GoKawiilA mixed community of bacteria — some of which are found in the gut — imaged using a scanning electron microscope.Steve Gschmeissner/SPL
As the saying goes, you are what you eat. The choices that we make for every meal have a profound impact on our bodies, shaping our short- and long-term health. It might be a decision as simple as having a coffee earlier in the day than usual, choosing mashed potatoes instead of fried ones or a more complex choice, such as giving up meat.
In an era when many of the leading causes of death are linked to diet-related metabolic disorders, such as obesity and diabetes, nutrition research seeks to understand such impacts, and to guide food and dietary choices for improved health outcomes. This round-up examines some of the most interesting and important nutritional-health findings of the past few years.
Morning coffee best for heart health
For millions of people globally, the day starts with a steaming cup of coffee. And for many of those coffee drinkers, it’s the first of several cups consumed throughout their waking hours.
Nature Spotlight: Nutrition
The relationship between coffee consumption and health is unclear, particularly when it comes to having more than three cups a day. To help understand the relationship between coffee intake and health, researchers have investigated whether the timing of coffee consumption throughout the day has any effect on mortality1.
Biostatistician Xuan Wang at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, and co-authors made use of detailed data from 40,725 adults involved in the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a long-term cohort study. They also included data from 1,463 participants in two other US studies, the Women’s Lifestyle Validation Study and the Men’s Lifestyle Validation Study.
The authors found that around one-third of people enjoy their coffee mostly or exclusively before lunchtime, and that less than one-fifth drink coffee throughout the day. The remainder didn’t drink coffee at all.
After adjusting for potential confounding factors — including age, sex, smoking, sleeping habits, conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure and the overall intake of caffeine — researchers found that restricting coffee consumption to the morning was the healthiest option: healthier, even, than forgoing it entirely.
... continue reading