Nutritional Sciences News & Highlights

A team of 20 undergraduates from the University of Texas at Austin created a donation-based e-cookbook titled "Food: For the Love of Community" that offers easy recipes and guidance on how to maintain healthy food habits amid the COVID-19 crisis.T

he students make up this year's Coordinated Program in Dietetics, a 3-semester pre-professional program where those enrolled rotate between work in hospitals, food banks and community centers on their way to becoming registered dietitians. Linda Steinhardt, who kick-started the project, said the group's diverse, on-the-ground experiences helped them make the book.

A new study performed by University of Texas at Austin researcher Heather Leidy found that snacking on hummus in the afternoon can improve diet quality, curb hunger and desire to eat, and even improve alertness throughout the day when compared to consuming high sugar snacks or eating no snack at all.

The paper, out today in the Journal of Nutrition, looked at adults who were given afternoon snacks of either red pepper hummus and pretzel crisps, a granola bar, or no snack for 7 days each. Both types of snacks had 240 kcals – the amount that is typically consumed by most Americans.

For about 100 years, scientists have known about the Reissner Fiber, an enigmatic structure inside the spinal canal of vertebrates. What they didn't know was exactly what role the Reissner Fiber played in the formation of the spine during different life stages and what influence it had on spinal conditions like scoliosis, a condition displaying atypical curvatures in the spine.

In a recent paper, researchers from The University of Texas at Austin have identified a genetic mechanism behind the formation of the Reissner Fiber and have been able to link the absence of the fiber to scoliosis in zebrafish.