NutritionFacts.org

How safe are fourth-generation sweeteners, such as the rare sugar allulose? First, there was sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, the original industrial sweeteners. They were cheap, but they had lots of empty calories and contributed to diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, cavities, and metabolic syndrome. Then came the second-generation sweeteners, the artificial sweeteners in the colored pastel packets: NutraSweet, Splenda, and Sweet’N Low. They have practically zero calories, but there

Swapping just 1% of plant protein in place of animal protein was associated with significantly less age-related deficit accumulation. Based on a study of more than 400,000 people, replacing just 3% of calories of animal protein with plant protein was associated with a 10% reduction in overall mortality risk. That simple swap could translate to about an extra year of life. Egg protein—mostly found in egg whites—appeared to be the biggest offender when it came to mortality risk. Swapping 3% of calor

What foods should we eat and avoid to reduce our risk of atrial fibrillation? Atrial fibrillation, or Afib, is the most common clinical arrhythmia, meaning an abnormal heart rhythm, affecting millions of Americans and recognized as a global public health problem due to its “significant burden” of death and disease resulting from stroke, heart attacks, and heart failure. Is there any particular diet that may help prevent or treat it? Recently, we learned what not to eat. Low-carbohydrate diets ar

There is little guarantee that a dietary supplement will actually contain what is advertised on the packaging and not have undeclared contaminants. In one of my videos a few years ago, I talked about how press releases on the latest science coming out of even top medical centers were filled with overstatements and omissions. Medical journal press releases suffered from similar problems, and press releases from the drug companies were no different, filled with hype and exaggeration. What about pr

What food can eradicate H. pylori in the majority of patients? The salting and pickling of fish produce a novel DNA-mutating chemical called CMBA, which is formed from a reaction of salt, nitrite preservatives, and methionine, an amino acid found concentrated in animal proteins. The nitrites can also interact with other protein components to form N-nitroso compounds, a powerful class of carcinogens found in cigarette smoke. This may explain why processed meats such as bacon, ham, hot dogs, lunch

The origins of yoga go back thousands of years, and the practice of yoga for health has become popular worldwide. A 2016 survey estimated that 36 million Americans may be involved in yoga to varying degrees, for example. With so many practitioners, what do we really know about yoga?   What Are the Benefits of Yoga? As I discuss in my video How to Prove Whether Yoga Has Special Benefits, researchers have found that yoga users have better health status and are less likely to be obese, but tha

What explains the Achilles’ heel in certain Asian diets? For decades, Japan has had the longest life expectancy in the world, while spending just a fraction on healthcare compared to other high-income countries. This longevity has been attributed in part to Japanese dietary patterns, which are thought to have contributed to their comparatively low rates of coronary artery disease. Japan has historically had among the lowest rates of colon, breast, ovarian, prostate, bladder, and blood cancers. J

Coffee can improve Parkinson’s symptoms within three weeks compared to placebo, but do the benefits last? When James Parkinson described the classic symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, “he could hardly foresee the evolution of our understanding over the next two hundred years”—like the role of nutrition. High dietary intakes of animal fat, mercury, iron, and dairy products seem to increase Parkinson’s disease risk, while a plant-based dietary pattern and the intake of antioxidants may be protective

Our gut flora is determined by what we eat, for good or for ill. When we eat meat (including seafood), dairy, or eggs, our gut flora can take certain components in them (carnitine and choline) and produce something that ends up as a toxic compound called TMAO, which may set us up for a heart attack, stroke, and death. The process is illustrated below and at 0:26 in my video How to Cultivate a Healthy Gut Microbiome with Food. Give people two eggs, and they get a spike of TMAO in their bloodstre

Why don’t more big payors in health care embrace plant-based eating? Many of the diseases “that cause a constant drain on health care budgets can be prevented by nutrition;” so, why aren’t the big payors getting involved? Even a 1% decline in excess body fat could alone save tens of billions in medical costs. You’d think at least the health insurance industry would try to get people to eat more healthfully to try to pay out less money. Well, one could say “the insurance industry benefits from hi

The hormonal benefits of fenugreek extend beyond the muscle-bulking testosterone boost. In my video about the benefits of fenugreek seeds, I profiled a study in which young men were randomized to a sugar pill or fenugreek capsules for eight weeks, and they got a significant improvement in upper body strength, lower body strength, body composition, as well as a significant reduction in body fat percentage. The only side effect? It can make your sweat and pee smell like maple syrup. Seems like a b

If you put together all the new chemotherapy drugs approved over a dozen years, the average overall survival benefit is only 2.1 months. Though we often hear new cancer drugs described as “game changers” or “breakthroughs,” most afford much more modest benefits. In my last blog, I quoted an editorial in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute suggesting that the majority of new cancer drugs don’t deliver clinically meaningful benefits—at all. When they’re later proven to be ineffective, the

Most chemotherapy drugs are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) without evidence that they benefit survival or quality of life. By 2030, the number of new cancer cases in the United States is expected to skyrocket by 45%, from 1.6 million to 2.3 million every year. Are we really winning the war on cancer? Sadly, in general, no, despite the hundreds of new anticancer drugs that have been introduced. As I discuss in my video How Effective Is Chemotherapy?, the war on cancer has

If you care about your health so much that it would be unthinkable to light up a cigarette before and after lunch, maybe you should order a bean burrito instead of a meaty one. According to the Global Burden of Disease Study, diets high in processed meat, like bacon, ham, hot dogs, lunch meat, and sausage, may kill more than 100,000 people every year, due largely to heart disease, but also cancer and diabetes. This results in millions of healthy years of life lost every year around the world, as

Big Meat downplays the magnitude of meat mortality. A series of studies published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found a statistically significant association between lower consumption of red and processed meats and lower total mortality (meaning living a longer life), lower cardiovascular disease mortality, as well as lower risk of dying from cancer—across the board. Yet, remarkably, the authors of these studies concluded that people should ignore all the other dietary guidelines and keep e

The meat industry’s own study concluded that meat consumption increased the risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and premature death. A series of papers published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that “largely discounted all but the highest quality randomised studies…reached a conclusion directly contrary to the public health advice we’ve heard for years.” They suggested that we should continue our current consumption of red and processed meats. The authors based their exclusion of evidenc

The same person paid by Big Sugar to downplay the risks of sugar was paid by Big Meat to downplay the risks of meat. A series of articles published in the Annals of Internal Medicine recommending people just keep eating their meat was decried by nutrition researchers as “irresponsible and unethical,” a “travesty of science,” an “assault on public health,” and the “most egregious abuse of evidence” that they had ever seen. There were calls for retraction even before it was published from eminent

The meat industry comes up with a perversion of evidence-based medicine. A series of articles published in the Annals of Internal Medicine culminated in a recommendation suggesting people keep eating red and processed meat. Nutrition researchers blasted these articles. The chair of the nutrition department at Harvard called it “a very irresponsible public health recommendation,” and the past Harvard nutrition chair was even less restrained. “It’s the most egregious abuse of data I’ve ever seen,”

How legitimate is the common corporate criticism of the scientific nutrition literature that the credibility of observational studies is questionable? While randomized controlled trials are highly reliable in assessing interventions like drugs, they’re harder to do with diet. Dietary diseases can take decades to develop. People can’t eat placebo food, and it’s difficult to get them to stick to assigned diets, especially for the years it would take to observe effects on hard endpoints like cancer

How did Big Corn Syrup and other corporate sugar titans hijack the scientific process? In 2016, a Washington-based lobby group published a scientific review that concluded the evidence behind guidelines recommending limits on added dietary sugar was “low quality” and didn’t “meet criteria for trustworthy recommendations.” This was a group funded by multinational food and agrochemical companies, from Coca-Cola to Monsanto to the captains of corn syrup, accused of “hijacking the scientific process