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July 2002
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Green Tea Is Good For You, But Black Tea Boasts Just As Many Benefits
By Catherine Golub, M.S., R.D.
Americans are taking to tea in a big way, buying billions of dollars of the brewed beverage each year. Unlike coffee, mostly absolved of supposed health crimes but never touted as actually being good for you, the buzz brewing about tea is that drinking a daily cup or two may be a habit well worth forming. Could Starbucks-style tea houses be just around the corner? Green tea has long been credited with disease-preventing properties, but as more studies unfold,
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Silent Syndrome Raises The Risk Of Diabetes, Heart Disease, Maybe Cancer
By Densie Webb, Ph.D., R.D.
Here’s a pop quiz: What’s it called when your blood sugar is slightly elevated, your HDL’s (high-density lipoproteins, the "good" cholesterol) are kind of low and your blood pressure edges up? Diabetes? Atherosclerosis? Hypertension? None of the above. When these otherwise unremarkable changes occur together, you have what doctors now call "metabolic syndrome" (also "insulin resistance syndrome" or more sinisterly "Syndrome X"). If you’re not familiar with it, chances are you soon will be. A recent national health survey found that
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Slow Food Movement Counters Fast-Food Culture
By Anastasia Schepers, M.S., R.D.
Fast food gets a bad rap these days. And for good reason. But what’s the alternative? Slow food, of course. Eat Healthfully: Go Slow Shop at farmers’ markets or local family farms to appreciate the connection between the land and our food, as well as benefit from unprocessed and unadulterated food. Look beyond fresh produce at farmers’ markets. Try locally produced jams, pickles, breads and cheeses. Collect traditional family recipes, especially ethnic recipes that celebrate your own
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Oats May Now Be Okay for People With Gluten Sensitivity
In a new five-year study, Finnish researchers provide the first long-term evidence that oats can be safely eaten by people with celiac disease. Also known as celiac sprue, nontropical sprue and gluten-sensitive enteropathy, celiac disease is a digestive disorder that damages the wall of the small intestine, interfering with the absorption of nutrients from food. People with celiac disease cannot tolerate a protein called gluten, found in wheat, so they must avoid that grain, as well as rye and barley,
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Get Skinny the Smart Way
By Annette B. Natow, Ph.D., R.D. and Jo-Ann Heslin, M.A., R.D. Pocket Books (2002), New York, NY; 366 pp.; $14; softcover.
Despite its name, this book is not about getting skinny, it’s about getting healthy. And the authors—both members of EN’s Editorial Advisory Board—succeed in that aim. They teach the reader how to make sensible food choices and become more active to lose weight. For many overweight people, losing just 5% to 10% of their current weight can get them healthy, though not necessarily skinny. The book can help you take control of what you eat in a world where "Big
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Research Roundup
F Folate may protect people from suffering the same fate as a family member with colon cancer, according to 16 years of data from more than 88,000 women in the Nurses’ Health Study. While dietary folate had only a minimal protective effect on the risk of colon cancer among women with no family history, those with a family history who got more than 400 micrograms of folate a day were only half as
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Appetite Hormone Offers Weight-Loss Clue
Losing weight is an uphill battle for the nearly 60% of Americans who are overweight or obese, leaving them feeling fat, frustrated and far from healthy. Now, researchers may have discovered why keeping lost weight off remains an elusive goal for so many people. It may hinge on a hormone called ghrelin (pronounced GREL-in) that’s produced in the stomach. Ghrelin may be a key player in the complex stomach-brain communication that signals us when to eat and when to
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Throw One on the Grill: New "Veggie" Burgers Might Surprise You
By Andrea Klausner, M.S., R.D.
Meatless burgers (a.k.a. veggie burgers) are beyond popular, they’re downright hip. Compared to hamburgers, they win, hands down, when it comes to being more healthful and having less environmental impact, not to mention few, if any, worries about antibiotics, hormones, E.coli, Salmonella or mad cow disease. All pretty good reasons to toss one on the grill….except perhaps taste. However, today’s alternative patties deliver better variety, flavor and texture than their predecessors, and many stand up to grilling better. Meatless burgers offer
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Vitamin C May Calm Your Risk of Stroke
Getting enough vitamin C to maintain healthy blood levels may significantly reduce your risk of stroke, say researchers from Finland. They measured the blood levels of vitamin C in more than 2,400 middle-aged men with no history of stroke, then followed them for more than 10 years. They found that men with the lowest blood levels of vitamin C had more than double the risk of stroke as men with the highest levels. Men who were also overweight or
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A Bowl of Cherries: Rich in Antioxidants, Melatonin
The Folklore: While we’ll likely never know if young George Washington really used his hatchet on that famous cherry tree, it is known that, to Victorians, cherry trees symbolized education, and the white cherry, deceit. The cherry has also been associated with virginity from ancient times, probably because the red-colored fruit enclosing a seed symbolized the uterus.
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Choline Counts: Essential Nutrient for Your Body and Mind
Q. I’ve seen food labels that say a food is a "good source of choline." What exactly is choline and should I be concerned about getting enough? A. Choline is the newest nutrient to be declared essential to life by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). While choline is needed for proper functioning of body and mind, the body can make it. But because sometimes it may not make enough, it is essential in our diets. The food labels you’ve seen
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Study Confirms Organic Foods Have the Fewest Pesticides
Q. I heard that organic produce contains pesticide residues. I thought organic foods were pesticide-free? A. Foods that are "certified organic" are guaranteed only to be grown without the use of synthetic pesticides prohibited by organic labeling criteria. They cannot be guaranteed free of pesticide residues, because pesticides lingering in the environment are beyond an organic farmer’s control. But they are likely to have far fewer residues than other foods. That’s exactly what a team of scientists from Consumers Union (CU), the
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