Diet Detectives

Food of the Week: Watermelon Watermelon is pretty much the unofficial fruit of summer. But are you familiar with other types of melon, such as musk melon (i.e. cantaloupe), yellow melon (grown here in Wisconsin!) or honeydew?...

It's kind of crazy that the effect of food on health is being scientifically "proven" and "accepted" only now... (well maybe not surprising, considering that the drug companies don't benefit from dietary interventions!)

"For the first time, researchers have shown that a diet can have an effect as powerful as drugs in preventing what really matters to patients — heart attacks, and strokes and deaths from cardiovascular disease."

Experts Want More Studies of Diet’s Role for the Heart A study has infused the field of cardiovascular medicine with optimism, as scientists are calling for similarly rigorous studies of other popular diets.

How many times a day do you eat?

Conventional wisdom went from "eat three square meals a day" to "space your meals apart 5-6 times a day to rev up your metabolism" to "Research results vary. Just don't eat too much."

Should you take a multi-vitamin? Findings from a recent meta-analysis published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggest that taking a multi-vitamin won't increase--but also won't decrease mortality risk (http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/97/2/437.abstract). A better bet? Try to get your vitamins and minerals from food and supplement only what is missing. So what's missing? Thought you'd never ask...