Now there's a new reason to grab a glass of milk when you're on diet, suggests a new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. In a 2-year weight loss study, milk drinkers had an advantage over those who skipped the milk. Israeli researchers found that adults who drank the most milk (nearly 2 glasses per day) and had the highest vitamin D levels at 6 months, lost more weight after 2 years than those who had little or no milk or milk products nearly 12 pounds weight loss, on average.

Scientists at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (SFBR) in San Antonio have found a gene that causes high levels of bad cholesterol to accumulate in the blood as a result of a high-cholesterol diet.

9 new projects aimed at uncovering links between diet and health and worth a total of 4M are announced today by a public-private partnership of three research councils (BBSRC, EPSRC and MRC) and 13 food and drink companies. The new projects tackle issues such as reducing fat content or proportion of saturated fat in food, fortification with bioactive compounds including Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and antioxidants and increasing the dietary fibre in white bread.

Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) are launching a groundbreaking new project to investigate the benefits of broccoli in the fight against osteoarthritis.Initial laboratory research at UEA has found that a compound in broccoli called sulforaphane blocks the enzymes that cause joint destruction in osteoarthritis the most common form of arthritis.

The research, unveiled at a press conference today (14 September 2010), shows that the watercress compound is able to interfere with the function of a protein which plays a critical role in cancer development.