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I've always wondered about this.  What's better, sea or table salt?  Sea salt always seemed very exotic to me, bringing up images of seaweed waving under the water and large white crystals, bigger than regular table salt. When recipes called for it, I always considered them the gourmet ones. Now a shocking new study  has found that "trendy sea salt may be natural but it is not healthy," according to newswise.com.   "Typically people opt for natural vs. processed to avoid preservatives such as sodium, but in this case, all salt is sodium,” the Web site quotes Ashley Barrient, clinical dietitian, Loyola Center for Metabolic Surgery & Bariatric Care. “Sea salt and table salt have an equivalent sodium content despite sea salt being deemed less processed than table salt due to the way it is produced.” We've all been deluged with warnings for years about the dangers of salt.  But  Barrient says many healthy adults may think monitoring or lowering salt c...

Fast food restaurants for some time have posted calorie contents on their burgers and fries so you know what you're eating and can make good decisions.  But now experts are saying that nutrition guidelines are needed for full-service restaurants, as well. For example, did you know that Outback slathers your steak with butter before grilling it?   Food prepared away from home is typically higher in calories and lower in nutrition than food prepared at home, but it now makes up more than one-third of all calories purchased in the United States, according to newswise.com.  Now we can see why. "Consumers tend to view full-service restaurants as providing healthier, higher quality food than fast-food restaurants, but some studies have found much higher calorie, fat, and sodium levels in food at full-service restaurants," the Website reports. Nutrition information provided at full-service restaurants has lagged behind fast-food restaurants. “The need to educate custome...

Oh no, say it isn't so!  But a new survey has found that Subway is every bit as unhealthy as McDonald's. In a study of young people from 12 to 21, a little over 1,000 calories were consumed by each participant at the golden arches, while at Subway, it was 955,  according to a story at takepart.com.  The Institute of Medicine (IOM) advises that students eat no more than 850 calories at lunch (and for people like me, on a 1,000-calorie-a-day diet, even that sounds decadent!). Now, I was also under the impression that Subway was healthier.  There you could get a turkey sandwich (okay, rolled turkey), tomato and lettuce on a bun, hold the mayo, maybe a slice of swiss cheese, and that just had to be healthier than a Big Mac, no? But the sodium content is higher at Subway (that's probably how they get away with making the food taste good), and the Subway sandwiches, one of the chain's most popular offerings, still had 200 more calories than a similar McDonald's mea...