Healthy Heart

Honey enjoys what marketers call a "health halo" - consumers tend to view products containing honey as healthier than those sweetened with sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. Thats why Kellogg's renamed its Sugar Smacks cereal as "Honey Smacks" and so many other products have "honey" in the name or featured prominently on the package.

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.

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."

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 Nutrition research has shown that the emphasis on restricting total fat intake is outdated, yet these limits affect everything from Nutrition Facts labels to school lunches to supermarket products.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.

What exactly is protein? Some experts say its best to think of protein as a combination of up to 20 individual nutrients called amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins and play various key roles in human metabolism.

Are you getting the minerals in your diet that you need to help reduce stroke risk? In a new look at data on more than 180,000 women in the Nurses Health Study, combined intake of magnesium, potassium and calcium was associated with lower stroke risk. Separately, participants with the highest intake of magnesium and potassium, but not calcium, were also at lower risk.

The nations chile heads rejoiced recently over red-hot headlines linking consumption of spicy foods with lower mortality risk. In a Chinese study of 487,375 people, ages 30 to 79, those who reported consuming spicy foods almost daily were 14% less likely to die during 7.2 years of followup than those rarely eating chile-fueled foods. Major US media outlets gobbled up the study, published in BMJ, with headlines like USA Todays: Eating Spicy Food Might Help You Cheat Death a Little Longer.

A 2014 USDA report found that 31%-133 billion pounds-of the nations available food supply went uneaten, with two-thirds of food waste at the consumer level. If the holidays make you think that a big portion of that uneaten food is lurking among the containers of leftovers in your refrigerator, maybe its time to make some changes to benefit the planet and your grocery budget.

Your genes may help explain why you put more sugar in your coffee and on your cereal than other people do. A new study of 1,900 twins and their siblings reports that about 30% of variations in sweet taste perception can be attributed to genetics. People who perceive sweet taste less strongly may add more to satisfy their sweet tooth. Researchers tested four sweeteners, including two non-nutritive options, but found no difference between them, suggesting a single mechanism for sweetness perception regardless of calorie content. The findings were published in Twin Research and Human Genetics.