A tasty vegetarian salad could be the fresh meal that fuels a space flight to Mars, a new study contends. Researchers came up with the salad while searching for the optimal “space meal” that would supplement prepackaged foods on long voyages between planets. The salad contains soybeans, poppy seeds, barley, kale, peanuts, sweet potato, and sunflower seeds, according to a report in the journal ACS Food Science & Technology. These ingredients meet male astronauts’ special nutritional needs and can be grown in space, the researchers said. Astronauts in space burn more calories than humans on Earth do, researchers said in background notes. They also require extra nutrients like calcium to stay healthy during extended periods of weightlessness. Previous efforts have explored ways to grow food in space, but no specific fresh meals have been developed for future space travel, noted senior researcher Volker Hessel, a professor of sustainable chemical engineering at the University of Adelaide in Australia. For this study, researchers assessed combinations of fresh ingredients that could be grown in space because they require less water, fertilizer, time and area. They also considered whether inedible portions of the grown foods could be recycled onboard a spaceship. After settling on their space salad, the researchers whipped one up and subjected it to an Earthbound taste test for four people. One tester raved about the salad,…  read on >  read on >

You may think that artificial sweeteners can help you lose some weight, but a new study finds they are no good for your gut’s microbiome. People who use aspartame (Equal), sucralose (Splenda), saccharin (Sweet’N Low), or stevia leaf extract tended to have intestinal bacteria colonies that differed significantly from those of people who didn’t use sugar substitutes, researchers found. They had less rich colonies of bacteria in their small intestines or, even worse, higher levels of bacteria that churn out harmful toxins. “Artificial sweeteners are not benign for the microbiome of the gut,” said study author Dr. Ruchi Mathur, a professor and endocrinologist with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. More than 140 million Americans use artificial sweeteners to lower their sugar intake, researchers said in background notes. However, concerns have been raised that sugar substitutes don’t help with long-term weight loss and might be tied to increased risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, researchers said. The gut microbiome plays a key role in a person’s health, and diet can influence the makeup of these bacteria in significant ways. So, in a controlled study, researchers analyzed the microbial diversity of the small intestines in people who used artificial sweeteners, including nine who used aspartame and 35 who used other sugar substitutes. They compared the gut microbiome of those patients to a group of…  read on >  read on >

A diet laden with omega-3 fatty acids found in nuts and oily fish might help slow the progression of pulmonary fibrosis, researchers report. Pulmonary fibrosis is a relentless, potentially fatal disease where lung tissue scars and hardens over time. Often tied to smoking, the illness impairs lung function so that patients become short of breath, weak and disabled. The new study was led by Dr. John Kim, a pulmonary and critical care expert at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and UVA Health, in Charlottesville. His team tracked the health of 300 patients with interstitial lung disease — the class of respiratory ailments that includes pulmonary fibrosis. Most had “idiopathic” pulmonary fibrosis (meaning the exact cause of the illness is unknown) and most were men (males are more prone to the disease). Blood tests were taken to gauge each patient’s dietary intake of omega-3 fatty acids. The team found that “higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids were predictive of better clinical outcomes in pulmonary fibrosis,” Kim said in a university news release. Specifically, people with higher levels of the nutrient had lungs that were better able to exchange carbon dioxide and oxygen — a process necessary to life. They also were better able to survive without needing a lung transplant, the study found. “These findings were consistent whether [or not] you had a history of…  read on >  read on >

Folks who habitually add an extra sprinkle of salt to their meals are doing no favors for their kidneys, new research confirms. The finding held even after researchers accounted for other health issues, such as being overweight, not exercising or smoking and/or drinking. The bottom line: “Adding salt to foods is associated with increased risk of chronic kidney disease in the general population,” concluded a team led by Dr. Lu Qi, of Tulane University’s Obesity Research Center, in New Orleans. Qi and his colleagues recently published studies showing that adding salt to meals upped people’s odds for heart disease, type 2 diabetes and shortened life spans. However, links between table salt and the odds of kidney disease in the general population hadn’t been well-researched, Qi’s group noted. To remedy that, they analyzed data on more than 465,000 people, averaging 56 years of age, who didn’t have kidney disease when they registered for a British health database known as the UK Biobank. Participants’ health and lifestyle were tracked from 2006 to 2023. According to the researchers, over 22,000 cases of kidney disease emerged over the study period. Compared to folks who never or rarely added salt to their food, people who did so had a higher odds of developing kidney trouble. The risk rose with the frequency at which people said they used table salt. For…  read on >  read on >

New research suggests the effects of high blood pressure during pregnancy may be long-lasting. Researchers found that women who developed high blood pressure during pregnancy had tell-tale signs of abnormal heart structure and function up to a decade later. “This study helps to clarify that, for some women, pregnancy is not just a ‘stress test’ that unmasks underlying cardiovascular risks,” said senior author Dr. Susan Cheng, director of the Institute for Research on Healthy Aging in the cardiology department at Cedars-Sinai’s Smidt Heart Institute in Los Angeles. “This risk may also affect the heart years after pregnancy.” Her team looked at more than 5,000 Hispanic women who had at least one pregnancy and identified those who had disorders during pregnancy such as gestational high blood pressure, preeclampsia or eclampsia. After accounting for other risk factors that might lead to early signs of heart disease, researchers reported that heart images showed persistent problems in about 14% of participants who had high blood pressure problems during pregnancy. They included thicker heart walls, abnormalities in the left ventricle and weakened pumping compared to women who had also been pregnant but had no related high blood pressure disorder. “This study confirms the results of others and demonstrates that women who experience a hypertensive disorder during their pregnancy are more likely to have lasting changes in the structure and function…  read on >  read on >

In preliminary findings, Swedish researchers say taking a cholesterol-lowering statin could also slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. The study can’t prove cause-and-effect, but might pave the way to a trial that could confirm such a link, said study author Sara Garcia-Ptacek, an associate professor of neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. The study was observational, meaning that it was a look at past data, not a gold standard “prospective” trial. The Swedish team analyzed data on 15,500 people diagnosed with dementia who also had heart issues suggesting that they might benefit from using a statin. About 11,000 of them did go on to use a statin. Tracked for three years, “people with Alzheimer’s dementia treated with statins had better cognitive development over time,” Garcia-Ptacek said in an institute news release. That was true “even though they were more likely to have diagnoses such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, all of which are risk factors for dementia,” she added. However, the findings, published Dec. 20 in the journal Alzheimer’s Research and Therapy, remain preliminary.   “The results of the study do not mean that we now have evidence that people with dementia should be treated with statins,” Garcia-Ptacek stressed. “But on the other hand, we can’t see any support for not doing so. So, if a person needs statins for high…  read on >  read on >

At least 251 cases of lead poisoning linked to tainted fruit puree pouches have now been reported in 34 states, U.S. health officials said. That’s up from 205 cases reported in the last weekly tally, the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention noted in its latest update. States reporting new cases to CDC now include Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia. Exactly how many cases have been reported in each state is unclear because the CDC has withheld state-specific counts, pointing to patient privacy, CBS News reported. The median age for cases in the investigation “is nearly 2 years old,” a CDC spokesperson told CBS News, though reports have come in for children as old as 9. Federal officials have urged state health departments to seek out cases of lead poisoning, which could be missed if children who ate the lead-tainted applesauce don’t get blood tests from their doctor for the toxic metal. AustroFoods, which makes the now-recalled WanaBana, Weis and Schnucks brand cinnamon-flavored applesauce pouches, said Monday it will reimburse customers for up to $150 for lead tests. Meanwhile, the FDA reported earlier this month that cinnamon samples gathered at a facility…  read on >  read on >