Choosing Healthy Foods

With no shortage of diets to choose from, picking the best one can be difficult. US News and World Reports recently released their list of top diets as rated by health experts. The results may surprise you. How did they choose? US News consulted a panel of experts in the fields of diet, nutrition, obesity, food psychology, diabetes and heart disease and asked them what they thought of the most popular eating plans. The experts ranked each diet on a variety of factors including overall healthfulness, likelihood of helping you lose weight, how easy they are to follow and how beneficial they are for certain diseases like diabetes or heart disease. Which diets ranked highest? The DASH diet took the top spot for best overall diet followed by the Mediterranean Diet and the relatively new MIND diet. The MIND diet focuses on brain health and combines aspects of the Mediterranean and DASH diets. Plant-based diets scored well overall with the Flexitarian Diet taking the #4 spot overall and the V...

With assistance from Northeastern graduate student Kelli Harvilla We have all encountered our share of fads, whether it was a specific phrase or the following of a boy band, and these things were pretty harmless to our health; however, one type of fad has blown to epic proportions, and has the potential to be harmful – the culprit being fad diets. This type of dieting has opened our eyes to a new world of weight loss, where our hopes and spirits are lifted towards achieving quick and easy results with virtually no work. These "diets" may prove to be successful at first, but how long can it last and what happens when the fad fades away? Fad diets can be defined as weight loss plans that promise successful results in a small amount of time . They may seem to work in the beginning but no long term results are promised, and the weight is quickly gained back most of the time. Not only do these diets promise easy weight loss, but they can also be extremely harmful to your health. I...