Supplements/Ergogenic Aids

When it comes to grains in our diet, we now have more proof that whole is a whole lot better. In a study published last October in Gut, a team of Danish researchers assigned 50 adults to follow one of two diets for 2 months—one where all grains consumed were unrefined varieties, like brown rice and oats, and one where most grains were refined options, such as white rice and white pasta.

If we want people to eat better, we need to acknowledge that pears cost more than potato chips. A study from Drexel University, Philadelphia, published in a recent edition of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, showed that the difference in the cost of healthy foods versus their unhealthy counter­parts plays a significant role in whether people follow a nutritious diet.

It turns out there’s a social media spillover effect from those calorie postings popping up on more restaurant menus. A 2017 report in Marketing Science discovered that health mentions about foods at 9,805 eateries in New York—where chain restaurants are now required to post calorie counts on their menus—increased significantly in 761,962 online reviews that followed the implementation of calorie posting.

If you’re concerned about any lingering pesticides on your apples (after all, they are among the most heavily sprayed crops in America) but the price of organic causes too much pain at the checkout, then consider giving your fruit a baking soda bath.

Consuming too many sweet drinks, doughnuts and chocolate bars may lead not only to a belly bulge but also to a sour mood. After accounting for confounding factors like socio-economic status, body weight and smoking, researchers from University College London found a link between high sugar intake and mental conditions like depression and anxiety in men, according to research published in the July 2017 edition of Scientific Reports.

Most Americans consume well over the daily recommended intake of sodium (hello, packaged and restaurant foods), but turning up the heat on your meals may help you get by with less, according to the American Heart Association’s journal Hypertension.

Our increasingly harried lives are driving a shift toward eating more grab-and-go snack foods instead of sit-down meals, but research published in Appetite in January 2018 shows that just seeing the word snack on a food label may lead us to eat more.

Mary Poppins famously advised that “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” Now, it looks like a spoonful of oil helps nutrition levels go up—if we apply the right oils to certain veggies. In a study published recently in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers at Iowa State University found that subjects who ate salads with added soybean oil absorbed several key nutrients and antioxidants, including beta-carotene, vitamin E, vitamin K and lycopene, better than when they munched on salads minus the oil.

If your dining company is more likely to be a smartphone than a living, breathing human, you could be on the path to health woes that go well beyond heartburn. A paper published in Obesity Research & Clinical Practice in October 2017 suggests that the increasingly common practice of trading in family meals for less formal, more sporadic solo eating could raise the risk of developing maladies like heart disease and diabetes.