Since the 1990s, Nutrition Facts and ingredients have been required on nearly all packaged food labels. But who has time to carefully scour each label on the shelf? And it’s easy to be tricked by buzzwords that make a food sound higher—or lower—in something than it is. Here’s a quick quiz to see if you can guess which food from each pair has more of a nutrient or ingredient (or if it's a tie).
Our bodies make digestive enzymes that break down food into nutrients that we can absorb. “The enzymes are secreted by the digestive tract starting in the mouth, but most digestive enzymes come from the pancreas,” says Kyle Staller, director of the Gastrointestinal Motility Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“This idea that we all have low-level digestive enzyme deficiency or that we could all benefit from a little boost doesn’t fit with our understanding of how the pancreas or enzymes work,” he notes.
Diverticulosis happens when the lining of the colon pokes through the muscles on the outside of the colon, causing pockets that look like indentations. And while diverticulosis is common, it’s mostly inconsequential and asymptomatic. Diverticulitis, however, is a different animal. That’s where one or a couple of the pockets get inflamed, and it can result in pain in the lower abdomen, constipation, or diarrhea.
People with IBS have issues with motility and gut hypersensitivity, so they are more prone to develop symptoms from small doses of FODMAPs. FODMAPs occur in a wide range of foods, and different FODMAPs affect people differently. To figure out which FODMAPs, if any, trigger your symptoms, you have to follow a low-FODMAP diet.
While no studies have tested whether chewing each bite thoroughly—much less, 32 times—prevents GI discomfort, there is reason to make sure you chew your food sufficiently. “Chewing your food thoroughly makes it easier for your stomach to process the food,” explains William Chey, professor of gastroenterology at the University of Michigan.
Nearly all restaurant food is too salty. But if you look closely—and, maybe, customize—you can find dishes that aren’t full of cheese, red meat, sugar, or half a day’s calories...even at Xtreme chains. Here are a few examples.
A typical restaurant meal—with no appetizer, drink, or dessert—can easily hit 1,000 calories. Just what we need! But that’s child’s play compared to our “winners.” Are these eight items the worst in America? Heck no. Are they extreme-worthy? You bet.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest commends the House Education and Labor Chairman for introducing the Healthy Meals, Healthy Kids Act, the House’s Child Nutrition Reauthorization bill. Short of ensuring free school meals for all children, which Congress has tried but failed to do, the bill expands access to free meals for high-need schools and provides additional food assistance to children during the summer.
Haven’t taken a bite out of a perfectly ripe peach yet this summer? What are you waiting for?
It’s not just the intact fiber, vitamins, and minerals you’ll get from peaches—or pretty much any fruit—for not-so-many calories (60 a peach).
Which cancers are deadly over the long run? To find out, scientists tracked common cancers in 13,556 men for 30 years and in 28,448 women for 35 years.