Omega 3

Dr. Walter Willett is the chair of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. He's also a cow's best friend. Earlier this month, Willett and colleagues, who have studied the link between diet and health for decades, published a study that followed more than 100,000 people over more than 20 years - and found that the amount of red meat they ate was linked to a rise in risk of premature death. The notion that red meat might not be so great for you isn't exactly new, but carnivores cried foul.

There was a time when a cup of kibble and a can of dog food were all that people thought a dog needed for a complete diet. Although that's often still the case, a growing contingent of pet lovers feels that Fido needs to get in on the trend of super-foods. That desire has helped fuel the bottom line of Designing Health, a Valencia-based company started in 1992 by a veterinarian.

Fast-growing salmon. Pork containing heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. These are two examples of products you might see in your local supermarket soon -- animals developed not through conventional breeding but through genetic engineering. On Jan. 15, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration decided how it will regulate genetically engineered animals, for the first time paving the way for such animals or their products to be sold as food and medicine.

In August 2003, when scientists first revealed the life-extending powers of trans-3,4,'5-trihydroxystilbene-- also known as resveratrol -- its earthly form had all the allure of an apple in the garden of Eden. Ruby red, delicately fragrant, shapely in a rounded nest of glass, red wine can deliver as much as 1.5 milligrams of the plant compound resveratrol per four-ounce serving.

The product: Eye supplements are a hot topic of conversation in Kerry Beebe's optometry office in Brainerd, Minn., right up there with the weather and Frances McDormand trivia. "We field questions about vitamins multiple times a day," says Beebe, chairman of the Clinical Care Group for the American Optometric Assn. Patients mainly want to know if vitamins can help save them from macular degeneration, the leading cause of severe vision loss in America.

For 75 years, scientists have documented a curious fact: If rats and mice eat 30% to 40% fewer calories than normal, they live 15% to 40% longer than is typical for their species. The observation has offered humans hope that our own maximum life span could one day be extended, enabling people to live well past their 100th birthday. A new study of monkeys pours cold water on that notion - while at the same time offering some heartening health news. Among a colony of rhesus monkeys tracked for more than 20 years, animals whose calories were restricted to 30% below normal lived no longer, on average, than monkeys whose eating was unrestricted, scientists found.

In a Consumer Reports test of fish oil supplements, most passed muster but some didn't measure up on quality. Lab test results on 15 top brands analyzed for amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, disintegration, spoilage and contaminants. Researchers found that at least one sample from six brands didn't meet all the standards set. The results were released Tuesday and are available on newsstands. Over-the-counter fish oil supplements are extremely popular and used to treat heart disease, high blood pressure and psoriasis and a number of other ailments.

Getting a good grip on your health may mean … getting a good grip. The force you can muster when squeezing an object or a weight doesn't only reveal how strong your hand and arm are. It can be a measure of overall muscle function and — according to one recent study — even portend how long you're likely to live. That's not as nutty as it seems, says Richard Bohannon, a professor of physical therapy at the University of Connecticut. "Grip strength reflects your overall muscle status and a general sense of how much muscle mass you have" he says.

To truly keep the doctor away, it’s going to take more than a handful of red delicious. The fruit and vegetable aisle is a fine place to start your quest to lower cholesterol, but don’t stop there. Keep moving, keep moving....  This week we learned that eating dried apples  can help reduce “bad” cholesterol, or low-density lipoprotein, while raising “good” cholesterol, or high-density lipoprotein – at least when compared to eating dried plums (aka prunes)

The traditional diet in Greece is different from the traditional diet in France is different from the traditional diet in Spain. And while all of these diets are considered Mediterranean, it stands to reason that they don't all provide equal health benefits. So which Mediterranean diet is best? Dr. Artemis Simopoulos, president of the nonprofit Center for Genetics, Nutrition and Health in Washington, D.C., thinks it's the one followed in Greece before 1960. Laying out her case in a 2001 paper, she pointed to the Seven Countries Study, which found that Greece — and specifically the island of Crete — had the lowest heart disease and cancer rates of all seven countries in the study, including Italy.