According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) report, adults born from 1946 to 1985 who were asked about their diets from 2005 to 2010 consumed fewer calories and less cholesterol and unhealthy fats. “It’s good news for us,” said Kevin Concannon, USDA Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, in a press conference. We’re eating less food away from home Food eaten outside the home dropped by 127 calories per day, and Americans ate 53 fewer calories daily from fast food between 2005–2006 (when the most current data was available). If you’re eating at home, you’re probably having more family meals Working-age adults living with two or more people or with kids under age 17 reported that they had more meals with their families, and the number of these shared meals that were cooked at home also increased.

By Gene Emery NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Contrary to a popular theory, adults who are overweight when they are diagnosed with diabetes are not protected against dying early, a large new study shows. The findings call into question what’s known as the “obesity paradox,” the belief that people with a normal weight are more likely to die from type 2 diabetes than those who are overweight or obese. “There’s been a pretty polarized debate over whether this is real or not,” lead author Deirdre Tobias, from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, told Reuters Health. The new report included more than 11,000 people in those studies who were diagnosed with diabetes.

Title: Women More Open to Weight-Loss Surgery
Category: Health News
Created: 1/10/2014 12:35:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 1/13/2014 12:00:00 AM

After a six days of no sleep, Sainah Theodore physically destroyed her home and was committed involuntarily to a hospital mental ward for five days. Lab tests showed the herbal pills contained two drugs not approved by the FDA in over-the-counter products, according to her lawsuit.        

In “Epigenetics: A New Link Between Nutrition and Cancer”, a recent article from Nutrition and Cancer: An International Journal, a publication of Routledge, researchers explore the possible effects that diet can have on gene expression through epigenetic mechanisms.

In the past 50 years, as fruits and vegetables have featured less and less in the Western diet, rates of allergic asthma have gone up. Now a new study suggests these trends are not coincidental, but causally linked.

With no approved medications to treat autism, more parents are turning to alternative therapies  to help their kids. A new study published in the Journal of Behavioral and Developmental Pediatrics found that among parents of 600 children between ages two and five with autism (453) and developmental delays (125), 40% reported using homeopathic remedies, mind-body medicine, melatonin and probiotics in an attempt to relieve some of their children’s symptoms and even prevent some of the condition’s behavioral problems from progressing. Such use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) was 10% greater than that among non-autistic kids. About 7% of autistic kids were on a special diet such as gluten-free or casein-free, which parents believed could reduce inflammation that may aggravate autism symptoms.