White house sets hunger conference for Sept. 28
The Biden administration on Monday set a date of Sept. 28 for the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health in Washington, D.C. The conference will be the first of its kind in more than 50 years.
‘Overfed but undernourished’ — Congress is told U.S. in health crisis
Poor-quality diets are driving an expensive epidemic of obesity, diabetes and heart disease in America, a panel of physicians, researchers and policy experts told senators on Tuesday, calling for a national strategy to replace the mishmash of federal nutrition programs. "We are on a path to disaster," said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Tufts School of Nutrition.
Does gum acacia count as fiber? The FDA will soon decide.
The FDA is assessing whether 26 ingredients count as fiber on nutrition facts labels. “If you're a nutrition-label reader, the list includes some familiar-ish sounding ingredients — such as inulin, which is often sourced from chicory root,” says NPR. “Other ingredients on the 'do-these-count-as-fiber?' list include gum acacia, bamboo fiber, retrograded corn starch, and — get ready for the tongue-twister — xylooligosaccharides. Some of these fibers are extracted from plant sources, while others are synthetic.”
Ten percent of world population now obese, says study
Ten percent of the world’s population is now obese, and obesity levels are rising even in countries previously known for food scarcity, says a study designed by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
Sugar industry swayed findings on coronary health risks for decades
Industry documents reveal that the sugar industry began working closely with nutrition scientists in the mid-1960s to single out fat and cholesterol as the dietary causes of coronary heart disease and to downplay evidence that sugar was also a risk factor, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Vegetarian diet shapes human genome and risk for disease
Cornell University scientists found "tantalizing evidence" that generations of a vegetarian diet led to a mutation in the human genome that may make people "more susceptible to inflammation, and by association, increase risk of heart disease and colon cancer," says the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.