Health

Every day in the urban slums of Mumbai, hundreds of young children were fed toddler-appropriate porridge, soft curry or fresh-baked goods. For some, these were made of ordinary pearl millet, an ancient grain common in the Indian diet. For others, they were made of a specially bred variety packed with nearly three times the iron and more zinc than typical grain. The difference was largely imperceptible on the palate. But deep in the children’s guts, something meaningful was beginning to happen.

A new study from The Wistar Institute has uncovered an unexpected link between fructose—a common dietary sugar—and the spread of an aggressive form of ovarian cancer. Published in Nature Aging, the study found that cancer cells not killed by chemotherapy send signals to neighboring tumor cells, helping them become more capable of spreading.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is among the leading causes of death worldwide. In South Korea, it is the second-leading cause of death, and its incidence has continued to rise in recent years. CVD places a substantial burden on public health systems, society and the economy while also reducing quality of life. As a result, identifying effective strategies for prevention and management remains a major public health priority.

High blood pressure can be better controlled with a strategy that combines boosting potassium intake with reducing sodium, according to a new report. High blood pressure, or hypertension, affects more than 1.28 billion adults worldwide and is a leading risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Public health guidelines underscore sodium reduction as the best way to reduce hypertension and cardiovascular disease risk.

A father’s diet can affect his children’s health and body composition before they are even conceived. A study of 43 triads of fathers, mothers and newborns treated in the public health care system of Ribeirão Preto in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, demonstrated this. The analysis revealed that the greater the consumption of ultra-processed foods by the fathers, the higher the birth weight and the greater the accumulation of fat in the baby’s thighs and suprailiac region. High birth weight and elevated body fat early in life are risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases in adulthood.

Consuming less sugar in utero and during the first 1 to 2 years of life was associated with a lower risk of developing dementia later in life, according to a study published July 29, 2026, in Neurology. The study also found that lower sugar consumption early in life was associated with a delay in developing dementia. The study does not prove that lower sugar consumption directly prevents dementia; it only shows an association between sugar and dementia risk.

New research from the Guelph Family Health Study (GFHS) has found that circadian rhythm-related genes could influence the risk of obesity in children, highlighting an important connection between sleep and eating behavior.

Plant-based diets are good for you. They promote gut, immune, metabolic and cardiovascular health, in part by cultivating a diverse community of intestinal bacteria. These benefits have long been known to stem partly from the fiber in plant-based foods, which is processed by our commensal gut bacteria, and the often brightly colored “phytochemicals” plants produce to protect themselves from environmental threats. But much remains to be learned about how exactly the bugs in our bellies process the constituents of vegetables to such salubrious effect.

What makes a diet healthy—or not? According to a new study, nutritional quality matters more than processing level when it comes to long-term health.

The simple sentence: “No thanks, I don’t eat meat” can prompt very different reactions, but the question that often follows is: “Why?”