BEST DIET : LOSE WEIGHT WITH BEST TRICK

Correction Appended: Aug. 27, 2012

The sustainable food movement is sweeping the country. Farmer’s markets, organic produce, genetically modified foods, cage-free eggs — they’ve all become part of the cultural lingo. While a lot of this conversation focuses around whether organic foods are better for people’s health, let’s not forget that these trends are also good for the planet. Read on to learn about the 33 environmentally friendly eating habits that are making a difference for our bodies and our earth.

At the store:

1. Reuse it. Bring a reusable bag on your next shopping trip, and you’ve already helped out the planet. The U.S. alone uses about 100 billion new plastic bags each year, and (brace yourself) this massive production costs 12 million barrels of oil. Worldwide, only about 1% of plastic bags are recycled — which means that the rest end up in landfills, oceans or elsewhere in the environment. Why does it matter? Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, but light exposure can degrade them enough to release toxic polymer particles — most of which end up in the ocean. Approximately 1 million birds and 100,000 turtles and other sea animals die of starvation each year after ingesting after ingesting discarded plastics and other trash debris, which block their digestive tracts. And public agencies spend millions of dollars on litter clean-up each year. (In case you’re wondering, paper bags aren’t much better. Each year, 14 million trees are cut down to make paper shopping bags via a process that requires even more energy than the making of plastic bags.)

2. Strip down. Look for products with minimal packaging, like unwrapped produce or meat straight from the deli counter or butcher. Excess packaging is often made out of unsustainable materials and contributes to waste that ends up in landfills. Perhaps the worst culprit is polystyrene (a.k.a. Styrofoam), which is a suspected carcinogen and is manufactured through an energy-intensive process that creates hazardous waste and greenhouse gases.

3. Don’t buy the bottle. Millions of tons of plastic are used to produce billions of plastic water bottles each year. Save money and lessen waste by drinking tap water from a reusable water bottle. Worried about your health? Try a water filter, or take courage from the fact that a lot of bottled water is likely no better than what’s on tap.

4. Shop different. Choose to give your money to stores that demonstrate care for the planet, both in their company practices and in the food selections they provide. Look for a selection of local and organic foods as well as store practices that limit waste (think doors on the refrigerated sections so that energy isn’t wasted, minimal and/or recyclable packaging and a store-wide recycling program).

Produce:

5. Go local. Eating locally grown foods is possibly the best way to lower your carbon footprint when it comes to what you eat. Bonus: Eating locally means that food will be fresher — and therefore taste better and perhaps retain more nutrients — than food shipped across the globe.

6. Eat more of it. Eat more produce than any other food category, and you’ve already made an impact for the planet (not to mention your body!).

7. Go organic. The definition of organic can be a little confusing, but food labels can help. Certified organic foods are grown and processed using farming methods that recycle resources and promote biodiversity, without the use of synthetic pesticides, bioengineered genes or petroleum- or sewage-sludge-based fertilizers. (Weird. Who wouldn’t want their food grown in sewage sludge?) Though their benefits to the environment have a long-term payoff, organic foods can be pricier — if you’re on a budget, find out which foods are most worth buying organic, and limit your organic purchases to the ones that make the biggest impact.

8. Eat it raw. Chomp down on a raw carrot instead of boiling or sautéing it, and save energy that would otherwise have been used to power cooking appliances.

9. Eat in season. Seasonal nomming allows you to eat locally — and we’ve already covered how important local purchasing is for the environment. Check out what’s growing nearby right now.

10. Preserve it. Want to eat more locally, but love to eat strawberries year-round? Learn how to preserve fruits and vegetables so you can eat locally grown produce all year long (it’s bound to impress Grandma, too).

11. Grow it. You don’t need to live in the wild to grow your own fruits and veggies. Join a community garden, or, if you’re cramped for space, create a vertical garden right inside your window.

12. Get some community support. Not into the idea of growing your own? Consider joining a CSA (short for community supported agriculture), which allows you to reap the benefits of locally grown produce without getting your hands dirty.

Meat:

13. Eat less of it. Industrially farmed meat has the greatest impact of any food product on the environment. In addition to the tips outlined below, consider making meat less of a staple in your diet. Can’t give up the stuff? Try going meat-free for just one day per week (or one meal per week if you’re really attached).

14. You guessed it: buy local. We’ve said it before and we’re saying it again: buying local is a great way to cut down on the environmental impact of your food. Just imagine how much energy it would take to haul a side of beef from, say, New Zealand, in comparison to transporting it from the local butcher shop.

15. Go organic. When it comes to meat, the definition of “organic” changes a little. Obviously, chickens aren’t grown in the soil, nor are they (we hope!) conventionally grown with pesticides. Rather, organic livestock must have access to the outdoors and cannot be supplemented with antibiotics or growth hormones.

16. Be anti-antibiotics. It’s common practice these days to feed growth-producing antibiotics to animals raised for meat, but this results in health risks for the animals — and, by extension, the people who eat them.

17. Go out to pasture. Pasture-raised livestock make less of a negative environmental impact. They’re also treated more humanely than their industrially raised counterparts.

Seafood:

18. Look for the label. Figuring out how to buy sustainable seafood is tough: turns out “wild caught” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s environmentally friendly, after all, while some farmed fish are. The easiest way to sort through all the confusion is to look for the label of the Marine Stewardship Council, which guarantees that a product has successfully met requirements for sustainability.

19. Know your fish. Check out these guides to figure out which fish are least endangered and most likely to be farmed sustainably, and use them to guide your buying decisions.

20. Be a patriot. Buy U.S. caught or farmed fish. It’s as close as you can get to buying “local” when you live in a land-locked state, and it also means that the product has had the chance to be reviewed by the Marine Stewardship Council, so you have a better sense of the conditions under which the fish were caught.

21. Try something new. Instead of eating the ever-popular Alaskan salmon along with everybody else at the restaurant, expand your diet and distribute your impact by trying different varieties of fish. Check out these alternatives to some of our fishy favorites — you might even find a variety that you like more than tuna. In the process, you’ll reduce the risk of endangering key species.

Dairy:

22. Be hormone-free. (Wouldn’t that have made adolescence easier…) Just as livestock raised for consumption are often pumped full of antibiotics, dairy cows are often fed artificial hormones to up their milk production. This has big health impacts for the cows, the people who consume their milk and other dairy products, and the environment (manure lagoons sure don’t sound like a good thing to us). Industrial dairy production is also linked to massive greenhouse gas emissions. Luckily, hormone-free dairy products are readily available.

23. Surprise! Go local. As always when buying local, you’ll be reducing the distance that food must travel — and the energy it takes to do so — on its way to your plate.

24. Go organic. It’s better for the environment and for your body.

25. Cut back. The production of one pound of cheese might produce upwards of 11 lbs. of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas emitted by human activities and a big driver of climate change. As with meat, you can quickly lessen your environmental impact simply by eating less dairy. Bonus: eliminating common staples from your diet one or two days a week is a chance to experiment with fun new recipes.

At a restaurant:

26. Order from the tap. Cut down on packaging; ask for tap water instead of bottled. Likewise, save the beer bottle and order on tap.

27. Eat local. Just because you’re not at the farmer’s market doesn’t mean the market’s bounty isn’t available to you. More and more restaurants are incorporating locally sourced items into their menus.

28. Don’t be afraid to ask. There’s no shame in asking your server or a manager how your food was grown or processed (though it’s probably best not to take it to this extreme).

Eating at home:

29. Reduce waste. Use cloth napkins and real plates, bowls and utensils.

30. Turn waste into a resource. If you’ve got the inclination and a little bit of free time, give composting a try and turn food scraps into a resource that keeps on giving.

31. Revamp leftovers. Instead of dumping leftovers in the trash, turn them into new meals. It’ll reduce waste and also save on the energy it would have taken to cook a different meal the next day.

32. Double your recipes. Leftovers will last twice as long, and you’ll use less energy than you would if you cooked multiple meals.

33. Cook one local meal per week. Challenge yourself to cook one meal a week (or month) that is composed completely of local ingredients. Get some friends in on the action and revel in doing something good for your health and the health of the planet.

Do you practice any of these habits on a regular basis? Have we missed any? Share your strategies for eating well for the planet in comments!

Correction: The original version of this story stated that approximately 1 million birds and 100,000 turtles and other sea animals die of starvation each year after ingesting plastic bags, which block their digestive tracts. However, any product that is littered — not just plastic bags — can pose a threat to wildlife. The story has been updated to reflect that fact.

Greatist is the fastest-growing fitness, health and happiness start-up. Check out more tips, expert opinion and fun times at Greatist.com.

Correction Appended: Aug. 27, 2012

The sustainable food movement is sweeping the country. Farmer’s markets, organic produce, genetically modified foods, cage-free eggs — they’ve all become part of the cultural lingo. While a lot of this conversation focuses around whether organic foods are better for people’s health, let’s not forget that these trends are also good for the planet. Read on to learn about the 33 environmentally friendly eating habits that are making a difference for our bodies and our earth.

At the store:

1. Reuse it. Bring a reusable bag on your next shopping trip, and you’ve already helped out the planet. The U.S. alone uses about 100 billion new plastic bags each year, and (brace yourself) this massive production costs 12 million barrels of oil. Worldwide, only about 1% of plastic bags are recycled — which means that the rest end up in landfills, oceans or elsewhere in the environment. Why does it matter? Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, but light exposure can degrade them enough to release toxic polymer particles — most of which end up in the ocean. Approximately 1 million birds and 100,000 turtles and other sea animals die of starvation each year after ingesting after ingesting discarded plastics and other trash debris, which block their digestive tracts. And public agencies spend millions of dollars on litter clean-up each year. (In case you’re wondering, paper bags aren’t much better. Each year, 14 million trees are cut down to make paper shopping bags via a process that requires even more energy than the making of plastic bags.)

2. Strip down. Look for products with minimal packaging, like unwrapped produce or meat straight from the deli counter or butcher. Excess packaging is often made out of unsustainable materials and contributes to waste that ends up in landfills. Perhaps the worst culprit is polystyrene (a.k.a. Styrofoam), which is a suspected carcinogen and is manufactured through an energy-intensive process that creates hazardous waste and greenhouse gases.

3. Don’t buy the bottle. Millions of tons of plastic are used to produce billions of plastic water bottles each year. Save money and lessen waste by drinking tap water from a reusable water bottle. Worried about your health? Try a water filter, or take courage from the fact that a lot of bottled water is likely no better than what’s on tap.

4. Shop different. Choose to give your money to stores that demonstrate care for the planet, both in their company practices and in the food selections they provide. Look for a selection of local and organic foods as well as store practices that limit waste (think doors on the refrigerated sections so that energy isn’t wasted, minimal and/or recyclable packaging and a store-wide recycling program).

Produce:

5. Go local. Eating locally grown foods is possibly the best way to lower your carbon footprint when it comes to what you eat. Bonus: Eating locally means that food will be fresher — and therefore taste better and perhaps retain more nutrients — than food shipped across the globe.

6. Eat more of it. Eat more produce than any other food category, and you’ve already made an impact for the planet (not to mention your body!).

7. Go organic. The definition of organic can be a little confusing, but food labels can help. Certified organic foods are grown and processed using farming methods that recycle resources and promote biodiversity, without the use of synthetic pesticides, bioengineered genes or petroleum- or sewage-sludge-based fertilizers. (Weird. Who wouldn’t want their food grown in sewage sludge?) Though their benefits to the environment have a long-term payoff, organic foods can be pricier — if you’re on a budget, find out which foods are most worth buying organic, and limit your organic purchases to the ones that make the biggest impact.

8. Eat it raw. Chomp down on a raw carrot instead of boiling or sautéing it, and save energy that would otherwise have been used to power cooking appliances.

9. Eat in season. Seasonal nomming allows you to eat locally — and we’ve already covered how important local purchasing is for the environment. Check out what’s growing nearby right now.

10. Preserve it. Want to eat more locally, but love to eat strawberries year-round? Learn how to preserve fruits and vegetables so you can eat locally grown produce all year long (it’s bound to impress Grandma, too).

11. Grow it. You don’t need to live in the wild to grow your own fruits and veggies. Join a community garden, or, if you’re cramped for space, create a vertical garden right inside your window.

12. Get some community support. Not into the idea of growing your own? Consider joining a CSA (short for community supported agriculture), which allows you to reap the benefits of locally grown produce without getting your hands dirty.

Meat:

13. Eat less of it. Industrially farmed meat has the greatest impact of any food product on the environment. In addition to the tips outlined below, consider making meat less of a staple in your diet. Can’t give up the stuff? Try going meat-free for just one day per week (or one meal per week if you’re really attached).

14. You guessed it: buy local. We’ve said it before and we’re saying it again: buying local is a great way to cut down on the environmental impact of your food. Just imagine how much energy it would take to haul a side of beef from, say, New Zealand, in comparison to transporting it from the local butcher shop.

15. Go organic. When it comes to meat, the definition of “organic” changes a little. Obviously, chickens aren’t grown in the soil, nor are they (we hope!) conventionally grown with pesticides. Rather, organic livestock must have access to the outdoors and cannot be supplemented with antibiotics or growth hormones.

16. Be anti-antibiotics. It’s common practice these days to feed growth-producing antibiotics to animals raised for meat, but this results in health risks for the animals — and, by extension, the people who eat them.

17. Go out to pasture. Pasture-raised livestock make less of a negative environmental impact. They’re also treated more humanely than their industrially raised counterparts.

Seafood:

18. Look for the label. Figuring out how to buy sustainable seafood is tough: turns out “wild caught” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s environmentally friendly, after all, while some farmed fish are. The easiest way to sort through all the confusion is to look for the label of the Marine Stewardship Council, which guarantees that a product has successfully met requirements for sustainability.

19. Know your fish. Check out these guides to figure out which fish are least endangered and most likely to be farmed sustainably, and use them to guide your buying decisions.

20. Be a patriot. Buy U.S. caught or farmed fish. It’s as close as you can get to buying “local” when you live in a land-locked state, and it also means that the product has had the chance to be reviewed by the Marine Stewardship Council, so you have a better sense of the conditions under which the fish were caught.

21. Try something new. Instead of eating the ever-popular Alaskan salmon along with everybody else at the restaurant, expand your diet and distribute your impact by trying different varieties of fish. Check out these alternatives to some of our fishy favorites — you might even find a variety that you like more than tuna. In the process, you’ll reduce the risk of endangering key species.

Dairy:

22. Be hormone-free. (Wouldn’t that have made adolescence easier…) Just as livestock raised for consumption are often pumped full of antibiotics, dairy cows are often fed artificial hormones to up their milk production. This has big health impacts for the cows, the people who consume their milk and other dairy products, and the environment (manure lagoons sure don’t sound like a good thing to us). Industrial dairy production is also linked to massive greenhouse gas emissions. Luckily, hormone-free dairy products are readily available.

23. Surprise! Go local. As always when buying local, you’ll be reducing the distance that food must travel — and the energy it takes to do so — on its way to your plate.

24. Go organic. It’s better for the environment and for your body.

25. Cut back. The production of one pound of cheese might produce upwards of 11 lbs. of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas emitted by human activities and a big driver of climate change. As with meat, you can quickly lessen your environmental impact simply by eating less dairy. Bonus: eliminating common staples from your diet one or two days a week is a chance to experiment with fun new recipes.

At a restaurant:

26. Order from the tap. Cut down on packaging; ask for tap water instead of bottled. Likewise, save the beer bottle and order on tap.

27. Eat local. Just because you’re not at the farmer’s market doesn’t mean the market’s bounty isn’t available to you. More and more restaurants are incorporating locally sourced items into their menus.

28. Don’t be afraid to ask. There’s no shame in asking your server or a manager how your food was grown or processed (though it’s probably best not to take it to this extreme).

Eating at home:

29. Reduce waste. Use cloth napkins and real plates, bowls and utensils.

30. Turn waste into a resource. If you’ve got the inclination and a little bit of free time, give composting a try and turn food scraps into a resource that keeps on giving.

31. Revamp leftovers. Instead of dumping leftovers in the trash, turn them into new meals. It’ll reduce waste and also save on the energy it would have taken to cook a different meal the next day.

32. Double your recipes. Leftovers will last twice as long, and you’ll use less energy than you would if you cooked multiple meals.

33. Cook one local meal per week. Challenge yourself to cook one meal a week (or month) that is composed completely of local ingredients. Get some friends in on the action and revel in doing something good for your health and the health of the planet.

Do you practice any of these habits on a regular basis? Have we missed any? Share your strategies for eating well for the planet in comments!

Correction: The original version of this story stated that approximately 1 million birds and 100,000 turtles and other sea animals die of starvation each year after ingesting plastic bags, which block their digestive tracts. However, any product that is littered — not just plastic bags — can pose a threat to wildlife. The story has been updated to reflect that fact.

Greatist is the fastest-growing fitness, health and happiness start-up. Check out more tips, expert opinion and fun times at Greatist.com.

 “It’s easy to quit smoking,” Mark Twain supposedly said. “I’ve done it hundreds of times.”

Something similar could be said of losing weight: It’s relatively easy to drop a few pounds, but keeping them off is much trickier. That explains why so many people fall into the classic pattern of yo-yo dieting, in which they lose weight, gain it back, lose it again, and so on.

A new study from researchers at Stanford University may point the way toward breaking out of this cycle. Weight loss might be more lasting, the study suggests, if dieters get the hang of certain healthy habits—such as eating mindfully and taking brief walks—before actively trying to lose weight.

The study, which appears in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, included 267 mostly obese women who were randomly split into two groups. Half of the women began a weight-loss regimen immediately. The other half eventually followed the same regimen, but first went through an eight-week program in which they fine-tuned their lifestyle and learned to stabilize their weight.

Health.com: Little Ways to Drop the Pounds and Keep Them Off

Both groups of women ultimately slimmed down by the same amount—roughly 17 pounds, on average (or 9% of their initial body weight). But over the course of the following year, the women who participated in the eight-week program regained an average of just 3 pounds, compared to 7 pounds in the other group.

“They cut that regain in half,” says lead author Michaela Kiernan, a senior research scientist at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, in Palo Alto, Calif.

The dieting portion of the study lasted 20 weeks and featured all of the hallmarks of conventional weight-loss programs. Women met weekly with a trained instructor, kept food journals, exercised more, and followed a healthy diet focused on fruits and vegetables.

Health.com: Best Superfoods for Weight Loss

The eight-week lead-in program was unusual by comparison. Not only were the women instructed not to lose weight, but they were also told to gain it back if they did. This was designed to teach the women how to recognize and control the normal 3- to 5-pound fluctuations that occur even among people of healthy size, Kiernan says.

In addition, the women learned to control portion sizes, savor their meals, and identify healthy substitutes for their favorite high-calorie foods. To accustom the women to the ups and downs that go with dieting, the researchers even encouraged them to periodically indulge in a less-than-healthy food (like chocolate), and gave them a five-day pass—meant to simulate a vacation—during which they could eat high-calorie, high-fat foods.

“We purposely designed the study so they would do this before they lost weight,” Kiernan says. “They could see and experience what it was like, and thus obtain a sense of mastery without the pressure of having to maintain a weight loss at the same time.”

Health.com: Diet Crutches: What Works, What Doesn’t

Focusing on weight-maintenance skills before worrying about weight loss seems to have created a “teachable moment” for the study participants, says Linda Stockman, a weight-loss coach at Scott & White Healthcare, in Temple, Texas.

Often, dieters who successfully lose weight “get really excited by the weight loss, go off to enjoy it, and gain it back,” says Stockman, who was not involved in the study. “That eight weeks is a kind of cognitive behavioral approach, where they try things and experience things. And that’s the only way to get people to change their belief systems.”

The training program also may have fostered a sense of accountability and resolve heading into the weight-loss phase, says Lindsey Battistelli, manager of the weight management center at Henry Ford Health System, in Wyandotte, Mich.

“It takes effort to maintain a weight loss,” Battistelli says. “You can’t go back to doing what you were doing before. You can let yourself indulge here and there, as long as you’re willing to have it as part of a compromise.”

Health.com: Willpower Secrets From the Pros

Although the new findings are promising, Kiernan and her coauthors say their program will need to be tested in different populations. Most of the participants were white, college-educated women, making it difficult to extrapolate the findings to other women or to men.

Longer studies also are needed. Even the study participants who gained back relatively little weight tended to do so towards the end of the one-year study period, which may indicate the first signs of a relapse that wasn’t fully registered in the results, Kiernan notes.

 “It’s easy to quit smoking,” Mark Twain supposedly said. “I’ve done it hundreds of times.”

Something similar could be said of losing weight: It’s relatively easy to drop a few pounds, but keeping them off is much trickier. That explains why so many people fall into the classic pattern of yo-yo dieting, in which they lose weight, gain it back, lose it again, and so on.

A new study from researchers at Stanford University may point the way toward breaking out of this cycle. Weight loss might be more lasting, the study suggests, if dieters get the hang of certain healthy habits—such as eating mindfully and taking brief walks—before actively trying to lose weight.

The study, which appears in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, included 267 mostly obese women who were randomly split into two groups. Half of the women began a weight-loss regimen immediately. The other half eventually followed the same regimen, but first went through an eight-week program in which they fine-tuned their lifestyle and learned to stabilize their weight.

Health.com: Little Ways to Drop the Pounds and Keep Them Off

Both groups of women ultimately slimmed down by the same amount—roughly 17 pounds, on average (or 9% of their initial body weight). But over the course of the following year, the women who participated in the eight-week program regained an average of just 3 pounds, compared to 7 pounds in the other group.

“They cut that regain in half,” says lead author Michaela Kiernan, a senior research scientist at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, in Palo Alto, Calif.

The dieting portion of the study lasted 20 weeks and featured all of the hallmarks of conventional weight-loss programs. Women met weekly with a trained instructor, kept food journals, exercised more, and followed a healthy diet focused on fruits and vegetables.

Health.com: Best Superfoods for Weight Loss

The eight-week lead-in program was unusual by comparison. Not only were the women instructed not to lose weight, but they were also told to gain it back if they did. This was designed to teach the women how to recognize and control the normal 3- to 5-pound fluctuations that occur even among people of healthy size, Kiernan says.

In addition, the women learned to control portion sizes, savor their meals, and identify healthy substitutes for their favorite high-calorie foods. To accustom the women to the ups and downs that go with dieting, the researchers even encouraged them to periodically indulge in a less-than-healthy food (like chocolate), and gave them a five-day pass—meant to simulate a vacation—during which they could eat high-calorie, high-fat foods.

“We purposely designed the study so they would do this before they lost weight,” Kiernan says. “They could see and experience what it was like, and thus obtain a sense of mastery without the pressure of having to maintain a weight loss at the same time.”

Health.com: Diet Crutches: What Works, What Doesn’t

Focusing on weight-maintenance skills before worrying about weight loss seems to have created a “teachable moment” for the study participants, says Linda Stockman, a weight-loss coach at Scott & White Healthcare, in Temple, Texas.

Often, dieters who successfully lose weight “get really excited by the weight loss, go off to enjoy it, and gain it back,” says Stockman, who was not involved in the study. “That eight weeks is a kind of cognitive behavioral approach, where they try things and experience things. And that’s the only way to get people to change their belief systems.”

The training program also may have fostered a sense of accountability and resolve heading into the weight-loss phase, says Lindsey Battistelli, manager of the weight management center at Henry Ford Health System, in Wyandotte, Mich.

“It takes effort to maintain a weight loss,” Battistelli says. “You can’t go back to doing what you were doing before. You can let yourself indulge here and there, as long as you’re willing to have it as part of a compromise.”

Health.com: Willpower Secrets From the Pros

Although the new findings are promising, Kiernan and her coauthors say their program will need to be tested in different populations. Most of the participants were white, college-educated women, making it difficult to extrapolate the findings to other women or to men.

Longer studies also are needed. Even the study participants who gained back relatively little weight tended to do so towards the end of the one-year study period, which may indicate the first signs of a relapse that wasn’t fully registered in the results, Kiernan notes.

A study shows that not all good fats are the same when it comes to protecting your health.

For decades, the message about fats has been relatively simple — reduce the amount of oils and fats you eat from animal and dairy products (less red meat and cheese) and substitute them with healthier fats from plants or fish (olive oil, omega-3 fatty acids). The difference came down to the specific type of fats that make up these foods — animal and dairy fats tend to be saturated, which means all of the free bonds available in a chain of carbon atoms are bound to hydrogen atoms, while plant fats are unsaturated, meaning some of carbon atoms have double bonds with each other. Saturated fats are more likely to build up within artery walls and form plaques that can trigger heart attacks.

But in the latest study on fats published in the BMJ, researchers found convincing evidence that not all plant fats are created equal and that linoleic acid, or omega-6 fatty acids, may be associated with a higher risk of early death from any cause, as well as increased risk of heart disease and death from heart-related conditions.

The study is actually a reanalysis of data that had not been included in the original publication of results from the Sydney Diet Heart Study, a trial that was conducted from 1966 to 1973. For more than three years, researchers at the time followed 458 men aged 30 to 59 years old who had a history of heart disease; about half were told to replace the saturated fats they consumed from animal and dairy sources with omega-6 linoleic acid, which is commonly found in safflower oil or margarines made from it. The other half were not told to change their diet in any way. When that study was published in 1978, researchers noted an increased risk of early death from any cause among the omega-6 group, but did not break down the data by what caused the deaths.

(MORE: Study: ‘Good’ Fats Even Better for the Heart Than We Thought)

So Dr. Christopher Ramsden, a clinical investigator at the National Institutes of Health, who was interested in understanding the effects of linoleic acid on heart health, contacted one of the original authors and reviewed data that had not been included in the study. This information involved deaths from heart-related causes, and the new analysis showed that the omega-6 group had a 17% higher risk of dying during the study period from heart disease, compared with 11% among the control group.

The American Heart Association (AHA) currently recommends that people replace 25% to 35% of their daily saturated-fat intake with foods containing unsaturated fats, such as canola and olive oils. The AHA further breaks down the unsaturated-fat advice by suggesting that people devote about 5% to 10% of their daily calories to foods containing linoleic acid. The recommendation is based on a review of the available data.

(MORE: Study: Eating Omega-3s May Help Reduce Alzheimer’s Risk)

The latest results, however, raise questions about that advice. Ramsden says the findings provide some refined understanding of unsaturated fats, which come in different chemical forms that may have varying benefits or risks. “I wouldn’t necessarily say that the [current advice] is necessarily completely wrong,” he says. “What happened is that in the 1960s all polyunsaturated fats were considered the same. They were grouped together under one mechanism of being able to lower blood-cholesterol levels. Then, over the ensuing decades, it became clear as science progressed that there were multiple types of polyunsaturated fats, and these compounds potentially have distinct biochemical and health effects.”

There has been some evidence to suggest that omega-6 fatty acids, for example, may trigger inflammation, a condition that is linked to an increased risk of heart problems, while omega-3 fatty acids, found in deepwater fish like salmon, tend to inhibit inflammatory reactions. Ramsden says the results highlight the need to study dietary ingredients in more detail, rather than lumping them together and assuming they have the same effect on the body.

(MORE: Can Olive Oil Help Prevent Stroke?)

Recognizing that need, the AHA says it is considering re-evaluating all its dietary recommendations, and will make the issue of polyunsaturated fats part of this assessment. Reviewing the dietary advice as a whole is important, says Alice Lichtenstein, a spokesperson for the association, since changes in one area could have unexpected, and potentially harmful, effects on other eating habits. When health organizations advised people to lower their intake of saturated fats, for example, many replaced the fats with carbohydrates, which can increase risk of diabetes and lead to higher levels of another type of fat in the blood, triglycerides. “One of the things we learned is that we need to look at the whole picture,” says Lichtenstein. “Just looking at one individual component puts undue emphasis on that component, and may lead to unanticipated consequences. We need to look at dietary patterns rather than individual nutrients or individual food components.”

Whether the association will change its advice about consuming linoleic acid isn’t clear yet, but Ramsden says the results of the latest study “could have important implications” for the way people eat if they want to stay heart-healthy.

Parents who exert too much control over what their children eat may not be doing their adolescents any favors when it comes to controlling the youngsters’ weight, according to the latest study.

Researchers report in the journal Pediatrics that pressure from parents to clean plates or to restrict eating high-calorie foods such as sweets and sugared sodas may not help teens to maintain a healthy weight.

(MORE: Want to Live Longer? Don’t Try Caloric Restriction)

The analysis included two studies of 2,231 students, with an average age of 14 years old in Minnesota, and 3,500 parents. The scientists assessed how moms and dads influenced their teens’ eating habits by rating their responses to statements such as, “My child should always eat all of the food on his or her plate” or “If my child says, ‘I am not hungry,’ I try to get him or her to eat anyway.” The parents also provided their views on statements such as, “If I did not guide or regulate my child’s eating, he or she would eat too much of his or her favorite food.”

Overall, parents of obese children were most likely to report that they needed to make sure their kids were not eating too many high-fat and sugary foods, while parents of nonoverweight kids were more likely to think their adolescents should eat all the food on their plate at each meal. Dads were more likely to pressure their kids to clean their plates, and adolescent boys tended to be pushed more than girls to eat more.

While such attention to children’s eating habits is certainly laudable, and parents are presumably guided by the best intentions, the results suggest that overly restrictive supervision of eating habits could backfire since such excessive control could actually increase, rather than reduce teens’ weight. Changing perceptions of normal weight may be playing a role in some of the parental pressure, while ballooning portion sizes may actually make some of the clean-plate advice unhealthy for adolescents. “I was surprised at some of the parent behaviors, like feeling that their children should clean their plates and not waste food,” study author Katie Loth, a registered dietician, doctoral candidate and research assistant at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, told HealthDay. “In the 1950s, cleaning your plate meant something different. Portion sizes have gotten bigger over time, and if you encourage kids to rely on environmental indicators, like how much food is on their plates or the time of day, they’ll lose the ability to rely on internal cues to know whether they’re hungry or full.”

(MORE: Treat Yourself: Eating Dessert at Breakfast Can Aid Weight Loss)

In addition, he says, parents who impose eating habits on their children may be doing their youngsters a disservice since they discourage the teens from learning how to respond to their own hunger signals. Instead, the youngsters may use metrics such as cleaning their plate, regardless of how many calories weigh it down, or cutting out certain foods entirely, which studies show could lead people to compensate and even overeat by seeking more calories from other, potentially unhealthy foods.

The best advice? It’s a familiar refrain, but the scientists recommend that parents allow their children to eat all foods in moderation, and adopt other practices known to maintain healthy weights, like making sure there is a good supply of healthy foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grain snacks in the house, and eating dinner as a family in order to teach children the importance of eating a diverse menu of foods in moderate amounts. While they seem simple, setting such an example of good eating habits may do more for keeping adolescents at healthy weights than more intrusive restrictions or rules about what and when to eat.

There’s nothing like a furry red creature with a big nose to add a dash of excitement to the churn of bureaucracy. Elmo bounded into the White House kitchen earlier this week and talked turkey with hunky assistant presidential chef Sam Kass (Elmo calls him “Mr. Sam”) to mark the passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which aims to boost the nutrition and taste quotient found in school lunchrooms.

Elmo: Elmo’s a little worried. Elmo’s mommy told him he’s going to go to school and eat lunch in school.

Kass: So why are you worried? That’s great!

Elmo: Because what if there isn’t any good food at school?

Kass: Oh, Elmo, there’s going to be great food in school. And because of this new law that’s passed, we’re going to make sure that all food in school is healthy, nutritious and delicious.

Elmo: Really? (Here, the monster sounds incredulous. It is, in fact, quite a pledge. School lunches are not renowned for their healthiness, nutritiousness or deliciousness. Earlier this year, my kindergartener and second-grader begged to buy lunch at school. Tacos were on the menu, and they love tacos. Well, turns out they didn’t love school-lunch tacos; actually, they hated them. Their flirtation with school-lunch buying ended as quickly as it began. Fortunately, they have a choice. But many millions of kids who qualify for free or reduced school meals don’t.) (More on Time.com: More Muppets? The New ‘Superfoods’ Want Kids to Eat Healthy)

President Obama, who signed the legislation this week at a Washington, D.C., school, explained his support in terms of making sure “our kids have the energy and the capacity to go toe to toe with any of their peers, anywhere in the world. And we need to make sure that they’re all reaching their potential.”

What’s all this talk about capacity and potential got to do with the Sloppy Joes served up by the school cafeteria? More than 31 million U.S. children participate in school lunch programs. With the economy reeling, some of these kids get their only meals at school. Consider that one of every three kids in America qualifies as overweight or obese, and it’s not hard to see why breakfast and lunch eaten at school can make a big difference when it comes to many schoolchildren’s diet.

Both Democrats and Republicans hope the child nutrition bill will result in healthier food selection in school cafeterias and help teach kids about proper nutrition. It also aims to give the government the authority to set nutritional standards for all foods regularly sold in schools during the school day, including vending machines, and offers additional funding to schools that offer more nutritious meals. (More on Time.com: Study: 40% of Kids’ Calories Come From Solid Fat and Sugar)

First Lady Michele Obama, who has mounted a public campaign against childhood obesity, commented that “we can all agree that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, all children should have the basic nutrition they need to learn and grow and to pursue their dreams, because in the end, nothing is more important than the health and well-being of our children.  Nothing.”

But back to Elmo. The preschooler is incredulous when he hears that Kass intends to show him some examples of the kind of food he can expect to find in the school lunchroom. (More on Time.com: Mom and Consumer Group Sue McDonald’s For Luring Kids with Happy Meal Toys)

Elmo: Mr. Sam has the same kind of food that they have at school here at the White House?

Kass: I do.

Elmo: Well, that’s very convenient. (Elmo does a great job of saying this tongue-in-cheek.)

Kass whips out a few plates of appetizingly prepared and perfectly balanced meals — whole-wheat lasagna and salad, rice-and-bean burritos, garnished with apples and carrots.

If it’s good enough for the White House, apparently, it’s good enough for our public schools. Or is it the other way around?

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Exercising willpower is certainly an important technique for losing weight. But according to James Hill, executive director of the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center at the University of Colorado, you can’t rely on it as an inexhaustible resource.

“You only have a certain amount of it, and it’s gone,” Hill tells CNN Health.

The trick is to recognize that willpower is finite, and plan ahead of time how to get through “fattening” moments. If you know you’ll be tempted by all the free treats at a party, for instance, don’t arrive famished — eat a protein bar beforehand to keep yourself from eating too much once you arrive. If you’re worried that you’ll return from a trip to Italy carrying extra weight in cannolis, enlist help from your friends. You don’t have to skip dessert entirely — just make sure you share with your companions.

For the full article on ways to outwit your “fat moments,” head over to CNN Health.

More on TIME.com:

Want to Lose Weight While You Do Nothing? Try Exercising First

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Calorie Counts on Menus: Apparently, Nobody Cares

Americans quaff nearly 10 billion gallons of bottled water each year, in large part because they assume, wrongly, that it’s healthier and safer than tap water. Somewhat surprisingly, the data has suggested, underserved black and Latino families tend to spend more money than whites do on bottled water, and provide it exclusively for their kids.

While previous research has shown that minorities use bottled water more often than whites, the question has always been, why? A new study in the Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine aimed to find out, by surveying 632 parents, 32% of whom were Latino, 33% African American, and 35% white.

(More on TIME.com: The USDA Ditches the Food Pyramid for a Plate)

The study’s authors, from the department of pediatrics at the Medical College of Wisconsin, report that African American and Latino parents were three times more likely to give their children bottled water exclusively, compared with white parents. When questioned about their habits, minority parents reported that that they thought bottled water was cleaner, safer, healthier, more convenient and better tasting than tap.

In fact, the study author’s note, bottled water may be prone to bacterial contamination. A National Resources Defense Council investigation found that 17% of bottled waters had bacterial loads that were considered unsafe; 22% were tainted with enough chemicals, including arsenic, that they wouldn’t pass the strictest state standards.

What’s more, data have associated bottled water with diarrheal illness in kids: a 2010 study found that 45% of children who sought treatment for severe diarrhea drank only bottled water. And kids who use bottled water exclusively in place of tap may not get enough exposure to fluoride, which can affect their oral health. (It’s worth noting, too, that about one-quarter of all bottled waters are actually just tap water, repackaged — regardless of the pure mountain spring on the label.)

Overall, bottled water use was high, the current survey found, with 45% of parents saying their kids drank primarily or exclusively from bottled sources (broken down by ethnicity, more than 20% of Latino and black parents used only bottled water, compared with 10% of white parents). Factors like household income or previous residence outside the U.S. — where in many places bottled water may actually be healthier and cleaner than municipal sources — weren’t associated with bottled water consumption.

(More on TIME.com: Teens Don’t Need Sports and Energy Drinks, Pediatricians Say)

Indeed researchers found that families with lower incomes were more likely to buy bottled water: white families reported spending an average 0.4% (or about $12 a month) of their household income on bottled water, while African American and Latino families spent an average 1% (or $20 a month) of their incomes. Further, 12% of African American respondents and 14% of Latino respondents reported having to sacrifice other goods in order to afford their bottled water habit.

“The disproportionate use of bottled water by poor and minority families may contribute to health disparities,” write the authors. “Despite these perceptions about the safety and health effect of bottled water, there is little if any objective evidence that in most circumstances there is any actual health benefit of bottled water over tap water in the United States.”

(More on TIME.com: Cafeteria Cams Track Students’ Calorie Consumption at School)

Given the high cost and health consequences of consuming exclusively bottled water, the researchers hope their efforts will lead to public education campaigns about water from the tap: it’s free, it’s healthy and it usually even tastes good.

As summer comes to a close, so does BBQ season. That’s a good thing for your health, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which finds that consumption of red and processed meat — including summer cook-out favorites like hot dogs, hamburgers and pork ribs — is associated with an increased risk of Type 2 diabetes.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health analyzed data on 200,000 men and women who participated in the long-term Health Professionals Follow-Up Study and the Nurses’ Health Studies. They also conducted a larger analysis, which included data from other previously published studies, looking at a total of 442,101 participants, 28,228 of whom developed Type 2 diabetes during the study period.

After adjusting for contributing risk factors like age, weight, exercise habits, smoking, genetic predispositions and other dietary factors, the researchers found a strong association between eating red meat, particularly processed meat, and risk of Type 2 diabetes.

MORE: How to Make a Healthy Diet More Affordable

Among their findings:

• Each 2-oz. serving of processed meat, including hot dogs, bacon, salami and other cold cuts, per day accounted for a 51% increase in diabetes risk

• A 3.5-oz. serving of unprocessed red meat, such as hamburger, steak, pork or lamb, per day was linked to a 19% increase in risk of diabetes

• Replacing one serving per day of red and processed meats with healthier options, such as nuts, whole grains and low-fat dairy, accounted for a 16% to 35% reduction in diabetes risk

The researchers weren’t sure exactly why red meat may contribute to diabetes risk, but senior author Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), hypothesized that the high amount of heme iron in red meat could be responsible; iron helps prevent anemia, but the Western diet contains an iron overload, and high levels of iron in the body have been associated with Type 2 diabetes.

NEXT: “Red meat is not benign”

Feeding babies cereal, bread and crackers, which are high in sodium, may trigger a yearning for salt that lasts a lifetime, according to a new study that examined when and why people start hankering for the taste of salt.

The research is important because health authorities around the globe have been calling for people to reduce their sodium intake, which has increased over the last 50 years. But despite the public-health pronouncements, persuading people to shun salt hasn’t been successful. “We are built to like salt,” says Leslie Stein, a senior research associate at Monell Chemical Sciences Center, a nonprofit research institute in Philadelphia that studies the mechanisms and functions of taste and smell.

In fact, humans need salt to survive — just not as much as we’re eating. The average American consumes 3,436 mg of sodium a day, more than double the government’s recommended daily maximum. Sodium helps maintain blood pressure, send nerve messages and plays a role in muscle contraction. But too much has been linked to high blood pressure, a risk factor for heart disease and stroke.

Most of the salt we consume is in processed foods — bread has lots of salt, as do cereal and cakes, cheese and meat, and, of course, snack foods. Researchers know people like salt, but they don’t know why. Scientists understand the mechanism of sweet and bitter taste receptors, but they don’t have a good grasp of how salt taste receptors work. And while babies come out of the womb with a built-in preference for sweet and a strong aversion to bitter, it appears that they are indifferent to salty for the first few months of life.

MORE: Cutting Back on Salt: How Low Is Too Low?

To try to puzzle it out, Monell researchers studied 61 infants from the Philadelphia area at 2 months, then again at 6 months of age. At both points, they gave the babies three bottles, each containing water; a 1% salt solution, which mimics the saltiness of chicken noodle soup; or a 2% salt solution, which is the equivalent of doubling that bowl of chicken noodle soup’s saltiness.

The babies were given two minutes to drink out of each bottle. To assess each infant’s affinity for salt, researchers compared how much salt solution they drank compared to plain water. If they drank more of the salty bottles, they were categorized as preferring the salt solution; if they drank less, they were classified as rejecting it. Babies who drank the same amount of water or salty liquid were described as indifferent.

At 2 months of age, researchers found that babies were indifferent to the 1% solution and flat-out rejected the 2% mixture. But by 6 months, some appeared to have developed a taste for salt. Babies who had already begun eating starchy, sodium-packed morsels like Cheerios and bread in the interim showed a preference for both salty solutions, while babies who had stuck to baby food and low-salt foods like fruits and vegetables did not, according to the research, which was published this week in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. “Dietary experience can influence babies’ preference for salty taste,” says Stein, the study’s lead author.

The results don’t prove that early introduction of starchy table foods causes a later preference for salt; they show only an association between the two. But, if they hold up, the findings suggest that parents may have an easy way to reduce kids’ risk of becoming salt fiends later on.

MORE: To Salt or Not to Salt? Study Questions the Benefits of Reducing Dietary Sodium

To back up their findings in the infants, Stein circled back with 26 babies once they became preschoolers. Within that group, 12 had been introduced to starchy table foods before they were 6 months old, and 14 had not.

Mothers were asked about “salt-directed behaviors”: did their kids put salt on unusual foods like oranges? Were they likely to lick salt off foods such as pretzels before eating them? Moms with children who’d started on starchy foods before they were 6 months old were more likely than the other group to report that their kids liked to consume plain salt by licking it off, for example.

The small study is far from the last word on children’s sodium intake. But it does offer some food for thought: perhaps the public-health campaign to reduce salt intake may need to start in childhood and even infancy. “It might be a guide for parents about how to introduce their children to healthy foods,” says Stein.

Bonnie Rochman is a reporter at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @brochman. You can also continue the discussion on TIME‘s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.