What the evidence says about your body and your plate.
Viral health claims checked against studies, what substances do in the body, and the world's food. Then talk to your real doctor.
Food and health: the studies: all the numbers in one place →
Blood pressure and weight went down in a study of 94 people who stopped for a month. Nobody turned into a wellness influencer, but the results are clear enough to be worth a look.
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A huge study from China linked regular tea drinking to an 11% lower risk of heart and blood vessel disease. But tea drunk "burning hot" went the other way.
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UCLA researchers asked Americans for their go-to comfort foods. Nearly three in four were built to be hard to stop eating, and the top four all were.
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CBN is sold as a gentle, non-habit-forming way to fall asleep. A new University of Connecticut study in mice found the body gets used to it quickly, and misses it when it's gone.
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Almost 88,000 people wore a light sensor on their wrist. Eight years later, the ones who got the least bright daylight were more likely to develop dementia. Here's what that does and doesn't mean.
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A new trial tested the humble wall sit on 100 adults. Three times a week worked best. But even once a week kept most of the benefit, as long as people didn't stop.
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Same cups, same coffee, more calories. Scientists at Tufts looked at what 30,000 American adults put in their coffee from 2003 to 2018. The surprise villain isn't sugar. It's the creamer.
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A glass of wine with dinner, a beer after work. A big new analysis looked at more than 7,200 studies and found that at 14 drinks a week, about 1 in 25 people will die from something alcohol caused. And no, the "one glass is good for your heart" idea didn't survive.
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More than one in five Americans over 60 take omega-3 pills, many of them to keep their memory sharp. Scientists in California tested it properly for two years. The oil reached the brain. The memory didn't improve.
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Yellow, orange and white, shaped like a corn kernel, and covered in a shiny glaze made from an insect. You eat this? Millions do, and the other half of America thinks they're mad.
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Millions take it like a sweet before bed. Doctors looked at the records of 130,828 people with insomnia and found something that made them sit up. Don't panic, but do read the small print.
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The claim: it doesn't matter when you exercise, only how much. A study of students wearing Fitbits suggests that, for deep sleep, how often might matter more.
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Your watch buzzes at 10,000 like it's a medical rule. It isn't. The biggest review of the evidence found most of the benefit comes earlier.
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People who drank the most coffee weighed about the same as everyone else. But inside, their bodies looked different. Here's what it does, and what it doesn't prove.
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First a British grower broke the record. Seven days later a man from Rhode Island smashed it with a 1,431 kg monster, the first pumpkin ever over 3,000 pounds. Here's how you grow a fruit the size of a hatchback.
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A huge US study found no link between how much ultra-processed food people ate overall and bowel cancer. Before you grab the crisps: what's inside the package still matters a lot.
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Canadian researchers scanned the brains of about 9,000 adults and compared them with what they eat. The heaviest ultra-processed eaters had more tiny hidden marks. No panic, but it's worth a read before your next snack run.
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Kratom is a leaf sold in US shops as powders, capsules and drinks. Some products are pumped up with a compound that works like a strong opioid. The US is now putting those in its strictest drug class.
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New World Health Organization figures put dementia in 5th place among causes of death, up from 19th in 2000. Sounds scary. But it's partly because we're living longer. Here's how both are true.
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