Parents who want their preschoolers to eat their fruits and vegetables should probably practice what they preach, a new study suggests. In a study of more than 1,300 families, reported in the journal Preventive Medicine, researchers found that when parents boosted their own consumption of fruits and vegetables, so did their young children. The study included 1,306 parents of young children. Of these parents, 605 received four home visits in which they learned about nutrition and methods of getting young children to eat fruits and vegetables - including eating the foods in front of their children and allowing them to choose which fruits and vegetables they wanted to eat. In the end, this set of parents boosted their own fruit and vegetable intake, and children’s increases correlated with their parents’.

Lack of vitamin D may lead to death
A study has found evidence that having too little of vitamin D appears to be associated with a higher risk of death. Writing in The Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers said they looked at the vitamin D levels and death rates of more than 13,000 people over a period of more than six years. Those who fell in the lowest quarter of vitamin D levels had a 26 percent higher risk of death from all causes than those in the top quarter, found the study, at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. About 41 percent of men and 53 percent of women in the United States have levels of the vitamin that are considered too low. They found that deaths from cardiovascular disease are higher in the winter, when less sun leads to lower levels of vitamin D.

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