Chicory Coffee  We all know that caffeine during pregnancy is bad for you, so many ditch it completely in favour of alternative coffees so they can be a healthy mum. Unfortunately, chicory – a main ingredient of most replacement coffees – should be avoided during pregnancy. For a healthy alternative, try the Italian no-caffeine option called ‘orzo’ made of pure barley.  Not only is it a delicious substitute for ‘proper’ ground coffee, it’s also healthy in pregnancy: barley contains lots of helpful nutrients for you and your unborn little one, while also being reputed to reduce pregnancy-related water retention — bonus!   Decaffeinated Drinks Many women in pregnancy swap their coffee or tea for a decaf variety, but only some types of decaffeination process are healthy for your pregnancy. Cheap methods sometimes use solvents, which could then end…

Kids, it turns out, are not completely immune to logical explanations or adverse to eating vegetables. Combine these two things, new research indicates, and children are more likely to gamely down their greens. They may not start loving broccoli, but they’ll eat it for nutrition. ScienceDaily dishes: The researchers assigned some preschool classrooms to read nutrition books during snack time for about 3 months, while other classrooms were assigned to conduct snack time as usual. Later, the preschoolers were asked questions about nutrition. The psychologists conducting the study hypothesized that even preschoolers can grasp the concept of nutrition. Explaining why it’s important to eat vegetables, the researchers reasoned, would play into children’s tendency to “want to understand why and how things work,” they told ScienceDaily. It worked. The kids assigned to read about nutrition ate twice as many snack…

Obesity is a complex problem—the result of geography, economics, culture, class, personal choice and personal genetics—and the combination of these factors has led to more than a third of American adults being considered obese. And here’s another factor in this equation: journalist Kristin Wartman writes in the New York Times that new research is showing how diets of pregnant and breast-feeding women can bias their kids towards fatty foods. When expectant or new mom’s fill their diet with junk food, she says,  it can affect their baby’s brain’s chemical reward pathways and set the babies up to seek more of the same. The tastes you grew up with, the researchers say, tend to stick with you. “This early exposure leads to an imprinting-like phenomenon such that those flavors are not only preferred but they take on an emotional attachment,” says psychologist Gary Beauchamp. Pretty much everything…

With national obesity figures on the rise, infant nutrition – specifically the first 1,000 days of life – are ever more important. Science is the key to understanding this critical development period and delivering the products and services needed to provide long-term positive health outcomes. Obesity is arguably one of the greatest threats to life in the 21st century. High calorie meals and ‘fast foods’ are more readily available than ever before, with many ‘healthy’ meals containing high levels of salt, sugar and fat. At the same time consumers’ eating habits are changing, with an increasing trend for quick, on-the-go meals rather than the traditional family meal set-up. Nutrition and diet are now more than mere buzzwords; they are key concerns for the health of the nation. According to the World Health Organisation, diet is one of the…