Nicole Gregory

If you love meat but hate the idea of killing farm animals or damaging the environment to raise them, then take heed: Scientists are developing potential alternatives. Several companies are working on creating meat in labs using stem cells (unspecified cells that can be induced to become cells with a particular function) from animals.

Fad diets come and go, but one healthy-eating diet that has endured is the DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension).
For the seventh year in a row, DASH was named “best overall diet” by a panel of experts. DASH also topped the list as “best plan for healthy eating” and “best diabetes plan,” and it tied with the Ornish Diet for “best diet for heart health.”

Farm Sanctuary, which has been rescuing neglected and abused farm animals for more than 30 years, has organized three “plant-powered” events—timed 10Ks, fun runs and noncompetitive walks. The first will be in New York City on June 10, the second in Los Angeles on September 23, and the third in San Francisco on November 11.

Whether you cook food safely or not can mean the difference between enjoying a meal and becoming sick from it. How do you cook a particular food so it’s safe to eat?

Being allergic to one kind of nut may not oblige you to avoid all nut varieties, a new study suggests.
Published in the March issue of Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the study looked at 109 patients at an allergy referral center and found that more than half who were allergic to one kind of tree nut passed the allergy tests for other nuts. (Common tree nuts include almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, pecans, pistachios and Brazil nuts. Peanuts are technically a legume, not a nut.)

Never underestimate the power of a healthy lifestyle to support heart health.
A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine has shown that healthy eating and exercise habits can substantially cut the risk of heart disease events, even in people who inherit high risk for these events.

Trying to stick to a Mediterranean diet? You may want to add cardoons to your cooking repertoire. This thistle-like perennial Mediterranean native plant is closely related to artichokes, though the edible part is a silvery green-gray stalk, similar to celery—and it tastes like a combination of the two.

Eating vegetables and fruit is associated with low psychological distress, according to a University of Sydney analysis of more than 60,000 adults aged 45 or older. The new study confirms British, Canadian and Swiss studies—which have found that eating moderate amounts of fruits and vegetables contributes to well-being and low risk of depression and distress—but suggests a stronger protective effect for women than for men.

Nearly half of heart disease-related deaths are associated with eating or drinking certain foods, according to survey analyses reported in the March issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers looked at the diets of 702,308 people whose deaths in 2012 were due to heart disease, stroke or type 2 diabetes—putting them in the category of cardiometabolic deaths.

Adults who said they did not watch TV during family mealtimes were 37% less likely to be obese than adults who kept the TV on while eating as a family, according to a survey of 12,842 Ohio residents, reported in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics in February 2017. The survey also found that when all family meals were home-cooked, adults were 26% less likely to be obese than when no or only some family meals were home-cooked.
The number of family meals survey respondents ate each week had little impact on their obesity rates.

Looking for a good Father’s Day gift that puts Dad’s good health front and center? How about a box of ripe, fresh tomatoes? They contain lycopene, an antioxidant that could decrease his risk of stroke, according to one Finnish study. And plant-based diets that include foods rich in lycopene (tomato products, watermelon, pink grapefruit, guava and papaya) have been associated with a lower risk of prostate cancer—the most common cancer for men in the U.S. and the second-leading cause of cancer death in U.S. men.