Health

While U.S. adults report a high level of awareness of the term “ultraprocessed foods,” most do not fully understand what the term refers to, according to recent public opinion research commissioned by the American Heart Association. The findings reinforce the need for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to release the long-awaited federal definition of ultraprocessed foods (UPFs).

Infants born to mothers who ate a healthy, Mediterranean-style diet during pregnancy were at lower risk for colic and eczema, according to a new study by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. The researchers also found that regularly consuming seafood during pregnancy helped lower an infant’s risk for these conditions.

Choosing healthy fats is an important part of healthy eating. And that’s good news for a lot of reasons. Fats can add flavor and great texture to foods, boosting our enjoyment. They can help us feel fuller longer, so we don’t get too hungry between meals. And, if we choose certain types of fats, they can do all that—plus be really good for us.

A study from the Institute of Nutrition and Translational Research in Metabolism (NUTRIM) at Maastricht University Medical Center in Maastricht, the Netherlands, has found that longer-term consumption of unsalted, skin-roasted peanuts can benefit insulin responsiveness in the brains of older adults. The findings are published in Food & Function.

In general, people who eat a healthy diet give themselves a significantly better chance of avoiding some major diseases than those who don’t. The Nordic diet, also known as a northern version of the Mediterranean diet, is a healthy, sustainable way of eating based on traditional foods of countries like Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. It includes plant foods and berries, whole grains, low-fat dairy products and fatty fish.

Vaccination is one of the most important tools for preventing infectious diseases and protecting public health. However, immune responses after vaccination vary dramatically from person to person: If you give many people the exact same vaccine, some will experience side effects such as fever and flulike symptoms while others feel fine.

Two major international studies are providing new insight into how human milk is regulated, showing that some components respond to maternal nutrition, while others remain stable or reflect biological processes involved in lactation and infant growth.

Gut health and muscle health are often thought of as separate concerns. The first brings to mind eating fiber and probiotics, while the other centers on exercise and protein.

The 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee weighed the available evidence on dietary patterns associated with the risk of cognitive impairment and dementia but said there were not enough data to make a recommendation. In response, a new paper by U.S. and European researchers addresses ambiguities across studies and harmonizes key data to shed light on how different diets may shape cognitive performance, executive function and dementia.

While the adult obesity rate appears to be slowing in the United States, childhood obesity remains historically high, affecting nearly 1 in 5 school-age children. Many efforts to address this persistent health crisis have urged children to make multiple lifestyle changes at once—such as increasing physical activity, improving diet and getting more sleep—but these interventions are often difficult to implement and unrealistic for children and families to sustain.