Nutrition & Food
29 stories
No One Guards the Toddler Food Aisle: 81 Percent of Its Foods Are Ultra-Processed
Parents assume the baby aisle is vetted. It isn't. No US rule makes toddler food meet a nutrient standard, and an Austin audit of 2,783 products marketed for 6-to-36-month-olds found 81 percent ultra-processed and nearly half failing a WHO benchmark.
Nutrition & FoodA Daily Scoop of Chicory Fiber Eased Knee Arthritis, and It Moved the Same Gut Hormone as Ozempic
Twenty grams of chicory fiber a day matched a physiotherapy app for knee arthritis pain, and only one person in the fiber group quit. The hormone it nudged is the one Ozempic is built to imitate.
Nutrition & FoodThe NIH Weighed Every Meal to a Tenth of a Gram. Four AI Calorie Apps Undercounted by up to 345.
In a locked NIH metabolic kitchen where every ingredient was weighed to 0.1 grams, MyFitnessPal, Lose It!, CalAI, and Appediet each read a plate and undercounted it by a quarter to a third, missing the fat most of all.
Nutrition & FoodPepsi Paid $1.95 Billion for Poppi, in a Category That Averages as Much Sugar as Fiber
UNC researchers read the labels on 108 prebiotic sodas and found roughly 5 grams of fiber, 5 grams of sugar, and, in most cans, a non-nutritive sweetener. Poppi agreed to an $8.9 million settlement over its gut-health claims; months later Pepsi paid $1.95 billion for it.
Nutrition & FoodThe FDA Revoked Two Petroleum Dyes That Industry Abandoned Before Most Americans Were Born
Orange B was last certified in 1978. Citrus Red No. 2 has painted Florida oranges since 1959. The six petroleum dyes actually in the food supply remain on a voluntary timeline no manufacturer has publicly signed.
Nutrition & FoodThe Fruit Juice Sold to Parents as the Healthy Choice Tracks With Higher Blood Pressure 25 Years Later
One daily glass of orange juice tracked with 20 percent higher blood pressure risk. The whole fruit tracked with nothing.
Nutrition & FoodIn the Lab, Coffee Flipped an Anti-Aging Switch. The Caffeine Barely Did.
Stephen Safe's lab reported that coffee's polyphenols, more than its caffeine, switch on a cellular stress-defense receptor. Every experiment ran in a dish, and the anti-aging headline traveled a great deal further than the data.
Nutrition & FoodThe AHA Says Coffee Is Safe to Five Cups a Day. The Energy Shot's Problem Isn't the Caffeine.
Up to 400 mg a day, roughly three to five cups of regular black coffee, is generally safe for most adults and may be linked to lower cardiovascular risk. The concentrated shot in the gym-bag can is a different animal, and the reason isn't the caffeine.
Nutrition & FoodScientists Measured the Salt in 39 Takeaways. Nearly Half Had More Than the Label Claimed.
Chemists at the University of Reading ran 39 takeaway dishes through a mass spectrometer. Almost half the labeled ones held more salt than the menu admitted, and one pasta dish carried nearly two days' worth.
Nutrition & FoodFor Forty Years, Margarine Was the 'Healthy' Choice. The Chemistry Was Never on Its Side.
The spread your doctor pushed for decades delivered trans fats, then got rebuilt with a modified fat that raised fasting glucose 22 percent in one trial. Butter, the supposed villain, turned out roughly neutral for your heart.
Nutrition & FoodThey Call It Aging. Sometimes It's a Vitamin Your Doctor Forgot to Check.
New Cornell research explains how B12 deficiency starves muscle of energy, and why the standard test your doctor orders can call the problem aging.
Nutrition & FoodSummer Sun Won't Save You: A Vitamin D Study Funded by the People Who Sell the Spray
A Newcastle screening study found vitamin D deficiency persists through summer in older and ethnic-minority adults in northern Britain. The funder sells the fix.
Nutrition & FoodYour Kombucha Is Only as Good as the Tea You Brewed It From
A new five-tea kombucha study finds the antioxidant punch depends almost entirely on the tea you start with, with green and oolong on top and the label never telling you.
Nutrition & FoodThe Protein Numbers on the Government Charts Were Never Meant to Help You Thrive
A new Frontiers in Nutrition perspective argues official protein and exercise guidelines were built to prevent deficiency, not to maximize healthspan, and that older adults in particular need far more.
Nutrition & FoodA Cheap Amino Acid Pulled Mice Back From a Cytokine Storm. The Twist Is Which Organ Did the Saving.
A Salk Institute mouse study found that dietary methionine cut deaths from severe inflammation by boosting the kidneys' ability to flush pro-inflammatory cytokines into urine, without blunting the immune response to infection.
Nutrition & FoodWHO Tripled the Foodborne Death Toll. The Food Didn't Get Deadlier.
WHO's new estimate says unsafe food kills 1.5 million people a year, more than triple its 2015 figure, even as it admits the burden has fallen. The jump is an accounting change, not an epidemic.
Nutrition & FoodYour Five-a-Day Isn't Enough Flavanols, Says the Company That Sells Them by the Capsule
A new study says following dietary guidelines won't get you enough flavanols for heart protection. Two of its authors work for the company that sells flavanols in a capsule.
Nutrition & FoodBrewed tea has the longevity receipts. The supplement aisle has a liver problem.
A 2025 review finds 1.5 to 2 cups of brewed tea daily correlate with about 10% lower all-cause and 14% lower cardiovascular mortality. The EGCG-extract supplements built on the same chemistry have been linked to over 100 liver-injury cases, while bubble tea can match a Coke for sugar.
Nutrition & FoodVitamin C just landed on an 8-preservative hypertension list. It was the only one also tied to heart disease.
A French cohort of 112,395 adults, followed eight years, flagged eight common preservatives for hypertension. Ascorbic acid was the only one that also independently associated with cardiovascular disease, and the lead author is calling on EFSA and FDA to reopen the file.
Nutrition & FoodYour Food Has 139,000 Molecules. Standard Nutrition Science Tracks About 150.
A May 2025 NEJM review pegs the chemical complexity of the human diet at more than 139,000 molecules. USDA-style databases track around 150. That gap is not a footnote, and it is why so much nutrition guidance keeps aging badly.
Nutrition & FoodCalcium and Vitamin D Got Demoted in the BMJ. The Trial Data Are More Stubborn Than the Headline.
A BMJ meta-analysis of 153,902 older adults reports calcium and vitamin D supplements offer little meaningful benefit against fractures and falls, though the combined arm showed a statistically significant 16% reduction in hip fracture risk.
Nutrition & FoodThe bitter finish in your protein shake isn't the protein. It's the minerals.
A new sensory study traces the bitter, peppery aftertaste in whey protein shakes to minerals that get concentrated during filtration, not the protein itself. The fix is a manufacturing tweak. The co-author is the supplier that sells the alpha-lactalbumin line.
Nutrition & FoodThe sugar-free mice got sicker, and the press release left out what they were eating instead
A 16-week mouse study presented at ENDO 2026 reported that sugar-free animals developed insulin resistance, gut dysbiosis and fatty liver at the same body weight as controls. The press release never says what replaced the sugar, and that single missing detail decides what the study actually means.
Nutrition & Food8,300 Brazilian elders, one saltshaker, and the 80 percent of sodium nobody mentions
A Frontiers in Public Health survey of 8,336 Brazilians over 60 found older men reach for the saltshaker most. Buried in the same paper: the shaker only accounts for 6 to 20 percent of total sodium. The other 70-plus percent already arrived from the factory.
Nutrition & FoodAmerican Doctors Get About 1.2 Hours of Nutrition Training a Year. RFK Jr. Just Found the Lever.
Kennedy got eight organizations across U.S. medical training and 73 medical schools to commit to nutrition in licensing, accreditation, and a 40-hour pledge. The board exam matters; the rest is partly hedging.
Nutrition & FoodThe thin trial behind England's next supermarket-layout mandate
A non-randomized trial of 36 English discount stores produced a moment-of-implementation bump in produce sales that lost statistical significance by three months, and a household-purchasing signal that never landed. The authors' immediate call for a national layout mandate is the louder finding.
Nutrition & FoodHe Shou Wu's Hair-Loss Pitch Is Better Than I Expected. Its Liver Record Is Worse.
Researchers at Guangdong Pharmaceutical University argue Polygonum multiflorum could become the next pattern-baldness lead. The follicle biology is interesting. The case series of acute liver failure on four continents are not.
Nutrition & FoodThe supplement aisle has spent twenty years getting older Americans wrong
A May 2026 review by two geriatric researchers, syndicated this week by ScienceDaily, restates what twenty years of trial data have already shown: the supplement aisle is built around vague promises older Americans do not need, while protein, the gap that actually moves aging outcomes, sits in the m
Nutrition & FoodYale's Olive Oil Cancer Story Did Not Actually Test Olive Oil
A Yale mouse study reported in Cancer Discovery is being sold as proof that olive oil fuels pancreatic cancer. The lab fed the mice purified oleic acid, the effect only showed up in males, and no one has tested it in a person.