By focusing on micro- or macronutrients, most nutrition research fails to recognise the most important truth about food: diet is more than the intake of nutrients.
Exclusive breastfeeding until children are six months old is recommended by the World Health Organisation for optimal growth of infants.
Nureldien Abdallah/Reuters
In 12 years Kenya has managed to dramatically improve its exclusive breastfeeding rates from 13% to 61%. The success has not come without challenges, and some persist.
Time spent indoors during winter provides a good excuse to eat more, and generally indulge. But does the weather really influence what we eat, or is it merely a fig leaf for our inherent gluttony?
Food can prompt behaviours and brain responses similar to those seen in more traditional forms of addiction.
Justin McGregor/Shutterstock
Are you a “carb craver” or “chocaholic”? We often use language associated with addiction to describe our relationships with food. But is it really possible to be addicted to certain types of food?
Multiple approaches to alleviating poverty help cater for different contexts and groups of people.
Reuters/Pascal Rossignol
There is no one perfect package for alleviating poverty, but there is agreement on what the elements should be. Combination and sequence of interventions varies, depending on context and beneficiaries.
The food industry has made the most of our taste for salt by hooking kids from an early age.
Phil Burns/Flickr
Bruce Neal, George Institute for Global Health and Kathy Trieu, George Institute for Global Health
Kids are eating way too much salty food even though it leads to high blood pressure in adulthood as well as increased risks of stroke, heart attack and kidney disease.
Reading the label might not help.
Supplements by Shutterstock
Pregnant women get all kinds of advice but reliable, evidence-based information on what they should eat for their good health as well as that of their developing child is often sorely missing.
Easier said than done but there are ways.
Eating by Shutterstock
A child’s diet should be high in fruit and vegetables, high in complex carbohydrates such as brown bread, brown pasta and brown rice and relatively low in fat and sugary foods. It should also be low in…
Nutrition celebrities draw us in with fancy blogs, colourful cook books, stylised food photography and inspirational stories.
jhard/flickr
Nutrition celebrities often promote strict diets that eliminate entire food groups. Not only are they based on flimsy evidence, some of their advice can lead to serious harm.
Coconut oil, comes with 90% saturated fat and health benefits.
Tree-species
Government nutrition guidelines recommend a high carbohydrate diet regardless of the ample evidence of the health risks it promotes. Yet, chronic diseases and obesity rates have risen in correlation with…
Taste acts as the gatekeeper of ingestion.
Photo and Share CC/Flickr
Humans are thought to be able to taste five qualities but technological advances combined with sophisticated research means we can now test for more subtle tastes we haven’t known about. In a paper we…
Back in 2012 the Which? Breakfast Cereal Report identified worryingly high amounts of sugar in 50 of the most popular breakfast cereals. Three years later and a new survey by campaign group Action On Sugar…
A mother’s healthy and varied diet during pregnancy might give her child a head start to healthy eating.
Bettina Neuefeind/Flickr
Our parents teach us what is to eat. But this process begins well before the fight to get toddlers to eat their veggies. Not only do our parents give us the genes that define our taste receptors, research…
OK you can trust this food label. But calories? Forget it.
Bryan Kennedy
Food labels seem to provide all the information a thoughtful consumer needs, so counting calories should be simple. But things get tricky because food labels tell only half the story. A calorie is a measure…
High intake of take-away foods, red and processed meat, soft drinks, and fried and refined food is a risk factor for poor academic performance.
Jay Peg/Flickr
As their children submit themselves to the ordeal of all-important end-of-year exams, parents of high school and university students may be wondering what they can do to help. One thing they ought to consider…
Nutritious meal inside? Maybe, maybe not.
Lunchbox image via www.shutterstock.com.
Ravenous students, busy parents, nutrition professionals and school officials all have their own ideas about what belongs on the school lunch table. Plenty of criticism centers on the unhealthiness of…
Nutrition is one of the most important determinants of health, but has been neglected in policy.
Jason Brackins/Flickr
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have significantly poorer health and lower life expectancy than other Australians. But while reducing these inequalities is a priority for governments, national…
The Eatwell plate is the UK government’s official food guide about which foods we should eat to achieve a healthy diet. It is essentially a pie-chart depicting the recommended intakes of five specified…