By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

I was bummed to hear that I'd never get to try the cicada ice cream being served up at Sparky's, a Columbia, Missouri, ice cream shop. It sold out pretty quickly when Sparky's debuted it, last week and then just as quickly vanished on Tuesday when the ice cream store pulled it from the menu.

Turns out, the Sparky's owners didn't feel comfortable keeping the cicadas -- which were collected from employees' backyards -- as an ingredient after local public health officials told them they didn't have enough information regarding safe cooking temperatures for the critters.

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By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

A new research finding could help parents and public health specialists deal with one of the more troubling conundrums of the new millennium: how to keep teens from getting fat. The study, published today in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, found that girls who followed basic principles of the Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet through their teens had a smaller tendency to gain an excess amount of weight by the time they reached early adulthood than teens who didn't stick to this diet.

The DASH diet centers around high consumption of low-fat dairy products, fish, chicken, and lean cuts of beef, as well as nuts, fruits, whole grains, vegetables, and legumes. This is the diet that’s recommended by the US government in its dietary guidelines, says study author Dr. Jonathan Berz, an assistant professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. "And I absolutely think this highlights what we felt in our gut is true -- that it can prevent extra weight gain over time."

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By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

Bean sprouts are likely to blame for the E. coli outbreak in Germany that has so far killed 22 people and sickened more than 2,200, though that won't be confirmed until lab tests are completed later today, the Associated Press reports.

How worried should you be about the "super-toxic" strain of bacteria? Not much -- at least from the German sprouts. The US Food and Drug Administration said that our country hasn't imported any sprouts from Germany since at least last October. And in a press release issued Friday the agency said it "believes that this outbreak has not affected the U.S. food supply."

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By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

Last week, the federal government chucked the confusing food pyramid and embraced a plate icon in an effort to get Americans to eat healthier. The plate is divided into four sections, with fruits and vegetables on one half and protein and grains on the other. A circle for dairy -- indicating a glass of milk or container of yogurt -- rests to the right of the plate.

This week's challenge: Get your plate to look like the one above. Also be selective within those food groups aiming for low-fat dairy and lean cuts of beef instead of full-fat choices. And make sure at least half of your grains are whole-grains like whole-wheat bread or brown rice. Eat sweets sparingly. And check out the government's MyPlate website to get more details.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

In an effort to simplify the message it gives the public on healthy eating, the federal government today unveiled a new icon to replace the complicated and confusing food pyramid: It's a plate divided into four sections, with fruits and vegetables on one half and protein and grains on the other. A circle for dairy -- indicating a glass of milk or container of yogurt -- rests to the right of the plate.

"The new icon is simple and easy to understand, with more emphasis placed on fruits and vegetables," said U.S. Surgeon General Regina M. Benjamin in a statement . It's designed, she said, to "help individuals and families make healthier meal choices."

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By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

Our appetite and hunger levels may be as much a product of our minds as our stomachs, suggests a new finding from Yale University researchers. The study was small -- only 46 participants -- but intriguing; it found that that levels of the "hunger hormone" ghrelin are partly controlled by how many calories we think we're eating, not only how many we're actually consuming.

In the study published in the May issue of Health Psychology, volunteers ages 18 to 35 were asked to drink an "indulgence" milk shake on one occasion with 620 calories and 30 grams of fat listed on its label and, on a separate occasion, to drink a "sensi-shake" labeled as containing140 calories and no fat. ln actuality, both shakes were identical and contained 380 calories. Nevertheless, participants experienced a steeper rise in ghrelin levels in anticipation of the indulgence shake and a sharper decline after they drank it compared with the sensible shake.

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By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

First it was the Happy Meals. Now it's Ronald the clown who's the target of public health workers' efforts to get McDonald's to stop marketing its fast food to kids. NPR blogger Scott Hensley writes in this post that the nonprofit group behind this effort -- Corporate Accountability International -- originally went after Joe Camel. Ronald McDonald in the same camp as Joe Camel? Ouch.

"The rise of health conditions like diabetes and heart disease mirrors the growth of your business – growth driven in large part by children’s marketing," reads the group's open letter to McDonald's CEO that was signed by hundreds of healthcare providers including the Massachusetts Public Health Association, Dr. Hans-Olov Adami, chair of epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health, and Dr. Caroline M. Apovian, director of the Nutrition and Weight Management Center at Boston Medical Center.

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By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

It's nice when sinful foods turn out to be not so sinful, and coffee has been earning high marks lately on the nutrition front -- to the point that some are now calling it a health food. Adding to the growing evidence is a study published yesterday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, which found that drinking copious amounts may reduce the risk of dying from prostate cancer.

"Those in the study who drank one to three cups of coffee a day had a 30 percent lower risk of lethal prostate cancer," says study author Kathryn Wilson, an epidemiologist at Harvard School of Public Health. "The ones who drank six cups a day had a 60 percent lower risk."

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By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

With all the disappointment over prescription weight loss drugs, the search has been on for the best diet plan. You know, the one that gets you to your goal weight (and keeps you there) while still letting you eat whatever you want.

Okay, that's pure fantasy, but some plans work better than others, according to a new diet plan ranking released today by Consumer Reports.

Jenny Craig came out of top -- primarily because a two-year study published last October in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 92 percent of participants were able to stick with a Jenny Craig program for two years while maintaining an average weight loss of more than 8 percent of their initial body weight.

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By Deborah Kotz and Kay Lazar, Globe Staff

Three months after the federal government urged most Americans to sharply cut their salt intake, a new study questions whether the recommendation will benefit those without high blood pressure. The finding from Belgian researchers, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, indicates that healthy people who eat the least amount of sodium don’t have any health advantage over those who eat the most. In fact, they had slightly higher death rates from heart disease.

The findings are likely to add fuel to an already heated debate over public health guidelines regarding salt consumption. Eating less salt has been shown to modestly lower blood pressure in people with hypertension, but more than a dozen studies since the mid-1990s have reached conflicting conclusions about whether lowering salt intake helps healthy people avoid high blood pressure and its serious consequences: heart disease, stroke, and kidney failure.

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