diet

As much as you might like to believe that eating bacon cheeseburgers three times a day (no buns) will magically transform you (buns included) into a sizzling piece of meat, the no-carb diet infomercials are, shall we say, fraught with problematic claims. Anyone who can think rationally can probably figure that out, but anyone who does dive into the carb-free zone might, as it turns out, lose his or her ability to figure things out in general.

Dear EarthTalk: My body doesn't tolerate cheese well. Are there dairy-free cheeses that will be easier on my constitution and better for the environment, too? -- Steve Sullivan, Seattle, WA

With some 30 to 50 million Americans suffering from various degrees of lactose intolerance, and an estimated three million of us now eating animal-free (vegan) diets for humane, environmental, and/or health reasons, the production of alternatives to dairy products has started to become big business.

Finally, the scientific finding every man has been waiting to hear: carbo-loading on doughnuts optimizes your lifespan and makes you sexually potent. Too bad the research only applies to crickets (so far . . . ).

Given that Americans drink billions of gallons of diet soda every year, it comes as little surprise that one of the most popular articles abuzz on the New York Times Web site is about the potentially waist-thickening effects of diet soda. The article highlights a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Minnesota who scrutinized the dietary intake of 9,514 volunteers ages 45 to 64 over the course of nine years. The Times honed in on the effects of diet soda: specifically, drinking one can of the stuff each day can increase the risk of developing metabolic disorder, a scary collection of risk factors including increased waist circumference, high blood pressure and low levels of good cholesterol, by 34 percent.

But the same study also came to an even more depressing conclusion: that consuming a healthy diet dominated by fruits and vegetables does nothing to reduce the risk of contracting chronic disease.