Healthy Eating

The incredible, edible egg is back ruling the roost, with US consumption expected to hit an eight-year high-almost back to the level of 2006, before concerns over cholesterol caused a slump. The American Egg Board reports that consumers have added 10 eggs per capita since 2011, cracking an estimated 257.9 eggs per person per year in 2014. Overall egg production was up 3% over 2013.

Would labeling added sugars on the Nutrition Facts panel confuse consumers, as industry opponents of the change have suggested? A new study of 500 consumers, published in the journal Obesity, rebuts those concerns: 63% of those surveyed said that including added sugar as a subset of total sugar on product labels would help them track and reduce their sugar intake. Only 18% responded that the change would be more confusing than helpful, giving reasons that suggest they were indifferent to the information rather than truly confused, and were likely among those who seldom look at nutrition labels anyway.

Q. Because Ive read about health benefits from green tea and coffee, Ive taken to adding a teaspoonful of ground coffee beans and the contents of a green tea bag to my oatmeal. Is that equivalent to, or maybe even better than, drinking a cup of coffee and a cup of tea at breakfast?

Q. Is it true that agave affects the body differently than other sugars?

Q. I have a thyroid problem and was told to cut down on iodine. How much iodine is in dairy products?

If you grew up thinking three glasses of milk a day are a must for healthy nutrition, youre hardly alone. Even for Baby Boomers who secretly wished for a soda instead, at a healthy meal the glass was always filled with milk. Multi-million-dollar dairy marketing campaigns have reinforced the idea that milk does a body good. And the USDAs My Plate agrees, advising all adults to consume the equivalent of three cups of low-fat dairy every day.

A controversial animal study, with a very small follow-up in humans, suggests that artificial sweeteners may promote glucose intolerance-and therefore diabetes-by changing the bacterial mix in the gut. Published in the journal Nature, the findings have some saying artificial sweeteners should be viewed with suspicion, while other experts dismiss the results.

The obesity epidemic may be leveling off, but more Americans are carrying fat around the middle-the most dangerous kind of obesity. A new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study, published in JAMA, says the rate of adult abdominal obesity has shot up from 46% in 1999-2000 to 54%. Abdominal obesity is defined as a waist size of more than 35 inches for women and 40 inches or more for men. During the 12-year span of the study, womens average waist size expanded two inches to 38 inches and men added an inch, to 40 inches.

A small pilot study at Tufts Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) raises the intriguing possibility that following a new behavioral weight-loss program for six months can in turn reprogram your brains food cravings. The first-of-its-kind study used MRI scans of the brains addiction center to see changes in the response to healthy and unhealthy food. The scans showed that it is possible to train the brain to reverse cravings and temptation for unhealthy food, replacing former cravings with temptation for healthy food.

Products containing coconut, coconut oil and coconut milk are popping up everywhere, with marketers touting coconut as the latest superfood. But a recent warning letter from the US Food and Drug Administration cautions coconut boosters not to overreach. The FDA warned that coconut products cant be labeled as healthy if they contain more than 1 gram of saturated fat or more than 15% of calories come from saturated fat. Some have claimed that the saturated fat in coconut is different because its mostly lauric acid, which a few small studies suggest is metabolized differently than other saturated fats. But the FDA isnt buying that argument, noting that coconut products might contain as much as 16 grams of saturated fat per serving.