Nutrition bites

Green eating

Mixed diets offer the best balance of environmental and health outcomes, say University of Tokyo researchers. The “dish-level” study analysed data on 45 popular multi-ingredient dishes in Japan rather than looking at broad food categories such as red meat. It found a mixed diet strikes a balance between a good nutritional outcome and low carbon footprint. While beef or fish-based dishes tend to have a higher carbon footprint, plant-based ingredients sometimes fail to meet daily nutritional requirements.

Pick and choose

Some strategies parents use to provide young children with a balanced, nutritious diet may be counterproductive, a University of Michigan study suggests. A poll of nearly 1100 parents found one in eight required children to eat everything on their plate, more than half said children must try some of everything and less than a third withheld dessert if meals went unfinished. But this can encourage eating when you’re overfull, the researchers say. Although recognising that the standard US diet was high in saturated fats, sugars and refined carbs, few parents employed healthy alternatives such as the Mediterranean diet.

How big is your pretzel?

The size of an individual snack not only influences how fast a person eats it, but also how much of it they eat, according to a new study from Penn State University. The team of food scientists investigated how the size of pretzels influenced the eating behaviour of 75 adults. They found people ate larger pretzels more quickly and with larger bites. But while people ate smaller pretzels more slowly, and ate less overall, they still had a higher intake of sodium. − Listener staff