Tag: Eat

Time-Delayed Eating Leads to Better Food Choices

A study of online grocery orders found that people who order several days before delivery make better food choices than those who seek last-minute deliveries.

A study of online grocery orders found that people who order several days before delivery make better food choices than those who seek last-minute deliveries. Yana Paskova for The New York Times

Want to improve your diet? Try time-delayed eating — ordering (or at least choosing) your food long before you plan to eat it.

A series of experiments at Carnegie Mellon University found that when there was a significant delay between the time a person ordered their food and the time they planned on eating it, they chose lower-calorie meals.

What was interesting, researchers said, was that the participants were not making a conscious choice to order less. Most didn’t even realize they were choosing lower-calorie options.

Being less hungry when they ordered the meal accounted for only a small part of the difference, said Eric M. VanEpps, a post-doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics who led the research while at Carnegie Mellon. The research was published this summer in the journal American Marketing Association.

Dr. VanEpps believes people have what he calls a “bias toward the present,” that alters the calculations they make about something that is occurring momentarily.

“If a decision is going to be implemented immediately, we just care about the immediate consequences, and we discount the long-term costs and benefits,” Dr. VanEpps said. “In the case of food, we care about what’s happening right now – like how tasty it is – but discount the long-term costs of an unhealthy meal.”

On the other hand, when you order a meal in advance, “you’re more evenly weighing the short-term and the long-term costs and benefits,” he said. “You still care about the taste but you’re more able to exert self control.”

The finding is the latest to suggest that timing matters when it comes to healthful eating. When people order groceries online, they are more likely to choose healthier foods when they schedule a delivery date several days away, one study found..

Another study showed that people choosing a snack a week in advance were more likely to pick an apple or banana over a candy bar. When choosing a snack for immediate consumption, they were more likely to choose a candy bar.

One study showed that people choosing a snack in advance were more likely to pick an apple or banana over a candy bar.

One study showed that people choosing a snack in advance were more likely to pick an apple or banana over a candy bar. Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

The latest research, which focuses on three eating-delay experiments, offers a number of insights that can help us make better choices for eating out.

In the first experiment, 394 employees of a large health care company were asked to place their lunch orders at least 30 minutes before they wanted to pick up their meal. They had the option to place an order as early as 7 a.m. for lunches that were to be picked up between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Some people placed their order five hours in advance while others barely made the deadline, placing an order 31 minutes ahead of pickup.

The more hours people planned ahead, the fewer calories they ordered and ultimately consumed. For every hour in advance the participants ordered their meal, they ordered 38 fewer calories. The biggest effect of the time-delay was seen in women.

In another experiment, the Carnegie Mellon researchers recruited more than 1,100 workers and controlled the time delay between ordering and eating. One group of workers at the same company placed their food order before 10 a.m. and had to wait at least an hour before eating. Another group placed its lunch order after 11 a.m., and waited just 30 minutes before eating it. In one arm of the experiment, calorie labels were put on meals containing fewer than 500 calories.

The same pattern ensued: When people ordered lunch longer in advance, they were more likely to choose the meal with less than 500 calories. What was interesting was that they didn’t seem to think they were doing anything unusual and said they would have chosen the same option, regardless.

Did people order more calories later in the morning because they were hungrier? A third experiment attempted to answer this question. The researchers recruited about 200 university students who took classes that ended around lunchtime, and asked them to answer surveys in exchange for a free lunch.

Some students took the survey before their class, while others took it right before receiving their meal. The surveys asked about unrelated issues in order to mask the true purpose of the trial, and gave the students the opportunity to order their meal and also indicate how hungry they were.

Once again, the pattern held: Students who took the survey before their class (and thus placed their food order earlier) ordered lunches containing about 100 fewer calories. The sandwiches they chose were similar in type to those of the students who ordered later, but they were more likely to order bottled water instead of a soda and chose less caloric combinations of fruit and cookies.

Dr. VanEpps isn’t sure advance ordering will work the same way if you are going out for dinner or a celebratory meal. But if businesses or schools want to encourage employees and students to eat healthfully, he said “let them make decisions further in advance.”

But some researchers were skeptical about people’s ability to plan ahead like this on a regular basis.

“This requires a level of organization and forward planning that would be impossible for someone like me,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. But, she said, “More power to those who can do this!”

Related:

Are You Ready to Eat Your Natto?

Ann Yonetani makes natto, a fermented soybean food popular in Japan, in Queens, N.Y.

Ann Yonetani makes natto, a fermented soybean food popular in Japan, in Queens, N.Y.

Does a stinky, fermented soybean condiment belong on your plate? Ann Yonetani, a microbiologist turned food entrepreneur, thinks so.

The preparation, called natto, has a mild, earthy taste and looks like a mishmash of tiny brown jelly beans suspended in white goo. It is popular in many parts of Japan but has yet to catch on in most other places. Dr. Yonetani, who teaches food science at the New School, founded NYrture Food last year to introduce natto to New Yorkers, calling it one of the most potent sources of healthful bacteria there is.

Bacteria have not traditionally been something we wanted in our foods. Increasingly, though, researchers like Dr. Yonetani, a Columbia-trained specialist in cell reproduction, believe that in our quest to avoid germs, we have inadvertently eliminated many of the beneficial bugs that help to comprise a healthy human microbiome, the community of microbes that live in our gut.

“Food used to be fresh and dirty. We lived surrounded by nature,” said Dr. Yonetani. “Nowadays, we are exposed to too little microbial diversity.”

Spaghetti with parmesan, black pepper and natto, garnished with broccoli rabe greens and flowers.

Spaghetti with parmesan, black pepper and natto, garnished with broccoli rabe greens and flowers. Ann Yonetani

Dr. Yonetani, who calls herself a “microbe farmer,” says that each tablespoon of her finished product contains a billion of the healthful soil bacteria Bacillus subtilis, a count that is “orders of magnitude greater than what you would find in a typical probiotic food.” Because natto contains lots of dormant bacterial cysts, which Dr. Yonetani has observed under the microscope, she speculates that the bacteria can survive the high-acid environment of the stomach and “colonize the intestine, where conditions are more welcoming.”

It is a potent selling point given the growing interest in the microbiome and the booming market for probiotics, products that reputedly help replenish the healthful bacteria in our bodies.

“The microbiome is a hot issue right now, and proponents of probiotics are riding that wave,” said Marion Nestle, a nutrition expert at New York University. Still, she said, our knowledge of probiotics remains “in its infancy.” Most of the studies that demonstrate the efficacy of probiotics, she noted, are sponsored by yogurt companies that may report only positive outcomes.

“Are probiotics good for you? Sure, why not?” Dr. Nestle said. “Are they miracle foods? That would be nice, if true, but the science isn’t there yet.”

Fermented foods rich in living bacteria have long been popular in Japan as a way to promote health, said Dr. Yonetani, who was first introduced to natto as a child during visits to relatives there, where it is commonly consumed with rice for breakfast, and often mixed with chives and raw eggs. Just as children in America are urged to eat their spinach, in Japan they are told to eat their natto.

But for many of us who didn’t grow up on natto, there is a certain yuck factor. Natto’s slimy coating — reminiscent of okra — led one biologist collaborator of Dr. Yonetani’s at Harvard, where she did research, to call it “Klingon food.”

As with most probiotics, the science about natto is at an early stage. Dr. Ralph Holsworth, an emergency room supervisor and biomedical researcher in a rural hospital in Colorado who has coauthored several studies on the enzyme nattokinase, a byproduct of natto fermentation, said that the enzyme “breaks down fibrin in the blood, a protein aggregate involved in blood clotting, decreases the ‘stickiness’ of the red blood cells, and assists in the prevention of arterial plaque formation.” These blood-thinning actions, he said, may lessen the severity of heart attacks and strokes.

Dr. Holsworth uses the enzyme in his medical practice to help prevent blood clots and assist in healing from surgery. Nattokinase is not yet widely used in mainstream medical practice, although it has been gaining popularity as a food supplement with the public.

Natto may also be good for bone health, said Dr. Dennis Goodman, a clinical professor of medicine and director of integrative medicine at New York University. He cited a study that showed that in eastern Japan, where they eat more natto than in western parts of the country but otherwise have similar diets, there are significantly lower levels of osteoporosis. Dr. Goodman attributes this to natto’s high levels of vitamin K2, a form of vitamin K, which he said works like a theater usher by directing calcium to the bones.

“Most people are not getting nearly enough K2 in their diet,” said Dr. Goodman, who has written a book about the vitamin. “The only food that gives you a sufficient amount is natto.” Dr. Yonetani says that a single heaping tablespoon of natto contains approximately 300 micrograms of K2, about seven times the minimum daily requirement.

To make the product, Dr. Yonetani rents a room at the back of the Organic Food Incubator, a cooperative space for artisanal food producers in Long Island City, Queens. Her closet-narrow kitchen is fitted with pressure cookers, boxes full of glass jars and a microscope. A papier-mâché Daruma, a troll-like deity said to bestow good luck on fledgling businesses, oversees the operation.

As she peels back the plastic wrapper from a freshly fermented tray, scores of sticky spider’s web thin strands of biofilm rise up from the batch, and a limburger cheese-like aroma pervades the air. Sampling the two-day-old natto with a plastic spoon, Dr. Yonetani pronounces it finished.

“It’s got some nice coffee notes,” she effuses, with the discernment of a wine connoisseur. She offers me a spoonful. The taste is not at all unpleasant, a cross between chopped liver and cottage cheese. “Every batch comes out a bit different,” Dr. Yonetani said. “That’s not something the food industry likes. But I think it’s beautiful, because that’s biology.”

Sweetgreen Makes Healthful Fast Food — But Can You Afford It?

Employees work the line at Sweetgreen, a chain restaurant that uses fresh ingredients from local farms to make fast food healthier, in Berkeley, Calif.

Employees work the line at Sweetgreen, a chain restaurant that uses fresh ingredients from local farms to make fast food healthier, in Berkeley, Calif. Jason Henry for The New York Times

Healthful, fast and affordable food is the holy grail of the public health and nutrition community. A popular restaurant chain shows just how much of a challenge that is.

It began when three Georgetown University students were frustrated that they could not find a healthy fast-food restaurant near their campus. With money raised from family and friends, they started their own, renting a small storefront on M Street in Georgetown. The result was Sweetgreen, a restaurant that offered organic salads, wraps and frozen yogurt. Pretty soon, the daily line of lunchtime customers stretched out the door and around the corner.

Ten years later, the line is still there, but Sweetgreen has grown into a nationwide salad chain, with more than 40 locations. Sweetgreen is part of a small but growing breed of farm-to-table fast-food chains – like Chopt Creative Salad Company on the East Coast and Tender Greens in California – that are giving fast-food restaurants a plant-based makeover. Their mission: to fix fast food, which has long been fattening and heavily processed.

At Sweetgreen, fresh vegetables, cheeses and other ingredients are shipped directly to each restaurant from nearby farms and then chopped or cooked on site.

At Sweetgreen, fresh vegetables, cheeses and other ingredients are shipped directly to each restaurant from nearby farms and then chopped or cooked on site. Jason Henry for The New York Times

Sweetgreen’s owners say their goal is to offer customers foods made with nutritious, sustainable and locally grown ingredients. The company has decentralized its food sourcing and production. Fresh vegetables, cheeses and other ingredients are shipped directly to each restaurant from nearby farms and then chopped or cooked on site. They don’t sell soda or use refined sugar.
Sweetgreen expects to open another 20 stores in major cities around the country this year, and eventually to expand to places where experts say healthy, delicious fast food is needed most — low-income neighborhoods.

But while the chain has proven there is a big appetite for more healthful fast food, the goal of taking this concept to poor areas may be a distant reality. The company and other chains like it operate almost exclusively in affluent communities, far from the low-income food deserts where obesity is rampant and farmers’ markets and healthy food stores are scarce. And with salads that typically cost between $9 and $14, some question whether a healthful fast-food chain like Sweetgreen can ever be affordable for average Americans.

Maegan George, a Columbia University student who lives near a Sweetgreen, calculated that for the price of one Sweetgreen salad, she could buy the same ingredients in bulk at a local market and make several similar salads at home.

“I’m a first-generation student and I’m on full financial aid,” she said. “Sweetgreen is delicious and I enjoy it. But there’s no way I could afford to eat there on a regular basis.”

Jackie Hajdenberg, another Columbia student, wrote about the restaurant for the campus newspaper, The Spectator, earlier this year, lamenting that on a per calorie basis, a salad at Sweetgreen was three times the price of a Big Mac at McDonald’s.

“Sweetgreen has not only made it easier for people to make healthy decisions – it has also illustrated the unequal socioeconomic landscape of the world in which we live,” she wrote.

Salad options at Sweetgreen change often, depending on what is available at local farms.

Salad options at Sweetgreen change often, depending on what is available at local farms. Jason Henry for The New York Times

Sweetgreen says it prices its food so that it can compensate its suppliers and employees fairly, and that it expects nutritious fast food to become more affordable as the healthy food movement grows. Nicolas Jammet, a co-founder of Sweetgreen, said the company wants to serve lower-income customers, and has long-term plans to expand to low-income communities.

To get there, he said, the company will have to overcome hurdles involving its supply chain, the minimum wage and greater nutrition awareness and education among the public. For the past six years the company has been running a nutrition education program in schools that teaches children about healthier eating and locally grown food.

“It’s a long-term goal for us to be part of this larger systematic change that needs to happen,” he said. “But there are so many parts of this problem that need to be addressed.”

Mr. Jammet notes that the company was among the first to show that fast-food chains don’t need profits from soda and sugary drinks to succeed. He believes chains like Sweetgreen have caused a ripple effect throughout the fast-food industry.

In January, for example, Chick-fil-A unveiled a new kale, broccolini and nut “superfood” salad, responding to customer demands for “new tastes and healthier ways to eat in our restaurants.” McDonald’s is experimenting with kale salads, and Wendy’s is testing a spinach, chicken and quinoa salad.

“Companies like McDonald’s have more power to change the way that people eat than we do,” Mr. Jammet said. “We don’t see these companies as the enemy. We just have to force change on them.”

Public health experts say that such changes cannot come soon enough. A University of Toronto study recently showed that people have a higher risk of developing diabetes if they live in “food swamps” – an area with three or more fast-food restaurants and no healthy dining options.

Another study published in JAMA in June found that the percentage of Americans eating an unhealthy diet — high in sugar, refined grains, soft drinks and processed foods and low in fruits and vegetables — was on the decline, but the improvements in diet were much smaller for lower-income Americans.

Customers wait in line at Sweetgreen in Berkeley, Calif.

Customers wait in line at Sweetgreen in Berkeley, Calif. Jason Henry for The New York Times

Overall about twice as many people from poor households have poor diets compared to those at higher income levels.
Why is traditional fast food so cheap? One reason is the underlying infrastructure of the industry. Many of the ingredients, like the soy that’s turned into oil for deep fryers, or the the corn that’s fed to animals and used to make high-fructose corn syrup, begin with crops that are heavily subsidized by the government. To make their food economical, many traditional fast-food chains mass-produce their food in large factories, often stripping it of fiber and other nutrients that decrease its shelf life, while adding salt, sugar and other flavorings and preservatives.

Then they freeze and ship the processed components, like burger patties, bread, pickles and sauce, to their restaurants. There they are reheated and assembled, often with minimal effort, ensuring that a Big Mac in Seattle looks and tastes the same as a Big Mac in Charlotte, N.C.

By comparison, every Sweetgreen location has a chalkboard that lists the farms where its organic arugula, peaches, yogurt or blueberries are produced. As a result, the menus vary by location and by season. In Boston, Sweetgreen stores use New England Hubbard squash. In Los Angeles, the menu features a different variety of squash grown locally in California.

Those differences mean fresher, more nutritious ingredients, but ultimately costlier food for customers — one of the obstacles that Sweetgreen and other chains like it will have to overcome if they hope to make their food more accessible to all income brackets.
Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University and the author of “Food Politics,’’ says restaurants like Sweetgreen offer an encouraging, but imperfect, model for making fast food more healthful.

“What’s not to like?” she asks. “The cost, maybe, but for people who can afford it the quality is worth it. Next step: Moving the concept into low-income areas.”

Related:

How the Government Supports Your Junk Food Habit

Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times

At a time when almost three-quarters of the country is overweight or obese, it comes as no surprise that junk foods are the largest source of calories in the American diet. Topping the list are grain-based desserts like cookies, doughnuts and granola bars. (Yes, granola bars are dessert.)

That’s according to data from the federal government, which says that breads, sugary drinks, pizza, pasta dishes and “dairy desserts” like ice cream are also among Americans’ top 10 sources of calories.

What do these foods have in common? They are largely the products of seven crops and farm foods — corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, sorghum, milk and meat — that are heavily subsidized by the federal government, ensuring that junk foods are cheap and plentiful, experts say.

Between 1995 and 2010, the government doled out $170 billion in agricultural subsidies to finance the production of these foods, the latter two in part through subsidies on feed grains. While many of these foods are not inherently unhealthy, only a small percentage of them are eaten as is. Most are used as feed for livestock, turned into biofuels or converted to cheap products and additives like corn sweeteners, industrial oils, processed meats and refined carbohydrates.

Health advocates have long pointed out this seeming contradiction. While the federal government recommends that people fill half their plates with fruits and vegetables to help prevent obesity, only a small fraction of its subsidies actually support the production of fresh produce. The vast majority of agricultural subsidies go instead to commodity crops that are processed into many of the foods that are linked to the obesity crisis.

“The subsidies damage our country’s health and increase the medical costs that will ultimately need to be paid to treat the effects of the obesity epidemic,” a 2012 report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, concluded. “Taxpayers are paying for the privilege of making our country sick.”

Now federal health researchers have examined the relationship between metabolic disease and the consumption of federally subsidized foods.

The study, led by a team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and published this month in JAMA Internal Medicine, looked at over 10,000 adults and the foods they reported eating in a typical day. Then the researchers split the subjects into groups according to the proportion of foods they ate that were derived from the seven major subsidized commodities.

After adjusting for age, sex, socioeconomic factors and other variables, the researchers found that those who had the highest consumption of federally subsidized foods had a 37 percent greater risk of being obese. They were also significantly more likely to have belly fat, abnormal cholesterol, and high levels of blood sugar and CRP, a marker of inflammation.

While the study does not prove cause and effect, its authors say that this strong association is consistent with other research showing that diets that are higher in subsidized foods tend to be poorer quality and more harmful to health.

“This tells us that the factors that influence the prices of our foods are an additional factor,” said Ed Gregg, chief of the epidemiology and statistics branch in the C.D.C.’s Division of Diabetes Translation. “We’re hoping that this information reaches policy makers and the people who influence how subsidies work.”

The subsidies program was started decades ago in part to support struggling farmers and to secure America’s food supply. Since 1995, the government has provided farmers with close to $300 billion in agricultural subsidies overall, which are included in the federal farm bill, along with money for nutrition initiatives like the federal food stamps program, known as SNAP. The farm bill is renewed by Congress every five years and is projected to cost $956 billion between 2014 and 2023.

But critics say the subsidies program no longer serves its original purpose. Instead of supporting small farmers who grow fruits, nuts and vegetables – which the government calls “specialty crops” — the program now primarily subsidizes large producers that churn out a handful of “commodity” crops that include grains, corn, sorghum and oilseeds like soybeans.

According to the Government Accountability Office, small “specialty” farms represent three-quarters of the country’s cropland but receive just 14 percent of government subsidies. Large agribusinesses that specialize in growing the major commodity crops represent 7 percent of the cropland and receive about half of all subsidies.

Previous versions of the farm bill even stipulated that farmers who took subsidies for commodity crops could not grow fruits and vegetables. If they did, they were penalized, said Caroline Franck, the co-author of a 2012 report in the Archives of Internal Medicine that explored the role of agricultural subsidies in obesity.

Ms. Franck, a research assistant at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research of the Jewish General Hospital, McGill University, said many factors influence what people choose to eat. While it’s difficult to argue that subsidies are a direct cause of obesity, they clearly play a role.

“I think it’s safe to say that what happens at the top of the food chain has an impact on what happens at the bottom,” she said. “Agricultural policies are just not aligned with public health goals.”

In part because of public pressure, the last farm bill, which was passed in 2014, allowed farmers who grow commodity crops to use 15 percent of their acreage to grow fruits, vegetables and other specialty crops. It provided support to organic farmers, including $100 million for research to improve organic production. And it funded a “healthy incentives” program that encourages food stamp recipients to consume more fruits and vegetables by increasing the value of food stamps that are used to buy fresh produce at retail stores or farmers’ markets.

Ms. Franck said that early results suggest that the program is increasing the amount of fresh produce people consume. But others are not so sanguine. Raj Patel, a research professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, said that the funding for fruits and vegetables in the most recent farm bill was “crumbs” compared to the billions in subsidies for commodity crops.

Dr. Patel said it was time for the federal government to adopt a “national food policy” like one that has been proposed by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit advocacy group. Among other things, a national food policy would ensure that farm workers receive fair wages, that all Americans have access to healthy foods, and that the government’s nutrition recommendations and agricultural policies are aligned, he said.

“It would transition us away from the unhealthy consequences of the current industrial food policy,” he said. “I think there’s something very broken about the subsidy system.”

Cutting Sugar Rapidly Improves Heart Health Markers

Obese children who cut sugar from their diets saw improvements in markers of heart disease after just nine days, a study in Atherosclerosis found.

For the study, researchers evaluated 37 children ages 9 to 18 who were obese and at high risk for heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. The children were given food and drinks totaling the same number of calories, fat, protein and carbohydrates as their typical diets.

The only change was their sugar intake: The researchers swapped foods high in added sugars, like pastries and sweetened yogurts, for options like bagels and pizza. This lowered dietary sugar from 28 percent to 10 percent, and fructose from 12 percent to 4 percent of total calories.

After nine days, the researchers found a 33 percent drop in triglycerides, a type of fat tied to heart disease; a 49 percent reduction in a protein called apoC-III that is tied to high triglyceride levels; and dramatic reductions in small, dense LDL cholesterol, a risk factor for heart disease.

Though this study is small and short-term, it builds on this group’s previous research implicating added sugars as a contributor to metabolic disorders and heart disease.

“Sugar calories are not like other carbohydrate calories,” said Dr. Robert Lustig, a co-author of the study and professor of pediatrics at Benioff Children’s Hospital at the University of California, San Francisco. “Without changing total carbohydrate, or fat, or protein, we were able to accomplish this enormous improvement in their cardiovascular risk factors,” unrelated to weight loss, he said.

An App to Deconstruct Your Food

A screenshot of the Sage app.

A screenshot of the Sage app.

Ever wondered how long you’d have to swim to burn off the calories in an organic peanut butter cup? Or how far the strawberries or burger on your plate traveled to get there?

For answers, ask the Sage Project, one of the latest of the food technology companies helping consumers navigate nutrition. While a number of food apps count calories and track eating habits, Sage goes beyond the food label to give customers additional information about additives and preservatives, how much sugar has been adding during processing or how far a food has traveled.

“Food labels are a data visualization that we see every day, but we don’t get a lot from them,” said Sam Slover, the co-founder and chief executive of Sage. “There are a lot of things about those labels that make assumptions about what you know and what you want to know.”

Do we really need another food app? Apple’s app store already lists more than three dozen apps offering users information and advice about calories, nutrition data and weight loss, but research shows that many consumers have a failed relationship with their food apps. For instance, in January, about 16 percent of the people who downloaded the Lose It app were using it once a day. By June, only 10 percent were using it that often, according to research firm 7Park Data.

“These apps have trouble keeping customers loyal — if you use them successfully, you don’t need them any more, and if you don’t use them successfully, you may not think it’s worth it to try more,” said Byrne Hobart, the lead analyst at 7Park Data. “They’re kind of like the dating apps that way.”

The Sage app hopes to inspire more loyalty by providing a trove of useful and quirky information about the food you eat. It contains data on about 20,000 products, though you still may not find your favorite junk foods. Most of the products in the database are described as “natural” and “organic.” But if you shop at Whole Foods, you’re in luck. Sage has partnered with Whole Foods Market, deconstructing all of the roughly 7,000 items sold in the grocer’s new “365” store chains in Los Angeles and Lake Oswego, Ore.

To begin using Sage, which is available online or as a web-based app, a user signs up and enters any food restrictions and personal preferences. Only want to see products without additives and preservatives? No problem. Interested in digestive health? Sage will comb through its database and show you products with probiotics, high fiber and whole grains.

The app displays a wide variety of information using colorful graphics and animated food characters, and it’s surprisingly fun and entertaining to use. The app told me that Surf Sweet gummy bears, for instance, do have a fair amount of added sugar but also have “good nutrient density,” meaning that, among other things, they supply a high amount of vitamin C (much to my delight). A jump-roping chocolate bar informs me that I’d need to jump rope for 19 minutes — or a snorkeling olive recommends 23 minutes of swimming — to burn off a serving of Justin’s Organic milk chocolate peanut butter cups.

“Customers want a better understanding of how a product is sourced, the quality standards behind it, whether the labor that made it was paid a fair wage, its impact on the environment,” said Jason Buechel, the chief information officer at Whole Foods. “This is a way to give them all that information that isn’t captured on the nutrition label.”

Take the Beast Burger, for instance, a meatless burger sold at Whole Foods. Type the name of the burger into Sage or flip through a list, and you’ll find its basic nutritional profile and calorie content, with highlights of its nutritional strengths.

Using animated food characters — a pear doing yoga, a watermelon riding a bike — the app shows how much exercise would be required to work off the burger. In my case, it’s 20 minutes of running, 22 minutes of jumping rope, 28 minutes of swimming or biking, 44 minutes of dance or 89 minutes of yoga.

Sage also identifies any allergens — corn and seeds in the case of the Beast Burger — and offers detailed explanations of all the burger’s ingredients, and why they’re used should you be interested. For instance: “Calcium chloride, a salt, is used in canned goods to improve stability and quality and as a firming agent in tofu production.”

The system awards “badges” to the burger for things like an abundance of healthy fats and protein and having recyclable packaging, and it explains what diets — dairy free, gluten free, vegan, vegetarian and ketogenic — it does not violate. To make nutrition recommendations like “fiber friendly” or “heart healthy,” Sage uses nutritional standards set by the Food and Drug Administration and the American Heart Association. An in-house team of dietitians and nutritionists have created standards for badges like “healthy fats” or “contains probiotics” — areas where the F.D.A. doesn’t set guidelines.

Finally, the app tells you where the product is made or sourced. The Beast Burger is American made. If you decided to check out Driscoll strawberries, you might learn your batch came from Mexico.

It also can tailor daily nutritional requirements to a user’s specific weight, height and lifestyle. For instance, Sage came up with a recommended daily caloric intake of about 3,300 calories that is rich in protein for Mr. Slover, given his height, weight and exercise routine — he’s a triathlete. It recommended a 1,600-calorie diet with a lower portion of protein for his mother.

“All those things on a label telling you that a product gives you, say, 10 percent of the daily requirement of protein is based on a default, 2,000-calorie-day diet, a kind of one-size-fits-all approach that doesn’t work,” Mr. Slover said.

One thing the Sage app won’t tell you is what you should or shouldn’t eat. You will have to figure that out for yourself. “I’m not a big fan of red, yellow and green scoring mechanisms for food,” Mr. Slover said. “I don’t think they’re well received by consumers or used very much.”

For Coffee Drinkers, the Buzz May Be in Your Genes

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Like most of my work, this article would not have been possible without coffee.

I’m never fully awake until I have had my morning cup of espresso. It makes me productive, energized and what I can only describe as mildly euphoric. But as one of the millions of caffeine-loving Americans who can measure out my life with coffee spoons, (to paraphrase T.S. Eliot), I have often wondered: How does my coffee habit impact my health?

The health community can’t quite agree on whether coffee is more potion or poison. The American Heart Association says the research on whether coffee causes heart disease is conflicting. The World Health Organization, which for years classified coffee as “possibly” carcinogenic, recently reversed itself, saying the evidence for a coffee-cancer link is “inadequate.” National dietary guidelines say that moderate coffee consumption may actually be good for you – even reducing chronic disease.

Why is there so much conflicting evidence about coffee? The answer may be in our genes.

About a decade ago, Ahmed El-Sohemy, a professor in the department of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto, noticed the conflicting research on coffee and the widespread variation in how people respond to it. Some people avoid it because just one cup makes them jittery and anxious. Others can drink four cups of coffee and barely keep their eyes open. Some people thrive on it.

Dr. El-Sohemy suspected that the relationship between coffee and heart disease might also vary from one individual to the next. And he zeroed in on one gene in particular, CYP1A2, which controls an enzyme – also called CYP1A2 – that determines how quickly our bodies break down caffeine.

One variant of the gene causes the liver to metabolize caffeine very quickly. People who inherit two copies of the “fast” variant – one from each parent – are generally referred to as fast metabolizers. Their bodies metabolize caffeine about four times more quickly than people who inherit one or more copies of the slow variant of the gene. These people are called slow metabolizers.

With funding from the National Institutes of Health, Dr. El-Sohemy and his colleagues recruited 4,000 adults, including about 2,000 who had previously had a heart attack. Then they analyzed their genes and their coffee consumption. When they looked at the entire study population, they found that consuming four or more cups of coffee per day was associated with a 36 percent increased risk of a heart attack.

But when they split the subjects into two groups – fast and slow caffeine metabolizers – they found something striking: Heavy coffee consumption only seemed to be linked to a higher likelihood of heart attacks in the slow metabolizers.

“The increased risk that we saw among the entire population was driven entirely by the people that were slow metabolizers,” said Dr. El-Sohemy, who is also on the science advisory board at Nutrigenomix, a personalized nutrition company. “When you look at the fast metabolizers, there was absolutely no increased risk.”

The trend among fast metabolizers was quite the opposite. Those who drank one to three cups of coffee daily had a significantly reduced risk of heart attacks – suggesting that for them coffee was protective.

Dr. El-Sohemy suspects that because caffeine hangs around longer in a slow metabolizer, it has more time to act as a trigger of heart attacks. But fast metabolizers clear caffeine from their systems rapidly, allowing the antioxidants, polyphenols and coffee’s other healthful compounds to kick in without the side effects of caffeine, he said.

Other more recent research seems to point in the same direction. In Italy, a team of scientists looked at hypertension in 553 fast and slow caffeine metabolizers. Once again, the subjects’ genetic profiles predicted whether coffee was potentially harmful or healthful. Heavy and even moderate coffee drinkers were significantly more likely to have hypertension if they were slow metabolizers. But fast metabolizers saw their risk of hypertension fall as their coffee intake rose.

That is not to say that every coffee drinker should run out and have their CYP1A2 genes analyzed by one of the many direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies. Dr. Marilyn Cornelis, an assistant professor at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said her research had identified many genes involved in caffeine metabolism, and that relying on only one or two genetic factors could provide people with a false sense of reassurance.

“There are clearly other genetic and environmental factors contributing to differences in caffeine metabolism,” she said. “And these are not captured by existing tests.”

Nonetheless, this greater understanding of the link between coffee and genetics has opened up a wide new area of research. Scientists are now studying whether the CYP1A2 gene and others might mediate coffee’s influence on breast and ovarian cancer, Type 2 diabetes and even Parkinson’s disease.

It has also prompted a closer look at the effects of caffeine on exercise. Though it has long been accepted that caffeine enhances sports performance, research by Christopher J. Womack, a professor of kinesiology at James Madison University, suggests that endurance athletes who are fast caffeine metabolizers may benefit more than others.

In one study in 2012, Dr. Womack and his colleagues studied the effect of caffeine pills and placebos on the performance of male cyclists. Dr. Womack found that the slow metabolizers completed a 40-kilometer race on a stationary bike one minute faster on caffeine. But the fast metabolizers improved their time by four minutes.

Dr. Womack suspects that the fast metabolizers saw greater benefits because the rapid metabolism of caffeine further heightened their sympathetic nervous systems — which control the so-called fight or flight response.

“In the broad sense, the average person is going to perform better with caffeine,” he said. “Some people have a huge effect. Not surprisingly, it has something to do with our genetics.”

As an avid coffee consumer, I was curious about my own genes. Through a company called FitnessGenes, which analyzes 41 different genes related to diet and exercise – including CYP1A2 – I learned that I was a so-called fast caffeine metabolizer. The company says that 40 percent of people are fast metabolizers. About 45 percent have both a slow and a fast copy, and 15 percent carry two copies of the slow allele.

Dan Reardon, a medical doctor who founded FitnessGenes, said that, anecdotally, slow metabolizers who drink coffee tend to report a very gradual wakefulness, sometimes lasting hours. But fast metabolizers often experience something very different with coffee: an immediate spike in alertness followed at times by a relatively quick dip in energy.

While my DNA results suggested that my twice-daily espresso habit might be for the best, researchers have only just begun to understand how our genes and coffee habits interact. In a 2015 study, Dr. Cornelis and a team of international scientists identified eight genetic variants that appear to make people more likely to seek out coffee, including at least two variants that are involved in the psychologically rewarding effects of caffeine.

The research could help to explain why some people see little or no appeal in a freshly brewed cup of coffee – while others, like me, can hardly fathom a morning without it.

Eat Well is a new weekly column on the science and culture of eating.

No Health Benefit to Replacing Fat With Carbs

Low-fat diets that are high in carbohydrates are unlikely to improve your health, a new study shows.

Researchers came to the conclusion after studying the eating habits and health behaviors of 126,233 men and women who completed health questionnaires every two to four years for up to 32 years. Then they calculated the effect of replacing just 5 percent of saturated fat calories with another type of fat or carbohydrates.

The study, in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that replacing 5 percent of daily calories from saturated fats (mainly animal fat) with foods high in monounsaturated fat, such as olive oil and avocados, was associated with a 27 percent reduction in total mortality and reduced death from cardiovascular disease, cancer and neurodegenerative disease.

A similar switch from saturated fat to polyunsaturated fats, such as the omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids in fish and walnuts, was associated with a 13 percent reduction in total mortality and a 29 percent reduction in death from neurodegenerative diseases.

But replacing saturated fats with carbohydrates, such as sugars and refined grains, did not confer any health benefits.

“Not all fats are created equal,” said the senior author, Dr. Frank B. Hu, a professor of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “We should eat more good ones from fish and avocados, instead of animal fats. And second, the low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet is not beneficial for improving health and longevity.”