As you may have noticed, there is no shortage of magazines, publications or articles discussing the hot topic of nutrition these days. Personally, I find most of these materials to be overwhelming, too dry in content or just repetitive from last month's explanations. But there is one nutrition newsletter that I love to read: The Nutrition Action Healthletter. It is short (16 pages), concise, filled with pictures and just plain fun to read. The bimonthly newsletter presents excellent nutrition research in a concise format, with easy and practical lifestyle tips. It is the only newsletter that I actually read front to back. And for only $15 a year, I recently gave this newsletter subscription to five friends for holiday gifts!

The Nutrition Action Healthletter is published 10 times per year by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). CSPI is a nonprofit consumer health group that advocates honest food labeling and advertising and safer and more nutritious foods, and accepts no government or industry funding (not even advertising in their newsletter). Check out some of their articles or recipes on the CSPI website and consider subscribing to help support their work.

This video offers a good rundown of their accomplishments and goals. They created it to run on their website, which explains the "thanks for visiting" blurb at the end.


My favorite part of the newsletter? On the last page of every newsletter, they describe “RIGHT STUFF” vs “FOOD PORN”, and they break down 2 newer food products and categorize them accordingly. This month, the Chili's Restaurant Paradise Pie got a big thumbs down and shoved into the food porn category, due to the high calories (1600 calories per dessert!), excessive saturated fat content (35 grams) and 950 milligrams of sodium! You don’t even need to read the whole article to know that if a food fits into this category, you should avoid it entirely. Check out the full article here [PDF].

Have you seen the Nutrition Action Healthletter, or subscribe to another nutrition publication that doesn't overwhelm you with page counts, low relevance, and lots of advertising? Share your recommendations in the comments!