Health and Nutrition News: September

Every month, I like to make a collection of news stories that revolve around the field of Food Science, Human Nutrition, Vegetarianism, and other Health News. These are studies or reports that are not only super interesting, but also really work to open my mind and remind me that these fields are constantly evolving and finding new information. Click on the links for more info!

As always, there has been more info out to support the idea of doing both cardiovascular/aerobic and resistance training for ideal health. University of Calgary, Faculty of Medicine studied 304 overweight teens in the Ottawa/Gatineau area between the ages of 14 to 18, and found that any type of exercising plus diet was better than just dieting; however, the best results came from those with combined aerobic/resistance plans.

The University of Warwick's Medical School (using data from the Health Survey for England) found that high and low mental wellbeing were consistently associated with an individual's fruit and vegetable consumption. 33.5% of respondents with high mental wellbeing ate five or more portions of fruit and vegetables a day, compared with only 6.8% who ate less than one portion.Surprisingly, alcohol intake and obesity were no correlated with mental health.

Autism may be linked to the amount of iron in the mother's blood during pregnancy: low iron intake was associated with a five-fold greater risk of autism in a study by University of California - Davis Health System. R.J. Schmidt, assistant professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences, says that "Iron deficiency, and its resultant anemia, is the most common nutrient deficiency, especially during pregnancy, affecting 40 to 50 percent of women and their infants,"and furthermore, "Iron is crucial to early brain development, contributing to neurotransmitter production, myelination and immune function. All three of these pathways have been associated with autism." More studies need to be done before the link is confirmed.

In a study on mice, researchers found that adding exercise to chemo-treatment led to a greater reduction of tumors.University of Pennsylvania found that, although it did not benefit their hearts to a great extent, it did lead to tumors shrinking more. How did they test this? Here's a cute image for you: "walking 45 minutes five days a week on mouse-sized treadmills, while the rest of the mice remained sedentary." Mouse-sized treadmills!

University of Missouri and the University of Minnesota have found that youth obesity is negatively correlated to the number of non-motorized recreational outdoor parks. In other words: states with more public lands available for recreation have lower obesity rates. 

These are articles that I find fascinating. If you want to keep up on more news, I suggest going to ScienceDaily, BBC News Health, and EatRight.org. The next news update will be in October.