2001–2003 · lebanondiet.org archive

Science notes from the LDA site, 2001–2003

In its first years the Lebanese Dietetic Association posted short digests of studies and reports for its members. Five survive in the archive. They are summarised here with their original sources and a note on how to read them two decades later.

Archive page. These digests reflect the research literature of 2001–2003 and the way the association summarised it at the time. They are kept as a record, not as current dietary advice; for today’s guidance consult a licensed dietitian or your doctor.

Dietitians informed about new research on protein

A digest of a conference session at which Professor Donald Layman of the University of Illinois presented a ten-week study of two diets in adult women that differed in the ratio of protein to carbohydrate. Both groups lost weight, but the women on the moderate-protein diet lost more fat and kept more muscle than those on the higher-carbohydrate diet. The digest framed this against US figures of the time — about 55 per cent of adults overweight and 22 per cent obese — and noted that the session was sponsored by the beef industry’s checkoff programme.

Reading it today: the moderate-protein approach to weight management has since been studied far more widely; the sponsorship note the LDA included is a good habit that the current site keeps for its own content.

Nutrients may lower ovarian cancer risk

A case–control study of more than 550 women with ovarian cancer and matched healthy women compared their diets in the year before diagnosis. Higher intakes of carotenoids — alpha-carotene, beta-carotene and lycopene, from food and supplements — and of vitamin A from food were associated with lower risk; vitamins C, D and E were not. Raw carrots (five or more servings a week, 54 per cent lower risk) and tomato sauce (two or more half-cup servings a week, 40 per cent lower risk) were the specific foods linked to the reduction.

The digest itself cautioned that other studies had produced mixed results and drew the safe conclusion: at least five servings of fruit and vegetables a day, especially dark-coloured ones. Source: Cramer DW, Kuper H, Harlow BL et al., International Journal of Cancer, 2001, vol. 94, pp. 128–134.

A woman in her fifties enjoying a cup of herbal tea

Researchers shed more light on vitamin D and bones

A year-long Swedish study of about sixty healthy older men and women, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, compared those who spent at least three hours a week outdoors in spring and autumn with face, neck and forearms uncovered against those who stayed indoors. The outdoor group had consistently higher blood levels of vitamin D and calcium and denser bone. The volunteers as a whole, however, consumed only about half the recommended vitamin D and calcium.

The LDA’s conclusion combined the two: some sun exposure — as little as ten minutes a day — plus a diet with milk, fortified foods, leafy greens and legumes; supplements where older people are housebound. Source: Melin A, Wilske J, Ringertz H et al., J Am Geriatr Soc, 2001, vol. 49, pp. 1190–1196.

Diet market study — the IBIDS database, December 2001

A note describing the International Bibliographic Information on Dietary Supplements (IBIDS), a database of published scientific literature on vitamins, minerals and botanicals produced by the Office of Dietary Supplements at the US National Institutes of Health with the National Agricultural Library. At the time it held over 639,000 citations and abstracts, offered a consumer database launched in October 2000, and had just added 178,000 records in its November 2001 update. The digest recommended it as the place for dietitians and the public to find credible research on supplements.

Malnutrition among the elderly: a UK report

Filed on the site under the heading “Vitamin E in pregnancy could prevent allergies” — evidently a mismatch in the original content system — the text is a BBC report on the UK Malnutrition Advisory Group. One in seven people over 65 in the United Kingdom was malnourished or at severe risk, with a north–south divide; malnutrition was missed in up to 70 per cent of hospital patients and 45 per cent of outpatients and was estimated to cost £2–4 billion a year through hospital admissions and longer stays.

The group called for routine nutritional screening in hospitals and the community and for national standards for detecting and managing malnutrition — a message the LDA evidently considered relevant to Lebanese hospitals, where the topic returned a decade later in the national study on hospital malnutrition mentioned in the LAND committee profiles.

Original addresses on lebanondiet.org

The content above was published on the old site at the following addresses, which now redirect here — /article.asp?id=1, /article.asp?id=10, /article.asp?id=11, /article.asp?id=13, /article.asp?id=14 — Restored from the Internet Archive on 20 September 2026; text condensed and edited for readability, facts and dates kept as published.

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