The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension or DASH Diet, developed by scientists at Pennington Biomedical Research Center, has been recognized as the best heart-healthy diet and the second-best diet overall in the 2025 U.S. News & World Report Best Diets Rankings.
These rankings are released yearly, just in time for New Year’s resolutions when many people are looking for healthy eating options. The rankings examine 38 diets across 21 categories.
Why the DASH Diet Stands Out:
Health Benefits: The DASH Diet is well-researched and backed by science for its health benefits. It’s praised for being nutritionally complete, versatile, filling, and nonrestrictive.
History: Developed by Pennington Biomedical pioneers like Dr. George Bray, Dr. Donna Ryan, and Dr. Catherine Champagne, the DASH Diet has proven effective for over 30 years.
2025 Rankings Highlights:
Best Heart-Healthy Diets (No. 1)
Best Diets Overall (No. 2)
Best Diets for High Blood Pressure (No. 1)
Best Diets for High Cholesterol (No. 2)
Best Diabetes Diets (No. 3)
Best Diets for Prediabetes (No. 2)
Best Diets for Healthy Eating (No. 2)
Best Diets for Gut Health (No. 2)
Easiest Diets to Follow (No. 3)
Best Diets for Mental Health (No. 4)
Best Diets for Menopause (No. 4)
Best Diets for Arthritis (No. 4)
Best Diets for Brain Health (No. 4)
What Makes DASH Diet Unique: The DASH Diet focuses on reducing saturated fat, cholesterol, and total fat. It emphasizes fruits, vegetables, and fat-free or low-fat dairy products. It includes whole grains, fish, poultry, and nuts while limiting lean red meat, sweets, added sugars, and sugar-laden beverages. It’s rich in potassium, magnesium, calcium, protein, and fiber.
Developed with support from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the DASH Diet has been proven to lower blood pressure, reduce the risk of stroke and cardiovascular events, and improve metabolism.
Dr. Catherine Champagne highlights, “The DASH Diet is easy to follow, works for the whole family, and has been consistently ranked at the top due to its scientifically proven benefits.”
Evaluations for U.S. News’ rankings involve a methodology developed with The Harris Poll, considering inputs from 69 expert panelists, including doctors, dietitians, and weight loss researchers.
By choosing the DASH Diet, individuals can embrace a heart-healthy eating plan that’s stood the test of time and continues to deliver impressive health benefits.
Study finds how the effects of famine can be passed from one generation to the next.
You are what you eat, as the adage goes. However, a new study from Tulane University found that what’s missing from your diet may also impact the health of your descendants across multiple generations.
Recent research supports the idea that famine in one generation can lead to harmful genetic outcomes in the next. However, questions about how many generations could be affected when an ancestor endures a nutritional crisis have persisted.
In a study published in Heliyon, Tulane researchers found that when paired mice were fed a low-protein diet, their offspring had lower birthweights and smaller kidneys over the next four generations, leading risk factors for chronic kidney disease and hypertension.
Researchers found that correcting the diets in offspring had no impact, and subsequent generations continued to be born with low nephron counts, the vital filtration units that help kidneys remove waste from the bloodstream. Though further work remains to determine if the findings translate to humans, the outcomes underscore the potential for food scarcity or malnutrition to result in decades of adverse health outcomes.
“It’s like an avalanche,” said lead author Giovane Tortelote, assistant professor of pediatric nephrology at Tulane University School of Medicine. “You would think that you can fix the diet in the first generation so the problem stops there, but even if they have a good diet, the next generations – grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren – they may still be born with lower birth weight and low nephron count despite never facing starvation or a low-protein diet.”
Correcting the diet in any of the generations failed to return kidney development in offspring to normal levels.
While maternal nutrition is crucial to an infant’s development, the study found that first-generation offspring were negatively impacted regardless of whether the mother or the father ate a protein-deficient diet.
This novel finding of how diet can have a transgenerational impact on kidney development is one of the latest in the field of epigenetics, the study of how environmental factors can impact gene expression without changing the DNA sequence.
The researchers studied four generations of offspring with nephron counts beginning to show signs of normalizing by the third and fourth generations. Tortelote said further research is needed to determine which generation returns to proper kidney development – and why the trait is passed on in the first place.
“The mother’s diet is absolutely very important, but it appears there’s also something epigenetically from the father that governs proper kidney development,” Tortelote said.
The study also illuminates further understanding of the underlying causes of chronic kidney disease, the eighth leading cause of death in the U.S.
“If you’re born with fewer nephrons, you are more prone to hypertension, but the more hypertension you have, the more you damage the kidney, so it’s a horrible cycle and a public health crisis that could affect people across 50 to 60 years if we apply this to humans’ lifespans,” Tortelote said. “There are two main questions now: Can we fix it, and how do we fix it?”
Discoveries could lead to strategies to prevent cardiovascular disease associated with diabetes.
A study conducted at the Center for Research on Redox Processes in Biomedicine (Redoxoma) has enhanced our understanding of how high blood sugar levels (hyperglycemia), a common symptom of diabetes, can lead to thrombosis. The findings, published in the Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis, could inform the development of strategies to prevent cardiovascular issues in individuals with diabetes.
“The primary causes of death in Brazil and many other Latin American countries are ischemic events, including heart attacks and strokes, where arterial thrombosis plays a significant role. These cardiovascular disorders can result from various risk factors such as high blood sugar (hyperglycemia), abnormal lipid levels (dyslipidemia), and high blood pressure (hypertension). Among these factors, hyperglycemia is notably associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease,” stated Renato Simões Gaspar, the article’s lead author.
The investigation was conducted with support from FAPESP during Gaspar’s postdoctoral research and led by Francisco Laurindo, the last author of the article. Laurindo is a professor at the University of São Paulo’s Medical School (FM-USP) in Brazil and is also a member of Redoxoma, a Research, Innovation, and Dissemination Center (RIDC) established by FAPESP at the Institute of Chemistry (IQ-USP). Gaspar currently teaches at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP).
The authors state that prolonged hyperglycemia and diabetic ketoacidosis increase the risk of thrombosis. This is due to their effects on endothelial dysfunction, which refers to changes in the inner lining of blood vessels. These changes can lead to the binding of platelets to the endothelial cells, triggering the formation of blood clots.
The study showed that peri/epicellular protein disulfide isomerase A1 (pecPDI) regulates platelet-endothelium interaction in hyperglycemia through adhesion-related proteins and alterations in endothelial membrane biophysics.
“We found that a pathway for this PDI in endothelial cells mediates thrombosis in diabetes when hyperglycemia is present, involving a specific molecular mechanism, which we identified,” Laurindo said.
PDI is an enzyme that resides in the endoplasmic reticulum and has the classic function of catalyzing the insertion of disulfide bridges into nascent proteins so that they merge in the correct shape, i.e. so that the amino acid chain folds to form the three-dimensional structure that makes the molecule functional. It is also found in the extracellular space as pecPDI, a pool secreted or bound to the cell surface, in various cell types including platelets and endothelial cells. Studies have shown that pecPDI regulates thrombosis in several models.
Biochemical and biophysical modifications
To investigate platelet-endothelium interaction in hyperglycemia, the researchers created a model with human umbilical vein endothelial cells cultured in different glucose concentrations to produce normoglycemic and hyperglycemic cells. They assessed PDI’s contribution using whole-cell PDI or pecPDI inhibitors.
The cells were incubated with platelets derived from healthy donors. The platelets adhered almost three times more in hyperglycemic than normoglycemic cells. PDI inhibition reversed this effect, and the researchers concluded that the process is regulated by endothelial pecPDI.
To better understand the result, they investigated biophysical processes such as endothelial cell cytoskeleton remodelling and found that hyperglycemic cells had more well-structured actin filament fibres than normoglycemic cells. They also measured the production of hydrogen peroxide, an oxidizing compound, because reactive oxygen species are mediators of cytoskeleton reorganization and cell adhesion—hyperglycemic cells produced twice as much hydrogen peroxide as normoglycemic cells.
The researchers then investigated whether cytoskeleton reorganization affected cell membrane stiffness since substrate stiffness increases platelet adhesion. Using atomic force microscopy, they demonstrated that hyperglycemic cells were stiffer than normoglycemic cells.
The microscope images also showed the formation of cell elongations with extracellular vesicles that appeared to separate from the elongations. This observation led the researchers to investigate the secretome – the set of proteins secreted by an organism into the extracellular space – to find out whether it included proteins that enhanced platelet adhesion. “The purpose of this experiment was to detect proteins exclusively expressed by or present in hyperglycemic cells and not in controls or cells treated with PDI inhibitors,” Gaspar explained.
They found 947 proteins in the secretome, from which they selected eight with a role in cellular adhesion. They then silenced gene expression for three of these proteins using RNA interference and arrived at two proteins, SLC3A2 and LAMC1, as modulators of platelet adhesion. SLC3A2 is a membrane protein, and LAMC1 is the gamma subunit of laminin 1, a key extracellular matrix component.
A new study has found that a low-sugar diet in utero and in the first two years of life can meaningfully reduce the risk of chronic diseases in adulthood. This provides compelling new evidence of the lifelong health effects of early-life sugar consumption.
A study published in the journal Science reveals that children who had sugar restrictions during their first 1,000 days after conception faced up to a 35% lower risk of developing Type 2 diabetes and a 20% reduced risk of hypertension in adulthood. The research indicates that low sugar intake by mothers during pregnancy was sufficient to lower these health risks, and maintaining sugar restrictions after birth further enhanced the benefits.
Using an unintended “natural experiment” from World War II, researchers at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, McGill University in Montreal, and the University of California, Berkeley, examined how sugar rationing during the war influenced long-term health outcomes.
The United Kingdom introduced limits on sugar distribution in 1942 as part of its wartime food rationing program. Rationing ended in September 1953.
The researchers used contemporary data from the U.K. Biobank, a database of medical histories and genetic, lifestyle and other disease risk factors, to study the effect of those early-life sugar restrictions on health outcomes of adults conceived in the U.K. just before and after the end of wartime sugar rationing.
“Studying the long-term effects of added sugar on health presents challenges,” explains Tadeja Gracner, a senior economist at the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research and the study’s corresponding author. “It is difficult to identify situations where individuals are randomly exposed to different nutritional environments early in life and tracked over a span of 50 to 60 years. The end of rationing provided us with a unique natural experiment that helped us overcome these obstacles.”
On average, during rationing, sugar intake was about 8 teaspoons (40 grams) per day. When rationing ended, sugar and sweets consumption skyrocketed to about 16 teaspoons (80 grams) per day.
Notably, rationing did not involve extreme food deprivation overall. Diets generally appeared to have been within today’s guidelines set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the World Health Organization, which recommend no added sugars for children under two and no more than 12 teaspoons (50g) of added sugar daily for adults.
The immediate and large increase in sugar consumption but no other foods after rationing ended created an interesting natural experiment: Individuals were exposed to varying levels of sugar intake early in life, depending on whether they were conceived or born before or after September 1953. Those conceived or born just before the end of rationing experienced sugar-scarce conditions compared to those born just after who were born into a more sugar-rich environment.
The researchers then identified those born in the U.K. Biobank data collected over 50 years later. Using a very tight birth window around the end of sugar rationing allowed the authors to compare midlife health outcomes of otherwise similar birth cohorts.
While living through the period of sugar restriction during the first 1,000 days of life substantially lowered the risk of developing diabetes and hypertension, for those later diagnosed with either of those conditions, the onset of disease was delayed by four years and two years, respectively.
Notably, exposure to sugar restrictions in utero alone was enough to lower risks, but disease protection increased postnatally once solids were likely introduced.
The researchers say the magnitude of this effect is meaningful as it can save costs, extend life expectancy, and, perhaps more importantly, improve quality of life.
In the United States, individuals with diabetes face average annual medical expenses of approximately $12,000. Additionally, an earlier diagnosis of diabetes is associated with a significantly reduced life expectancy; specifically, for each decade that diagnosis occurs earlier, life expectancy decreases by three to four years.
The researchers note that these numbers underscore the value of early interventions that could delay or prevent this disease.
Experts continue to raise concerns about children’s long-term health as they consume excessive amounts of added sugars during their early life, a critical period of development. Adjusting child sugar consumption, however, is not easy—added sugar is everywhere, even in baby and toddler foods, and children are bombarded with TV ads for sugary snacks, say the researchers.
“Parents need information about what works, and this study provides some of the first causal evidence that reducing added sugar early in life is a powerful step towards improving children’s health over their lifetimes,” says study co-author Claire Boone of McGill University and University of Chicago.
Co-author Paul Gertler of UC Berkeley and the National Bureau of Economics Research adds: “Sugar early in life is the new tobacco, and we should treat it as such by holding food companies accountable to reformulate baby foods with healthier options and regulate the marketing and tax sugary foods targeted at kids.”
This study is the first of a larger research effort exploring how early-life sugar restrictions affected a broader set of economic and health outcomes in later adulthood, including education, wealth, and chronic inflammation, cognitive function and dementia.
Hypertension is commonly known to everyone by the name “High Blood Pressure”. This is one of the most commonly found chronic disease in which the blood pressure levels are at elevated levels.
Hypertension can be easily detected, and can be kept at controlled levels with proper medication. But, it is left untreated can result in dangerous health conditions like, heart attack, stroke, chronic heart failure, and sometimes can result into kidney diseases.
Hypertension Statistics
Nearly 29.1% of American residents are affected with this disease. When we consider this percentage with respect to sex, women and men are almost same with 28.5% and 29.7% respectively.
The risk of developing hypertension increases with age. Only 7.3% of US residents with age group 18 to 39 years are affected with this health condition. Whereas, when it comes to the age group of 40 to 59 years, percentage of people affected are 32.4%.
And it is 65%, when we consider the US residents who are above 60 years of age. Let us see few more statistics in details in the following infographic.
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