Healthy Eating

There may be more than a fiery kick in that imported salsa.

Advocates of health-conscious menu labeling have their work cut out for

Unless you have celiac disease, avoiding gluten might actually make you less healthy by missing out on important nutrients.

Is it true that apples are the healthiest fruit, as that old keeps the doctor away saying suggests? Diane L. McKay, PhD, an assistant professor at Tufts Friedman School, says, This is actually one of the questions I like to pose to our PhD candidates during their qualifying exam.

If you studied the headlines this spring about the latest report on dietary sodium and concluded you could stop worrying and maybe have an extra bag of chips, think again. True, thats certainly how most of the news coverage of the report from the prestigious Institute of Medicine (IOM) read: No Benefit Seen in Sharp Limits on Salt in Diet, headlined the New York Times. Report questions reducing salt intake too dramatically was the take in USA Today. And CNN announced, Report questions benefits of salt reduction.

Answer :Dehydrated, powdered, juiced and spraydried fruit and vegetable products can never deliver all the nutritional value of the original produce. Even if a product has the same amount of antioxidants and phytonutrients as a daily diet of fruits and vegetables, youre missing the fiber and other benefits of eating whole foods. Youre also not using fruits and vegetables to replace other, higher-calorie and high-fat foods in your diet. …

Answer :Youre correct that some nut oils have a low smoke point, the temperature at which they begin to burn. Unrefined walnut oil, for example, has a smoke point of only 320 degrees Fahrenheit, although refined walnut oil can go to about 400 degrees. Almond oil, by contrast, has a smoke point of 430 degrees. …

Answer :Nothing short of cooking will guarantee that E. coli on produce has been killed, but some research does suggest vinegar washing can reduce contamination of fresh produce. Research at the University of Nebraska led scientists there to recommend soaking produce in full-strength white vinegar for five minutes, stirring occasionally. Rinse with clean tap water to remove vinegar flavor. Wash only what you need immediately, as washing earlier could give remaining bacteria time to grow.…

Answer :Jeffrey B. Blumberg, PhD, director of the Antioxidants Research Laboratory at Tufts Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, replies, There is certainly nutritional value in apple skin, as it contains a variety of phytochemicals (phytonutrients), particularly flavonoids. This is the case for the skin of most fruits and vegetables, as these compounds are phytoalexins (compounds protecting the plant from environmental stresses, like UV light, molds and insects) and so need to…

Answer :Theres no real scientific measure of freshness, but if you mean vegetables that are closest in nutrient content to freshly picked vegetables, the best bet is probably frozen produce. Alice H. Lichtenstein, DSc, Stanley N. Gershoff professor of nutrition science and policy at Tufts Friedman School, says, For the most part, frozen vegetables are processed close to the point of harvesting, and, unless thawed and refrozen prior to sale, should retain most of their…