Special Reports

About one in three American adults, some 67 million people, have high blood pressure, one of the most dangerous risk factors for stroke. If youre age 65 years or older, the odds are even greater that you have hypertension: 64% of men and 69% of women ages 65 and up have high blood pressure, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Vitamin K, once thought important primarily for blood clotting, may have a much wider array of health benefits. One recent Spanish study reported that people with the highest dietary intake of vitamin K were at significantly lower risk of mortality from cardiovascular disease, cancer and all causes. And if youre not already consuming plenty of vitamin K-found in dark leafy greens, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and other vegetables (see box)-its not too late to start: The study also found that people who increased their vitamin K intake were at lower mortality risk.

If a little is good, most Americans are accustomed to thinking, more must be better and a lot must be better still. When it comes to vitamins and minerals, however, it is possible to get too much of a good thing-especially if some of your nutrients are coming from pills instead of food.Remember that most of your vitamin and mineral needs can be safely met by a thoughtful diet, cautions Irwin H. Rosenberg, MD, editor of the Tufts Health & Nutrition Letter. The use of so-called dietary supplements will always be associated with some degree of risk.

After youve reached a certain age, does eating right really matter? As a reader of this newsletter, you might take it for granted that the answer is, Yes, of course!-after all, you subscribe to a publication whose tagline is Living healthier longer. But exactly how does nutrition affect the health of older individuals?

If youre worried about getting too much sodium from salt in your diet, a new globe-spanning study reports you should have company among 99% of the worlds population. Daily sodium consumption in the 66 countries studied averaged 3,950 milligrams-nearly twice the maximum recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). That excess sodium intake, researchers estimated, contributes to about 1.65 million deaths a year worldwide from cardiovascular causes.

You may be surprised at the sources of sodium in your diet. Although a teaspoon and a half of salt contains about 3,400 milligrams of sodium-the average US adults daily intake, by some estimates-most dietary sodium doesnt come from your salt shaker. In fact, according to a 2012 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study, the number-one source of sodium in the US diet is bread.

For a nation that not so long ago buried itself in the low-fat craze, America has seen quite a turnaround in its attitudes toward dietary fat-especially saturated fat. Given permission to indulge by the Atkins fad and a recent meta-analysis questioning the link between saturated fat intake and cardiovascular disease (see the June 2014 newsletter), weve loaded up our plates. This summer, wholesale prices of butter and bacon both hit record highs in response to surging consumer demand.

It may be time to dig out that seldom-used steamer basket, or the bamboo steamer your cousin gave you as a birthday gift that you never opened. Your cousin was right when she said steaming is a healthy way to cook-no added fat required, zero potential carcinogens from charring, and minimal loss of nutrients.

Sugar is in the spotlight as a key contributor not only to the obesity epidemic but also to chronic diseases, with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the first time proposing requiring food companies to list added sugars on the Nutrition Facts label. On average, US adults consume 14.6% of their calories from sugars not naturally occurring in food-in everything from sodas to snack foods, from cereals at breakfast to packaged entres at dinner.

Reporting on the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research earlier this year, the New York Times noted, The latest results about diet and cancer were relegated to a single poster session and a few scattered presentations. Previous high hopes that specific dietary changes might combat cancer risk have largely evaporated, the Times reported, in the wake of more thorough epidemiology. The report summed up: About all that can be said with any assurance is that controlling obesity is important, as it is for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, stroke and other threats to life. Avoiding an excess of alcohol has clear benefits. But unless a person is seriously malnourished, the influence of specific foods is so weak that the signal is easily swamped by noise.