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The study included 48 adults aged 55-75 years, divided into two groups. One group drank 2 cups of water prior to their meals and the other did not. All of the subjects ate a low-calorie diet during the study. Over the course of 12 weeks, water drinkers lost about 15.5 pounds, while the non-water drinkers lost about 11 pounds.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working with state health departments to investigate the illnesses, which have so far not resulted in any deaths.

Victims of the tainted eggs are believed to have been identified in Minnesota, California, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Illinois, Texas and Wisconsin.

Eggs from Wright County Egg in Galt, Iowa, were linked to several illnesses in three states.

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Pregnant women should avoid 'diet' soft drinks that have been artificially sweetened, experts have said, after a study linked them with premature birth.

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It was found that those who drank one serving per day of artificially sweetened fizzy drink were 38 per cent more likely to give birth before 37 weeks gestation and those who consumed four servings a day were 78 per cent more likely to have their baby prematurely.

The effect was weaker for still artificially soft drinks and there was no link between premature birth and sugar-sweetened drinks, they said.

Certainly, until more experimental work is done, this study suggests that pregnant women should steer clear of artificially sweetened drinks. Quite frankly, pregnant women should be focusing more on nutrient-rich drinks anyway, like milk and fruit juices. And don’t forget the water.”

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Eating red meat twice a day can increase a woman's risk of heart disease by nearly a third, a study has shown.

The study found those who ate two servings of fresh or processed red meat daily were 30 per cent more likely to suffer heart disease than women who ate just half a portion.

Substituting red meat for a serving of nuts cut the risk of heart disease by 30 per cent, eating fish instead lowered the risk by 24 per cent, while swapping red meat for poultry slashed the risk by 19 per cent, the survey also found.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, in the U.S., studied the diets of 84,136 women aged 30 to 55 between 1980 and 2006.

During the research period 2,210 suffered non-fatal heart-attacks, while 952 others died from coronary heart disease.

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The Boston study, in Archives of Dermatology, looked at more than 82,000 female nurses aged 27 to 44 and their drinking habits from 1991 until 2005.

Non-alcoholic beer, wine and spirits were not found to increase the risk.

In the study, researchers said that woman who drank more than two alcoholic drinks a week increased their risk of psoriasis by two-thirds compared with non-drinkers.

For women who drank five glasses of beer per week their risk of developing psoriasis was 1.8 times higher again.

When stricter criteria were used to confirm psoriasis cases, their risk was increased 2.3 times.

Yet women who drank any amount of low- or non-alcoholic beer, white wine, red wine or spirits per week were not found to be at increased risk.

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women aged 48-83 finds moderate consumption of chocolate with high-cocoa content lowered heart failure risk

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"If you frequently crave sweets you may have a sugar addiction and it could affect your brain. Sugar and sweeteners seems to start chemical changes in the brain, as seen in addicts who use drugs such as cocaine and heroin."

Researchers studies this theory in rats and their findings were:

“Our evidence from an animal model suggests that bingeing on sugar can act in the brain in ways very similar to drugs of abuse."

This is the reason why people can't stop their cravings for sweets but like any other addiction, there can be treatments. Dr. Louis Aronne, the director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Center says:

"To fight sugar addiction, start your day by eating protein and vegetables in the morning, because if you start your day eating starch and sweets it could lead you to crave them all day."

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A "disappointingly small" number of well-designed studies have looked at whether organic foods may have health benefits beyond their conventional counterparts', according to the review, by researchers with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Health in the UK.

Moreover, they found, what studies have been done have largely focused on short-term effects of organic eating — mainly antioxidant activity in the body — rather than longer-term health outcomes. And most of the antioxidant studies failed to find differences between organic and conventional diets.

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