nutrition

Getting the ratio right

A high protein diet appears linked to kidney disease and shortened lifespans for captive polar bears, a relationship similarly suspected in humans, according to a review led by WSU wildlife biologist Charlie Robbins. “Zoos made some assumptions in the past about the nutritional requirements of polar bears because their diet is almost exclusively

Hungry for health

Sociologists and nutrition experts agree: food insecurity is a public health issue. Thinking of food banks and other programs as charity not only stigmatizes recipients but obfuscates the fact that we all pay, in the long run, for one another’s ill health. Whether it’s through increased healthcare costs or loss of economic productivity, not having […]

WSU/UI team to develop national milk conference

A team of researchers from Washington State University and the University of Idaho has received a $50,000 grant from the USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program to organize a national conference in Washington, D.C., on the compositions of bovine and human milk. “Human milk is the only food ever designed by nature […]

McGuire honored for contributions to nutrition education

Shelley McGuire, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences, has been selected to receive the 2018 “Excellence in Nutrition Education Award” from the American Society for Nutrition. She will receive the award, given for “outstanding contributions to teaching nutrition,” at the society’s flagship meeting in Boston this June. For more than two decades, McGuire […]

A mother’s microbial gift

Old assumptions about human breast milk are giving way to new thinking about microbes in milk and their role in children’s health and our immune systems. It happened again, most recently at a conference in Prague. After she gave her talk, a scientist came up to Shelley McGuire, a pioneer exploring the microbial communities found […]

Plant inner workings point way to more nutritious crops

Almost every calorie that we eat at one time went through the veins of a plant. If a plant’s circulatory system could be rejiggered to make more nutrients available – through bigger seeds or sweeter tomatoes – the world’s farmers could feed more people. Washington State University researchers have taken a major step in that […]