URBANA, Ill. – Eating avocado as part of your daily diet can help improve gut health, a new study from University of Illinois shows. Avocados are a healthy food that is high in dietary fiber and monounsaturated fat. However, it was not clear how avocados impact the microbes in the gastrointestinal system or “gut.”

URBANA, Ill. – Carrots are a good source of beta-carotene, which is a precursor of vitamin A. But to get the full health benefits of this superfood, you need an active enzyme to produce this vitamin.

URBANA, Ill. – For individuals looking to improve their health in 2021, strengthening your couple relationship may be part of the answer, according to findings from a recent University of Illinois study.

The study examined long-term changes in partners’ health after participating in a new program for two-parent African American families.

URBANA, Ill. – An aging U.S. population is rapidly increasing the demand for nursing care. The number of U.S. citizens aged 65 and over is expected to almost double from 43.1 million in 2012 to 87.5 million by 2050, while the workforce is shrinking. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated the need for health care professionals.

URBANA, Ill. – College students are significantly less likely to be food insecure than non-students in the same age group, according to a new study from the University of Illinois.

“College hunger” has been widely reported in the media, and several studies found very high food insecurity rates among college students, sometimes up to 50 or 60%. “That did not make sense to those of us doing research on food insecurity, so I wanted to check those findings,” says Craig Gundersen, agricultural economist at U of I.

A new breakthrough by University of Illinois researchers, including John Erdman, Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, will make it easier to detect, prevent, and treat nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). The research team’s methods use noninvasive ultrasound, that could be used during a routine physical, to measure the amount of fat in the liver. The discovery could have a major impact on the prognoses of millions of people suffering from NAFLD around the world. Read more.

URBANA, Ill. – Since COVID-19 began its menacing march across Wuhan, China, in December 2019, and then across the world, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has taken a “whatever works” strategy to ensure its replication and spread. But in a new study published in Evolutionary Bioinformatics, University of Illinois researchers and students show the virus is honing the tactics that may make it more successful and more stable.

URBANA, Ill. – As food makes its way through your digestive system, gut microbiota also get energy from the food. This creates a microbial footprint of what you’ve consumed. But the detective work to find these footprints includes wrangling huge sets of data.

After all, the human gut microbiota is a collection of trillions of bacteria that reside in the gut.

URBANA, Ill. – Canadian women who experience food insecurity during pregnancy have increased risk of post-partum depression, and their children have higher frequency of emergency room visits, according to a new study from the University of Illinois and the University of Toronto.

URBANA, Ill. – Chances are you’ve heard of or even taken probiotics: supplements delivering “good microbes” to the gut, providing a wide range of health benefits. If you’re really up on your gut health, you may also be aware of prebiotics: supplements designed to fuel the good microbes already living in our guts.