There’s an old saying, you are what you eat. If you look at the average Australian diet, we’re in trouble. The rise of the 24/7 society, unsocial work hours and an accelerating pace of life have led the…
Selecting the right mix of foods and preparing them safely doesn’t come naturally to humans – we need to be taught. But lessons about food and nutrition are glaringly absent from the new draft national…
We’re just back from holidays. Nothing fancy, just a trip to post-flood ravaged Queensland: sun, sand, surf and every meal bar breakfast eaten out. But unfortunately, a stroll along the beach, a ramble…
After nearly four years in the making, around 55,000 research publications reviewed, nutrients modelled into food and food groups, independent expert review and several rounds of consultations, the National…
The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) today released its updated Australian Dietary Guidelines to advise Australians about the types and amounts of foods needed to maintain a healthy…
If food is labelled low fat, it’s got to be better for weight loss, right? Wrong – it’s the total kilojoules that matter most for weight loss. Looking solely at fat content only gives you part of the picture…
Forty years ago, British nutritionist John Yudkin wrote a book about sugar. Titled Pure, White and Deadly, Yudkin argued that consumption of sugar, not fat, was driving the epidemic of heart disease. But…
We’ve all heard people sprout the phrase, “go on, you’re eating for two now” at barbecues, dinner parties and wherever food is being served, forcing pregnant women to decline offers of more and more food…
Dairy products are good for the bones, so we’re encouraged to have regular serves of (reduced-fat) milk cheese and yogurt. But can they make asthma and allergies worse? Asthma is a respiratory condition…
While we think of junk food marketing as something that happens during television commercial breaks or on massive billboard signs, supermarkets are yet another advertising frontier for food companies…
Researchers have finally caught up with the wisdom of mothers, who, for decades have been coaxing their children to eat spinach. We know this leafy green is a good source of folate, a very important B…
The federal government is likely to introduce a star system for food packages next year to help consumers make healthier food choices, ABC’s Lateline reported last week. Much like the energy star rating…
Anyone else have the feeling something radical has happened with peanut allergy in the past 30 years? I don’t recall knowing anyone allergic to peanuts or peanut butter as a child in the 1980s, yet today…
The old saying that you should wait at least 30 minutes after eating before you swim is based on the idea that after a big meal, blood will be diverted away from your arms and legs, towards your stomach’s…
Denmark has scrapped the world’s first “fat tax”, which was charged on foods high in saturated fats, after just one year. Plans to introduce a tax on sugar have also been abandoned. In making the announcement…
The cultivated onion, Allium cepa, is a savoury staple of cuisines around the world. Yet slicing up onions all too often leads to tears: you peel off the papery outer skin, start chopping and before long…
Detox diets make amazing promises of dramatic weight loss and more energy – all achieved by flushing toxins from the body. Toxins have very little to do with it; detox diets “work” because of the very…
A couple of weeks back I awoke with a swollen and painful knee. I’ve had problem knees since high school and figured that this was just another chapter in the saga. Some days later I was fed up – my knee…
Australia should consider a healthy food rebate, tax on sugary drinks, and regulated portion sizes argue health experts, as New York pushes ahead with government regulation to address the obesity epidemic…
Branding that’s targeted at children can make healthy food a more attractive option than unhealthy food, according to a new US study. Researchers from Cornell University found that a sticker of the popular…