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Thinking about how to connect with distant friends and family? Searching for how to drop ten pounds in a week?

From high fructose corn syrup to fruit juice sweeteners to agave, added sugars are everywhere. New federal dietary guidelines call for limiting added sugar in the diet to 10 percent of total calories—a significant reduction for most Americans.

A research team led by scientists at The University of Texas Austin has engineered an enzyme that safely treats prostate and breast cancer in animals and also lengthens the lifespan of models that develop chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The new treatment and results from preclinical trials are described in a paper published in the Nov. 21 issue of Nature Medicine.

Even though over half of all Texan public school children qualify for free meals at school, many do not participate and have poorer nutrition, writes Diane Papillion, lecturer of nutritional sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, in an op-ed picked up by several newspapers in Texas.

The key to preventing or surviving a breast cancer diagnosis could be the food you eat, writes Linda deGraffenried, associate professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, in The Dallas Morning News.

Lydia Steinman and students in her nutrition class have cooked up a new way to help Longhorns and others plan for healthy meals this academic year. Thanks to a recent Provost's Teaching Fellowship, Steinman has amassed the tools needed for her students to produce informative cooking videos for the general public. The best videos are curated online under Cook 'Em.

​Sixteen Austin-area elementary schools will participate in a study with University of Texas at Austin researchers thanks to a $3.85 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to learn whether growing fruits and vegetables and learning nutrition and cooking skills can improve health and reduce childhood obesity. The project — a first-of-its-kind controlled experiment in four area school districts — is breaking ground on its first school gardens in Central Texas this spring.

​Recent federal regulations on the labeling of added sugar are a necessary step in combating childhood obesity, writes Jaimie Davis, associate professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, in the Austin American-Statesman.