(Source: NIH/National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute) A diet low in fat could reduce the risk of ovarian cancer in healthy postmenopausal women, according to new results from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Dietary Modification Trial. Researchers found that after four years, women who decreased the amount of dietary fat they consumed were 40 percent less likely to develop ovarian cancer than women who followed normal dietary patterns. As expected, no effect was found during the first four years because preventive benefits on cancer often take many years to develop. Ovarian cancer affects about 1 in 60 U.S. women in their lifetimes and has the highest mortality of all cancers of the female reproductive system.

The WHI Dietary Modification clinical trial followed 48,835 healthy, postmenopausal women for an average of 8.1 years to test whether a low-fat diet would reduce the risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease. Nearly 20,000 women in the intervention group were counseled to decrease fat intake to 20 percent of calories and to replace calories from fat with calories from vegetables, fruits, and grains. The control group (nearly 30,000 women) received diet-related education materials only.

(Source: Cornell University) The "health halos" of healthy restaurants often prompt consumers to treat themselves to higher-calorie side dishes, drinks or desserts than when they eat at fast-food restaurants that make no health claims, according to a series of new Cornell studies. The research, published in the October online version of the Journal of Consumer Research, found that many people also tend to underestimate by 35 percent just how many calories those so-called healthy restaurant foods contain.

"We found that when people go to restaurants claiming to be healthy, such as Subway, they choose additional side items containing up to 131 percent more calories than when they go to restaurants like McDonald's, that don't make this claim," says Brian Wansink, author of "Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think" (Bantam 2006) and the John S. Dyson Professor of Marketing and of Applied Economics and director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab.

(Source: Cornell University)  A low-fat vegetarian diet is very efficient in terms of how much land is needed to support it. But adding some dairy products and a limited amount of meat may actually increase this efficiency, Cornell researchers suggest. This deduction stems from the findings of their new study, which concludes that if everyone in New York state followed a low-fat vegetarian diet, the state could directly support almost 50% more people, or about 32% of its population, agriculturally. With today's high-meat, high-dairy diet, the state is able to support directly only 22% of its population, say the researchers.

A diet rich in antioxidant vitamins and minerals does not seem to prevent the degenerative eye disease known as age related macular degeneration, finds a study published in the British Medical Journal. Age related macular degeneration is the leading cause of visual loss in older people. It is caused by the progressive break down of light sensitive cells in the macula, located in the centre of the retina at the back of the eye. Sufferers do not go blind, but find it virtually impossible to read, drive, or do tasks requiring fine, sharp, central vision. Risk increases with age and smokers are thought to be more susceptible.