a time-honored pairing. In this recipe late-season plums and spices are simmered into a flavorful chutney to accompany lean pork tenderloin. The simple chutney does double duty as a glaze and a sauce. It is also delicious with poultry and can be used to perk up crackers and cheese.

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.

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.

Heres a new reason for watching your waistline and keeping active thats worth listening to: Extra weight and greater waist circumference are linked to a higher risk of hearing loss with aging, while moderate physical activity is associated with reduced risk.

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.

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. 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…

A. Alice H. Lichtenstein, director of Tufts HNRCA Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory, answers: To my knowledge Italians have been using olive oil for centuries in cooking. There is no reason why it could not be used for cooking. Theoretically, olive oil would be more stable than a more unsaturated oil.…