TUESDAY, Jan. 6 (HealthDay News) -- Eat less, weigh less.

While it may sound painfully obvious, nutrition experts have been divided over whether cutting calories leads to long-term weight loss, because the practice can sometimes boomerang, triggering binge eating and weight gain.

But, new research suggests that eating less can pay big dividends, particularly as you age.

Publishing in the current issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion, researchers from Brigham Young University reported that the middle-aged women they studied had more than twice the risk of significant weight gain if they didn't cut back on food consumption.

"Some suggest that restrained eating is not a good practice," BYU professor Larry Tucker, the study's lead author, said in a university news release. "Given the environmental forces in America's food industry, not practicing restraint is essentially a guarantee of failure."

The researchers followed 192 middle-aged women for three years and compiled information on their lifestyles, health and eating habits. The analysis revealed that women who didn't practice more restraint while eating were 138 percent more likely to put on 6.6 pounds or more, the news release said.

Columbia University researcher Lance Davidson, who was not involved with the study, said the findings underscore a key principle of weight control.

"Because the body's energy requirements progressively decline with age, energy intake must mirror that decrease or weight gain occurs," Davidson said. "Dr. Tucker's observation that women who practice eating restraint avoid the significant weight gain commonly observed in middle age is an important health message."

Tucker said the benefits of cutting back on what you eat aren't limited to your reflection in a mirror. Healthful eating equals better health, he said.

"Weight gain and obesity bring a greater risk of diabetes and a number of other chronic diseases," he said. "Eating properly is a skill that needs to be practiced."

Tucker offers these tips for better eating:

• Record what you eat and how much.
• Put less food on your plate.
• Eat more fruits and vegetables. The U.S. food pyramid recommends at least five servings each day.

More information

To learn more about growing older and eating better, visit the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

SUNDAY, Jan. 4 (HealthDay News) -- An apple a day while you're pregnant may indeed keep the doctor away. But the real beneficiary could be your unborn child.

Recent research suggests that when moms-to-be eat apples during pregnancy, their offspring have lower rates of asthma.

And, mothers who consume fish during pregnancy may lower their child's risk of developing the allergic skin condition called eczema.

"There are influences that occur in utero that can have lasting impact," said Dr. Jennifer Appleyard, chief of allergy and immunology at St. John Hospital and Medical Center in Detroit. "More and more, we're finding influences for later health develop earlier than we anticipated."

More than 20 million Americans have asthma, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and about 6.2 million of those are children.

Eczema is an allergic condition that makes the skin dry and itchy. It's most common in babies and children and is sometimes called atopic dermatitis.

Dutch researchers recently followed 1,253 children from before birth to age 5. Their mothers completed food questionnaires during their pregnancies, and their children's health was assessed with a symptom questionnaire. The children's diets were also assessed.

Women who consumed the most apples during pregnancy -- more than four a week -- had children who were 37 percent less likely to have ever wheezed than children of mothers who had the lowest consumption of apples during pregnancy. Additionally, youngsters born to apple-loving moms were 46 percent less likely to have asthma symptoms and 53 percent less likely to have doctor-confirmed asthma than those whose mothers shunned the fruit.

The mechanism behind apples' apparent protective effect needs further study, but may have something to do with the flavonoids and other antioxidants contained in apples, said Dr. Devang Doshi, director of pediatric allergy and immunology at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich.

The study, published in the journal Thorax, also found that mothers who ate fish more than once a week had children who were 43 percent less likely to have eczema than women who never ate fish.

"This was a good study, but we need a lot more evidence still," said Doshi, who pointed out that the children in the study generally had well-balanced, nutritious diets, and that may have played a role as well.

So, what's a pregnant woman to do? "The general consensus is that women should consume a good, well-balanced diet with lots of fruits and vegetables, and not to overindulge in any one food," he said.

Appleyard recommends avoiding nuts, peanuts and shellfish while you're pregnant to reduce the risk of your child developing a food allergy.

While this advice applies to everyone, it may be even more important for those with a family history of allergies. And Appleyard added that women who are vegetarians have to weigh the risks and benefits of following such dietary restrictions.

She agreed that prenatal nutrition is an area that needs a lot more research but suggested that pregnant women might want to "pick your foods wisely, because what you're eating today may not only nourish your body, but may have an impact on your baby's future health."

Appleyard added that for preventing asthma, avoiding cigarette smoke both before and after birth is crucial.

More information

To learn more about allergies and their causes, visit the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

MONDAY, Dec. 29 (HealthDay News) -- A diet rich in the inorganic phosphates found in many natural and processed foods accelerated the growth of lung cancers in rats, South Korean researchers report.

"Our study suggests that dietary regulation of inorganic phosphates may be critical for lung cancer treatment as well as prevention," Myung-Haing Cho, lead author of a report in the first January issue of American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, said in a statement.

But, "an individual shouldn't act on these results as yet, other than to encourage funding organizations such as the National Institutes of Health to support research to see whether dietary phosphates encourage cancer," said Dr. John Heffner, a professor of medicine at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland and past president of the American Thoracic Society, which publishes the journal.

Natural sources of dietary phosphates include leafy vegetables, fruits, meats and poultry products. Phosphates also are added to a number of foods, including baking powder, carbonated cola drinks, ice cream, bread, rolls, macaroni, fruit jellies and preserves. Food phosphates are listed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as GRAS -- generally recognized as safe -- with no limits on their use.

The South Korean study was done with two breeds of laboratory mice, one genetically inclined to have lung cancer, the other with induced lung cancers. They were fed either diets containing phosphates in roughly the same amounts found in human diets or phosphates at twice that level. After four weeks, more and larger lung cancers were found in the rats given the higher-phosphate diets, the report said.

Phosphates appear to activate a metabolic pathway that stimulates the growth of the lung tumors, the researchers said.

There is "good scientific rationale" for believing that phosphates can stimulate the growth of lung cancers and other tumors in humans, Heffner said. But for lung cancer, he said, "the first thing is not to smoke." Genetics can also play a role in risk, Heffner added, since "some smokers get lung cancer, and some don't."

"I'll be more cautious about inspecting foods I ingest for phosphate addition, trying to keep dietary phosphate ingestion in the healthy range," he said.

However, the study was criticized as inadequate by Haley C. Stevens, scientific affairs specialist for the International Food Additives Council, whose members include manufacturers and users of phosphates.

"This new study is very limited and not comparable to the food industry's numerous toxicological studies, which use several different animal models of carcinogenesis, acute exposures and chronic exposures, and which clearly demonstrate the safety of phosphate-based food additives," Stevens said.

Studies are planned in South Korea to determine what the healthy range is, the researchers stated. In the 1990s, phosphate-containing food additives contributed an estimated 470 milligrams a day to the average adult diet. Their wider use has increased intake by as much as 1,000 milligrams a day, equivalent to the higher dose given to the rats in the experiment, Cho noted.

But Stevens took issue with that point: "...it should be noted that data on phosphate production do not indicate an increase in phosphate intake, as the study authors allege."

More information

Basic facts about lung cancer are available from the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

MONDAY, Dec. 22 (HealthDay News) -- Even a few extra pounds and just a little inactivity increased the risk of heart failure in a major study of American doctors.

"What this study shows is that even overweight men who are not obese have an increase in heart failure risk," said Dr. Satish Kenchaiah, lead author of a report on the finding in the Dec. 23 issue of Circulation.

As for exercise, "even a little amount of physical activity appears to decrease the risk of heart failure," said Kenchaiah, who did the research as a epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and is now at the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

The study has followed more than 21,000 doctors for two decades, measuring among other factors the influence of overweight and physical activity on development of heart failure, the progressive loss of ability to pump blood, which is often a prelude to major coronary events.

Outright obesity, defined as a body-mass index of 30 or over, has long been known as a risk factor for heart failure. The new report concentrated on men who were borderline overweight, with a body-mass index of 25 to 29.9.

About 5 percent of the doctors were obese, and 40 percent were overweight, when the study began. Adjusting for other risk factors such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol, the study found a 49 percent increased incidence of heart failure in overweight men compared to those with a body-mass index of 25 or less. Incidence of heart failure was 180 percent for the obese men compared to the leaner ones.

It was the same story for physical activity. "Men who engaged in physical activity anywhere from one to three times a month had an 18 percent reduction in heart failure risk," Kenchaiah said. "For those who were active five to seven times a week, the reduction was 36 percent. The more you exercise, the more reduction you achieve."

The association of even minimal physical activity with reduced risk could be explained as an indicator of good habits in general, he said. "It is possible that they have a healthier lifestyle in general," Kenchaiah said.

The study found that doctors who rarely or never exercised were older, smoked cigarettes more often, and were more likely to have high blood pressure or diabetes.

"This new report reinforces what we've said in the past," said Dr. Gerald Fletcher, a preventive cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla. "Not being obese but being overweight is definitely a risk factor for heart failure."

While Fletcher said he would have liked a more definitive indicator of physical activity -- the report described it as simply breaking a sweat -- he said the study showed again that "vigorous exercise makes the difference. The more you do, the better it is for you."

Two-thirds of Americans have excess body weight, and only about 30 percent exercise regularly, Kenchaiah said. About 660,000 new cases of heart failure are diagnosed each year in the United States, he said, and 80 percent of the men and 75 percent of the women aged 65 and older who are diagnosed with heart failure die within eight years.

More information

Heart failure and its treatment are described by the American Heart Association  .