Every ten minutes in Australia someone has a heart attack. For 17% this will be fatal; the rest get a second chance. If you have had a close call, these five food tips will help get your health back on…
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…
Coca Cola has begun carefully rolling out its green-labelled “Life” brand, filling its iconic hour-glass bottles with a new fizzy drink which has nearly a third fewer calories than Coke Original. It is…
Jeremy Hunt’s announcement that minimum standards for NHS hospital food will be introduced in England is about time. Whereas the NHS in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have had food standards for…
Rats are very useful for studying human eating behaviour. Both rats and humans are omnivores, and both use flavour conditioning – learning through taste and experience which foods are good to eat and which…
Amanda Lee, Queensland University of Technology and Deanne Minniecon, Queensland University of Technology
We’ve recently seen some encouraging improvements in closing the gap on Indigenous disadvantage: better educational outcomes, higher child immunisation rates, more health checks, and a 35% drop in the…
If you believe cancer is a disease that strikes from nowhere with little in your control to prevent it, you’d be mistaken on both counts. Most cases of cancer are considered preventable by positive nutrition…
The evolution of diet is intimately linked to human evolution: from the use of tools to break nuts, collect insects or hunt game, to the use of fire allowing more calories to be extracted from the food…
There are claims that cooking destroys nutrients and enzymes found in food, and that eating raw, uncooked foods must be better for you. But it’s not that simple and, as Tim Crowe explains, a pure raw-food…
Gluten intolerance covers a range of gut problems caused by ingesting proteins found in wheat, barley, rye and in some cases, oats. The three main groups affected are those with a direct sensitivity to…
Working out what are the healthiest options in the supermarket can be a difficult job, especially when food labels are often designed to trick you into thinking they’re healthier than they are. We asked…
The findings of a study from researchers at UCL suggested we should be eating seven different portions of vegetables and fruit a day, rather than the five as currently recommended. But it’s clear that…
When it comes to weight loss, there are no magic tricks that guarantee success. What works for you is likely to be different to what works for your partner, neighbour or workmate. The best advice is to…
“The optimist”, wrote American fantasy fiction writer James Branch Cabell, “proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.” Reading about the global food…
Almost everyone who has tried to lose weight has tasted the bitter pill of failure. That feeling you get when, despite all your desires to be healthier, to fit into sassier clothes or to shimmy through…
“Eat your five-a-day” is a health slogan that has been kicking around since the 1980s. The UK government made it an official campaign in 2003. But understanding the exact benefits (and harms) that our…
The debate over saturated fat is hotting up: new scientists, intelligent laypeople, anthropological observers, and clinical practitioners, have all noticed that eating fat seems to do little harm – and…