PLUS : TEA FA C TS n B EST FOOD MAKEOVERS n H I SPAN I C HEALTH

NUTRITION

MAGAZINE OF THE GERALD J. AND DOROTHY R. FRIEDMAN SCHOOL OF NUTRITION SCIENCE AND POLICY VOL. 8 NO. 2 SPRING 2007

Game THE LOWDOWN ON LO-CAL DIETS FOR LONGEVITY

The

Long Lifeof

ASK TUFTS NUTR IT ION

PHOTO: STUDIO PAGGY FOR ISTOCKPHOTO.COM

FOR THIS INSTALLMENT OF “ASK TUFTS NUTRITION,” DIANE L. MCKAY, J89, N97, N00,

a scientist in the Antioxidants Research Laboratory at the Jean MayerUSDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, serves as our expert.

Q: I’m not a tea drinker, but I’m wondering if it would beworthwhile to start drinking it. Does it have to be green

tea? Can I put milk and sugar in my tea and still get the health benefits? Can it help me burn calories?

A: After water, tea is the world’s most popular beverage. It is also an excellent source of the antioxidant compounds

known as flavonoids. Studies of large populations have shown thatpeople who consume a flavonoid-rich diet have a lower risk of developing heart disease and certain cancers. Although flavonoids are present in small amounts in many plant-based foods, includingfruits, vegetables, wine, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices, tea is themajor source of dietary flavonoids for many people. For instance,among the 35,000 women participating in the Iowa Women’s HealthStudy, 26 percent of the flavonoids in their diets came from tea.

All non-herbal teas, whether black, oolong, green or white, comefrom the Camellia sinensis plant. Leaves for black and oolong teasare left to ferment after they are harvested, while leaves for greenand white teas are not fermented at all. Fermentation changes thechemical composition of the tea leaves, so each tea has a differentamount of the individual flavonoid compounds. Green tea has more

epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) than black tea, but black tea hasmore thearubigens and theaflavins. All of these flavonoids haveantioxidant and other actions, though their specific activity varies indifferent tissues. Studies suggest the putative health benefits ofblack, oolong and green teas overlap substantially, so you shoulddrink the one or ones you enjoy the most.

Freshly brewed hot tea contains the highest amount of flavonoids per cup, followed by decaffeinated and iced teas, which have slightlyless. Ready-to-drink teas typically contain relatively few flavonoids. Sugar or honey does not affect the flavonoid content of the tea,though it does add calories to an otherwise zero-calorie beverage.Some research suggests milk may reduce the absorption of teaflavonoids, though this issue is far from settled.

Some preliminary evidence shows that the flavonoids in tea, especially EGCG, increase the rate at which your body burns calories, a process called thermogenesis. This has only been demonstrated in acouple of small studies of young, active people of normal weight. In onestudy of overweight people, EGCG did increase thermogenesis whensubjects were also put on a very low-calorie diet, but not if their usualcaffeine consumption was high. In any event, substituting tea for asugar-sweetened soft drink or other calorie-containing beverage will saveyou calories, and that will definitely help keep your weight in check.

Please send your questions for future installments of “Ask Tufts Nutrition” to Julie Flaherty, Tufts University Office of Publications, 200 Boston Ave., Suite 4600, Medford, MA 02155. Or send an e-mail to julie.flaherty@tufts.edu.

Steeped in health benefits

D E P A R T M E N T S

4 A La CarteResearch in brief

22 On CampusFriedman School news

28 University News

30 Beyond Boundaries

33 Alumni News

Cover illustration by Michael Klein

C O V E R S T O R Y

10 Read This, Live Foreverby Julie Flaherty

Hard-core calorie cuttersbelieve they are on the road to immortality. But dolongevity diets hold promisefor the rest of us?

C O N T E N T SS P R I N G 2 0 0 7 I V O L U M E 8 , N O . 2

F E A T U R E S

6 Una Vida Saludable by Jacqueline Mitchell

A study investigates why Puerto Ricans in theUnited States live with more chronic diseaseand depression than their neighbors.

16 Health Food ReduxSome of our favorite good-for-you product makeovers.

22 Activist AcademicJim Levinson has made his mark near and far.

6

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 1

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 3

FROM THE DEAN

The overall goal of the RAK-Tufts part-nership is to build capacity in education,health and nutrition for the region. To thatend, Tufts University and RAK have estab-lished two endowed professorships at theFriedman School. The RAK gift will createpermanent funds, or endowments, whoseinvestment income will support the salaryand scholarly activities of the professorshipappointees, sustaining them in their teaching,research and service.

At the same time, we have launched theFriedman School/RAK Health and EducationInitiative, a significant venture that willexpand the international reach of the schoolwith three programs that address educationand health initiatives. The school will workwith colleagues in RAK to develop and imple-ment a series of short-term training coursesfor health professionals in the region designedto help them meet new requirements forcontinuing medical education credits. Weare proposing that these short courses becomplemented by a master’s degree in nutri-tion, provided via distance learning.

The initiative’s third component is theestablishment of a health and wellness cen-ter in RAK. As in many other parts of theworld, problems related to diet and chronicdisease are growing at an exponential rate inthe Middle East. Through a range of serv-ices, the center will promote healthylifestyles, linking Tufts’ cutting-edge researchwith application. At Tufts’ facilities and onlocation in RAK, the Friedman School will

be involved in training the health profes-sionals who will staff the new center.

TUFTS AT THE U.N.The school was well represented at this year’sannual meeting of the United Nations Stand-ing Committee on Nutrition (SCN). EllenKramer, N03, F03, now with the World FoodProgram (WFP) in Sudan; Soha Moussa, aPh.D. student in food policy and appliednutrition who is with WFP in Rome; DianeHolland, N03, MPH03, who works forUNICEF in Sudan; Mesfin Teklu, from WorldVision Nairobi; and Frank Martinez-Nocito,N03, of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Orga-nization in Rome, were each engaged in pre-sentations and discussions at the SCN.Christine McDonald, N07, gave a presenta-tion on behalf of Gary Gleason, co-chair ofthe SCN working group on micronutrients.Shibani Ghosh of the International NutritionFoundation presented on training fellow-ships and best practices as part of the work-ing group on capacity building. Facultymembers Irv Rosenberg, Patrick Webb andJennie Coates also attended.

TUFTS IN BOSTONCloser to home there is also much to report.In March, the first-ever student researchday was launched at the Friedman School(see story, page 27). The one-day conferencewas organized totally by students andinvolved more than 150 participants frommany universities.

Also in March, Visiting Professor NevinScrimshaw gave the inaugural seminar in anew set of collaborative activities betweenthe Friedman School and the Institute forHealth and Social Justice of the Partners inHealth. His lecture, “The Synergism ofNutrition and Infection,” was the first in aseries being given by faculty this spring onthe role of food and nutrition and relatedpolicies in improving health for thoseinfected with HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuber-culosis in developing countries.

Planning is under way for the 2007 Fried-man School Symposium, “What You Eat,What You Do, Who You Are,” which will takeplace October 29–31 at the Boston ParkPlaza. Dr. David Barker, whose ground-breaking research on the fetal origins ofhealth and disease has had a profoundimpact on nutrition and health care over thepast two decades, will be the keynote speakeron the first day.

NUTRITION WEEKWe are fortunate that we are able to anchorour 2007 symposium to two other confer-ences during the same week. On the morn-ing of October 29, the Jean Mayer USDAHuman Nutrition Research Center on Aging(HNRCA) will celebrate its 30th anniver-sary. On November 1 and 2, the HNRCAand the International Academy of Nutritionand Aging will host a symposium on “Nutri-tion Modulators of Physical Function andAging.” This is an opportunity to take advan-tage of a full week of nutrition in Boston.

,

known for its dedication to internationalism, the health sciences and community

service. These themes are evident in the Friedman School’s growing collaboration

with the government of Ras Al Khaimah (RAK), one of the seven emirates in the

United Arab Emirates.

At home abroad

2 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

LETTERS

EMERITUS MERITEDI finally got around to reading the winteredition of Tufts Nutrition. It’s very well doneand definitely a keeper.

There is one flaw that I’d like to call toyour attention. In the photo caption onpage 40, John Field is identified as a “formerfaculty member.” John is, in fact, still a mem-ber of the faculty with the title of professoremeritus. I’d hate to think that the schoolthinks of its emeritus faculty as anythingbut members of the faculty!

I hope this doesn’t come across as harsh.It isn’t meant to be. As someone who hopesto join the ranks of the emeriti myself someday, I think it’s important that everyonerecognize that while the emeritus facultymight not be active in the day-to-day run-ning of the school, they are still consideredvalued members of the community.

gerard dallalprofessor

friedman school

Editor’s Note: Well said. We’ll add that JohnO. Field was appointed professor emeritus ofthe Friedman School in 1998.

HUMBLER BEGINNINGSOne quibble regarding your otherwise nicepiece on three early nutrition students(“Where Are They Now?” Winter 2006).The houses on Curtis Street that youdescribe as the “humble beginnings” of thenutrition school in fact were the second ofthree homes (so far). The first was 97 TalbotAve. in Medford (now home to Tufts’Department of Urban and EnvironmentalPolicy and Planning). We moved out ofthere to Curtis Street around 1981 or 1982.

I came to the school in spring 1981, andI may be the only current member of thefaculty or administration who had an officein that building. Other occupants were BobMcGandy, John Field, Marian Zeitlin, StanGershoff, Kathy Dowd and a few more.Lynne Ausman and Bea Rogers arrived at theschool shortly after I did, but I think we hadalready moved to Curtis Street by that time.

william lockeretzprofessor

friedman school

HIGH PRAISE

Tufts Nutrition won a silver medal for best

magazine design from the Council for

Advancement and Support of Education

(CASE) in its 2007 District I Communica-

tions Awards competition. The awards

recognize outstanding achievement in

higher education, independent school and

non-profit organization communications.

TALK TO US Tufts Nutrition welcomes letters, concerns and suggestions from all

its readers. Address your correspondence, which may be edited for space, to Julie

Flaherty, Editor, Tufts Nutrition, Tufts University Office of Publications, 200 Boston

Avenue, Suite 4600, Medford, MA 02155. You can also fax us at 617.627.3549 or

e-mail julie.flaherty@tufts.edu.

NUTRITION

volume 8, no. 2 spring 2007

EditorJulie Flaherty

Editorial DirectorKaren Bailey

Art DirectorMargot Grisar

DesignerBetsy Hayes

Contributing WritersMeghan Mandeville, Jacqueline Mitchell,

Helene Ragovin, Mark Sullivan

Editorial AdvisorsEileen Kennedy, D.Sc., Dean

Gerald J. and Dorothy R. FriedmanSchool of Nutrition Science and Policy

Patrick Webb, Ph.D., Dean Academic Affairs

Cindy Briggs Tobin, DirectorDevelopment and Alumni Relations

Tufts Nutrition is a publication of the Gerald J. andDorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science

and Policy at Tufts University for alumni, key university personnel, students, faculty, staff and

others with an interest in the school.

The mission of the school is to passionatelyadvance nutritional well-being for people worldwide through excellence in research,teaching and the shaping of public policy.

We welcome your letters.Correspondence should be sent to:

Julie Flaherty, Tufts Nutrition,Tufts University Office of Publications,

200 Boston Ave., Suite 4600, Medford, MA 02155Tel: 617.627.4273 Fax: 617.627.3549

E-mail: julie.flaherty@tufts.edu

We’re online. Please check out the magazine andthe world of Tufts Nutrition at

http://nutrition.tufts.edu.

eileen kennedy

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 3

FROM THE DEAN

The overall goal of the RAK-Tufts part-nership is to build capacity in education,health and nutrition for the region. To thatend, Tufts University and RAK have estab-lished two endowed professorships at theFriedman School. The RAK gift will createpermanent funds, or endowments, whoseinvestment income will support the salaryand scholarly activities of the professorshipappointees, sustaining them in their teaching,research and service.

At the same time, we have launched theFriedman School/RAK Health and EducationInitiative, a significant venture that willexpand the international reach of the schoolwith three programs that address educationand health initiatives. The school will workwith colleagues in RAK to develop and imple-ment a series of short-term training coursesfor health professionals in the region designedto help them meet new requirements forcontinuing medical education credits. Weare proposing that these short courses becomplemented by a master’s degree in nutri-tion, provided via distance learning.

The initiative’s third component is theestablishment of a health and wellness cen-ter in RAK. As in many other parts of theworld, problems related to diet and chronicdisease are growing at an exponential rate inthe Middle East. Through a range of serv-ices, the center will promote healthylifestyles, linking Tufts’ cutting-edge researchwith application. At Tufts’ facilities and onlocation in RAK, the Friedman School will

be involved in training the health profes-sionals who will staff the new center.

TUFTS AT THE U.N.The school was well represented at this year’sannual meeting of the United Nations Stand-ing Committee on Nutrition (SCN). EllenKramer, N03, F03, now with the World FoodProgram (WFP) in Sudan; Soha Moussa, aPh.D. student in food policy and appliednutrition who is with WFP in Rome; DianeHolland, N03, MPH03, who works forUNICEF in Sudan; Mesfin Teklu, from WorldVision Nairobi; and Frank Martinez-Nocito,N03, of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Orga-nization in Rome, were each engaged in pre-sentations and discussions at the SCN.Christine McDonald, N07, gave a presenta-tion on behalf of Gary Gleason, co-chair ofthe SCN working group on micronutrients.Shibani Ghosh of the International NutritionFoundation presented on training fellow-ships and best practices as part of the work-ing group on capacity building. Facultymembers Irv Rosenberg, Patrick Webb andJennie Coates also attended.

TUFTS IN BOSTONCloser to home there is also much to report.In March, the first-ever student researchday was launched at the Friedman School(see story, page 27). The one-day conferencewas organized totally by students andinvolved more than 150 participants frommany universities.

Also in March, Visiting Professor NevinScrimshaw gave the inaugural seminar in anew set of collaborative activities betweenthe Friedman School and the Institute forHealth and Social Justice of the Partners inHealth. His lecture, “The Synergism ofNutrition and Infection,” was the first in aseries being given by faculty this spring onthe role of food and nutrition and relatedpolicies in improving health for thoseinfected with HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuber-culosis in developing countries.

Planning is under way for the 2007 Fried-man School Symposium, “What You Eat,What You Do, Who You Are,” which will takeplace October 29–31 at the Boston ParkPlaza. Dr. David Barker, whose ground-breaking research on the fetal origins ofhealth and disease has had a profoundimpact on nutrition and health care over thepast two decades, will be the keynote speakeron the first day.

NUTRITION WEEKWe are fortunate that we are able to anchorour 2007 symposium to two other confer-ences during the same week. On the morn-ing of October 29, the Jean Mayer USDAHuman Nutrition Research Center on Aging(HNRCA) will celebrate its 30th anniver-sary. On November 1 and 2, the HNRCAand the International Academy of Nutritionand Aging will host a symposium on “Nutri-tion Modulators of Physical Function andAging.” This is an opportunity to take advan-tage of a full week of nutrition in Boston.

,

known for its dedication to internationalism, the health sciences and community

service. These themes are evident in the Friedman School’s growing collaboration

with the government of Ras Al Khaimah (RAK), one of the seven emirates in the

United Arab Emirates.

At home abroad

2 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

LETTERS

EMERITUS MERITEDI finally got around to reading the winteredition of Tufts Nutrition. It’s very well doneand definitely a keeper.

There is one flaw that I’d like to call toyour attention. In the photo caption onpage 40, John Field is identified as a “formerfaculty member.” John is, in fact, still a mem-ber of the faculty with the title of professoremeritus. I’d hate to think that the schoolthinks of its emeritus faculty as anythingbut members of the faculty!

I hope this doesn’t come across as harsh.It isn’t meant to be. As someone who hopesto join the ranks of the emeriti myself someday, I think it’s important that everyonerecognize that while the emeritus facultymight not be active in the day-to-day run-ning of the school, they are still consideredvalued members of the community.

gerard dallalprofessor

friedman school

Editor’s Note: Well said. We’ll add that JohnO. Field was appointed professor emeritus ofthe Friedman School in 1998.

HUMBLER BEGINNINGSOne quibble regarding your otherwise nicepiece on three early nutrition students(“Where Are They Now?” Winter 2006).The houses on Curtis Street that youdescribe as the “humble beginnings” of thenutrition school in fact were the second ofthree homes (so far). The first was 97 TalbotAve. in Medford (now home to Tufts’Department of Urban and EnvironmentalPolicy and Planning). We moved out ofthere to Curtis Street around 1981 or 1982.

I came to the school in spring 1981, andI may be the only current member of thefaculty or administration who had an officein that building. Other occupants were BobMcGandy, John Field, Marian Zeitlin, StanGershoff, Kathy Dowd and a few more.Lynne Ausman and Bea Rogers arrived at theschool shortly after I did, but I think we hadalready moved to Curtis Street by that time.

william lockeretzprofessor

friedman school

HIGH PRAISE

Tufts Nutrition won a silver medal for best

magazine design from the Council for

Advancement and Support of Education

(CASE) in its 2007 District I Communica-

tions Awards competition. The awards

recognize outstanding achievement in

higher education, independent school and

non-profit organization communications.

TALK TO US Tufts Nutrition welcomes letters, concerns and suggestions from all

its readers. Address your correspondence, which may be edited for space, to Julie

Flaherty, Editor, Tufts Nutrition, Tufts University Office of Publications, 200 Boston

Avenue, Suite 4600, Medford, MA 02155. You can also fax us at 617.627.3549 or

e-mail julie.flaherty@tufts.edu.

NUTRITION

volume 8, no. 2 spring 2007

EditorJulie Flaherty

Editorial DirectorKaren Bailey

Art DirectorMargot Grisar

DesignerBetsy Hayes

Contributing WritersMeghan Mandeville, Jacqueline Mitchell,

Helene Ragovin, Mark Sullivan

Editorial AdvisorsEileen Kennedy, D.Sc., Dean

Gerald J. and Dorothy R. FriedmanSchool of Nutrition Science and Policy

Patrick Webb, Ph.D., Dean Academic Affairs

Cindy Briggs Tobin, DirectorDevelopment and Alumni Relations

Tufts Nutrition is a publication of the Gerald J. andDorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science

and Policy at Tufts University for alumni, key university personnel, students, faculty, staff and

others with an interest in the school.

The mission of the school is to passionatelyadvance nutritional well-being for people worldwide through excellence in research,teaching and the shaping of public policy.

We welcome your letters.Correspondence should be sent to:

Julie Flaherty, Tufts Nutrition,Tufts University Office of Publications,

200 Boston Ave., Suite 4600, Medford, MA 02155Tel: 617.627.4273 Fax: 617.627.3549

E-mail: julie.flaherty@tufts.edu

We’re online. Please check out the magazine andthe world of Tufts Nutrition at

http://nutrition.tufts.edu.

eileen kennedy

ACCORDING TO A RECENT ANALYSIS IN THE

Journal of the American Medical Associa-tion, antioxidant vitamins, including A, Eand C, don’t help people live any longerthan they would without the popular supple-ments. The new study, undertaken by scien-tists at Copenhagen University in Denmark,analyzed 68 randomized trials, involving232,606 people from 1977 to 2005, andshowed no long-life benefit.

Some experts caution that it’s too earlyto toss out all vitamin pills, or to dismiss thepossibility that they may have some healthbenefits. Alice Lichtenstein, the GershoffProfessor at the Friedman School, said thestudy supports the idea that antioxidantswork best when consumed in food. The takeaway message, she said, is this: “Rely on food to get your nutrients.”

When the Danish researchers eliminatedthe lower-quality studies and looked only at the most trustworthy ones, they actuallyfound a higher risk of death for people taking vitamins. “The results were shockingto us; we didn’t expect this,” said a lead scientist on the study.

Jeffrey Blumberg, head of the Antioxi-dants Research Laboratory at the JeanMayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts, was similarly baffled by the findings. Blumberg told USAToday that he didn’t understand how antioxi-dants given in pill form could be harmfulwhen ample evidence shows that a diet richin foods containing antioxidants is healthful.

An estimated 80 million to 160 millionpeople in North America and Europe—asmany as 20 percent of all adults—takeantioxidants. Last year, Americans spent$2.3 billion on nutritional supplements andvitamins at grocery stores, drug stores andretail outlets.

PHOTO: MARCEL NIJHUIS FOR ISTOCKPHOTO.COM s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 54 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 PHOTO: TONY ANDERSON FOR GETTYIMAGES

PILL POPPERS

highway used to be: pests, pollution, traffic. And before the first seed issown, you’ve got to do a lot of homework.

The Rose Kennedy Greenway is the decorative finale of the massive Cen-tral Artery Tunnel Project, commonly known as the Big Dig, which sentInterstate 93 underground. Submerging the highway freed up about 27acres of land in the heart of Boston that will be dedicated to parks and pub-lic space. When the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, which is overseeingthe development of three of the Greenway parcels, decided to devote spaceto a food garden, it turned to the Friedman School for guidance.

Urban agriculture “has existed as long as people have lived in cities,”said Rachel Beckhardt, who, along with fellow Agriculture, Food andEnvironment Program students Sarah Borron, Emily Ladow and AmeliaLoDolce, took on the project as a directed study. They uncovered a long

history of city cultivation (thinkPresident Franklin D. Roosevelt call-ing on Americans to grow vegetablesin their victory gardens) as well assome best practices for growingfood within city limits.

They surveyed 40 urban garden-ing organizations in the United Statesand Canada to find out the commonchallenges and tap the veteran gar-deners for some smart solutions. Inthe winter, when nothing grows, theybring in art and decorative lighting.They plant sunflowers to divert squir-rels from eating the vegetables. Raisedplanting beds deter street pollutionfrom settling on the crops. Coffeegrounds from coffee shops, foodscraps from restaurants and even dog-gie droppings can be used for com-post. “There are ways you can usewaste from the city to then makegood soil for the garden,”Borron said.

They also investigated how highto make the fences so that peoplefeel welcomed, the need for safestreet-crossing points and the likeli-hood that people will steal foodfrom the garden. (The existing gardens reported surprisingly little“finger blight” or vandalism.)

The final plan will most likelyfollow one of three themes. A worldgarden would grow foods from different cultures and highlight thecity’s diversity. A Boston food gar-den would chronicle the city’s agri-cultural and culinary history. (Cowsused to graze on the Common.) A

“healthy eating” garden would have nutri-tion lessons for both adults and children.

“Kids respond to gardening, and theyare much more likely to try fruits and veg-etables that they have contributed to grow-ing,” Ladow said.

The garden, which could open as soonas summer 2008, should help city dwellersknow more about where their food comesfrom. Although the garden will occupyonly a portion of a 1/3-acre plot, “you cando a lot of education with a small piece ofland,” said Prof. Kathleen Merrigan, theproject advisor.

A LA CAR TE RESEARCH IN BRIEF

FOR HEALTH-CONSCIOUS SHOPPERS, A STROLL DOWN THE AISLE OF THEIR LOCAL

supermarket can be both an educational—and an overwhelming—experience. Offers to help consumers lose weight and lower their cholesterol jump off boxes and cans. For many, it can be a lot to digest.

Some supermarket chains are stepping in to try to help. Using a variety of rating systems—involving symbols like stars, letters and traffic lights—several companies are experi-menting with new systems thatthey hope will enable shoppers tomake faster, smarter purchasingdecisions.

Last fall, Hannaford, a 158-store chain in New England andparts of New York, unveiled itsGuiding Stars program, which rates27,000 grocery items between nostars (soft drinks, for example) andthree stars (fruits and vegetables).

Jeffrey Blumberg, a FriedmanSchool professor and a member ofthe scientific team thatput the ratings together,sees the shelf symbolsas a starting place. “Wehope that people will usethe stars to read the foodlabels,” he told The Wash-ington Post.

The more informationwe can provide to con-sumers, the better, saidEileen Kennedy, dean of the Friedman School. Supermarket programs “are absolute-ly a step in the right direction because they simplify a very complex body of informationfor the consumer,” said Kennedy, who, along with a team of Friedman researchers, is cur-rently involved in a project with Safeway grocery stores, which owns supermarkets in theUnited States and Canada, aimed at educating consumers about the nutritional value ofits food products.

There are some potential pitfalls. One risk, said Jeanne Goldberg, G59, N86,director of the school’s Nutrition Communication Program, is that these programscould add to consumer confusion by dumping even more data into the marketplace.With so much information already on packages, and rating systems that differ fromstore to store and brand to brand, consumers may be overwhelmed.

“There is growing concern that all of this messaging, which is company-specific, is going to further clog the airwaves,” said Goldberg, noting that the next step may beto create a system that appeals to industry and uses common language and commonsignals.

If consumers respond to aisle-side recommendations, it may help prompt food companies “to reformulate products to earn more stars,” Blumberg said. “That’sthe underlying hope.” —Meghan Mandeville

Knowledge on aisle five

Supermarkets like Hannaford are ratingthe nutritional value of their groceries.

A garden for Chinatown

Urban agriculture in Brooklyn, N.Y.

ACCORDING TO A RECENT ANALYSIS IN THE

Journal of the American Medical Associa-tion, antioxidant vitamins, including A, Eand C, don’t help people live any longerthan they would without the popular supple-ments. The new study, undertaken by scien-tists at Copenhagen University in Denmark,analyzed 68 randomized trials, involving232,606 people from 1977 to 2005, andshowed no long-life benefit.

Some experts caution that it’s too earlyto toss out all vitamin pills, or to dismiss thepossibility that they may have some healthbenefits. Alice Lichtenstein, the GershoffProfessor at the Friedman School, said thestudy supports the idea that antioxidantswork best when consumed in food. The takeaway message, she said, is this: “Rely on food to get your nutrients.”

When the Danish researchers eliminatedthe lower-quality studies and looked only at the most trustworthy ones, they actuallyfound a higher risk of death for people taking vitamins. “The results were shockingto us; we didn’t expect this,” said a lead scientist on the study.

Jeffrey Blumberg, head of the Antioxi-dants Research Laboratory at the JeanMayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts, was similarly baffled by the findings. Blumberg told USAToday that he didn’t understand how antioxi-dants given in pill form could be harmfulwhen ample evidence shows that a diet richin foods containing antioxidants is healthful.

An estimated 80 million to 160 millionpeople in North America and Europe—asmany as 20 percent of all adults—takeantioxidants. Last year, Americans spent$2.3 billion on nutritional supplements andvitamins at grocery stores, drug stores andretail outlets.

PHOTO: MARCEL NIJHUIS FOR ISTOCKPHOTO.COM s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 54 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 PHOTO: TONY ANDERSON FOR GETTYIMAGES

PILL POPPERS

highway used to be: pests, pollution, traffic. And before the first seed issown, you’ve got to do a lot of homework.

The Rose Kennedy Greenway is the decorative finale of the massive Cen-tral Artery Tunnel Project, commonly known as the Big Dig, which sentInterstate 93 underground. Submerging the highway freed up about 27acres of land in the heart of Boston that will be dedicated to parks and pub-lic space. When the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, which is overseeingthe development of three of the Greenway parcels, decided to devote spaceto a food garden, it turned to the Friedman School for guidance.

Urban agriculture “has existed as long as people have lived in cities,”said Rachel Beckhardt, who, along with fellow Agriculture, Food andEnvironment Program students Sarah Borron, Emily Ladow and AmeliaLoDolce, took on the project as a directed study. They uncovered a long

history of city cultivation (thinkPresident Franklin D. Roosevelt call-ing on Americans to grow vegetablesin their victory gardens) as well assome best practices for growingfood within city limits.

They surveyed 40 urban garden-ing organizations in the United Statesand Canada to find out the commonchallenges and tap the veteran gar-deners for some smart solutions. Inthe winter, when nothing grows, theybring in art and decorative lighting.They plant sunflowers to divert squir-rels from eating the vegetables. Raisedplanting beds deter street pollutionfrom settling on the crops. Coffeegrounds from coffee shops, foodscraps from restaurants and even dog-gie droppings can be used for com-post. “There are ways you can usewaste from the city to then makegood soil for the garden,” Borron said.

They also investigated how highto make the fences so that peoplefeel welcomed, the need for safestreet-crossing points and the likeli-hood that people will steal foodfrom the garden. (The existing gardens reported surprisingly little“finger blight” or vandalism.)

The final plan will most likelyfollow one of three themes. A worldgarden would grow foods from different cultures and highlight thecity’s diversity. A Boston food gar-den would chronicle the city’s agri-cultural and culinary history. (Cowsused to graze on the Common.) A

“healthy eating” garden would have nutri-tion lessons for both adults and children.

“Kids respond to gardening, and theyare much more likely to try fruits and veg-etables that they have contributed to grow-ing,” Ladow said.

The garden, which could open as soonas summer 2008, should help city dwellersknow more about where their food comesfrom. Although the garden will occupyonly a portion of a 1/3-acre plot, “you cando a lot of education with a small piece ofland,” said Prof. Kathleen Merrigan, theproject advisor.

A LA CAR TE RESEARCH IN BRIEF

FOR HEALTH-CONSCIOUS SHOPPERS, A STROLL DOWN THE AISLE OF THEIR LOCAL

supermarket can be both an educational—and an overwhelming—experience. Offers to help consumers lose weight and lower their cholesterol jump off boxes and cans. For many, it can be a lot to digest.

Some supermarket chains are stepping in to try to help. Using a variety of rating systems—involving symbols like stars, letters and traffic lights—several companies are experi-menting with new systems thatthey hope will enable shoppers tomake faster, smarter purchasingdecisions.

Last fall, Hannaford, a 158-store chain in New England andparts of New York, unveiled itsGuiding Stars program, which rates27,000 grocery items between nostars (soft drinks, for example) andthree stars (fruits and vegetables).

Jeffrey Blumberg, a FriedmanSchool professor and a member ofthe scientific team thatput the ratings together,sees the shelf symbolsas a starting place. “Wehope that people will usethe stars to read the foodlabels,” he told The Wash-ington Post.

The more informationwe can provide to con-sumers, the better, saidEileen Kennedy, dean of the Friedman School. Supermarket programs “are absolute-ly a step in the right direction because they simplify a very complex body of informationfor the consumer,” said Kennedy, who, along with a team of Friedman researchers, is cur-rently involved in a project with Safeway grocery stores, which owns supermarkets in theUnited States and Canada, aimed at educating consumers about the nutritional value ofits food products.

There are some potential pitfalls. One risk, said Jeanne Goldberg, G59, N86,director of the school’s Nutrition Communication Program, is that these programscould add to consumer confusion by dumping even more data into the marketplace.With so much information already on packages, and rating systems that differ fromstore to store and brand to brand, consumers may be overwhelmed.

“There is growing concern that all of this messaging, which is company-specific, is going to further clog the airwaves,” said Goldberg, noting that the next step may beto create a system that appeals to industry and uses common language and commonsignals.

If consumers respond to aisle-side recommendations, it may help prompt food companies “to reformulate products to earn more stars,” Blumberg said. “That’sthe underlying hope.” —Meghan Mandeville

Knowledge on aisle five

Supermarkets like Hannaford are ratingthe nutritional value of their groceries.

A garden for Chinatown

Urban agriculture in Brooklyn, N.Y.

6 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

Maria Rodriguez celebrates her 90th birthday.

,

adult health center are observing the Last Supper with bagels and cups

of grape juice. One man reads passages aloud from a dog-eared bible;

another plays a guitar around the edges of the verse. Among them is

Epifania Gonzalez, 79, who surely has longevity in her genes. Her father lived to

be 114 years old. His sister made it to 110. But by the time she reached her early

70s, Gonzalez—who left her native Puerto Rico for the United States 10 years

ago—had developed high cholesterol, diabetes and osteoporosis.

BY JACQUELINE MITCHELL PHOTOS BY JOEL HASKELL

Una VidSaludableResearch may help stateside Puerto Ricanslead healthier, happier lives

I

a

6 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

Maria Rodriguez celebrates her 90th birthday.

,

adult health center are observing the Last Supper with bagels and cups

of grape juice. One man reads passages aloud from a dog-eared bible;

another plays a guitar around the edges of the verse. Among them is

Epifania Gonzalez, 79, who surely has longevity in her genes. Her father lived to

be 114 years old. His sister made it to 110. But by the time she reached her early

70s, Gonzalez—who left her native Puerto Rico for the United States 10 years

ago—had developed high cholesterol, diabetes and osteoporosis.

BY JACQUELINE MITCHELL PHOTOS BY JOEL HASKELL

Una VidSaludableResearch may help stateside Puerto Ricanslead healthier, happier lives

I

a

A POPULATION PORTRAITThe researchers continue to build upon theMAHES study to paint a detailed portrait ofa previously understudied population. Insome ways, the population’s health mirrorsthat of the rest of America: Puerto Ricanelders are about as obese as their non-His-panic white counterparts, with Puerto Ricanmen managing their weight slightly better. YetPuerto Ricans suffer disproportionately fromdiabetes. In a 2000 study, Tucker and Bermu-dez found that 38 percent of Puerto Ricanshad diabetes, compared to just 23 percent oftheir non-Hispanic white neighbors. What’smore, Puerto Ricans develop diabetes atlower body weights than their non-Hispanicwhite counterparts.

Jose Ordovas, a Friedman School pro-fessor and director of the Nutrition andGenomics Laboratory at the HNRCA, seeksa genetic basis for these health disparities.Using blood and data collected as part ofTucker’s current study, Ordovas is looking atthe genetic variants that might make PuertoRicans more susceptible to metabolic syn-drome, diabetes, inflammation and stresswhen living in the United States. Ordovasand his colleagues will investigate the linkbetween certain common genetic variantsand these measures of allostatic load inorder to provide a basis for targeted pre-vention.

At the same time, the research team islooking at the elders’ mental well-being. In

December 2006, they released preliminaryresults showing that 58 percent of womenand 38 percent of men in Boston’s PuertoRican community suffer from depression,compared to 22 percent of non-Hispanicwhites. The numbers made headlines,though they only confirmed what the scien-tists—and community leaders—already sus-pected. A 2000 study of 715 Hispanic eldersand 238 non-Hispanic whites in the sameneighborhood found that depression wassignificantly linked to being female, livingalone and having health problems. Tucker’sfrequent collaborator, Luis M. Falcon, anassociate professor in the Department ofSociology and Anthropology at NortheasternUniversity, is exploring the link betweenpsychological and social pressures and poorhealth. Through extensive interviews, Falconhopes to pinpoint the sources of mentalstress among Boston’s Puerto Rican elders, aswell as sources of social support that mightmitigate that stress.

One such source, La Alianza Hispana, acommunity organization in Roxbury, is animportant collaborator on the research proj-ects, helping recruit subjects for the study.Working with the scientists was an easy deci-sion, says Marketing and Community Rela-tions Coordinator Josiane Martínez, becausePuerto Rican elders “are hungry to knowmore about their health.”

The study helps community leaders bet-ter serve their population, says executivedirector Janet Collazo. “This is a reality checkfor us. Now we have facts supporting whatwe already know. It’s not just us as an organ-ization talking to ourselves.”

“I SLOWED DOWN”A petite woman with a shock of white hairover bright blue eyes, Gonzalez attributes herfailing health in part to her emigration fromPuerto Rico 10 years ago.

“I was always active, working all the time,”she says as Martínez translates. “I sloweddown a little when I came to the States.”

Today, Gonzalez, who lives with her 36-year-old daughter, spends most weekdays at LaAlianza Hispana’s Senior Center in Roxbury,where she has healthy breakfasts, lunches andsnacks. She also participates in daily exercisesessions and, she says with a smile as sheraises her arms above her head, “We dancehere, too.”

Once Gonzalez learned about her healthproblems, she made an effort to eat morefruits and salad and cook more vegetable-based soups. She said the changes didn’tmean she had to stop eating her favoritePuerto Rican dish of pigeon beans and rice.Now she just limits her portions.

Tomasita Mercado, who has lived inBoston for 38 of her 67 years, learned a sim-ilar lesson both through her participation inthe study and her daily attendance at thesenior center with her husband.

“I used to eat everything, but now I eatleaner meats and less fried stuff,” she says.“We still eat traditional meals, but we makelittle changes to make them healthier.”

Marisol Amaya, the program manager atthe senior center, says that most of herclients have lost weight and seen their bloodsugar levels go down. “We teach them toeat healthy and still save money, since manyfruits and vegetables in this country can beexpensive,” she says.

These are lessons worth passing downfor generations.

“Among Latinos, the elders are still thehead of the family,” Amaya says. “The uni-versities teach us how to improve the life ofthe seniors, and what we teach the seniors,the seniors teach the family.” TN

Jacqueline Mitchell is a senior health scienceswriter in Tufts’ Office of Publications.

Gonzalez’s story is a common one amongBoston’s Puerto Ricans, who are far morelikely to suffer from chronic diseases, depres-sion, cognitive impairment and physical dis-ability than their neighbors. Katherine L.Tucker, a Friedman School professor anddirector of the Dietary Assessment and Epi-demiology Research Program at the JeanMayer USDA Human Nutrition ResearchCenter on Aging (HNRCA), has been studyinghealth disparities among Boston’s Hispanicssince the late 1990s. Back then, when she andher colleagues began a seven-year neighbor-hood-based research project called the Mass-achusetts Hispanic Elders Study (MAHES),there was “almost nothing available” on thesubject, Tucker says. But when it was over, theyfound “significant health disparities, evencompared to low-income whites,” she says.“Now, we’re trying to understand why.”

That’s the goal of the four research proj-ects currently under way at the Boston PuertoRican Center for Population Health andHealth Disparities, one of eight NIH-fundedresearch institutes intended to address U.S.health disparities. In Boston, experts fromTufts, the HNRCA, Tufts-New England Med-ical Center, Northeastern University and LaAlianza Hispana, a prominent communityorganization for Latinos, are workingtogether to examine the relationship betweenstress, nutrition, genetics and chronic diseasesin the region’s largest Hispanic group.

Tucker, the center’s director, is principalscientist for a two-year study following 1,100

Boston-area Puerto Ricans between the agesof 45 and 75. During four-hour, in-homeinterviews, researchers took participants’medical histories, as well as their social andemotional histories. Through questionnairesand blood and urine tests, Tucker and hercolleagues are attempting to measure the tolldaily physical and emotional stress takes onthe body—a metric they call allostatic load—and how that stress manifests as depressionor physical disability. Then the researcherswill examine how social and nutritionalinterventions might mitigate the effects.

“We hypothesize that a combination ofstressors create wear and tear on the body,and that’s made all the worse when you don’thave adequate nutrition,” Tucker says.

That’s where Odilia I. Bermudez’s researchcomes in. Working with a subset of 125 menand women randomly selected from Tucker’sstudy, Bermudez, an assistant professor atthe Friedman School and Tufts School ofMedicine, is testing the effects of nutritionalsupplements on the elders’ allostatic load.The participants receive monthly suppliesof over-the-counter multivitamins and min-erals. At the end of the two-year study, shewill be able determine if improving nutrientintake helped decrease the evidence of stressor stave off chronic diseases.

“The stressors we’re talking about are notjust emotional but also physical,” Bermudezsays. “We wanted to get deeper into theircauses and consequences.”

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 98 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

La Alianza Hispana is an important health andsocial resource for Latinos in Boston, includingEridania Cabrera and Petra Rivera (below),Domingo Alvarado (right), and Ramona Cesena and Maria Rodriguez (opposite page).

Ordovas is looking at genetic variantsthat might make Puerto Ricans more susceptible

to metabolic syndrome, diabetes,inflammation and stress when

living in the United States.

Maria Rodriguez, Farmacio Suarez and Tomasita Mercado play bingo after lunch.

A POPULATION PORTRAITThe researchers continue to build upon theMAHES study to paint a detailed portrait ofa previously understudied population. Insome ways, the population’s health mirrorsthat of the rest of America: Puerto Ricanelders are about as obese as their non-His-panic white counterparts, with Puerto Ricanmen managing their weight slightly better. YetPuerto Ricans suffer disproportionately fromdiabetes. In a 2000 study, Tucker and Bermu-dez found that 38 percent of Puerto Ricanshad diabetes, compared to just 23 percent oftheir non-Hispanic white neighbors. What’smore, Puerto Ricans develop diabetes atlower body weights than their non-Hispanicwhite counterparts.

Jose Ordovas, a Friedman School pro-fessor and director of the Nutrition andGenomics Laboratory at the HNRCA, seeksa genetic basis for these health disparities.Using blood and data collected as part ofTucker’s current study, Ordovas is looking atthe genetic variants that might make PuertoRicans more susceptible to metabolic syn-drome, diabetes, inflammation and stresswhen living in the United States. Ordovasand his colleagues will investigate the linkbetween certain common genetic variantsand these measures of allostatic load inorder to provide a basis for targeted pre-vention.

At the same time, the research team islooking at the elders’ mental well-being. In

December 2006, they released preliminaryresults showing that 58 percent of womenand 38 percent of men in Boston’s PuertoRican community suffer from depression,compared to 22 percent of non-Hispanicwhites. The numbers made headlines,though they only confirmed what the scien-tists—and community leaders—already sus-pected. A 2000 study of 715 Hispanic eldersand 238 non-Hispanic whites in the sameneighborhood found that depression wassignificantly linked to being female, livingalone and having health problems. Tucker’sfrequent collaborator, Luis M. Falcon, anassociate professor in the Department ofSociology and Anthropology at NortheasternUniversity, is exploring the link betweenpsychological and social pressures and poorhealth. Through extensive interviews, Falconhopes to pinpoint the sources of mentalstress among Boston’s Puerto Rican elders, aswell as sources of social support that mightmitigate that stress.

One such source, La Alianza Hispana, acommunity organization in Roxbury, is animportant collaborator on the research proj-ects, helping recruit subjects for the study.Working with the scientists was an easy deci-sion, says Marketing and Community Rela-tions Coordinator Josiane Martínez, becausePuerto Rican elders “are hungry to knowmore about their health.”

The study helps community leaders bet-ter serve their population, says executivedirector Janet Collazo. “This is a reality checkfor us. Now we have facts supporting whatwe already know. It’s not just us as an organ-ization talking to ourselves.”

“I SLOWED DOWN”A petite woman with a shock of white hairover bright blue eyes, Gonzalez attributes herfailing health in part to her emigration fromPuerto Rico 10 years ago.

“I was always active, working all the time,”she says as Martínez translates. “I sloweddown a little when I came to the States.”

Today, Gonzalez, who lives with her 36-year-old daughter, spends most weekdays at LaAlianza Hispana’s Senior Center in Roxbury,where she has healthy breakfasts, lunches andsnacks. She also participates in daily exercisesessions and, she says with a smile as sheraises her arms above her head, “We dancehere, too.”

Once Gonzalez learned about her healthproblems, she made an effort to eat morefruits and salad and cook more vegetable-based soups. She said the changes didn’tmean she had to stop eating her favoritePuerto Rican dish of pigeon beans and rice.Now she just limits her portions.

Tomasita Mercado, who has lived inBoston for 38 of her 67 years, learned a sim-ilar lesson both through her participation inthe study and her daily attendance at thesenior center with her husband.

“I used to eat everything, but now I eatleaner meats and less fried stuff,” she says.“We still eat traditional meals, but we makelittle changes to make them healthier.”

Marisol Amaya, the program manager atthe senior center, says that most of herclients have lost weight and seen their bloodsugar levels go down. “We teach them toeat healthy and still save money, since manyfruits and vegetables in this country can beexpensive,” she says.

These are lessons worth passing downfor generations.

“Among Latinos, the elders are still thehead of the family,” Amaya says. “The uni-versities teach us how to improve the life ofthe seniors, and what we teach the seniors,the seniors teach the family.” TN

Jacqueline Mitchell is a senior health scienceswriter in Tufts’ Office of Publications.

Gonzalez’s story is a common one amongBoston’s Puerto Ricans, who are far morelikely to suffer from chronic diseases, depres-sion, cognitive impairment and physical dis-ability than their neighbors. Katherine L.Tucker, a Friedman School professor anddirector of the Dietary Assessment and Epi-demiology Research Program at the JeanMayer USDA Human Nutrition ResearchCenter on Aging (HNRCA), has been studyinghealth disparities among Boston’s Hispanicssince the late 1990s. Back then, when she andher colleagues began a seven-year neighbor-hood-based research project called the Mass-achusetts Hispanic Elders Study (MAHES),there was “almost nothing available” on thesubject, Tucker says. But when it was over, theyfound “significant health disparities, evencompared to low-income whites,” she says.“Now, we’re trying to understand why.”

That’s the goal of the four research proj-ects currently under way at the Boston PuertoRican Center for Population Health andHealth Disparities, one of eight NIH-fundedresearch institutes intended to address U.S.health disparities. In Boston, experts fromTufts, the HNRCA, Tufts-New England Med-ical Center, Northeastern University and LaAlianza Hispana, a prominent communityorganization for Latinos, are workingtogether to examine the relationship betweenstress, nutrition, genetics and chronic diseasesin the region’s largest Hispanic group.

Tucker, the center’s director, is principalscientist for a two-year study following 1,100

Boston-area Puerto Ricans between the agesof 45 and 75. During four-hour, in-homeinterviews, researchers took participants’medical histories, as well as their social andemotional histories. Through questionnairesand blood and urine tests, Tucker and hercolleagues are attempting to measure the tolldaily physical and emotional stress takes onthe body—a metric they call allostatic load—and how that stress manifests as depressionor physical disability. Then the researcherswill examine how social and nutritionalinterventions might mitigate the effects.

“We hypothesize that a combination ofstressors create wear and tear on the body,and that’s made all the worse when you don’thave adequate nutrition,” Tucker says.

That’s where Odilia I. Bermudez’s researchcomes in. Working with a subset of 125 menand women randomly selected from Tucker’sstudy, Bermudez, an assistant professor atthe Friedman School and Tufts School ofMedicine, is testing the effects of nutritionalsupplements on the elders’ allostatic load.The participants receive monthly suppliesof over-the-counter multivitamins and min-erals. At the end of the two-year study, shewill be able determine if improving nutrientintake helped decrease the evidence of stressor stave off chronic diseases.

“The stressors we’re talking about are notjust emotional but also physical,” Bermudezsays. “We wanted to get deeper into theircauses and consequences.”

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 98 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

La Alianza Hispana is an important health andsocial resource for Latinos in Boston, includingEridania Cabrera and Petra Rivera (below),Domingo Alvarado (right), and Ramona Cesena and Maria Rodriguez (opposite page).

Ordovas is looking at genetic variantsthat might make Puerto Ricans more susceptible

to metabolic syndrome, diabetes,inflammation and stress when

living in the United States.

Maria Rodriguez, Farmacio Suarez and Tomasita Mercado play bingo after lunch.

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 11

LONGHard-core calorie cutters believe they are on the road to immortality. But do longevity diets hold promise for the rest of us?

Life

B Y J U L I E F L A H E R T Y

I L L U S T R A T I O N S B Y M I C H A E L K L E I N

, ,

Clive McKay, found that a peculiar thing happened when he put

rats on a diet. They got lean, and sometimes mean, but they

lived longer. A lot longer. Cut a rat’s rations without skimping

on nutrients and its lifespan starts to stretch. Cut them even

more, and instead of three years, a rat can survive to a ripe old

age of nearly 5. n “It’s amazing,” says Susan Roberts, director of

the Energy Metabolism Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA

Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at

Tufts and a professor of nutrition at the Friedman School.

“You can restrict rats down to about a third of what they

would choose to eat, and they still live, and they live longer, and

they maintain the muscles and vitality of young rats. It’s the only

intervention that’s ever been done that’s known to extend lifes-

pan. And it doesn’t just extend lifespan, it delays biological aging.

It virtually eliminates the age-associated diseases you currently

get in elderly rodents. It’s enormously effective.”

10 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

The Game of

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 11

LONGHard-core calorie cutters believe they are on the road to immortality. But do longevity diets hold promise for the rest of us?

Life

B Y J U L I E F L A H E R T Y

I L L U S T R A T I O N S B Y M I C H A E L K L E I N

, ,

Clive McKay, found that a peculiar thing happened when he put

rats on a diet. They got lean, and sometimes mean, but they

lived longer. A lot longer. Cut a rat’s rations without skimping

on nutrients and its lifespan starts to stretch. Cut them even

more, and instead of three years, a rat can survive to a ripe old

age of nearly 5. n “It’s amazing,” says Susan Roberts, director of

the Energy Metabolism Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA

Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at

Tufts and a professor of nutrition at the Friedman School.

“You can restrict rats down to about a third of what they

would choose to eat, and they still live, and they live longer, and

they maintain the muscles and vitality of young rats. It’s the only

intervention that’s ever been done that’s known to extend lifes-

pan. And it doesn’t just extend lifespan, it delays biological aging.

It virtually eliminates the age-associated diseases you currently

get in elderly rodents. It’s enormously effective.”

10 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

The Game of

Scientists havefound similar evidenceof a slowed-down agingprocess in calorie-restrictedspiders, dogs, cows, mice, yeast,roundworms and fruit flies. A group ofrhesus monkeys at the University of Wis-consin has been dieting since 1989, and preliminary results suggest that they arehealthier than their free-eating counterparts,showing less diabetes, cancer, and yes, evenfewer wrinkles.

Whether the trick works in humansremains to be seen—not that that has keptsome people from biting off less than theycan chew in the search for a longer andhealthier life. You may have heard of theCalorie Restriction Society, which countsabout 1,700 constant dieters as its members,and if you have, you’ve probably been eitherinspired by their self-discipline and aspira-tions of immortality or turned off by reportsof sunken cheeks and freakishly Spartanlifestyles. One recipe for Caloric Restriction,or CR, suggests dieting until you weigh 10 to25 percent less than you did in your lateteens or early twenties—and then eat onlyenough calories to stay at that weight.

But what if it is not an all-or-nothing-for-dessert proposition? The National Institute

on Aging (NIA), for one, believes there mightbe some anti-aging benefits to a less-extremeCR diet that a mere mortal can do. So the NIAawarded $20 million to Tufts and two otherU.S. universities to conduct the first random-ized controlled trial to study the long-termeffects of caloric restriction in people. In phaseone, 46 people signed on at Tufts for a year ofbelt-tightening. Recruitment of study volun-teers for phase two, a two-year commitment,is already under way. At issue is whether cut-ting calories but upping nutrition will slow thesigns of aging (as measured in molecular bio-markers, not crow’s feet) and whether the CRlifestyle is something we could grow to love.

The study, called the ComprehensiveAssessment of the Long-term Effects ofReducing Intake of Energy, or CALERIE,offers a kinder, gentler starvation that won’t

push anyone into the“underweight” classifi-

cation. The researchersdetermine how many calo-

ries participants need to keeptheir current weight, which can

vary from mid-range normal orslightly overweight, and then they

shave off about 25 percent.“We’re cutting what we believe to be not

such a big deal, actually, 600 or 700 calories”each day, says Roberts, the principal investi-gator for the study. “It’s less than a conven-tional weight-loss diet.” It sounds reasonable:Skip that Starbuck’s cranberry orange muffinand its 500 calories, and you’re almost there.

Most study participants lose about 15percent of their body weight in the first ninemonths, which Roberts says made for a lot of“happy campers” during phase one. Onestudy subject, told she would have to wait fora room to disrobe in before her weigh-in,replied: “With a body like this I could justchange in the hall.” And she seemed pre-pared to do just that.

READ THIS, LIVE FOREVERNow before you start living off of soda crackersand Diet Coke, know that the theory behindCaloric Restriction is getting as much nutrition

as you can packed into the allowed calories.That means lots of vegetables and fruits, care-fully selected animal and plant proteins, somewhole grains, and unsaturated fats from nutand plant oils. Less wiggle room for sugars,flours and processed foods.

Roberts explains: “It’s a healthy diet thatcuts calories but doesn’t cut vitamins and min-erals.And that’s very important, because even inanimals, if you feed animals the same food, sothey are getting less of everything, they don’t livelonger, they don’t live healthier. What you haveto do is specifically cut out the calories.”

But couldn’t you have that cookie if youhit the treadmill to burn it off? Increasedexercise, at least in animals, doesn’t seem tohave the same life-extending effects. Thatwas news to Eric Evans, 41, a financial advi-sor from North Reading, Mass. Before join-ing the CALERIE study, Evans believedexercise was the key to staying healthy. At dif-ferent times in his life, he had trained formarathons and worked out four hours aweek. But as he got older, exercise was lesseffective at keeping off the weight.

For the study,Tufts provided hismeals for six monthswhile training him on por-tion sizes, balanced nutritionand lifestyle changes that could helphim stick to the diet. Most of the foods hetruly enjoyed, like the bulgur and beans,wheat berry salad and apricot-blueberryyogurt. A few, like the vacuum-packedscrambled eggs, showed the limits of having

your food prepared in a research kitchen.Roberts says they’ve listened to the phase onevolunteers and tweaked the menus for phasetwo. Besides, as any dieter knows, food takeson a renewed succulence when there is less

of it. “You really got to enjoy just what anapple was all about,” Evans says.

With scientific precision, he lostthree-quarters of a pound every week

for the first 20 weeks, and anec-dotally, he felt really good.

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 1312 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

DINNERChicken Alfredo pastaLettuce/tomato saladOil and vinegar dressingDinner roll

“We’re cutting what

we believe to be not such

a big deal, actually,

600 or 700 calories”

each day.

SUSAN ROBERTS

LUNCHTuna salad (made with olive oil)Pita breadBlack bean and vegetable saladRed grapes

(A sample menu from the CALERIE study)

BREAKFASTToasted oat cereal

AlmondsSkim milkPineapple

Scientists havefound similar evidenceof a slowed-down agingprocess in calorie-restrictedspiders, dogs, cows, mice, yeast,roundworms and fruit flies. A group ofrhesus monkeys at the University of Wis-consin has been dieting since 1989, and preliminary results suggest that they arehealthier than their free-eating counterparts,showing less diabetes, cancer, and yes, evenfewer wrinkles.

Whether the trick works in humansremains to be seen—not that that has keptsome people from biting off less than theycan chew in the search for a longer andhealthier life. You may have heard of theCalorie Restriction Society, which countsabout 1,700 constant dieters as its members,and if you have, you’ve probably been eitherinspired by their self-discipline and aspira-tions of immortality or turned off by reportsof sunken cheeks and freakishly Spartanlifestyles. One recipe for Caloric Restriction,or CR, suggests dieting until you weigh 10 to25 percent less than you did in your lateteens or early twenties—and then eat onlyenough calories to stay at that weight.

But what if it is not an all-or-nothing-for-dessert proposition? The National Institute

on Aging (NIA), for one, believes there mightbe some anti-aging benefits to a less-extremeCR diet that a mere mortal can do. So the NIAawarded $20 million to Tufts and two otherU.S. universities to conduct the first random-ized controlled trial to study the long-termeffects of caloric restriction in people. In phaseone, 46 people signed on at Tufts for a year ofbelt-tightening. Recruitment of study volun-teers for phase two, a two-year commitment,is already under way. At issue is whether cut-ting calories but upping nutrition will slow thesigns of aging (as measured in molecular bio-markers, not crow’s feet) and whether the CRlifestyle is something we could grow to love.

The study, called the ComprehensiveAssessment of the Long-term Effects ofReducing Intake of Energy, or CALERIE,offers a kinder, gentler starvation that won’t

push anyone into the“underweight” classifi-

cation. The researchersdetermine how many calo-

ries participants need to keeptheir current weight, which can

vary from mid-range normal orslightly overweight, and then they

shave off about 25 percent.“We’re cutting what we believe to be not

such a big deal, actually, 600 or 700 calories”each day, says Roberts, the principal investi-gator for the study. “It’s less than a conven-tional weight-loss diet.” It sounds reasonable:Skip that Starbuck’s cranberry orange muffinand its 500 calories, and you’re almost there.

Most study participants lose about 15percent of their body weight in the first ninemonths, which Roberts says made for a lot of“happy campers” during phase one. Onestudy subject, told she would have to wait fora room to disrobe in before her weigh-in,replied: “With a body like this I could justchange in the hall.” And she seemed pre-pared to do just that.

READ THIS, LIVE FOREVERNow before you start living off of soda crackersand Diet Coke, know that the theory behindCaloric Restriction is getting as much nutrition

as you can packed into the allowed calories.That means lots of vegetables and fruits, care-fully selected animal and plant proteins, somewhole grains, and unsaturated fats from nutand plant oils. Less wiggle room for sugars,flours and processed foods.

Roberts explains: “It’s a healthy diet thatcuts calories but doesn’t cut vitamins and min-erals.And that’s very important, because even inanimals, if you feed animals the same food, sothey are getting less of everything, they don’t livelonger, they don’t live healthier. What you haveto do is specifically cut out the calories.”

But couldn’t you have that cookie if youhit the treadmill to burn it off? Increasedexercise, at least in animals, doesn’t seem tohave the same life-extending effects. Thatwas news to Eric Evans, 41, a financial advi-sor from North Reading, Mass. Before join-ing the CALERIE study, Evans believedexercise was the key to staying healthy. At dif-ferent times in his life, he had trained formarathons and worked out four hours aweek. But as he got older, exercise was lesseffective at keeping off the weight.

For the study,Tufts provided hismeals for six monthswhile training him on por-tion sizes, balanced nutritionand lifestyle changes that could helphim stick to the diet. Most of the foods hetruly enjoyed, like the bulgur and beans,wheat berry salad and apricot-blueberryyogurt. A few, like the vacuum-packedscrambled eggs, showed the limits of having

your food prepared in a research kitchen.Roberts says they’ve listened to the phase onevolunteers and tweaked the menus for phasetwo. Besides, as any dieter knows, food takeson a renewed succulence when there is less

of it. “You really got to enjoy just what anapple was all about,” Evans says.

With scientific precision, he lostthree-quarters of a pound every week

for the first 20 weeks, and anec-dotally, he felt really good.

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 1312 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

DINNERChicken Alfredo pastaLettuce/tomato saladOil and vinegar dressingDinner roll

“We’re cutting what

we believe to be not such

a big deal, actually,

600 or 700 calories”

each day.

SUSAN ROBERTS

LUNCHTuna salad (made with olive oil)Pita breadBlack bean and vegetable saladRed grapes

(A sample menu from the CALERIE study)

BREAKFASTToasted oat cereal

AlmondsSkim milkPineapple

In the second half of the study, it was up tohim to create his own meals with the guide-lines he had learned, which took some effort.He estimates that meal planning, shopping,measuring and cooking took an extra five toseven hours each week.

If one of the goals of CALERIE is to gaugeCR in the real world, Evans found it sociallylimiting. The few times he took his wife out toa restaurant, he would order water. Or try tosneak in his own CR entrée.“It was little awk-ward,” he says. “She would get invited out todinner, and I guess I could go along, but Ireally didn’t want to. That can be a little bitrestrictive.”

Over the course of the study, he went from188 pounds to 155 pounds, losing 18 percentof his body weight. His blood pressure“dropped right to the floor” to 100/62.“It justfelt like I was getting exactly what I needed,”he recalls. “I thought this is what being ahuman being should feel like. I felt almost—prehistoric.”

Indeed, some scientists believe there is apart of us, deep in our genes, that remembersthe days when fast food was a fleeing gazelleand a happy meal was any meal at all. That isone theory of why CR works: that whenfood is scarce, cells

direct all their energies toward repair andmaintenance, much like a business facingdraconian budget cuts.

Another hypothesis is that mitochondria,the powerhouses of cells, consume less oxygenor burn oxygen more efficiently when caloriesare in short supply, producing fewer of thosenasty free radicals, scapegoats of aging thatthey are.

Research has also focused on the proteinSIRT1, which affects fat storage and release inmammals, and which may get deliberatelyswitched on by the hormonal alterations ofcaloric restriction.

“Because there isn’t any one theory that isrecognized to be preeminent in aging, we’regoing to be looking at SIRT proteins andimmune function and oxidation damage,”Roberts says. “We’re going to be coveringeverything to see what we can best correlatewith the data.”

The short version of the testing listincludes immune function, bone density,growth hormone, inflammatory factors, thy-roid function, insulin sensitivity, energymetabolism, cognition, psychology andmood, food preferences, food cravings, eatingbehavior and body image.

With its broad scope, the studyinvolves collaborators from all overthe HNRCA, including Dr. Simin

Nikbin Meydani, director of the NutritionalImmunology Laboratory, for immune func-tion; Dr. Edward Saltzman of the EnergyMetabolism Laboratory for medical safety andoverall health; and Roger Fielding, N93, direc-tor of the Nutrition, Exercise Physiology andSarcopenia Laboratory, for body composition.

The dieters have PDAs to keep daily foodlogs and count up their nutrients and calo-ries. They are also in constant contact with adietitian. “Weight measure is a good indica-tion of whether they are adhering to theirdiet,” says Christine Ferrone, the study man-ager. “If their weight isn’t decreasing, weknow something is going on.”

If that fails, Roberts has an uncanny abilityto guess a person’s body mass index (BMI)within a half a point, just by looking.

THE ‘VITALITY DIET’Just to be clear, Roberts, who trained as a chefbefore becoming a nutritionist, has nothingagainst food. She’s proud of the fact that inphase one, most people did not report beinghungry.

“That’s the most important thing for me,”she says, digging into her lunch, a salad of let-tuce, bell peppers, carrots, steamed chickenand a peanut dipping sauce.“They have to feelsatisfied, and they have to enjoy food. Peoplecare about what they eat.”

Roberts is eating with such relish you wouldthink she was on Caloric Restriction herself. Infact, she is, although she thinks “Vitality Diet”

would be a more apt moniker.“I would be 20, 30 pounds heavier,

but I eat in Caloric Restriction ways,” shesays.“And that does mean eating fewer

empty calories. But you know, you can’tgive people no empty calories. On

something like the Ornish diet, peoplehave to eat chick peas and brown rice,

and they get bored to death. We specificallybuild in treats every day.”

Whether or not the study participantsbecome CR converts, they will walk away witha blueprint for healthy eating.

“You have to be a little knowledgeable inorder to not just follow a Caloric Restrictionregimen but to avoid the 40-pound weightgain that the average American goes throughbetween the ages of 20 and 50,” Roberts says.

Given the growing rate of obesity in theUnited States—and the number of peoplewho try and fail to lose weight every year—theobvious question becomes: Is the CALERIE

diet something that most people would beable to follow?

“I don’t think it would work for everyone,”Roberts says.“But I think a lot of people could.We can’t put numbers on it yet, but my per-sonal guess is that 20, 25 percent of peoplewouldn’t find it that hard.”

Some question whether the study goes farenough—or thin enough—to truly test thelongevity hypothesis. Michael Rae, 36, a devo-tee of CR who lives in Philadelphia, sees theCALERIE study as a look at the benefits ofrestoring healthy weight in the moderatelyoverweight, but not a real test of CaloricRestriction.

“It would certainly be helpful if the resultswere analyzed in subgroups to show us the dis-tinct effects, if any, of an energy-restricted dietin people who were already of healthy bodycomposition to begin with,” Rae says, “and inparticular in those who may reach the very lowend of the spectrum in final weight.” Thosepeople like him. With only 115 pounds on his6-foot-tall frame, Rae has a BMI of about15.6. (Supermodel Kate Moss, by compari-son, is a hefty 16.4)

People who diet down to such a low BMImay have enviable cholesterol levels and bloodpressure, better-functioning hearts and fewer

signs of inflammation, but there can beside effects. With less body fat,

serious calorie restrictors may sometimes getcold easily or find sitting uncomfortable. Somereport a lowered libido or menstrual irregu-larity. Other risks include slower wound heal-ing, loss of strength from reduced muscle massand more fractures from reduced bone mass.

All that—and an uncertain reward. Giventhe inherent differences in the species, somescientists believe calorie restriction won’tincrease life in humans as dramatically as itdoes in other animals. From mathematicalmodels, John Phelan, an evolutionary biologistat the University of California at Los Angeles,predicts that a lifetime of food deprivationwill translate into human life extension of amere 3 to 7 percent.

Even if it turns out that the most nutri-tionally disciplined among us will live thelongest, that doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldreach for the donuts in despair.

“People get the impression that there aretwo choices with respect to life-extension diets:starve yourself or eat 5,000 calories a day,”says Brian Delaney, the president of the Calo-rie Restriction Society and co-author of TheLongevity Diet (Marlowe & Company, 2005).“It really does not make scientific sense toportray CR as being one specific degree ofrestriction. There doesn’t appear to be a thresh-old effect.

“There are these milder, doable versionsof CR that the public should be aware of,”Delaney says, emphasizing that with eatingbetter and slimming down even a little, “itseems very likely that there will be mild retar-dation of the aging process.”

Since completing the CALERIE study, EricEvans says his lifestyle changes are sticking. Heeats a whole grain breakfast now, instead of justcoffee, and drinks more milk. He put on a fewpounds after the study (his wife thought he wasgetting a little too skinny, anyway), but hisweight has been stable for about a year now.

But a lifetime of restraint? Evans, for one,thinks there is a happy medium. “To managethis kind of lifestyle, it would be such a sacri-fice,” he says.“I just wonder, living that long, isit really worth that effort?”

Rae banks on it with every calorie he avoids.“We love life and look forward to more.”

For more information on the CALERIEstudy, write to calerie@tufts.edu or call617.556.3125. TN

Julie Flaherty is the editor of this magazine.She can be reached at julie.flaherty@tufts.edu.

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 1514 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

Before you start living off of

soda crackers and Diet Coke,

know that the theory behind

Caloric Restriction is getting

as much nutrition as you can

packed into the allowed calories.

DIET OR DISEASE?The Caloric Restriction movement is often accused of lending legitimacy to anorexia nervosa. CR practitioners are quick to point out that Caloric Restriction is about healthand longevity, not appearance or fear of weight gain. And while anorexia is usually a hid-den obsession, CR proponents are often evangelical in their openness. Caloric Restric-tion is foremost about nutrition, they say, while anorexia usually leads to malnutrition.

Jennifer Murphy, N00, a nutrition therapist who specializes in eating disorders, notesthat anorexia is a disease, not a lifestyle choice. “It may be prompted by stress, physicalor mental trauma, severe depression or anxiety,” she says. “Individuals with anorexianervosa often find themselves deep into the disease before they realize they need help.”

At the same time, she wonders if Caloric Restriction, even for the right reasons, may lead to something unhealthy.

“The diet has a positive approach and promotes a lot of good-quality food, but thebottom line comes down to: Is this too much work for people to actually follow? If you arespending too much time in your life preparing, measuring and controlling what you areeating, is this disordered? As I am someone who promotes normalized eating, this diet seems a little excessive for me.”

The Tufts CALERIE (Comprehensive Assessment of the Long-term Effects of ReducingIntake of Energy) study, for its part, is not designed to diet participants down to the pointof being underweight. Because researchers are interested in the psychology, as well asthe physiology, of attempting Caloric Restriction, participants are carefully monitored byboth dietitians and psychologists throughout the study.

In the second half of the study, it was up tohim to create his own meals with the guide-lines he had learned, which took some effort.He estimates that meal planning, shopping,measuring and cooking took an extra five toseven hours each week.

If one of the goals of CALERIE is to gaugeCR in the real world, Evans found it sociallylimiting. The few times he took his wife out toa restaurant, he would order water. Or try tosneak in his own CR entrée.“It was little awk-ward,” he says. “She would get invited out todinner, and I guess I could go along, but Ireally didn’t want to. That can be a little bitrestrictive.”

Over the course of the study, he went from188 pounds to 155 pounds, losing 18 percentof his body weight. His blood pressure“dropped right to the floor” to 100/62.“It justfelt like I was getting exactly what I needed,”he recalls. “I thought this is what being ahuman being should feel like. I felt almost—prehistoric.”

Indeed, some scientists believe there is apart of us, deep in our genes, that remembersthe days when fast food was a fleeing gazelleand a happy meal was any meal at all. That isone theory of why CR works: that whenfood is scarce, cells

direct all their energies toward repair andmaintenance, much like a business facingdraconian budget cuts.

Another hypothesis is that mitochondria,the powerhouses of cells, consume less oxygenor burn oxygen more efficiently when caloriesare in short supply, producing fewer of thosenasty free radicals, scapegoats of aging thatthey are.

Research has also focused on the proteinSIRT1, which affects fat storage and release inmammals, and which may get deliberatelyswitched on by the hormonal alterations ofcaloric restriction.

“Because there isn’t any one theory that isrecognized to be preeminent in aging, we’regoing to be looking at SIRT proteins andimmune function and oxidation damage,”Roberts says. “We’re going to be coveringeverything to see what we can best correlatewith the data.”

The short version of the testing listincludes immune function, bone density,growth hormone, inflammatory factors, thy-roid function, insulin sensitivity, energymetabolism, cognition, psychology andmood, food preferences, food cravings, eatingbehavior and body image.

With its broad scope, the studyinvolves collaborators from all overthe HNRCA, including Dr. Simin

Nikbin Meydani, director of the NutritionalImmunology Laboratory, for immune func-tion; Dr. Edward Saltzman of the EnergyMetabolism Laboratory for medical safety andoverall health; and Roger Fielding, N93, direc-tor of the Nutrition, Exercise Physiology andSarcopenia Laboratory, for body composition.

The dieters have PDAs to keep daily foodlogs and count up their nutrients and calo-ries. They are also in constant contact with adietitian. “Weight measure is a good indica-tion of whether they are adhering to theirdiet,” says Christine Ferrone, the study man-ager. “If their weight isn’t decreasing, weknow something is going on.”

If that fails, Roberts has an uncanny abilityto guess a person’s body mass index (BMI)within a half a point, just by looking.

THE ‘VITALITY DIET’Just to be clear, Roberts, who trained as a chefbefore becoming a nutritionist, has nothingagainst food. She’s proud of the fact that inphase one, most people did not report beinghungry.

“That’s the most important thing for me,”she says, digging into her lunch, a salad of let-tuce, bell peppers, carrots, steamed chickenand a peanut dipping sauce.“They have to feelsatisfied, and they have to enjoy food. Peoplecare about what they eat.”

Roberts is eating with such relish you wouldthink she was on Caloric Restriction herself. Infact, she is, although she thinks “Vitality Diet”

would be a more apt moniker.“I would be 20, 30 pounds heavier,

but I eat in Caloric Restriction ways,” shesays.“And that does mean eating fewer

empty calories. But you know, you can’tgive people no empty calories. On

something like the Ornish diet, peoplehave to eat chick peas and brown rice,

and they get bored to death. We specificallybuild in treats every day.”

Whether or not the study participantsbecome CR converts, they will walk away witha blueprint for healthy eating.

“You have to be a little knowledgeable inorder to not just follow a Caloric Restrictionregimen but to avoid the 40-pound weightgain that the average American goes throughbetween the ages of 20 and 50,” Roberts says.

Given the growing rate of obesity in theUnited States—and the number of peoplewho try and fail to lose weight every year—theobvious question becomes: Is the CALERIE

diet something that most people would beable to follow?

“I don’t think it would work for everyone,”Roberts says.“But I think a lot of people could.We can’t put numbers on it yet, but my per-sonal guess is that 20, 25 percent of peoplewouldn’t find it that hard.”

Some question whether the study goes farenough—or thin enough—to truly test thelongevity hypothesis. Michael Rae, 36, a devo-tee of CR who lives in Philadelphia, sees theCALERIE study as a look at the benefits ofrestoring healthy weight in the moderatelyoverweight, but not a real test of CaloricRestriction.

“It would certainly be helpful if the resultswere analyzed in subgroups to show us the dis-tinct effects, if any, of an energy-restricted dietin people who were already of healthy bodycomposition to begin with,” Rae says, “and inparticular in those who may reach the very lowend of the spectrum in final weight.” Thosepeople like him. With only 115 pounds on his6-foot-tall frame, Rae has a BMI of about15.6. (Supermodel Kate Moss, by compari-son, is a hefty 16.4)

People who diet down to such a low BMImay have enviable cholesterol levels and bloodpressure, better-functioning hearts and fewer

signs of inflammation, but there can beside effects. With less body fat,

serious calorie restrictors may sometimes getcold easily or find sitting uncomfortable. Somereport a lowered libido or menstrual irregu-larity. Other risks include slower wound heal-ing, loss of strength from reduced muscle massand more fractures from reduced bone mass.

All that—and an uncertain reward. Giventhe inherent differences in the species, somescientists believe calorie restriction won’tincrease life in humans as dramatically as itdoes in other animals. From mathematicalmodels, John Phelan, an evolutionary biologistat the University of California at Los Angeles,predicts that a lifetime of food deprivationwill translate into human life extension of amere 3 to 7 percent.

Even if it turns out that the most nutri-tionally disciplined among us will live thelongest, that doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldreach for the donuts in despair.

“People get the impression that there aretwo choices with respect to life-extension diets:starve yourself or eat 5,000 calories a day,”says Brian Delaney, the president of the Calo-rie Restriction Society and co-author of TheLongevity Diet (Marlowe & Company, 2005).“It really does not make scientific sense toportray CR as being one specific degree ofrestriction. There doesn’t appear to be a thresh-old effect.

“There are these milder, doable versionsof CR that the public should be aware of,”Delaney says, emphasizing that with eatingbetter and slimming down even a little, “itseems very likely that there will be mild retar-dation of the aging process.”

Since completing the CALERIE study, EricEvans says his lifestyle changes are sticking. Heeats a whole grain breakfast now, instead of justcoffee, and drinks more milk. He put on a fewpounds after the study (his wife thought he wasgetting a little too skinny, anyway), but hisweight has been stable for about a year now.

But a lifetime of restraint? Evans, for one,thinks there is a happy medium. “To managethis kind of lifestyle, it would be such a sacri-fice,” he says.“I just wonder, living that long, isit really worth that effort?”

Rae banks on it with every calorie he avoids.“We love life and look forward to more.”

For more information on the CALERIEstudy, write to calerie@tufts.edu or call617.556.3125. TN

Julie Flaherty is the editor of this magazine.She can be reached at julie.flaherty@tufts.edu.

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 1514 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

Before you start living off of

soda crackers and Diet Coke,

know that the theory behind

Caloric Restriction is getting

as much nutrition as you can

packed into the allowed calories.

DIET OR DISEASE?The Caloric Restriction movement is often accused of lending legitimacy to anorexia nervosa. CR practitioners are quick to point out that Caloric Restriction is about healthand longevity, not appearance or fear of weight gain. And while anorexia is usually a hid-den obsession, CR proponents are often evangelical in their openness. Caloric Restric-tion is foremost about nutrition, they say, while anorexia usually leads to malnutrition.

Jennifer Murphy, N00, a nutrition therapist who specializes in eating disorders, notesthat anorexia is a disease, not a lifestyle choice. “It may be prompted by stress, physicalor mental trauma, severe depression or anxiety,” she says. “Individuals with anorexianervosa often find themselves deep into the disease before they realize they need help.”

At the same time, she wonders if Caloric Restriction, even for the right reasons, may lead to something unhealthy.

“The diet has a positive approach and promotes a lot of good-quality food, but thebottom line comes down to: Is this too much work for people to actually follow? If you arespending too much time in your life preparing, measuring and controlling what you areeating, is this disordered? As I am someone who promotes normalized eating, this diet seems a little excessive for me.”

The Tufts CALERIE (Comprehensive Assessment of the Long-term Effects of ReducingIntake of Energy) study, for its part, is not designed to diet participants down to the pointof being underweight. Because researchers are interested in the psychology, as well asthe physiology, of attempting Caloric Restriction, participants are carefully monitored byboth dietitians and psychologists throughout the study.

grocery store shelves. The seemingly endless varieties of cookies, chips and processed

foods have become increasingly easy to eat, requiring nothing more than a hand in a bag

or a zap in the microwave. n But there is a brighter side. In recent years, some inher-

ently healthful foods, like fruits and vegetables, have gotten makeovers that make them

more appealing to consumers. Some are more convenient to cook or eat. Others have

been made tastier. Still others aim to be more nutritious. n So we asked some Fried-

man School faculty, staff and alumni what they personally consider the best advances

in convenience or taste or healthful transformations. In this informal survey, they were

free to pick the foods their families enjoy or the foods they think will make the biggest

difference to consumer health in general. These are some of their favorites.

THE

16 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

best thingsSINCE

SLICEDBREAD

B Y J U L I E F L A H E R T Y P H O T O S B Y V I T O A L U I A

grocery store shelves. The seemingly endless varieties of cookies, chips and processed

foods have become increasingly easy to eat, requiring nothing more than a hand in a bag

or a zap in the microwave. n But there is a brighter side. In recent years, some inher-

ently healthful foods, like fruits and vegetables, have gotten makeovers that make them

more appealing to consumers. Some are more convenient to cook or eat. Others have

been made tastier. Still others aim to be more nutritious. n So we asked some Fried-

man School faculty, staff and alumni what they personally consider the best advances

in convenience or taste or healthful transformations. In this informal survey, they were

free to pick the foods their families enjoy or the foods they think will make the biggest

difference to consumer health in general. These are some of their favorites.

THE

16 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

best thingsSINCE

SLICEDBREAD

B Y J U L I E F L A H E R T Y P H O T O S B Y V I T O A L U I A

Woe is the lonely salad spinner: Thehands-down choice in our informal surveywas bagged, pre-washed salad greens. SarahSliwa, N08, a project manager for the JohnHancock Center for Physical Activity andNutrition at the Friedman School, said thatjudging from her roommates’ shopping habitsand nutritional interests—or lack thereof—this invention has done wonders “to make theconsumption of vegetables as easy as chipsand salsa: open a bag, open a jar.”

Earthbound Farm, an organic grower inCalifornia, said it was the first company topackage lettuce in bags, starting in 1986.They found that baby lettuces were moreresistant to decay than cut mature lettuces,and worked on ways to harvest greens intheir infancy. The science keeps improving,although for competitive reasons, producersare very secretive about their washing andbagging processes. One technique is toremove oxygen from the bags and inflatethem with nitrogen to protect leaves frombruising and wilting. Most employ specialplastic packaging that slows the rate of decay.But the greens must be kept cold and eaten

within about 15 days of harvesting.Consumers don’t seem to mind that

bagged lettuces can cost twice as much as ahead of lettuce. Janet Forrester, an associateprofessor in the department of Public Healthand Family Medicine at Tufts School of Med-icine, said it has been years since she boughta head of romaine or iceberg. “Though theyare a little more expensive, they save memoney in the end because I am not alwaysthrowing out unused ends or the first threelayers of a head of lettuce,” she said.

The $2.8 billion convenience greensindustry took a significant hit last fall, whenan E. coli outbreak in fresh spinach killedthree people and sickened nearly 200. Fol-lowing the September spinach recall, pack-aged salad sales were down 16.8 percent inthe fourth quarter of 2006, compared to thesame period in 2005, according to the Per-ishables Group, a consulting firm for thefresh food industry. Some have blamedincreased illness from produce contaminationon imported products, more widespread dis-tribution, lack of inspection and—in a painfulhealth irony—growing consumption.

Forget about thinking outsidethe box. Produce producers have theirminds in the bag. Shredded cabbage formaking cole slaw, trimmed broccoli andcauliflower for stir fries and peeled andcubed butternut squash have all helped winpeople back to the joys of cooking. But of allthe pre-cut fruits and vegetables that havecome on the market in recent years, the “baby”carrot won the most hearts in our survey.

The baby carrot isn’t exactly a juvenile. Itwas born in 1986, when a California farmernamed Mike Yurosek was looking for a way tosell misshapen but otherwise tasty maturecarrots. He used an industrial green bean cut-ter to slice them into 2-inch lengths, an indus-trial potato peeler to smooth them down andwas left with something cute and snackable.

“I don’t even mind paying more for theindividual serving bags—I know, what awaste!—but it is fast and easy to throw themin lunch bags,” said Melinda Maryniuk, G79,a graduate of the master’s and Dietetic Intern-ship Program at the Frances Stern NutritionCenter and associate director of affiliated

programs at the Joslin Diabetes Center.“I travela lot for business and have found a few places,like convenience stores, that sell small bags ofthe mini-carrots ... that I find so helpful.”

After they are cut, most fresh veggies arewashed in a chlorine solution to kill harmfulbacteria and then rinsed in plain water. Thenthey are packaged with less oxygen and morecarbon dioxide to slow decay. Even so, com-pared to their whole counterparts, cut veggieshave a shorter shelf life (they need to bestored in the refrigerator) and are faster tolose nutrients like vitamin C.

Pre-cut fruit was a little trickier to bring tomarket. The USDA Agriculture Research Ser-vice and Mantrose-Haeuser Co. spent a

decade developing a coating (a blend ofcalcium and vitamin C) that preventssliced apples from browning and turningmushy without changing their flavor.

In our survey, pre-cut fruit was not aclear-cut success. Some agreed with KellyKane, nutrition education coordinator atthe Frances Stern Nutrition Center, whosaid pre-cut fruit is a hit with her twochildren, ages 2 and 5.

Others felt like Marla Rhodes, N96,who can see the value of cut-up melon andpineapple that is hard to deal with whole,but not with fruits that come in their ownnatural wrappers.“Pre-sliced apple dippersinfuriate me. Why are we using excessthrowaway packaging to give these to chil-dren when they can hold an apple in theirhand and take a bite?” said Rhodes, whomanaged a community farm. “Talk aboutremoving food from its natural source!Smaller, kid-sized apples that actually havetaste will do the trick.”

When it comes to conveniencefoods, you have to decide whetherthe time saved is worth the addition-al price. Arizona State University con-ducted a study in 2003 to determinethe cost-per-hour equivalent a con-sumer pays for several value-addedgroceries. The time savings for saladmixes and some pre-prepped vegeta-bles, like broccoli, seemed worth theextra expense. Less cost-effectivewere shredded cheese, cheesesticks, sliced apples and trimmedcelery, for which consumers werepaying the equivalent of $50 to $80per hour for the labor they avoided.

If there was a casualty of thecarb wars of a few years back, itwas pasta. Followers of the Atkinsand South Beach diets shunnedbowls of spaghetti as glycemic night-mares. The industry responded withhigher-protein, higher-fiber pastas thatfeatured whole wheat, and the trendgained momentum in January 2005,when the Dietary Guidelines for Ameri-cans encouraged everyone to eat morewhole grains.

Almost 100 new whole- and multi-grain pasta products were launched in2005, compared to 11 in 2001. They rangefrom whole-grain-laced products thatlook and taste like white pasta to dark andtoothsome 100 percent whole-wheat pas-tas with distinct flavors all their own.

“We switched to this type exclusively,and the kids didn’t flinch at all,” saidDeanna Campbell, N91, a registered die-titian and a mother of three.

Whole-wheat pasta has two to threetimes more fiber than traditional pastaand more micronutrients, such as folicacid, magnesium and vitamin E. But toget the most nutrition, you have to readthe pasta box carefully. Most quality pastais based on hard durum wheat, which hasmore protein and gluten and less starchthan other wheat, and makes a tough,stretchy dough that is perfect for con-torting and squeezing into myriadshapes. If the bran and germ areremoved, as it is in most “white” pastas,the flour is called semolina. If the wholekernel is used, the label should read“whole durum wheat.” Some of thenewer pastas employ a mix of the twoflours, or they may feature oat, barley,spelt, brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat andprotein-rich legumes, including lentilsand chickpeas, all of which are nutri-tionally superior to semolina alone.

Thanks, Dr. Atkins. “Hopefully thesefoods will remain available even nowthat the low-carb diet is less popular,”said Nicholas Hays, N02, a researcher atthe Donald W. Reynolds Institute onAging at the University of Arkansas forMedical Sciences.

Trade-offs

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 1918 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

PRE-PREPPED PRODUCE

CLEAN GREENS

WHOLE-WHEAT PASTA

Woe is the lonely salad spinner: Thehands-down choice in our informal surveywas bagged, pre-washed salad greens. SarahSliwa, N08, a project manager for the JohnHancock Center for Physical Activity andNutrition at the Friedman School, said thatjudging from her roommates’ shopping habitsand nutritional interests—or lack thereof—this invention has done wonders “to make theconsumption of vegetables as easy as chipsand salsa: open a bag, open a jar.”

Earthbound Farm, an organic grower inCalifornia, said it was the first company topackage lettuce in bags, starting in 1986.They found that baby lettuces were moreresistant to decay than cut mature lettuces,and worked on ways to harvest greens intheir infancy. The science keeps improving,although for competitive reasons, producersare very secretive about their washing andbagging processes. One technique is toremove oxygen from the bags and inflatethem with nitrogen to protect leaves frombruising and wilting. Most employ specialplastic packaging that slows the rate of decay.But the greens must be kept cold and eaten

within about 15 days of harvesting.Consumers don’t seem to mind that

bagged lettuces can cost twice as much as ahead of lettuce. Janet Forrester, an associateprofessor in the department of Public Healthand Family Medicine at Tufts School of Med-icine, said it has been years since she boughta head of romaine or iceberg. “Though theyare a little more expensive, they save memoney in the end because I am not alwaysthrowing out unused ends or the first threelayers of a head of lettuce,” she said.

The $2.8 billion convenience greensindustry took a significant hit last fall, whenan E. coli outbreak in fresh spinach killedthree people and sickened nearly 200. Fol-lowing the September spinach recall, pack-aged salad sales were down 16.8 percent inthe fourth quarter of 2006, compared to thesame period in 2005, according to the Per-ishables Group, a consulting firm for thefresh food industry. Some have blamedincreased illness from produce contaminationon imported products, more widespread dis-tribution, lack of inspection and—in a painfulhealth irony—growing consumption.

Forget about thinking outsidethe box. Produce producers have theirminds in the bag. Shredded cabbage formaking cole slaw, trimmed broccoli andcauliflower for stir fries and peeled andcubed butternut squash have all helped winpeople back to the joys of cooking. But of allthe pre-cut fruits and vegetables that havecome on the market in recent years, the “baby”carrot won the most hearts in our survey.

The baby carrot isn’t exactly a juvenile. Itwas born in 1986, when a California farmernamed Mike Yurosek was looking for a way tosell misshapen but otherwise tasty maturecarrots. He used an industrial green bean cut-ter to slice them into 2-inch lengths, an indus-trial potato peeler to smooth them down andwas left with something cute and snackable.

“I don’t even mind paying more for theindividual serving bags—I know, what awaste!—but it is fast and easy to throw themin lunch bags,” said Melinda Maryniuk, G79,a graduate of the master’s and Dietetic Intern-ship Program at the Frances Stern NutritionCenter and associate director of affiliated

programs at the Joslin Diabetes Center.“I travela lot for business and have found a few places,like convenience stores, that sell small bags ofthe mini-carrots ... that I find so helpful.”

After they are cut, most fresh veggies arewashed in a chlorine solution to kill harmfulbacteria and then rinsed in plain water. Thenthey are packaged with less oxygen and morecarbon dioxide to slow decay. Even so, com-pared to their whole counterparts, cut veggieshave a shorter shelf life (they need to bestored in the refrigerator) and are faster tolose nutrients like vitamin C.

Pre-cut fruit was a little trickier to bring tomarket. The USDA Agriculture Research Ser-vice and Mantrose-Haeuser Co. spent a

decade developing a coating (a blend ofcalcium and vitamin C) that preventssliced apples from browning and turningmushy without changing their flavor.

In our survey, pre-cut fruit was not aclear-cut success. Some agreed with KellyKane, nutrition education coordinator atthe Frances Stern Nutrition Center, whosaid pre-cut fruit is a hit with her twochildren, ages 2 and 5.

Others felt like Marla Rhodes, N96,who can see the value of cut-up melon andpineapple that is hard to deal with whole,but not with fruits that come in their ownnatural wrappers.“Pre-sliced apple dippersinfuriate me. Why are we using excessthrowaway packaging to give these to chil-dren when they can hold an apple in theirhand and take a bite?” said Rhodes, whomanaged a community farm. “Talk aboutremoving food from its natural source!Smaller, kid-sized apples that actually havetaste will do the trick.”

When it comes to conveniencefoods, you have to decide whetherthe time saved is worth the addition-al price. Arizona State University con-ducted a study in 2003 to determinethe cost-per-hour equivalent a con-sumer pays for several value-addedgroceries. The time savings for saladmixes and some pre-prepped vegeta-bles, like broccoli, seemed worth theextra expense. Less cost-effectivewere shredded cheese, cheesesticks, sliced apples and trimmedcelery, for which consumers werepaying the equivalent of $50 to $80per hour for the labor they avoided.

If there was a casualty of thecarb wars of a few years back, itwas pasta. Followers of the Atkinsand South Beach diets shunnedbowls of spaghetti as glycemic night-mares. The industry responded withhigher-protein, higher-fiber pastas thatfeatured whole wheat, and the trendgained momentum in January 2005,when the Dietary Guidelines for Ameri-cans encouraged everyone to eat morewhole grains.

Almost 100 new whole- and multi-grain pasta products were launched in2005, compared to 11 in 2001. They rangefrom whole-grain-laced products thatlook and taste like white pasta to dark andtoothsome 100 percent whole-wheat pas-tas with distinct flavors all their own.

“We switched to this type exclusively,and the kids didn’t flinch at all,” saidDeanna Campbell, N91, a registered die-titian and a mother of three.

Whole-wheat pasta has two to threetimes more fiber than traditional pastaand more micronutrients, such as folicacid, magnesium and vitamin E. But toget the most nutrition, you have to readthe pasta box carefully. Most quality pastais based on hard durum wheat, which hasmore protein and gluten and less starchthan other wheat, and makes a tough,stretchy dough that is perfect for con-torting and squeezing into myriadshapes. If the bran and germ areremoved, as it is in most “white” pastas,the flour is called semolina. If the wholekernel is used, the label should read“whole durum wheat.” Some of thenewer pastas employ a mix of the twoflours, or they may feature oat, barley,spelt, brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat andprotein-rich legumes, including lentilsand chickpeas, all of which are nutri-tionally superior to semolina alone.

Thanks, Dr. Atkins. “Hopefully thesefoods will remain available even nowthat the low-carb diet is less popular,”said Nicholas Hays, N02, a researcher atthe Donald W. Reynolds Institute onAging at the University of Arkansas forMedical Sciences.

Trade-offs

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 1918 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

PRE-PREPPED PRODUCE

CLEAN GREENS

WHOLE-WHEAT PASTA

If you are going to include juice as one ofyour daily fruit servings, it is hard to gowrong with orange juice. Compared to otherjuices, it is typically higher in vitamins C, Aand the B vitamins, as well as iron and potas-sium. For many people, OJ is now also a go-to source for calcium.

Minute Maid was the first company tomarket a nationally branded calcium-fortifiedorange juice in 1987, the same year theNational Academy of Sciences increased itscalcium-intake recommendations in an effortto prevent osteoporosis. Today, calcium-boosted products account for one-third offresh, refrigerated OJ sales in the United States,according to the Nielsen Co.

“Not being a milk drinker, I’m always try-ing to find alternatives to increase the amountof calcium in my diet, and the OJ is a greatoption,” said Laura Coleman, N87, N95, aregistered dietitian.

Naturally calcium-rich foods includecheese, milk, yogurt, tofu, canned salmon andsardines (with the bones), leafy green vegeta-bles and broccoli. But many people can’t orchoose not to eat dairy, and it is difficult to getadequate calcium from the other sourcesalone. For those who balk at choking downcalcium supplements each day, a glass of for-tified OJ, which supplies 35 percent of the rec-

ommended daily allowance for calcium and 25percent of the allowance for vitamin D, seemslike a good deal.

Shara Aaron, N00, owner of NutCom, LLCNutrition Communications, said that theorange juice makeover has made a big differ-ence to her family and clients.“Since very fewdrink milk, it’s really a no-brainer,” she said.

Judy Salkeld, N96, project director withthe Brown University Institute for CommunityHealth Promotion, agreed.“You get the bene-fits of a serving of fruit plus part of the cal-cium benefits you would get from a dairydrink,” she said.

OJ seems to do a fine job of transportingcalcium. A one-week study with senior citizensat the Jean Mayer USDA Human NutritionResearch Center on Aging at Tufts found thatcalcium was equally well absorbed from skimmilk, fortified orange juice and calcium-car-bonate tablets.

That said, fortified OJ can’t replace milkwhen it comes to protein, vitamin B12,riboflavin and phosphorus, but it is a steptoward achieving the 1,000 to 1,500 milligramsof calcium that adults need each day.

n A larger selection of flash-frozen vegetables and fruits (like mangoesand cherries)

n Better non-fat and low-fat dairyproducts

n Shelled edamame

n Quick-cooking whole grain mixes

n Lactose-free products

n Soy products

n Farmers markets

n Heirloom vegetables

n Drinkable and portableyogurt

n Single-serving cottagecheese

n String cheese

n Berry and pomegranatejuices

Eggs all but disappeared from the breakfasttable in the 1980s, when their high cholesterolcontent was considered a no-no for health-conscious hearts. But then scientists foundthat saturated fat, rather than dietary choles-terol, was the bigger culprit behind high LDLlevels, and most people were given the OK toscramble again. As if to mark its return to thespotlight, the humble egg has gotten all dolledup in recent years, with some sporting extraOmega-3 fatty acids and other nutritional

bonuses. Eggs with Omega-3 health claimsaccounted for 9.4 percent of the $2.4 billionAmericans spent on fresh eggs sold at food,drug and mass merchandiser stores otherthan Wal-Mart in the 52 weeks ending March24, 2007, according to Nielsen.

“We definitely appreciate sources ofOmega-3s other than fish,” said JenniferSpadano, N97, N04. Susan Phinney, N98, stilluses mostly egg substitute to keep cholesteroldown. But, she said,“When I eat whole eggs, I

am delighted to have the option of eggswith more Omega-3s.”

Omega-3 fatty acids are a group ofpolyunsaturated fats that some evidencehas shown to be heart-healthy. The mostcommon sources are fish oil, some nutsand some vegetable oils. So how do theyget them into an egg? It comes down towhat the hens are fed. Chicken feeds withflaxseed, safflower oil, algae or fish oillead to more Omega-3 content in theegg yolk. Tweaking the feed recipe leadsto other benefits as well. Hens fed canolaoil turn out eggs with up to 25 percentless saturated fat. Add a little alfalfa, algaeor marigold petal to the feed, and you’llget eggs with extra lutein, a carotenoidthat may help prevent macular degener-ation. Not surprisingly, hens fed vitaminE turn out eggs with extra vitamin E.

“Designer” eggs cost more (up totwice as much) and may look a littledifferent. “I love the creepy orange-yel-low color of the yolks,” said CarrieHubbell Melgarejo, N00. But betweenwhite and brown, cage-free and free-range, organic and conventional, shewonders if there might be a few toomany varieties in the egg case. “Whycan’t these types of eggs just be allOmega-3 and free-range?” she asked.

For years consumers complainedabout the hard, thick-skinned andtasteless tomatoes that were soldmost of the year in this region,tomatoes grown thousands of milesaway, picked green and gassed intransit to produce “ripening” and red color, while achieving little interms of desirable taste and texture.Walk into a supermarket today, andyou’ll be hard-pressed to find thatbox of four smallish, square tomatofruits that filled the shelves just afew years ago.

Now we have a great selection of juicy, tasty and colorful tomatoes,almost year-round. They come fromall over. Some are new—like the littlebell-shaped cherry varieties—andothers are still clustered on toma-toes vines where they were picked at a riper stage. Yes, they cost more,but clearly fill a real demand.

—Hugh Joseph, N84, N94

Other favorites

Tomato tribute

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 2120 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

They got rid of the skim milk with thefunny blue cast a while ago, but in thelast five years, some low-fat and non-fatmilks have emerged that actually mimicthe color and creaminess of whole or 2percent milk.

Some milk companies add non-fatmilk solids to the mix, a standard prac-tice in California for the past 20 years.Others use newer condensation and fil-tration technologies to create a richer-tasting but still lower-fat product. “Theyare essentially pulling some of the waterout of the milk, so what’s left is more ofthe good things,” explained SharonGerdes, a technical support consultantfor Dairy Management Inc. Bothprocesses boost the amount of proteinand calcium per glass compared to typ-ical milk. As with regular skim milk,vitamins A and D3 are also added.

These technologies are just the latestin a long line of industry efforts toimprove the taste and texture of low-fatdairy foods. A quarter century ago, only14 percent of total milk consumed waslow-fat or skim. Today, that number iscloser to 65 percent. “Improved skimmilk has been around for decades, andthe shift in consumption has occurredover a long time, but in terms of meas-urable dietary impact, it is the one withthe most potential for a big effect,” saidJeanne Goldberg, G59, N86, a professorat the Friedman School.

OJ WITH CALCIUM

SKIM MILK THAT DOESN’TTASTE LIKE WATER

DESIGNER EGGS

Whole-wheat bread has always been anutritional powerhouse, but now you nolonger have to drive to the health foodstore to find a wide selection.

“I remember just five years ago it waslike an Easter egg hunt to find a super-market that sold 100 percent whole-wheat bread,” said Heather (Case)Rafferty, N97, director of brand and mar-keting services for the Culinary Instituteof America. “Now whole-wheat breadsand tortillas can be found in almost everysupermarket.” Others have praise for theproliferation of whole-grain varieties ofpizza dough, pita bread, English muffins,buns, bagels, rice, pilafs and couscous.

Just because the shelves are teemingwith whole-grain breads doesn’t meanthat consumers will rush to abandontheir soft and mild white loaves. To woothose reluctant consumers, ConAgrafoods spent at least eight years and mil-lions of dollars developing Ultragrain, awhole-grain wheat flour introduced in2004 that has a taste, texture and colorsimilar to refined flour. Sara Lee, for one,uses it in hot dog buns, bagels and its ver-sion of whole-grain white bread.

Some hope these undercover wholegrains will help white-bread eaters tran-sition to the brown stuff. Others are dubi-ous that highly processed breads withadditives like dough conditioners andhigh fructose corn syrup will ever makethe grade nutritionally, even with thewhole-grain designation. “I prefer grainproducts that have only two to threeingredients on the label,” said SandraBouma, N82, a registered dietitian at theUniversity of Michigan Hospital.

GRAINS, GRAINS EVERYWHERE

If you are going to include juice as one ofyour daily fruit servings, it is hard to gowrong with orange juice. Compared to otherjuices, it is typically higher in vitamins C, Aand the B vitamins, as well as iron and potas-sium. For many people, OJ is now also a go-to source for calcium.

Minute Maid was the first company tomarket a nationally branded calcium-fortifiedorange juice in 1987, the same year theNational Academy of Sciences increased itscalcium-intake recommendations in an effortto prevent osteoporosis. Today, calcium-boosted products account for one-third offresh, refrigerated OJ sales in the United States,according to the Nielsen Co.

“Not being a milk drinker, I’m always try-ing to find alternatives to increase the amountof calcium in my diet, and the OJ is a greatoption,” said Laura Coleman, N87, N95, aregistered dietitian.

Naturally calcium-rich foods includecheese, milk, yogurt, tofu, canned salmon andsardines (with the bones), leafy green vegeta-bles and broccoli. But many people can’t orchoose not to eat dairy, and it is difficult to getadequate calcium from the other sourcesalone. For those who balk at choking downcalcium supplements each day, a glass of for-tified OJ, which supplies 35 percent of the rec-

ommended daily allowance for calcium and 25percent of the allowance for vitamin D, seemslike a good deal.

Shara Aaron, N00, owner of NutCom, LLCNutrition Communications, said that theorange juice makeover has made a big differ-ence to her family and clients.“Since very fewdrink milk, it’s really a no-brainer,” she said.

Judy Salkeld, N96, project director withthe Brown University Institute for CommunityHealth Promotion, agreed.“You get the bene-fits of a serving of fruit plus part of the cal-cium benefits you would get from a dairydrink,” she said.

OJ seems to do a fine job of transportingcalcium. A one-week study with senior citizensat the Jean Mayer USDA Human NutritionResearch Center on Aging at Tufts found thatcalcium was equally well absorbed from skimmilk, fortified orange juice and calcium-car-bonate tablets.

That said, fortified OJ can’t replace milkwhen it comes to protein, vitamin B12,riboflavin and phosphorus, but it is a steptoward achieving the 1,000 to 1,500 milligramsof calcium that adults need each day.

n A larger selection of flash-frozen vegetables and fruits (like mangoesand cherries)

n Better non-fat and low-fat dairyproducts

n Shelled edamame

n Quick-cooking whole grain mixes

n Lactose-free products

n Soy products

n Farmers markets

n Heirloom vegetables

n Drinkable and portableyogurt

n Single-serving cottagecheese

n String cheese

n Berry and pomegranatejuices

Eggs all but disappeared from the breakfasttable in the 1980s, when their high cholesterolcontent was considered a no-no for health-conscious hearts. But then scientists foundthat saturated fat, rather than dietary choles-terol, was the bigger culprit behind high LDLlevels, and most people were given the OK toscramble again. As if to mark its return to thespotlight, the humble egg has gotten all dolledup in recent years, with some sporting extraOmega-3 fatty acids and other nutritional

bonuses. Eggs with Omega-3 health claimsaccounted for 9.4 percent of the $2.4 billionAmericans spent on fresh eggs sold at food,drug and mass merchandiser stores otherthan Wal-Mart in the 52 weeks ending March24, 2007, according to Nielsen.

“We definitely appreciate sources ofOmega-3s other than fish,” said JenniferSpadano, N97, N04. Susan Phinney, N98, stilluses mostly egg substitute to keep cholesteroldown. But, she said,“When I eat whole eggs, I

am delighted to have the option of eggswith more Omega-3s.”

Omega-3 fatty acids are a group ofpolyunsaturated fats that some evidencehas shown to be heart-healthy. The mostcommon sources are fish oil, some nutsand some vegetable oils. So how do theyget them into an egg? It comes down towhat the hens are fed. Chicken feeds withflaxseed, safflower oil, algae or fish oillead to more Omega-3 content in theegg yolk. Tweaking the feed recipe leadsto other benefits as well. Hens fed canolaoil turn out eggs with up to 25 percentless saturated fat. Add a little alfalfa, algaeor marigold petal to the feed, and you’llget eggs with extra lutein, a carotenoidthat may help prevent macular degener-ation. Not surprisingly, hens fed vitaminE turn out eggs with extra vitamin E.

“Designer” eggs cost more (up totwice as much) and may look a littledifferent. “I love the creepy orange-yel-low color of the yolks,” said CarrieHubbell Melgarejo, N00. But betweenwhite and brown, cage-free and free-range, organic and conventional, shewonders if there might be a few toomany varieties in the egg case. “Whycan’t these types of eggs just be allOmega-3 and free-range?” she asked.

For years consumers complainedabout the hard, thick-skinned andtasteless tomatoes that were soldmost of the year in this region,tomatoes grown thousands of milesaway, picked green and gassed intransit to produce “ripening” and red color, while achieving little interms of desirable taste and texture.Walk into a supermarket today, andyou’ll be hard-pressed to find thatbox of four smallish, square tomatofruits that filled the shelves just afew years ago.

Now we have a great selection of juicy, tasty and colorful tomatoes,almost year-round. They come fromall over. Some are new—like the littlebell-shaped cherry varieties—andothers are still clustered on toma-toes vines where they were picked at a riper stage. Yes, they cost more,but clearly fill a real demand.

—Hugh Joseph, N84, N94

Other favorites

Tomato tribute

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 2120 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

They got rid of the skim milk with thefunny blue cast a while ago, but in thelast five years, some low-fat and non-fatmilks have emerged that actually mimicthe color and creaminess of whole or 2percent milk.

Some milk companies add non-fatmilk solids to the mix, a standard prac-tice in California for the past 20 years.Others use newer condensation and fil-tration technologies to create a richer-tasting but still lower-fat product. “Theyare essentially pulling some of the waterout of the milk, so what’s left is more ofthe good things,” explained SharonGerdes, a technical support consultantfor Dairy Management Inc. Bothprocesses boost the amount of proteinand calcium per glass compared to typ-ical milk. As with regular skim milk,vitamins A and D3 are also added.

These technologies are just the latestin a long line of industry efforts toimprove the taste and texture of low-fatdairy foods. A quarter century ago, only14 percent of total milk consumed waslow-fat or skim. Today, that number iscloser to 65 percent. “Improved skimmilk has been around for decades, andthe shift in consumption has occurredover a long time, but in terms of meas-urable dietary impact, it is the one withthe most potential for a big effect,” saidJeanne Goldberg, G59, N86, a professorat the Friedman School.

OJ WITH CALCIUM

SKIM MILK THAT DOESN’TTASTE LIKE WATER

DESIGNER EGGS

Whole-wheat bread has always been anutritional powerhouse, but now you nolonger have to drive to the health foodstore to find a wide selection.

“I remember just five years ago it waslike an Easter egg hunt to find a super-market that sold 100 percent whole-wheat bread,” said Heather (Case)Rafferty, N97, director of brand and mar-keting services for the Culinary Instituteof America. “Now whole-wheat breadsand tortillas can be found in almost everysupermarket.” Others have praise for theproliferation of whole-grain varieties ofpizza dough, pita bread, English muffins,buns, bagels, rice, pilafs and couscous.

Just because the shelves are teemingwith whole-grain breads doesn’t meanthat consumers will rush to abandontheir soft and mild white loaves. To woothose reluctant consumers, ConAgrafoods spent at least eight years and mil-lions of dollars developing Ultragrain, awhole-grain wheat flour introduced in2004 that has a taste, texture and colorsimilar to refined flour. Sara Lee, for one,uses it in hot dog buns, bagels and its ver-sion of whole-grain white bread.

Some hope these undercover wholegrains will help white-bread eaters tran-sition to the brown stuff. Others are dubi-ous that highly processed breads withadditives like dough conditioners andhigh fructose corn syrup will ever makethe grade nutritionally, even with thewhole-grain designation. “I prefer grainproducts that have only two to threeingredients on the label,” said SandraBouma, N82, a registered dietitian at theUniversity of Michigan Hospital.

GRAINS, GRAINS EVERYWHERE

PHOTOS: KATHLEEN DOOHER s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 23

“ , .”

futile reprimand, as F. James Levinson’s boss at the U.S. Agency for Inter-national Development (USAID) in New Delhi probably knew. The recentHarvard graduate was so taken with Indian culture that he was befriend-ing the factory workers he was supposed to be surveying and showing upat the office in homespun khadi cloth that had been popularized byGandhi. Indeed, so enthusiastic was this Jewish kid from Pittsburgh that theIndians he worked with dubbed him “Labhu Ram.”

“It’s just a very ordinary name,” Levinson explains proudly, “the namea washerman might have.”

Levinson is not one to keep people at arm’s length: not his research sub-jects, not his colleagues and definitely not his students, many of whom cometo know him as a friend. In fact, there is a decent chance that if Jim Levin-son becomes your academic advisor, you will eventually ask him to offici-ate at your wedding.

It is not just that he has been at this mentoring thing for a while, to thepoint where several current Friedman School faculty members once calledhim teacher, and he now has his first second-generation student, thedaughter of a former protégé. News of his retirement brought an out-pouring of letters and e-mails from alumni around the world, most of themrecalling how Levinson’s “contagious enthusiasm” and “warm-climatepersonality” had rubbed off on them.

“One quality that makes Jim a good teacher is his ability to connect withjust about everyone, and to connect people to each other,” says Anna Her-forth, N05. “He is always saying things like, ‘You should meet so-and-so ... you both like Mahler symphonies!’ What it boils down to is that Jimdoesn’t just teach nutrition, monitoring and evaluation, or any other

scholarly subject. At the core, he teachespeace and goodwill.”

His character explains a lot about hisachievements as a nutrition crusader,improving the quality of life for people, par-ticularly women and children, around theworld. Thanks in large part to his efforts, theBangladesh Integrated Nutrition Project, forexample, was perhaps the largest and mosteffective freestanding nutrition project inthe world, dramatically reducing infant andmaternal malnutrition and mortality. Notbad for a career that has taken detours formusic, chickens and the odd stint in jail.

FROM PITTSBURGH TO INDIALevinson grew up in Pittsburgh, where hisfamily owned a steel fabricating company,and later attended Deerfield Academy andHarvard University. But a funny thing hap-pened on the way to law school. As theleader of an a cappella group at Harvard, themusically inclined Levinson embarked on asinging tour of India. He was soon fasci-nated by the country and the teachings ofMahatma Gandhi. Tossing aside his lawbooks, he signed on to walk across Indiawith one of Gandhi’s disciples. Sadly, thedisciple became ill, and the pilgrimage fellthrough. So instead, he took the job withUSAID, where he sometimes frustrated hisbosses with his clothing, but impressed themwith his work.

A year later, he was asked to investigatefood fortification opportunities as part ofUSAID’s first-ever nutrition project, andhis path was set. He spent the next fiveyears fighting malnutrition in the pooreststates of India before returning to theUnited States for graduate school.

In 1972, at just 30 years old, he was invitedto head the International Nutrition Plan-ning Program at the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology. One of his best skills wasattracting bright graduate students to theprogram, including Beatrice Lorge Rogers,who was then studying at Brandeis. Now aFriedman School professor, Rogers describesphoning MIT’s nutrition department to set

ON CAMPUS NUTRITION SCHOOL NEWS

He’s a nutrition crusader, spiritual leader, choral master and occasional trespasser. And then there are the weddings... by Julie Flaherty

Peace out, Jim

Levinson’s office is filled withphotos of students, colleaguesand friends he has made in Asia,Africa and Latin America.

PHOTOS: KATHLEEN DOOHER s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 23

“ , .”

futile reprimand, as F. James Levinson’s boss at the U.S. Agency for Inter-national Development (USAID) in New Delhi probably knew. The recentHarvard graduate was so taken with Indian culture that he was befriend-ing the factory workers he was supposed to be surveying and showing upat the office in homespun khadi cloth that had been popularized byGandhi. Indeed, so enthusiastic was this Jewish kid from Pittsburgh that theIndians he worked with dubbed him “Labhu Ram.”

“It’s just a very ordinary name,” Levinson explains proudly, “the namea washerman might have.”

Levinson is not one to keep people at arm’s length: not his research sub-jects, not his colleagues and definitely not his students, many of whom cometo know him as a friend. In fact, there is a decent chance that if Jim Levin-son becomes your academic advisor, you will eventually ask him to offici-ate at your wedding.

It is not just that he has been at this mentoring thing for a while, to thepoint where several current Friedman School faculty members once calledhim teacher, and he now has his first second-generation student, thedaughter of a former protégé. News of his retirement brought an out-pouring of letters and e-mails from alumni around the world, most of themrecalling how Levinson’s “contagious enthusiasm” and “warm-climatepersonality” had rubbed off on them.

“One quality that makes Jim a good teacher is his ability to connect withjust about everyone, and to connect people to each other,” says Anna Her-forth, N05. “He is always saying things like, ‘You should meet so-and-so ... you both like Mahler symphonies!’ What it boils down to is that Jimdoesn’t just teach nutrition, monitoring and evaluation, or any other

scholarly subject. At the core, he teachespeace and goodwill.”

His character explains a lot about hisachievements as a nutrition crusader,improving the quality of life for people, par-ticularly women and children, around theworld. Thanks in large part to his efforts, theBangladesh Integrated Nutrition Project, forexample, was perhaps the largest and mosteffective freestanding nutrition project inthe world, dramatically reducing infant andmaternal malnutrition and mortality. Notbad for a career that has taken detours formusic, chickens and the odd stint in jail.

FROM PITTSBURGH TO INDIALevinson grew up in Pittsburgh, where hisfamily owned a steel fabricating company,and later attended Deerfield Academy andHarvard University. But a funny thing hap-pened on the way to law school. As theleader of an a cappella group at Harvard, themusically inclined Levinson embarked on asinging tour of India. He was soon fasci-nated by the country and the teachings ofMahatma Gandhi. Tossing aside his lawbooks, he signed on to walk across Indiawith one of Gandhi’s disciples. Sadly, thedisciple became ill, and the pilgrimage fellthrough. So instead, he took the job withUSAID, where he sometimes frustrated hisbosses with his clothing, but impressed themwith his work.

A year later, he was asked to investigatefood fortification opportunities as part ofUSAID’s first-ever nutrition project, andhis path was set. He spent the next fiveyears fighting malnutrition in the pooreststates of India before returning to theUnited States for graduate school.

In 1972, at just 30 years old, he was invitedto head the International Nutrition Plan-ning Program at the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology. One of his best skills wasattracting bright graduate students to theprogram, including Beatrice Lorge Rogers,who was then studying at Brandeis. Now aFriedman School professor, Rogers describesphoning MIT’s nutrition department to set

ON CAMPUS NUTRITION SCHOOL NEWS

He’s a nutrition crusader, spiritual leader, choral master and occasional trespasser. And then there are the weddings... by Julie Flaherty

Peace out, Jim

Levinson’s office is filled withphotos of students, colleaguesand friends he has made in Asia,Africa and Latin America.

Early on, Levinson looked for an antidoteto the typical, and isolated, doctoral course ofstudy. “The Ph.D. student gets closeted offwith some professor to work on somethingway over on the right side of the decimalpoint, a miniscule thing where the studentwould become the world expert on this finite,minute problem …but would not be devel-oping the skills that doctoral students shouldhave in problem solving more generally.”

That led to the creation ofthe Ph.D. seminar, in whichdoctoral candidates join aroundtable with faculty andeach other, sharing their proj-ects and roadblocks.

Many students cite Lev-inson as the force that drewthem to the Friedman School.Laura Rowe, N07, remembers that Levinsonwas out of the country when she came to tourthe school, but he insisted she use his officephone to call him.“I was convinced that I hadto come to Tufts if for no other reason than tohave a class with this dynamic and energeticprofessor who was so willing to talk with aprospective student,” she says.

When she first joined the FriedmanSchool faculty, Assistant Professor RuthPalombo saw that despite the constant streamof students in and out of his office, Levinsonmanaged to make each feel like he had all thetime in the world to listen. And he does listen.Palombo observed Levinson’s standing-room-only class in international nutrition,where he remembered not only the students’names but their distinctive experiences.

“He would turn to a student and say,‘What we’re talking about is so similar tomicronutrient work you did in India’ or ‘Canyou talk to us a bit about what you did withpositive deviance in Africa?’ And the studentwould glow. When you’re sitting in class andsomeone is remembering something thatyou uniquely did, you shine.”

LIVING IN HARMONYLevinson never abandoned his love of music,instead taking it with him on his travels.Over the years, he has conducted the DelhiSymphony Orchestra, directed a programof South African liberation music for NelsonMandela and given a series of piano recitals

around India for the U.S. Information Ser-vice. (Ask him some time about performingRavel in Trivandrum while the back leg of thedecaying piano was giving way.) In the 1980s,he took a break from nutrition and spent ayear in a master’s program in choral con-ducting at the New England Conservatory ofMusic. Friedman students get a taste of hisskills at orientation, when they suddenlyfind themselves being led in a four-part

choral rendition of “Frère Jacques,” “ThreeBlind Mice,” “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”

In Bangladesh, he and his wife befriendeda group of singers, offering to teach thegroup four-part harmony in exchange forbeing taught the Bangla songs of Rabinan-drath Tagore. One day, the singers stoppedshowing up for their weekly gatherings.Only later, when Levinson cornered one ofthem in the street, did he learn what hap-pened: “He told me, ‘We had many meetingsabout the two of you, and we finally decidedthat any Americans who were not living inthe American compound, who were speak-ing the language and who were interested inthe likes of us, had to be CIA.”

Yet very little about him is covert. Whentraveling in Pakistan, colleagues advisedhim to keep mum about his Jewish faith, toavoid any friction. He didn’t comply, ofcourse, (“I have to be who I am,” he says)and inevitably struck up terrific conversa-tions with Pakistani Muslims that went wellinto the night.

But he did give in to a similar plea whenhe was touring salt works and Hindu templesin India. He was welcomed at the former, butforbidden to enter the inner sancta of the lat-ter, so his hosts stripped off his shirt and puta traditional lungi around his waist.“I was notallowed to say a word, and if anyone asked aquestion, my colleagues would identify me asa deaf-mute Kashmiri—Kashmiris tended to

have lighter complexions—and we never hadany trouble again.”

He also gets some raised eyebrows fromimmigration officers when he passesthrough Israel. “What were you doing inPakistan, Iran, Egypt, Indonesia?” they ask,looking at his passport.

Yet spirituality has been a constant inhis life, and some years back, when a youngrabbi offered to teach him in the oral tradi-

tion, Levinson, who is descended from 14generations of rabbis and cantors, decided itwas time to follow his genes. Within a year,Levinson was leading services. He has beenleading congregations for 18 years, the lastfive as the Sh’liach Tzibur, or spiritual leader,for the Brattleboro Area Jewish Community.When he retires from Tufts, he will directmany of his energies there.

And then, of course, there are the wed-dings. He officiated at his 13th graduatestudent nuptials last summer.

Not surprisingly, all three of Levinson’schildren have devoted their careers to publichealth. His daughter, Mira, is an evaluationand data management consultant for domes-tic HIV/AIDS and substance abuse programs.His son, Noah, started an organization thathelps children in the slums of Calcutta. Hisdaughter, Dora, is pursuing her master’s inpublic health at Tufts. She was the one whosuggested they return to the Indian villagesLevinson had studied in the 1970s to see whathad changed in 30 years.

“In 1971, 69 percent of young girls wereundernourished; now it’s down to 17 per-cent,” he says.“Literacy is up fourfold. Before,when asked why a child was severely mal-nourished, more than half would say it’sbecause an evil sprit cast a shadow. Today,none say that.”

Asked if he felt his work had made the dif-ference, his eye twinkles.“We certainly madea lot of noise,” he says.

up an informational interview, being trans-ferred to Levinson’s line, and being sweptaway. “ ‘What are you doing right now?’ heasked, and down I came and walked out witha summer job,” she recalls.

The emphasis at MIT was on using noveltechnologies to solve the world’s food prob-lems—fortification with algae protein, any-one?—but during Levinson’s four years there,his perspective changed.“The more we stud-ied it and the more we learned about it, themore we saw these magic bullets were notwhat we had thought they were,” he says,“and that a lot of the business of combatingmalnutrition is getting into the villages andincreasing the incomes of the poorest familiesand changing the child care and feeding prac-tices of women.”

So Levinson returned to USAID, thistime to run its Office of Nutrition in Wash-ington, D.C., where he spent a year as a kidin a candy store. “Jimmy Carter had justbeen elected president, and with the newadministration, in a federal agency, nobodyknew for sure what you could do or whatyou couldn’t do,” Levinson says. “It was adream.” Together with Larry Minear, whothen worked for Lutheran World Relief andnow works with Tufts’ Feinstein Interna-tional Center, he drew up plans to assess theconsumption effects of agricultural policiesand lots more. “We would get together andscheme and plot and strategize and wereable to push through most of what we cameup with,” he says.

But his next job for USAID led to a per-sonal crisis. He was sent to head a food andnutrition operation in Bangladesh, where hebegan to question both the agency’s effi-cacy and the American government’smotives. A stint consulting in the Philip-pines, where the dictator Ferdinand Marcosenjoyed U.S. backing, left Levinson feelingthat he was “on the wrong side.”

Disillusioned, Levinson turned his effortscloser to home. He and his wife, LouiseCochran, joined the Catholic Worker move-ment, living with their children in a com-munity of activists above a soup kitchen inBoston that provided services to the elderlyand homeless. Through his commitment tothe anti-nuclear movement, he finally hadhis chance to practice Gandhi’s principles of

civil disobedience. A protest at a militarylaboratory earned him eight days inprison for trespassing. By the end of hissentence, he had thoroughly indoctri-nated his cell mate, a car thief, in no-nukes philosophy.

Levinson and his family also helpedestablish Noonday Farm, an experiment incommunal organic agriculture in northcentral Massachusetts, where they lived withseveral other families, poor but content, for 10years, growing food and raising poultry forsoup kitchens and shelters. But by the mid-1980s, Levinson’s old colleagues were coaxinghim back into nutrition.

“Enough already with the chickens,”scolded his friend Abraham Horowitz, thendirector of the Pan American Health Service.“It’s time to go back to the children.” And hedid, working for the World Bank in Lesotho,Malawi, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozam-bique and Ethiopia.

STUDENTS AS COLLEAGUESIf Levinson is known for caring about hisstudents—sneeze in his classroom, and hequickly produces a zinc lozenge—it mayhave something to do with his own gradu-ate school experience. He was disgusted

by the way graduate students, particularlyinternational students, “were treated as sec-ond-class citizens.”

Perhaps it is his radical nature, but sincecoming to Tufts in 1994 as director of theInternational Center for Nutrition, he hasbeen quick to lend a hand to students whowant to change the Friedman School. It was astudent initiative that led to internshipsbecoming such a central feature of the school(he worked hard to secure and fund theopportunities) and a student initiative that ledto his course in monitoring and evaluation.“The students knew they needed it, and itdidn’t exist,” Levinson says. “So we went towork on it.” Over the last 12 years, the classhas developed monitoring and evaluationplans for major projects in India, Bangla-desh, Senegal, Egypt, South Africa and theUnited States.

24 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

ON CAMPUS NUTRITION SCHOOL NEWS

Levinson managed to make eachfeel like he had all the time in the world

to listen. And he does listen.

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 25

Levinson poses with children who live in the slums ofDhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Below, a quote fromhis daughter reminds him to keep focused.

Early on, Levinson looked for an antidoteto the typical, and isolated, doctoral course ofstudy. “The Ph.D. student gets closeted offwith some professor to work on somethingway over on the right side of the decimalpoint, a miniscule thing where the studentwould become the world expert on this finite,minute problem …but would not be devel-oping the skills that doctoral students shouldhave in problem solving more generally.”

That led to the creation ofthe Ph.D. seminar, in whichdoctoral candidates join aroundtable with faculty andeach other, sharing their proj-ects and roadblocks.

Many students cite Lev-inson as the force that drewthem to the Friedman School.Laura Rowe, N07, remembers that Levinsonwas out of the country when she came to tourthe school, but he insisted she use his officephone to call him.“I was convinced that I hadto come to Tufts if for no other reason than tohave a class with this dynamic and energeticprofessor who was so willing to talk with aprospective student,” she says.

When she first joined the FriedmanSchool faculty, Assistant Professor RuthPalombo saw that despite the constant streamof students in and out of his office, Levinsonmanaged to make each feel like he had all thetime in the world to listen. And he does listen.Palombo observed Levinson’s standing-room-only class in international nutrition,where he remembered not only the students’names but their distinctive experiences.

“He would turn to a student and say,‘What we’re talking about is so similar tomicronutrient work you did in India’ or ‘Canyou talk to us a bit about what you did withpositive deviance in Africa?’ And the studentwould glow. When you’re sitting in class andsomeone is remembering something thatyou uniquely did, you shine.”

LIVING IN HARMONYLevinson never abandoned his love of music,instead taking it with him on his travels.Over the years, he has conducted the DelhiSymphony Orchestra, directed a programof South African liberation music for NelsonMandela and given a series of piano recitals

around India for the U.S. Information Ser-vice. (Ask him some time about performingRavel in Trivandrum while the back leg of thedecaying piano was giving way.) In the 1980s,he took a break from nutrition and spent ayear in a master’s program in choral con-ducting at the New England Conservatory ofMusic. Friedman students get a taste of hisskills at orientation, when they suddenlyfind themselves being led in a four-part

choral rendition of “Frère Jacques,” “ThreeBlind Mice,” “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”

In Bangladesh, he and his wife befriendeda group of singers, offering to teach thegroup four-part harmony in exchange forbeing taught the Bangla songs of Rabinan-drath Tagore. One day, the singers stoppedshowing up for their weekly gatherings.Only later, when Levinson cornered one ofthem in the street, did he learn what hap-pened: “He told me, ‘We had many meetingsabout the two of you, and we finally decidedthat any Americans who were not living inthe American compound, who were speak-ing the language and who were interested inthe likes of us, had to be CIA.”

Yet very little about him is covert. Whentraveling in Pakistan, colleagues advisedhim to keep mum about his Jewish faith, toavoid any friction. He didn’t comply, ofcourse, (“I have to be who I am,” he says)and inevitably struck up terrific conversa-tions with Pakistani Muslims that went wellinto the night.

But he did give in to a similar plea whenhe was touring salt works and Hindu templesin India. He was welcomed at the former, butforbidden to enter the inner sancta of the lat-ter, so his hosts stripped off his shirt and puta traditional lungi around his waist.“I was notallowed to say a word, and if anyone asked aquestion, my colleagues would identify me asa deaf-mute Kashmiri—Kashmiris tended to

have lighter complexions—and we never hadany trouble again.”

He also gets some raised eyebrows fromimmigration officers when he passesthrough Israel. “What were you doing inPakistan, Iran, Egypt, Indonesia?” they ask,looking at his passport.

Yet spirituality has been a constant inhis life, and some years back, when a youngrabbi offered to teach him in the oral tradi-

tion, Levinson, who is descended from 14generations of rabbis and cantors, decided itwas time to follow his genes. Within a year,Levinson was leading services. He has beenleading congregations for 18 years, the lastfive as the Sh’liach Tzibur, or spiritual leader,for the Brattleboro Area Jewish Community.When he retires from Tufts, he will directmany of his energies there.

And then, of course, there are the wed-dings. He officiated at his 13th graduatestudent nuptials last summer.

Not surprisingly, all three of Levinson’schildren have devoted their careers to publichealth. His daughter, Mira, is an evaluationand data management consultant for domes-tic HIV/AIDS and substance abuse programs.His son, Noah, started an organization thathelps children in the slums of Calcutta. Hisdaughter, Dora, is pursuing her master’s inpublic health at Tufts. She was the one whosuggested they return to the Indian villagesLevinson had studied in the 1970s to see whathad changed in 30 years.

“In 1971, 69 percent of young girls wereundernourished; now it’s down to 17 per-cent,” he says.“Literacy is up fourfold. Before,when asked why a child was severely mal-nourished, more than half would say it’sbecause an evil sprit cast a shadow. Today,none say that.”

Asked if he felt his work had made the dif-ference, his eye twinkles.“We certainly madea lot of noise,” he says.

up an informational interview, being trans-ferred to Levinson’s line, and being sweptaway. “ ‘What are you doing right now?’ heasked, and down I came and walked out witha summer job,” she recalls.

The emphasis at MIT was on using noveltechnologies to solve the world’s food prob-lems—fortification with algae protein, any-one?—but during Levinson’s four years there,his perspective changed.“The more we stud-ied it and the more we learned about it, themore we saw these magic bullets were notwhat we had thought they were,” he says,“and that a lot of the business of combatingmalnutrition is getting into the villages andincreasing the incomes of the poorest familiesand changing the child care and feeding prac-tices of women.”

So Levinson returned to USAID, thistime to run its Office of Nutrition in Wash-ington, D.C., where he spent a year as a kidin a candy store. “Jimmy Carter had justbeen elected president, and with the newadministration, in a federal agency, nobodyknew for sure what you could do or whatyou couldn’t do,” Levinson says. “It was adream.” Together with Larry Minear, whothen worked for Lutheran World Relief andnow works with Tufts’ Feinstein Interna-tional Center, he drew up plans to assess theconsumption effects of agricultural policiesand lots more. “We would get together andscheme and plot and strategize and wereable to push through most of what we cameup with,” he says.

But his next job for USAID led to a per-sonal crisis. He was sent to head a food andnutrition operation in Bangladesh, where hebegan to question both the agency’s effi-cacy and the American government’smotives. A stint consulting in the Philip-pines, where the dictator Ferdinand Marcosenjoyed U.S. backing, left Levinson feelingthat he was “on the wrong side.”

Disillusioned, Levinson turned his effortscloser to home. He and his wife, LouiseCochran, joined the Catholic Worker move-ment, living with their children in a com-munity of activists above a soup kitchen inBoston that provided services to the elderlyand homeless. Through his commitment tothe anti-nuclear movement, he finally hadhis chance to practice Gandhi’s principles of

civil disobedience. A protest at a militarylaboratory earned him eight days inprison for trespassing. By the end of hissentence, he had thoroughly indoctri-nated his cell mate, a car thief, in no-nukes philosophy.

Levinson and his family also helpedestablish Noonday Farm, an experiment incommunal organic agriculture in northcentral Massachusetts, where they lived withseveral other families, poor but content, for 10years, growing food and raising poultry forsoup kitchens and shelters. But by the mid-1980s, Levinson’s old colleagues were coaxinghim back into nutrition.

“Enough already with the chickens,”scolded his friend Abraham Horowitz, thendirector of the Pan American Health Service.“It’s time to go back to the children.” And hedid, working for the World Bank in Lesotho,Malawi, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozam-bique and Ethiopia.

STUDENTS AS COLLEAGUESIf Levinson is known for caring about hisstudents—sneeze in his classroom, and hequickly produces a zinc lozenge—it mayhave something to do with his own gradu-ate school experience. He was disgusted

by the way graduate students, particularlyinternational students, “were treated as sec-ond-class citizens.”

Perhaps it is his radical nature, but sincecoming to Tufts in 1994 as director of theInternational Center for Nutrition, he hasbeen quick to lend a hand to students whowant to change the Friedman School. It was astudent initiative that led to internshipsbecoming such a central feature of the school(he worked hard to secure and fund theopportunities) and a student initiative that ledto his course in monitoring and evaluation.“The students knew they needed it, and itdidn’t exist,” Levinson says. “So we went towork on it.” Over the last 12 years, the classhas developed monitoring and evaluationplans for major projects in India, Bangla-desh, Senegal, Egypt, South Africa and theUnited States.

24 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

ON CAMPUS NUTRITION SCHOOL NEWS

Levinson managed to make eachfeel like he had all the time in the world

to listen. And he does listen.

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 25

Levinson poses with children who live in the slums ofDhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Below, a quote fromhis daughter reminds him to keep focused.

from several universities had the rare oppor-tunity to present their work and meet theirpeers at a graduate research conference theFriedman School hosted in March. The con-ference,“The Future of Food and Nutrition,”was the brainchild of Chris Hillbruner, N07,and Christine McDonald, N07.

“I knew a lot of students were doing inter-esting work but had no way to share it,” Hill-bruner said.“I thought this would be a greatway for nutrition students to connect.”

Twenty-nine student researchers fromacross the country presented their workduring nine faculty-moderated sessions, andanother 25 submitted posters. The sessionscovered broad topics such as agriculture indeveloping countries, food insecurity andbehavior, antioxidants, and nutrition assess-ment and planning. “I thought we got areally good balance betweenscience and policy in the ses-sions,” McDonald said.

For example, during thesession on “Obesity: Scienceand Policy,” Latrice Goosby,A02, N04, a Ph.D. student innutritional epidemiology at theFriedman School, presentedher work on the heritability oflipid profiles among African-Americans. Her work uses datafrom the Jackson Heart Study,a Mississippi-based epidemio-logical study modeled on the FraminghamHeart Study. NYU nutrition student AmyGelfand reported on a pilot study incorpo-rating obesity prevention into well-child vis-its at Bellevue Pediatric Clinic. SamanthaSnyder, a student of agricultural economics atPerdue, shared her preliminary data linkingBody Mass Index to access to supermarkets.To wrap up, Cornell student Alexandra Lewinpresented her research on congressional pol-itics and childhood obesity policy.

“Thank you all for bringing us from thebench to national politics,” said panel mod-erator Christina Economos, N96, holder of the New Balance Chair in Childhood Nutrition at the Friedman School. “It really

underscores how we, as scientists, can addressthis problem and coordinate a response.”

During the session on culture and food,Stephanie Bostic, N08, spoke on the culinaryinfluence of French colonization on Moroc-co, Vietnam and Guadeloupe. Bostic toured

the three former colonies of France, whereshe took cooking classes and conductedinterviews with local chefs and market ven-dors. Bostic concluded that social customsand climate play the largest role in howquickly—if at all—new ingredients, recipesor techniques get incorporated into localcuisines. For Bostic, the student conferencewas the first opportunity she had to presenther project outside of the classroom.

“It was a challenge compressing two yearsof research and writing into the short timeperiod, and I definitely learned from theexperience,” Bostic said.

Increasing students’ confidence in theirpresentation skills was another goal Hill-

bruner and McDonald had in mind forthe conference. “This is a stepping stone toprofessional conferences,” McDonald said.“Ideally, we’ll provide more training to in-crease people’s confidence in their pre-senting skills.”

Friedman School Dean Eileen Kennedymoderated a multidisciplinary panel ofexperts who discussed the potential for

farming technologies and techniques thatincrease food yields per acre to addresshunger in Africa. Some have called for a sec-ond Green Revolution, a revisiting of theefforts that transformed agriculture in manydeveloping nations in the mid-1900s.

Mary Keyes, N07, was honored for herposter, “Folate and age affect methylation inthe mouse colon,” and Priya Bhagowalia, astudent at Perdue, for her talk on the distri-bution of nutritional status across coun-tries over time.

Jacqueline Mitchell is a senior health scienceswriter in Tufts’ Office of Publications. She canbe reached at jacqueline.mitchell@tufts.edu.

PHOTOS: ALONSO NICHOLS s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 2726 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 PHOTO: VITO ALUIA

ON CAMPUS NUTRITION SCHOOL NEWS

,

the Friedman School of Nutri-tion Science and Policy hopingto one day feed the world’s hun-

gry, cure diabetes or start an agricultural rev-olution. Spending long hours crunchingnumbers is usually not part of the picture.

“They don’t come in expecting to betrained in statistics,” says Prof. Gerard Dallal.“I think it’s a shock when they see how seri-ously the school takes it. They don’t appreci-ate how important it is to them until later.”

Jerry Dallal has been the school’s primarysource of statistical comprehension for almost24 years. Indeed, up until a few years ago,most every student who passed through theFriedman School had to take his class. Dallal

will tell you that’s the reason—a mere com-putation of number of students served andyears at the school—that he recently receivedthe Friedman School’s Distinguished Fac-ulty Award. But in this case, stats don’t tell thewhole story.

Turning numerical dread into statisticalconfidence is Dallal’s specialty. He once over-heard a student complain, “This course is acomplete waste of time. I don’t know why I’mtaking this,” only to have the same studentcome back a year later, and ask, “Can I beyour teaching assistant?”

Maybe he got it from his father, an inter-nal auditor at an insurance company, or fromhis mother, a statistical typist, but Dallal wasalways good at math, eventually earning a

doctorate in statistics from Yale. He came toTufts in 1982 as a visiting assistant professorin the math department. Today he serves aschief of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutri-tion Research Center on Aging (HNRCA)Biostatistics Unit and as a Friedman Schoolprofessor.

He uses examples in class that are takenfrom actual nutrition research. Using genericproblems from a statistics book would bepointless. “This is exciting stuff, this is vitalstuff, and you’re talking about the fraction ofred M&Ms in a bag of M&Ms?” he asks. “Inan applied field, people care about what goeson the rows and in the columns.”

He gives students what they will need todo their jobs. “I’m not teaching them every-thing, but I’m giving them the basic skills setso they can begin to analyze their own data incertain situations, which I hope they recog-nize,” he says.“And I hope they also recognizewhen it’s time to call in help.”

To that end, alumni from all over theworld send him e-mails that usually begin“You may not remember me” (he does, ofcourse), and then “Can I ask you a ques-tion?” Last year, Gwenola Desplats, N04,wrote to Dallal from Niger, where she wasconsulting for UNICEF. She was desperate forhelp with a sticky data problem.“I wish Jerrywas not such a good teacher. Instead of givingme straight answers, he made me think aboutmy own questions,” she says.“From that dis-cussion, I realized that my logistic regressionquestion was, in fact, a survey design prob-lem. He saved me from huge embarrassment,and the paper is now in the process of beingrevised for publication.”

Now that the Friedman School has grown,and assistant professors Parke Wilde andRaymond Hyatt have taken over some of thestatistics classes, Dallal has been teachingmostly aspiring bench scientists and epi-demiologists, students who are braced towork with numbers.

“But the social science students will alwayshave a soft spot in my heart,” he says. “Theyare the ones who don’t know quite what theyare getting into. And when I see the light goon in their eyes, and I realize I’ve shownthem something that is going to affect whatthey do with their careers, that has alwaysbeen an exciting part.”

E

Statistically speakingJerry Dallal eases students through the trials of tabulation

by Julie Flaherty

Peer to peer

Jerry Dallal

Clockwise from upper left: MeaghanMurphy, N07; PhD candidate MakikoYoshida; Academic Dean PatrickWebb; and students from Cornell,Clark and Tufts universities.

Conference showcases the best of student research by Jacqueline Mitchell

from several universities had the rare oppor-tunity to present their work and meet theirpeers at a graduate research conference theFriedman School hosted in March. The con-ference,“The Future of Food and Nutrition,”was the brainchild of Chris Hillbruner, N07,and Christine McDonald, N07.

“I knew a lot of students were doing inter-esting work but had no way to share it,” Hill-bruner said.“I thought this would be a greatway for nutrition students to connect.”

Twenty-nine student researchers fromacross the country presented their workduring nine faculty-moderated sessions, andanother 25 submitted posters. The sessionscovered broad topics such as agriculture indeveloping countries, food insecurity andbehavior, antioxidants, and nutrition assess-ment and planning. “I thought we got areally good balance betweenscience and policy in the ses-sions,” McDonald said.

For example, during thesession on “Obesity: Scienceand Policy,” Latrice Goosby,A02, N04, a Ph.D. student innutritional epidemiology at theFriedman School, presentedher work on the heritability oflipid profiles among African-Americans. Her work uses datafrom the Jackson Heart Study,a Mississippi-based epidemio-logical study modeled on the FraminghamHeart Study. NYU nutrition student AmyGelfand reported on a pilot study incorpo-rating obesity prevention into well-child vis-its at Bellevue Pediatric Clinic. SamanthaSnyder, a student of agricultural economics atPerdue, shared her preliminary data linkingBody Mass Index to access to supermarkets.To wrap up, Cornell student Alexandra Lewinpresented her research on congressional pol-itics and childhood obesity policy.

“Thank you all for bringing us from thebench to national politics,” said panel mod-erator Christina Economos, N96, holder of the New Balance Chair in Childhood Nutrition at the Friedman School. “It really

underscores how we, as scientists, can addressthis problem and coordinate a response.”

During the session on culture and food,Stephanie Bostic, N08, spoke on the culinaryinfluence of French colonization on Moroc-co, Vietnam and Guadeloupe. Bostic toured

the three former colonies of France, whereshe took cooking classes and conductedinterviews with local chefs and market ven-dors. Bostic concluded that social customsand climate play the largest role in howquickly—if at all—new ingredients, recipesor techniques get incorporated into localcuisines. For Bostic, the student conferencewas the first opportunity she had to presenther project outside of the classroom.

“It was a challenge compressing two yearsof research and writing into the short timeperiod, and I definitely learned from theexperience,” Bostic said.

Increasing students’ confidence in theirpresentation skills was another goal Hill-

bruner and McDonald had in mind forthe conference. “This is a stepping stone toprofessional conferences,” McDonald said.“Ideally, we’ll provide more training to in-crease people’s confidence in their pre-senting skills.”

Friedman School Dean Eileen Kennedymoderated a multidisciplinary panel ofexperts who discussed the potential for

farming technologies and techniques thatincrease food yields per acre to addresshunger in Africa. Some have called for a sec-ond Green Revolution, a revisiting of theefforts that transformed agriculture in manydeveloping nations in the mid-1900s.

Mary Keyes, N07, was honored for herposter, “Folate and age affect methylation inthe mouse colon,” and Priya Bhagowalia, astudent at Perdue, for her talk on the distri-bution of nutritional status across coun-tries over time.

Jacqueline Mitchell is a senior health scienceswriter in Tufts’ Office of Publications. She canbe reached at jacqueline.mitchell@tufts.edu.

PHOTOS: ALONSO NICHOLS s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 2726 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 PHOTO: VITO ALUIA

ON CAMPUS NUTRITION SCHOOL NEWS

,

the Friedman School of Nutri-tion Science and Policy hopingto one day feed the world’s hun-

gry, cure diabetes or start an agricultural rev-olution. Spending long hours crunchingnumbers is usually not part of the picture.

“They don’t come in expecting to betrained in statistics,” says Prof. Gerard Dallal.“I think it’s a shock when they see how seri-ously the school takes it. They don’t appreci-ate how important it is to them until later.”

Jerry Dallal has been the school’s primarysource of statistical comprehension for almost24 years. Indeed, up until a few years ago,most every student who passed through theFriedman School had to take his class. Dallal

will tell you that’s the reason—a mere com-putation of number of students served andyears at the school—that he recently receivedthe Friedman School’s Distinguished Fac-ulty Award. But in this case, stats don’t tell thewhole story.

Turning numerical dread into statisticalconfidence is Dallal’s specialty. He once over-heard a student complain, “This course is acomplete waste of time. I don’t know why I’mtaking this,” only to have the same studentcome back a year later, and ask, “Can I beyour teaching assistant?”

Maybe he got it from his father, an inter-nal auditor at an insurance company, or fromhis mother, a statistical typist, but Dallal wasalways good at math, eventually earning a

doctorate in statistics from Yale. He came toTufts in 1982 as a visiting assistant professorin the math department. Today he serves aschief of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutri-tion Research Center on Aging (HNRCA)Biostatistics Unit and as a Friedman Schoolprofessor.

He uses examples in class that are takenfrom actual nutrition research. Using genericproblems from a statistics book would bepointless. “This is exciting stuff, this is vitalstuff, and you’re talking about the fraction ofred M&Ms in a bag of M&Ms?” he asks. “Inan applied field, people care about what goeson the rows and in the columns.”

He gives students what they will need todo their jobs. “I’m not teaching them every-thing, but I’m giving them the basic skills setso they can begin to analyze their own data incertain situations, which I hope they recog-nize,” he says.“And I hope they also recognizewhen it’s time to call in help.”

To that end, alumni from all over theworld send him e-mails that usually begin“You may not remember me” (he does, ofcourse), and then “Can I ask you a ques-tion?” Last year, Gwenola Desplats, N04,wrote to Dallal from Niger, where she wasconsulting for UNICEF. She was desperate forhelp with a sticky data problem.“I wish Jerrywas not such a good teacher. Instead of givingme straight answers, he made me think aboutmy own questions,” she says.“From that dis-cussion, I realized that my logistic regressionquestion was, in fact, a survey design prob-lem. He saved me from huge embarrassment,and the paper is now in the process of beingrevised for publication.”

Now that the Friedman School has grown,and assistant professors Parke Wilde andRaymond Hyatt have taken over some of thestatistics classes, Dallal has been teachingmostly aspiring bench scientists and epi-demiologists, students who are braced towork with numbers.

“But the social science students will alwayshave a soft spot in my heart,” he says. “Theyare the ones who don’t know quite what theyare getting into. And when I see the light goon in their eyes, and I realize I’ve shownthem something that is going to affect whatthey do with their careers, that has alwaysbeen an exciting part.”

E

Statistically speakingJerry Dallal eases students through the trials of tabulation

by Julie Flaherty

Peer to peer

Jerry Dallal

Clockwise from upper left: MeaghanMurphy, N07; PhD candidate MakikoYoshida; Academic Dean PatrickWebb; and students from Cornell,Clark and Tufts universities.

Conference showcases the best of student research by Jacqueline Mitchell

Yamaha pianos. “We are buying a lot ofinstruments,” said Auner. “We also bought alot of percussion instruments and jazz in-struments—electronic keyboards. Also, webought a lot of world music instruments. Inaddition to our traditional strengths inAfrican drumming and gamelan, for the firsttime we’re offering lessons in a range of tra-ditions, including Japanese and Indian andMiddle Eastern music.”

A separate room on the lower level isdevoted to the world music collection, hous-ing the West African drums used by AssociateProfessor David Locke’s Kiniwe West AfricanDrum and Dance Ensemble and the Javanesegamelan, a collection of percussion and otherinstruments native to Indonesia.

MUSICALLY MINDED STUDENTSThe Kiniwe and gamelan ensembles aretwo of more than 15 student ensemblesdirected by music department faculty.“Many, many students are involved in musicat Tufts,” Auner said.

About 1,500 students participate inmusic classes each year. During the 2005-06academic year, there were 2,000 courseenrollments in the department, Aunersaid—an impressive number at a universitywith a student body of 4,500 undergradu-ates, he added.

Interest in musical performance also hasbeen growing steadily. In 2000, the musicdepartment staged between 60 and 65 eventsa year; last year, it staged 106, said eventsmanager Ryan Saunders. Yet, for severaldecades, the music faculty and students hadto contend with cramped quarters that werenot properly sound-proofed and were oftenat the mercy of the elements; instrumentsaged faster than they should have because ofinadequate climate control.

“It’s a testament to just how strong andvibrant our department is that they havebeen able to accomplish so much in suchlimited circumstances,” said Bharucha, amusician and psychologist who studies howour brains perceive music and has pub-lished widely on the topic.

Most of the performances in the Gra-noff Center are free and open to the public.For a schedule of upcoming events, go towww.tufts.edu/musiccenter.

ALBRIGHT PUSHESPOLITICAL SOLUTION FOR IRAQ

“THERE IS A VITAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COMPETENCE AND CERTAINTY,” FORMER SECRETARY OF

State Madeleine K. Albright told a Tufts audience during the 2007 Issam M. FaresLecture. “A competent leader will reconsider views on the basis of new informa-tion. A morally certain leader will reject any advice that is not in accord with whathe or she already thinks.”

And now that it has become clear that “our leaders made a terrible choice” inpursuing the U.S. invasion of Iraq, she said, those in power need to be willing toreview their options anew; to look for a political solution to the situation in Iraq;

to avoid another military incursion, this time in Iran,and not to take sides in the split between Sunni andShi’ite Muslims and other disputes in the region.

“None of us should be so sure we’re right thatwe close our minds to the possibility that on somematters, at least, we’re wrong,” Albright said. “It’s always tempting, especially for Americans,to attach labels to people, groups and evennations, and to say that here are the good guys,and there are the bad. Life is generally more complicated than that. Good and evil generallydon’t come in separate packages.”

Albright delivered the lecture on March 7 onTufts’ Medford/Somerville campus. The Fares Lecture is supported by an endow-ment from the Fares Foundation and is named in honor of Issam M. Fares, the former deputy prime minister of Lebanon and a trustee emeritus of the university.

Albright, who was appointed the first woman U.S. secretary of state in 1997,began her speech by referring to a previous Fares Lecture speaker, former Presi-dent George H.W. Bush, who delivered a talk in 2003 titled “Choose Hope OverHate.” “What I found most interesting about that speech is that it took place onlythree weeks before the U.S. invasion of Iraq,” Albright said. “Instead of using hislecture to make the case for invasion, the former president stressed the wisdomof the choice he had made when in office not to invade.

“There are lessons in this,” she said. “The first is that young people should listen to their parents,” a comment that was met with applause from the audi-ence. “The second is that before making decisions that will affect our future, leaders should study carefully the lessons of the past.”

The time has now passed, she said, for debate over the wisdom of militaryinvolvement in Iraq. “That argument has been settled. Our leaders made a terriblechoice. The question is what can be salvaged?”

While most of her speech was critical of the Middle East policies of the currentBush administration, Albright did cite some areas of agreement—and somecaveats. “I agree with the president that it would be a disaster to leave Iraq underpresent circumstances, but it may also be a disaster for us to stay,” she said. “If our troops are not in a position to make a decisive difference, we have an overriding duty to bring them home sooner rather than later.”

The answer to Iraq lies in political, not military, means, she said. “An arrangement must be worked out that will give each side more than they canobtain through continued violence.” —Helene Ragovin

PHOTO: JOANIE TOBIN s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 2928 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 PHOTO: ALONSO NICHOLS

UNIVERSITY NEWS THE WIDER WORLD OF TUFTS

University’s Medford/Somerville campus. The Perry and Marty GranoffMusic Center was made to be heard.

From the classrooms, practice rooms and rehearsal spaces to—mostsignificantly—the 300-seat recital hall, the building was designed withexquisite attention to acoustical detail. The new music center allows Tuftsstudents and faculty, along with the wider community, to learn, teach,create, perform and enjoy music in a way that previously has not beenpossible on campus.

The new facility also is expected to raise the academic profile of themusic department, which has been hampered by lack of space and adequatefacilities—although not by lack of talent and commitment.

“I think [Tufts] should be one of the most attractive schools on the EastCoast for students who are interested in music in a liberal arts environment,” said Joseph Auner, professor and chair of music.“Tufts getsa lot of people applying who are interested in music, but I think we expect to be able to recruit many more talented musicians, both musicmajors and non-majors.”

“I feel inspired, reinvigorated, about coming to teach, compose and per-form” in the Granoff Center, said John McDonald, associate professor ofmusic. “For the graduate and undergraduate student composers whowork with me, we can now provide the very best facility and equipment forperforming and recording their efforts.”

The 55,000-square-foot music center isnamed for trustee Martin Granoff and PerryGranoff, A91P. It is located on the corner ofTalbot and College avenues on the Med-ford/Somerville campus and was dedicatedduring a weekend of celebratory events inFebruary.

The crown jewel of the $27 million build-ing is the Distler Performance Hall, anacoustically separate “box-within-a-box”that was designed by architects Perkins +Will of Boston to be a showcase for liveacoustic performances.

“I think it’s the best small recital hall in theBoston area,” Auner said as he bounded ontothe low stage and waved his arm toward the40-foot ceiling.“It’s going to be wonderful forstudent recitals, for the various ensemblesand chamber music. This is a big, resonantspace … it keeps the sound alive. There’s nota bad seat in the house,” he said.

The hall is “acoustically sealed”—mean-ing sounds from without will not interferewith performances, and sounds from withinwill not interrupt teaching or other functionselsewhere in the building. Even the ventila-tion and lighting systems have been designedto be silent—no humming, no buzzing, noblowing. “It’s a very quiet space, so it’ll bepossible to play very quietly and delicately inhere,” Auner said.

The recital hall is a gift of Arts & Sciencesoverseer Stephen Distler, A74, and Dr. Rox-anne E. Kendall, J75. The Karl LeichtmanPerformance Stage was a gift of trusteeAgnes Varis, H03. And the Steinway concertgrand piano—“probably the best piano inNew England,” Auner said—was donatedby President Lawrence S. Bacow and AdeleFleet Bacow in honor of their parents, Ruthand Mitchell Bacow and Margaret and JoelFleet, M.D.

“Music is all about sound,” said Provostand Senior Vice President Jamshed Bharucha.“Most architectural projects are focused onthe visual. It’s very important that we get theacoustics right, and certainly a tremendousamount of attention has gone into every littledetail acoustically. You can hear it in the class-rooms, in the studios and in the concert hall.”

The concert grand in the recital hall is oneof 12 new Steinway pianos that were pur-chased for the new building, along with eight

Madeleine K. Albright

Site to be heardIn a lyrical weekend, the Granoff Music Center makes its debut by Helene Ragovin

The Perry and Marty GranoffMusic Center at Tufts

Yamaha pianos. “We are buying a lot ofinstruments,” said Auner. “We also bought alot of percussion instruments and jazz in-struments—electronic keyboards. Also, webought a lot of world music instruments. Inaddition to our traditional strengths inAfrican drumming and gamelan, for the firsttime we’re offering lessons in a range of tra-ditions, including Japanese and Indian andMiddle Eastern music.”

A separate room on the lower level isdevoted to the world music collection, hous-ing the West African drums used by AssociateProfessor David Locke’s Kiniwe West AfricanDrum and Dance Ensemble and the Javanesegamelan, a collection of percussion and otherinstruments native to Indonesia.

MUSICALLY MINDED STUDENTSThe Kiniwe and gamelan ensembles aretwo of more than 15 student ensemblesdirected by music department faculty.“Many, many students are involved in musicat Tufts,” Auner said.

About 1,500 students participate inmusic classes each year. During the 2005-06academic year, there were 2,000 courseenrollments in the department, Aunersaid—an impressive number at a universitywith a student body of 4,500 undergradu-ates, he added.

Interest in musical performance also hasbeen growing steadily. In 2000, the musicdepartment staged between 60 and 65 eventsa year; last year, it staged 106, said eventsmanager Ryan Saunders. Yet, for severaldecades, the music faculty and students hadto contend with cramped quarters that werenot properly sound-proofed and were oftenat the mercy of the elements; instrumentsaged faster than they should have because ofinadequate climate control.

“It’s a testament to just how strong andvibrant our department is that they havebeen able to accomplish so much in suchlimited circumstances,” said Bharucha, amusician and psychologist who studies howour brains perceive music and has pub-lished widely on the topic.

Most of the performances in the Gra-noff Center are free and open to the public.For a schedule of upcoming events, go towww.tufts.edu/musiccenter.

ALBRIGHT PUSHESPOLITICAL SOLUTION FOR IRAQ

“THERE IS A VITAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COMPETENCE AND CERTAINTY,” FORMER SECRETARY OF

State Madeleine K. Albright told a Tufts audience during the 2007 Issam M. FaresLecture. “A competent leader will reconsider views on the basis of new informa-tion. A morally certain leader will reject any advice that is not in accord with whathe or she already thinks.”

And now that it has become clear that “our leaders made a terrible choice” inpursuing the U.S. invasion of Iraq, she said, those in power need to be willing toreview their options anew; to look for a political solution to the situation in Iraq;

to avoid another military incursion, this time in Iran,and not to take sides in the split between Sunni andShi’ite Muslims and other disputes in the region.

“None of us should be so sure we’re right thatwe close our minds to the possibility that on somematters, at least, we’re wrong,” Albright said. “It’s always tempting, especially for Americans,to attach labels to people, groups and evennations, and to say that here are the good guys,and there are the bad. Life is generally more complicated than that. Good and evil generallydon’t come in separate packages.”

Albright delivered the lecture on March 7 onTufts’ Medford/Somerville campus. The Fares Lecture is supported by an endow-ment from the Fares Foundation and is named in honor of Issam M. Fares, the former deputy prime minister of Lebanon and a trustee emeritus of the university.

Albright, who was appointed the first woman U.S. secretary of state in 1997,began her speech by referring to a previous Fares Lecture speaker, former Presi-dent George H.W. Bush, who delivered a talk in 2003 titled “Choose Hope OverHate.” “What I found most interesting about that speech is that it took place onlythree weeks before the U.S. invasion of Iraq,” Albright said. “Instead of using hislecture to make the case for invasion, the former president stressed the wisdomof the choice he had made when in office not to invade.

“There are lessons in this,” she said. “The first is that young people should listen to their parents,” a comment that was met with applause from the audi-ence. “The second is that before making decisions that will affect our future, leaders should study carefully the lessons of the past.”

The time has now passed, she said, for debate over the wisdom of militaryinvolvement in Iraq. “That argument has been settled. Our leaders made a terriblechoice. The question is what can be salvaged?”

While most of her speech was critical of the Middle East policies of the currentBush administration, Albright did cite some areas of agreement—and somecaveats. “I agree with the president that it would be a disaster to leave Iraq underpresent circumstances, but it may also be a disaster for us to stay,” she said. “If our troops are not in a position to make a decisive difference, we have an overriding duty to bring them home sooner rather than later.”

The answer to Iraq lies in political, not military, means, she said. “An arrangement must be worked out that will give each side more than they canobtain through continued violence.” —Helene Ragovin

PHOTO: JOANIE TOBIN s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 2928 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 PHOTO: ALONSO NICHOLS

UNIVERSITY NEWS THE WIDER WORLD OF TUFTS

University’s Medford/Somerville campus. The Perry and Marty GranoffMusic Center was made to be heard.

From the classrooms, practice rooms and rehearsal spaces to—mostsignificantly—the 300-seat recital hall, the building was designed withexquisite attention to acoustical detail. The new music center allows Tuftsstudents and faculty, along with the wider community, to learn, teach,create, perform and enjoy music in a way that previously has not beenpossible on campus.

The new facility also is expected to raise the academic profile of themusic department, which has been hampered by lack of space and adequatefacilities—although not by lack of talent and commitment.

“I think [Tufts] should be one of the most attractive schools on the EastCoast for students who are interested in music in a liberal arts environment,” said Joseph Auner, professor and chair of music.“Tufts getsa lot of people applying who are interested in music, but I think we expect to be able to recruit many more talented musicians, both musicmajors and non-majors.”

“I feel inspired, reinvigorated, about coming to teach, compose and per-form” in the Granoff Center, said John McDonald, associate professor ofmusic. “For the graduate and undergraduate student composers whowork with me, we can now provide the very best facility and equipment forperforming and recording their efforts.”

The 55,000-square-foot music center isnamed for trustee Martin Granoff and PerryGranoff, A91P. It is located on the corner ofTalbot and College avenues on the Med-ford/Somerville campus and was dedicatedduring a weekend of celebratory events inFebruary.

The crown jewel of the $27 million build-ing is the Distler Performance Hall, anacoustically separate “box-within-a-box”that was designed by architects Perkins +Will of Boston to be a showcase for liveacoustic performances.

“I think it’s the best small recital hall in theBoston area,” Auner said as he bounded ontothe low stage and waved his arm toward the40-foot ceiling.“It’s going to be wonderful forstudent recitals, for the various ensemblesand chamber music. This is a big, resonantspace … it keeps the sound alive. There’s nota bad seat in the house,” he said.

The hall is “acoustically sealed”—mean-ing sounds from without will not interferewith performances, and sounds from withinwill not interrupt teaching or other functionselsewhere in the building. Even the ventila-tion and lighting systems have been designedto be silent—no humming, no buzzing, noblowing. “It’s a very quiet space, so it’ll bepossible to play very quietly and delicately inhere,” Auner said.

The recital hall is a gift of Arts & Sciencesoverseer Stephen Distler, A74, and Dr. Rox-anne E. Kendall, J75. The Karl LeichtmanPerformance Stage was a gift of trusteeAgnes Varis, H03. And the Steinway concertgrand piano—“probably the best piano inNew England,” Auner said—was donatedby President Lawrence S. Bacow and AdeleFleet Bacow in honor of their parents, Ruthand Mitchell Bacow and Margaret and JoelFleet, M.D.

“Music is all about sound,” said Provostand Senior Vice President Jamshed Bharucha.“Most architectural projects are focused onthe visual. It’s very important that we get theacoustics right, and certainly a tremendousamount of attention has gone into every littledetail acoustically. You can hear it in the class-rooms, in the studios and in the concert hall.”

The concert grand in the recital hall is oneof 12 new Steinway pianos that were pur-chased for the new building, along with eight

Madeleine K. Albright

Site to be heardIn a lyrical weekend, the Granoff Music Center makes its debut by Helene Ragovin

The Perry and Marty GranoffMusic Center at Tufts

school’s ability to offer competitive financialaid packages will ensure that we can com-pete with our sister institutions for the verybest students, and that they graduate with-out a heavy debt load.

Building excellence in teaching and research.The school seeks a total of $21 million tobolster teaching and research priorities. Inthe coming years, the school will experiencesignificant turnover in current senior fac-ulty members. In order to help attract top-level faculty, Tufts University’s Board ofTrustees has approved the first, tenure-track faculty position at the school. Thisgoal includes:

Endowed professorships (new): New en-dowed professorships will strengthen facultyrecruitment by offering and guaranteeingfinancial stability for the life of the appoint-ment. Planned endowed professorships,totaling $9 million, include nutritional bio-chemistry and/or epidemiology; food andnutrition policy; and behavioral nutrition.These professorships parallel the priorityareas of nutrition science, food policy andcommunications/behavior translationalresearch.

Endowed professorships (existing): Thecontinued viability of the Friedman Schoolrelies on a collaborative, stable relationshipwith the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutri-tion Research Center on Aging (HNRCA). A$3 million endowment will be used to guar-antee salary support for core HNRCA fac-ulty—key scientists who provide most of theacademic instruction and laboratory train-ing in biological sciences and epidemiol-ogy for our students.

Endowed junior career developmentchairs: In addition to senior-level posi-tions, the school seeks to raise $3 million toattract some key junior faculty who havethe potential to grow and contribute toschool leadership. Assistant professors are

particularly needed in areas such as epi-demiology, nutrition science and nutritioncommunication.

Research support. The Friedman School iswell placed within the university family tobuild strong collaborative approaches to solv-ing complex societal problems. ThroughBeyond Boundaries, the school aims to raise $6million in endowment funds to generate seedmoney and support to provide intellectualand financial incentives for multidisciplinary,cross-school research partnerships.

Friedman Nutrition Fund. The school’s annualfund goal of $3.2 million affirms the impor-tance of annual giving as a vital, ongoingsource of support. As a young school with adedicated but small alumni base, we encour-age and deeply appreciate participation fromour alumni and friends at all levels and wel-come multi-year commitments. As part ofthe capital campaign, the school will increaseoutreach to new friends for support to

markedly expand the school’s base of support.During the campaign’s quiet phase, from

July 2002 to November 2006, the universityenjoyed record-setting philanthropy. Someof the recent key gifts to the FriedmanSchool included significant grants from theJohn Hancock Foundation, the New Bal-ance Foundation, the Leir Foundation andthe Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.Another major gift was from the Gerald J.and Dorothy R. Friedman NY Foundationfor Medical Research to endow the Gerald J.Friedman Fellows in Nutrition and Citi-zenship. In addition, Edward Budd, Fried-man School overseer and university trusteeemeritus, issued a $1.5 million challengefor new gifts to the school’s endowmentthat is still ongoing. These are just a few ofthe significant gifts given during the cam-paign so far.

To learn more about Beyond Boundaries:The Campaign for Tufts, and how it willimpact the Friedman School and the uni-versity, visit www.tufts.edu/giving.

A NEW WAY TO SUPPORT THE UNIVERSITY YOU LOVE

ARE YOU 701⁄2 YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER? ARE YOU REQUIRED TO TAKE DISTRIBUTIONS

from your IRA (Individual Retirement Account) that you don’t need?

Until December 31, 2007, you can make a donation to the Friedman

School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University by directly transfer-

ring money from your IRA, tax free.

The Pension Protection Act of 2006 allows individuals with traditional or

Roth IRAs to make tax-free charitable distributions in any amount up to

$100,000 per year.

To make your gift and for more information, please visit

www.tufts.edu/giftplanning, or contact the Gift Planning Office by phone

at 1.888.PGTufts or by e-mail at giftplanning@tufts.edu.

Please note that this information is not intended as legal advice, so please

consult with your tax advisor if you are considering this type of gift. Restric-

tions may exist.

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 3130 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 PHOTO: MELODY KO

. .

Science and Policy has embarked on a $50 million fund-raising endeavoras part of the university’s Beyond Boundaries: The Campaign for Tufts.

Beyond Boundaries, which officially launched last November, will tar-get key priorities across the university, including financial aid, endowedprofessorships, new research facilities and initiatives in citizenship andpublic service.

Some 60 percent of the campaign is anticipated to support theTufts endowment. The financial bedrock of the university, the endow-ment ensures stability and fuels strategic growth. Similarly, at theFriedman School, strengthening the school’s endowment is a top prioritybecause it allows the school to achieve critical academic and research pri-orities not covered by tuition, such as resources for financial aid andendowed professorships.

“The Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy has the breadthof expertise to address the complexity of nutrition in our modern world,”

A $50 million goal

BEYOND BOUNDARIES PROVIDING THE MEANS FOR EXCELLENCE

Dean Eileen Kennedy said. “Our faculty, ourstudents and our graduates are key players insolving issues as diverse as famine and suc-cessful aging. But if we are to achieve ourpotential, if we are to truly integrate sciencewith policy and real-world action, we mustbuild true, lasting excellence.”

THE CAMPAIGN FOCUSES ON FOUR KEY AREASFinancial aid. A significant portion of thecampaign goal—$29 million—is earmarkedfor student financial aid. The future of theFriedman School relies heavily on the caliberof its students, and yet the competition fortop-tier students has never been greater. The

Fund-raising effort is part of university’s historic $1.2 billion campaign

Friedman School of Nutrition Scienceand Policy student Latrice Goosby A02,N04, teaches a biostatistics class inthe Sackler library.

school’s ability to offer competitive financialaid packages will ensure that we can com-pete with our sister institutions for the verybest students, and that they graduate with-out a heavy debt load.

Building excellence in teaching and research.The school seeks a total of $21 million tobolster teaching and research priorities. Inthe coming years, the school will experiencesignificant turnover in current senior fac-ulty members. In order to help attract top-level faculty, Tufts University’s Board ofTrustees has approved the first, tenure-track faculty position at the school. Thisgoal includes:

Endowed professorships (new): New en-dowed professorships will strengthen facultyrecruitment by offering and guaranteeingfinancial stability for the life of the appoint-ment. Planned endowed professorships,totaling $9 million, include nutritional bio-chemistry and/or epidemiology; food andnutrition policy; and behavioral nutrition.These professorships parallel the priorityareas of nutrition science, food policy andcommunications/behavior translationalresearch.

Endowed professorships (existing): Thecontinued viability of the Friedman Schoolrelies on a collaborative, stable relationshipwith the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutri-tion Research Center on Aging (HNRCA). A$3 million endowment will be used to guar-antee salary support for core HNRCA fac-ulty—key scientists who provide most of theacademic instruction and laboratory train-ing in biological sciences and epidemiol-ogy for our students.

Endowed junior career developmentchairs: In addition to senior-level posi-tions, the school seeks to raise $3 million toattract some key junior faculty who havethe potential to grow and contribute toschool leadership. Assistant professors are

particularly needed in areas such as epi-demiology, nutrition science and nutritioncommunication.

Research support. The Friedman School iswell placed within the university family tobuild strong collaborative approaches to solv-ing complex societal problems. ThroughBeyond Boundaries, the school aims to raise $6million in endowment funds to generate seedmoney and support to provide intellectualand financial incentives for multidisciplinary,cross-school research partnerships.

Friedman Nutrition Fund. The school’s annualfund goal of $3.2 million affirms the impor-tance of annual giving as a vital, ongoingsource of support. As a young school with adedicated but small alumni base, we encour-age and deeply appreciate participation fromour alumni and friends at all levels and wel-come multi-year commitments. As part ofthe capital campaign, the school will increaseoutreach to new friends for support to

markedly expand the school’s base of support.During the campaign’s quiet phase, from

July 2002 to November 2006, the universityenjoyed record-setting philanthropy. Someof the recent key gifts to the FriedmanSchool included significant grants from theJohn Hancock Foundation, the New Bal-ance Foundation, the Leir Foundation andthe Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.Another major gift was from the Gerald J.and Dorothy R. Friedman NY Foundationfor Medical Research to endow the Gerald J.Friedman Fellows in Nutrition and Citi-zenship. In addition, Edward Budd, Fried-man School overseer and university trusteeemeritus, issued a $1.5 million challengefor new gifts to the school’s endowmentthat is still ongoing. These are just a few ofthe significant gifts given during the cam-paign so far.

To learn more about Beyond Boundaries:The Campaign for Tufts, and how it willimpact the Friedman School and the uni-versity, visit www.tufts.edu/giving.

A NEW WAY TO SUPPORT THE UNIVERSITY YOU LOVE

ARE YOU 701⁄2 YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER? ARE YOU REQUIRED TO TAKE DISTRIBUTIONS

from your IRA (Individual Retirement Account) that you don’t need?

Until December 31, 2007, you can make a donation to the Friedman

School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University by directly transfer-

ring money from your IRA, tax free.

The Pension Protection Act of 2006 allows individuals with traditional or

Roth IRAs to make tax-free charitable distributions in any amount up to

$100,000 per year.

To make your gift and for more information, please visit

www.tufts.edu/giftplanning, or contact the Gift Planning Office by phone

at 1.888.PGTufts or by e-mail at giftplanning@tufts.edu.

Please note that this information is not intended as legal advice, so please

consult with your tax advisor if you are considering this type of gift. Restric-

tions may exist.

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 3130 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 PHOTO: MELODY KO

. .

Science and Policy has embarked on a $50 million fund-raising endeavoras part of the university’s Beyond Boundaries: The Campaign for Tufts.

Beyond Boundaries, which officially launched last November, will tar-get key priorities across the university, including financial aid, endowedprofessorships, new research facilities and initiatives in citizenship andpublic service.

Some 60 percent of the campaign is anticipated to support theTufts endowment. The financial bedrock of the university, the endow-ment ensures stability and fuels strategic growth. Similarly, at theFriedman School, strengthening the school’s endowment is a top prioritybecause it allows the school to achieve critical academic and research pri-orities not covered by tuition, such as resources for financial aid andendowed professorships.

“The Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy has the breadthof expertise to address the complexity of nutrition in our modern world,”

A $50 million goal

BEYOND BOUNDARIES PROVIDING THE MEANS FOR EXCELLENCE

Dean Eileen Kennedy said. “Our faculty, ourstudents and our graduates are key players insolving issues as diverse as famine and suc-cessful aging. But if we are to achieve ourpotential, if we are to truly integrate sciencewith policy and real-world action, we mustbuild true, lasting excellence.”

THE CAMPAIGN FOCUSES ON FOUR KEY AREASFinancial aid. A significant portion of thecampaign goal—$29 million—is earmarkedfor student financial aid. The future of theFriedman School relies heavily on the caliberof its students, and yet the competition fortop-tier students has never been greater. The

Fund-raising effort is part of university’s historic $1.2 billion campaign

Friedman School of Nutrition Scienceand Policy student Latrice Goosby A02,N04, teaches a biostatistics class inthe Sackler library.

’ ,

School Alumni Association is three yearsold. In such a short time, we’ve kicked offmany new programs and initiatives that, Ihope, are making a difference in the livesof the school’s graduates and students.

As your new Alumni Association pres-ident, I must thank our outgoing andfounding president, Elizabeth CocharyGross, who has done so much to launchthis organization and help the school.Liz, I’m proud to be following in yourfootsteps!

Over the course of this year alone, we’veheld multiple career panels, several alumni-student networking events,receptions at major meetings and yet another spectacular All-Alumni Re-union. More than 60 graduates are now volunteers, willing to offercareer advice to alumni and students through the Tufts Career AdvisoryNetwork (http://careers.tufts.edu/alumni/network). Many others will beworking with our admissions office on a new project to assist prospec-tive students.

Members of the Alumni Association’s Executive Council have also beenreaching out to graduates like you to talk about the university’s BeyondBoundaries capital campaign and to ask for your gift to the FriedmanSchool’s annual fund to provide much-needed assistance for priorities suchas student financial aid. In the spring of 2006, the Executive Council alsoheld a board retreat to think about its goals and activities for this year andthe future. I think we have created a road map that will help our alumnireconnect with one another and the school, as well as provide terrific pro-

grams for networking, philan-thropy and career building.

While our momentum isgreat, the possibilities are endlessas to how we can support alumnias well as help the school achieve

its mission. Have an idea about an event orprogram? Want to volunteer? Are you inter-ested in attending an upcoming event? Pleasecontact Cindy Briggs Tobin in the Office ofDevelopment and Alumni Relations at617.636.0962 or send an e-mail to cindy.briggs@tufts.edu. Another great resource is theschool’s Web site, http://nutrition.tufts.edu,which has event listings and photos, infor-mation on benefits and services graduatescan receive from the university, the latestresearch news and more.

In three short years, we have come a longway in building a strong alumni community.I look forward to working with you andhope to see you at an upcoming event!

With warm wishes,suzanne dorfman, j98, n00, n05president, friedman school alumni association

32 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 PHOTO: MARK MORELLI

. ’

Irwin H. Rosenberg Professorship in Nutrition and Human Security, saysits holder, Professor Peter Walker, director of the Feinstein InternationalCenter at the Friedman School.

“The professorship sends a powerful signal that Tufts stands behind thesort of active research we do in crisis and conflict areas around the world,”Walker said.“The whole drive here is to do the research and then put it intoaction—to change things, not just write about them.”

Named for former Friedman School Dean Irwin H. Rosenberg, theprofessorship is conferred upon the director of the Feinstein InternationalCenter, which is devoted to field-based research to benefit communitiesbeset by famine, war or other humanitarian crises.

Walker was installed as the Rosenberg Professor last November. Morethan $2 million raised through private philanthropy established the pro-fessorship, with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation pledging half the total.

Rosenberg said the translation of scientific knowledge to field appli-cation has been an approach long associated with Tufts, particularly sincethe time of former university president and Friedman School founderJean Mayer, whom he described as a “champion and voice for the move-ment for freedom from hunger.”

Rosenberg, now a University Professor,also holds the Jean Mayer Professorship inNutrition. It was Mayer who encouragedRosenberg, a physician by training, to embarkon his first experience in international nutri-tion, leading to study and intervention inmalnutrition and famine in Bangladesh. Dur-ing Rosenberg’s nine-year tenure as dean,the Feinstein International Center wasfounded as a center devoted to the study andalleviation of famine in the world.

“Needless to say, I am deeply grateful to beassociated with this professorship,” Rosenbergsaid in remarks at Walker’s installation inNovember.“Nothing could be a higher honor,but this named professorship goes far beyondrecognition of any individual contribution tothe essential fusion of human nutrition andhuman security. This professorship recog-nizes the long commitment of this universityto the concept of humanitarian rights, free-dom from hunger, starvation and disease.”

Eileen Kennedy, dean of the FriedmanSchool, said: “The Rosenberg Professorshipis a tribute to the tireless efforts of the for-mer dean in enhancing the scientific andacademic excellence of the school. The pro-fessorship is a prime example of what I call‘beyond discovery.’ Dr. Walker’s scholarshiphas linked cutting-edge research and knowl-edge to action. I could not think of a moreappropriate person to hold the RosenbergProfessorship.”

Walker described the professorship as aplatform for the “participatory research”to which he and the school are dedicated.“Our research requires us to get involved,”Walker said. “We need to have a dialoguewith people, to understand their perspectiveof what’s going on.”

In Somerville, he said, this approach canmean working with local residents to makeschool lunches more nutritious; in Ugandathis can involve negotiating a working rela-tionship between the tribal justice systemand U.N. peace tribunals.

“We ask people, how do things work inthis place? Then we find the levers we cantouch to make things change,” Walker said.

Walker’s inaugural address as Rosenberg Professor is available online at http://fic.tufts.edu/downloads/RosenbergProfaddress.pdf.

ADVANCEMENT PROVIDING THE MEANS FOR EXCELLENCE

PHOTOS: JACQUELINE LOVATO/MARK GROSSMANN/ED MALITSKY s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 33

STAYING CONNECTED ALUMNI NEWS

MEET SUZANNEn A “triple-Jumbo” who received her bachelor’s

degree in biology from Tufts in 1998, a master’s in nutritional biochemistry from the FriedmanSchool in 2000 and a doctorate in nutritional biochemistry in 2005.

n Currently a pharmacology lab leader in diabetesand metabolism at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in Cambridge, Mass.

FRIENDS COAST TO COAST 1 Overseer Lloyd Greig and his wife, Sally,hosted a talk at their home in BeverlyHills by Peter Walker, director of the Feinstein International Center. Picturedare the Greigs and guest Elon Gunning.

2 Alison Robbins (right) held an event inBoca Raton to introduce new friends tothe Friedman School. Christina Economos,N96, the New Balance Chair in ChildhoodNutrition, spoke on “Nutrition and HealthyLifestyle Choices.”

Prof. Peter Walker

Rosenberg Professorship designed to put research into action by Mark Sullivan

Global Platform

Alumni Association continues to grow

1

2

’ ,

School Alumni Association is three yearsold. In such a short time, we’ve kicked offmany new programs and initiatives that, Ihope, are making a difference in the livesof the school’s graduates and students.

As your new Alumni Association pres-ident, I must thank our outgoing andfounding president, Elizabeth CocharyGross, who has done so much to launchthis organization and help the school.Liz, I’m proud to be following in yourfootsteps!

Over the course of this year alone, we’veheld multiple career panels, several alumni-student networking events,receptions at major meetings and yet another spectacular All-Alumni Re-union. More than 60 graduates are now volunteers, willing to offercareer advice to alumni and students through the Tufts Career AdvisoryNetwork (http://careers.tufts.edu/alumni/network). Many others will beworking with our admissions office on a new project to assist prospec-tive students.

Members of the Alumni Association’s Executive Council have also beenreaching out to graduates like you to talk about the university’s BeyondBoundaries capital campaign and to ask for your gift to the FriedmanSchool’s annual fund to provide much-needed assistance for priorities suchas student financial aid. In the spring of 2006, the Executive Council alsoheld a board retreat to think about its goals and activities for this year andthe future. I think we have created a road map that will help our alumnireconnect with one another and the school, as well as provide terrific pro-

grams for networking, philan-thropy and career building.

While our momentum isgreat, the possibilities are endlessas to how we can support alumnias well as help the school achieve

its mission. Have an idea about an event orprogram? Want to volunteer? Are you inter-ested in attending an upcoming event? Pleasecontact Cindy Briggs Tobin in the Office ofDevelopment and Alumni Relations at617.636.0962 or send an e-mail to cindy.briggs@tufts.edu. Another great resource is theschool’s Web site, http://nutrition.tufts.edu,which has event listings and photos, infor-mation on benefits and services graduatescan receive from the university, the latestresearch news and more.

In three short years, we have come a longway in building a strong alumni community.I look forward to working with you andhope to see you at an upcoming event!

With warm wishes,suzanne dorfman, j98, n00, n05president, friedman school alumni association

32 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 PHOTO: MARK MORELLI

. ’

Irwin H. Rosenberg Professorship in Nutrition and Human Security, saysits holder, Professor Peter Walker, director of the Feinstein InternationalCenter at the Friedman School.

“The professorship sends a powerful signal that Tufts stands behind thesort of active research we do in crisis and conflict areas around the world,”Walker said.“The whole drive here is to do the research and then put it intoaction—to change things, not just write about them.”

Named for former Friedman School Dean Irwin H. Rosenberg, theprofessorship is conferred upon the director of the Feinstein InternationalCenter, which is devoted to field-based research to benefit communitiesbeset by famine, war or other humanitarian crises.

Walker was installed as the Rosenberg Professor last November. Morethan $2 million raised through private philanthropy established the pro-fessorship, with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation pledging half the total.

Rosenberg said the translation of scientific knowledge to field appli-cation has been an approach long associated with Tufts, particularly sincethe time of former university president and Friedman School founderJean Mayer, whom he described as a “champion and voice for the move-ment for freedom from hunger.”

Rosenberg, now a University Professor,also holds the Jean Mayer Professorship inNutrition. It was Mayer who encouragedRosenberg, a physician by training, to embarkon his first experience in international nutri-tion, leading to study and intervention inmalnutrition and famine in Bangladesh. Dur-ing Rosenberg’s nine-year tenure as dean,the Feinstein International Center wasfounded as a center devoted to the study andalleviation of famine in the world.

“Needless to say, I am deeply grateful to beassociated with this professorship,” Rosenbergsaid in remarks at Walker’s installation inNovember.“Nothing could be a higher honor,but this named professorship goes far beyondrecognition of any individual contribution tothe essential fusion of human nutrition andhuman security. This professorship recog-nizes the long commitment of this universityto the concept of humanitarian rights, free-dom from hunger, starvation and disease.”

Eileen Kennedy, dean of the FriedmanSchool, said: “The Rosenberg Professorshipis a tribute to the tireless efforts of the for-mer dean in enhancing the scientific andacademic excellence of the school. The pro-fessorship is a prime example of what I call‘beyond discovery.’ Dr. Walker’s scholarshiphas linked cutting-edge research and knowl-edge to action. I could not think of a moreappropriate person to hold the RosenbergProfessorship.”

Walker described the professorship as aplatform for the “participatory research”to which he and the school are dedicated.“Our research requires us to get involved,”Walker said. “We need to have a dialoguewith people, to understand their perspectiveof what’s going on.”

In Somerville, he said, this approach canmean working with local residents to makeschool lunches more nutritious; in Ugandathis can involve negotiating a working rela-tionship between the tribal justice systemand U.N. peace tribunals.

“We ask people, how do things work inthis place? Then we find the levers we cantouch to make things change,” Walker said.

Walker’s inaugural address as Rosenberg Professor is available online at http://fic.tufts.edu/downloads/RosenbergProfaddress.pdf.

ADVANCEMENT PROVIDING THE MEANS FOR EXCELLENCE

PHOTOS: JACQUELINE LOVATO/MARK GROSSMANN/ED MALITSKY s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 33

STAYING CONNECTED ALUMNI NEWS

MEET SUZANNEn A “triple-Jumbo” who received her bachelor’s

degree in biology from Tufts in 1998, a master’s in nutritional biochemistry from the FriedmanSchool in 2000 and a doctorate in nutritional biochemistry in 2005.

n Currently a pharmacology lab leader in diabetesand metabolism at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in Cambridge, Mass.

FRIENDS COAST TO COAST 1 Overseer Lloyd Greig and his wife, Sally,hosted a talk at their home in BeverlyHills by Peter Walker, director of the Feinstein International Center. Picturedare the Greigs and guest Elon Gunning.

2 Alison Robbins (right) held an event inBoca Raton to introduce new friends tothe Friedman School. Christina Economos,N96, the New Balance Chair in ChildhoodNutrition, spoke on “Nutrition and HealthyLifestyle Choices.”

Prof. Peter Walker

Rosenberg Professorship designed to put research into action by Mark Sullivan

Global Platform

Alumni Association continues to grow

1

2

Conference on Food, Nutritionand Cancer in July 2006 inWashington, D.C. In addition, he discussed “CarotenoidOxidative Metabolites: Impli-cations for Cancer Prevention” at the International Society forFree Radical Research’s 13thBiennial Congress in August2006 in Davos, Switzerland. He also gave a talk on “Alcohol,Retinoids and HepatocellularCancer” at the InternationalSociety for Biomedical Researchon Alcoholism 2006 WorldCongress last September inSydney, Australia.

N94Madeline Dalton,see N85.

Hugh Joseph, see N84.

N95Angela Nell Stuartwas the spring

2006 theme editor of On theCutting Edge, a peer-reviewedjournal of the Diabetes Careand Practice Group of theAmerican Dietetic Association.

N97 Jennifer Hellwigand Jennifer Otten,

N98, both alumnae of the Nutrition CommunicationProgram, are co-editors, alongwith Linda Meyers, of the newreport, “Definitive Summary ofNutrient Reference Values forHealthy People,” a publicationthat debuted at the 2006 American Dietetic Associationannual conference. Otten alsonotes that she is workingtoward a doctorate at theUniversity of Vermont.

Heather Rafferty and herhusband, John, are expectingtheir first child this spring.Heather recently celebrated herfifth anniversary as the directorof brand and marketing servicesat the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, NY.

In this role, Heather overseesthe college’s brand and licensing programs as well asthe CIA’s marketing service departments, including commu-nications, creative services,special events, hospitality andWeb marketing.

N98Claire MacEvillyhas married Chris

Kitteringham and is the communications manager forthe Medical Research Council in Cambridge, UK.

Jennifer Otten, see N97.

N99Shara Aaronreports that she

will be moving to Yardley, Pa., in June.

Jenna Hollenstein’s firstbook, Understanding DietarySupplements, is scheduled tobe published in May 2007. It isa how-to book for evaluating andunderstanding vitamin, mineral,herbal and botanical dietarysupplements.

N01Congratulations toHolly Freishtat and

Aimee Witteman, N06. Theywere both awarded Food andAgricultural Sciences NationalNeeds Graduate and Post-graduate Fellowship Grants.Since 1984, the program hasprovided training for nearly1,200 students, with more than500 graduated USDA fellowsmaking contributions in a varietyof organizations.

N02Kim Dong still has a private

practice, SNAP (Smart NutritionApplication and Practice), withtwo fellow Friedman alums,Kendrin Sonneville and VanessaCavallaro, N03. They are basedin the Boston area.

Hind Merheb Khodr is the

clinical coordinator for theSchool for Health Studies at Simmons College.

Eileen (Socorso) Teschkemarried Jeffrey Teschke in October 2005. They live in Center Valley, Pa. Eileen hasworked at Merck since gradua-tion. She has been promotedfrom diabetes research to medical education for vaccines,including the new cervical cancer vaccine.

N03 Vanessa Cavallaro,see N02.

Jennifer Nichols marriedJamie Bogumil on August 12,2006, in Mystic, Conn.

Abby Usen is back at Tufts-New England Medical Center,working as an R.D. in both the Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition Clinic and the Metabolism Center.

N04Laurie Barenblatteamed with

personal trainer James Johnsonin July 2006 to start CurbsideFitness. They offer in-home personal training and nutritioneducation to help their clientstransition to a healthier lifestyle.

Kristine Shedd writes, “I’m getting married in June 2007!”

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 35

N83Susan Holmanwas invited to

be a visiting scholar at theInstitute for Advanced Studiesat Hebrew University inJerusalem during the winter of 2007 as a part of itsresearch group “Piety andCharity in the Late AntiqueMediterranean World.”

N84Hugh Joseph, N94,founding director

of the New Entry SustainableFarming Project, was featured in an August 2006 BostonGlobe article about the project,which helps immigrants usetheir farming backgrounds tobecome commercial farmers in this country. About 40 farmers from Laos, Cambodiaand a half-dozen African countries currently participate in the three-year training program at farms in Dracut and Sutton, Mass.

Marguerite Klein andFrances Stern Nutrition CenterDirector Johanna Dwyer co-chaired a session on researchneeds at the Drug InformationAssociation’s Conference onProbiotics in October 2006.

N85Madeline Dalton,N94, delivered the

commencement address May12 at Alfred University, whereshe earned her undergraduatedegree in biology in 1983. The university also awarded her an honorary doctor of science degree. She is a nutritional epidemiologist andassociate professor of pedi-atrics at Dartmouth MedicalSchool. In research funded bythe National Cancer Institute,Dalton found that seeing peo-ple smoke in the movies influ-ences teens’ decision tosmoke. The Cancer Institute isalso funding a follow-up study

that will evaluate the influenceof movies on adolescent smoking behavior and identifyparental factors that mightmodify the association betweenexposure to smoking in themovies and adolescent smoking. In other research,funded by the National Instituteof Environmental HealthSciences and the Robert WoodJohnson Foundation, Dalton is evaluating the environmentaland family influences on thenation’s childhood obesity epidemic. In 2006, Daltonreceived the Alfred UniversityAlumni Association’s Distin-guished Achievement Award.

N86 Alice Shapiroshares that the

“WINS Study” is finally finishedand was published in theDecember 2006 issue of theJournal of the National CancerInstitute. She notes, “Lots of

great nutritionists worked on it for 10 years!”

N87Brenda Braatenhosted Pacific

Crest Trail hikers this past summer at her home inCalifornia, offering nutrition and trail survival advice.

N92Xiang-Dong Wang,director of the

Nutrition and Cancer BiologyLaboratory at the Jean MayerUSDA Human Nutrition ResearchCenter on Aging at Tufts, hasbeen appointed an honored visiting professor at Sun Yat-SenUniversity in Guangzhou, China.He spoke on “Carotenoids,Vitamin A and Cancer Preven-tion” at that university’s 30thanniversary ceremony. He alsospoke on “Smoking, Alcohol and Vitamin A” at the AmericanInstitute for Cancer Research’sInternational Research

ALUMNI NEWS CLASS NOTES

34 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

IN SEARCH OF…AS MUCH AS WE TRY TO KEEP IN

touch with graduates, sometimeswe lose track. Have you heardfrom any of these alumni? Let them know we miss them and would like to add them to the magazine mailing list. Send them to http://nutrition.

tufts.edu/alumni.

Mohammed A. Al-Saif, N96

Young-Shin Ahn, N93

Nkiabungu Bikangi, N86, N87

Jeanine Comeau, N99

Suratha Cumaresan, N93

Andrea Dazzi, N83

Roberta Dworkin, N84

Sulima Abdel Haliem Elballa Rhman, N04, F04

Nahimana Gitebo, N88

Lori Hennessy, N89

Homgmei Li, N93

Chun-Yin Huang, N02

Winona Lawrence, G52

Barbara Martin, G70

Robyn Meizlish, N84

Fazal Najimi, N03, F03

Catherine Newton, N03, F03

George Were, N02, F02

Ameca Ellis Park, N01

Jonathan Thrasher, N90

travel-learntravel-learn

TRAVEL TO EXTRAORDINARY PLACES WITH EXCEPTIONAL PEOPLETRAVEL TO EXTRAORDINARY PLACES WITH EXCEPTIONAL PEOPLEFrom Antarctica to Santorini, from China to

the Nile, the Tufts Travel-Learn Program combines intellectual inquiry with leisure and exploration.

There’s a perfect trip for every taste. Call Usha Sellers, Director, at 800-843-2586 or visit our website for updated details and itineraries.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!Have a new job? Is your family growing? A special project or appointment? Getting together with classmates? Keep your fellow alumni posted by dropping us a line.

Send to:Cindy Briggs Tobin Director of Development and Alumni Relations136 Harrison AvenueBoston, MA 02111or go online to nutrition.tufts.edu/alumni

CLASS NOTES DEADLINE FOR NEXT ISSUE IS SEPTEMBER 1, 2007

Conference on Food, Nutritionand Cancer in July 2006 inWashington, D.C. In addition, he discussed “CarotenoidOxidative Metabolites: Impli-cations for Cancer Prevention” at the International Society forFree Radical Research’s 13thBiennial Congress in August2006 in Davos, Switzerland. He also gave a talk on “Alcohol,Retinoids and HepatocellularCancer” at the InternationalSociety for Biomedical Researchon Alcoholism 2006 WorldCongress last September inSydney, Australia.

N94Madeline Dalton,see N85.

Hugh Joseph, see N84.

N95Angela Nell Stuartwas the spring

2006 theme editor of On theCutting Edge, a peer-reviewedjournal of the Diabetes Careand Practice Group of theAmerican Dietetic Association.

N97 Jennifer Hellwigand Jennifer Otten,

N98, both alumnae of the Nutrition CommunicationProgram, are co-editors, alongwith Linda Meyers, of the newreport, “Definitive Summary ofNutrient Reference Values forHealthy People,” a publicationthat debuted at the 2006 American Dietetic Associationannual conference. Otten alsonotes that she is workingtoward a doctorate at theUniversity of Vermont.

Heather Rafferty and herhusband, John, are expectingtheir first child this spring.Heather recently celebrated herfifth anniversary as the directorof brand and marketing servicesat the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, NY.

In this role, Heather overseesthe college’s brand and licensing programs as well asthe CIA’s marketing service departments, including commu-nications, creative services,special events, hospitality andWeb marketing.

N98Claire MacEvillyhas married Chris

Kitteringham and is the communications manager forthe Medical Research Council in Cambridge, UK.

Jennifer Otten, see N97.

N99Shara Aaronreports that she

will be moving to Yardley, Pa., in June.

Jenna Hollenstein’s firstbook, Understanding DietarySupplements, is scheduled tobe published in May 2007. It isa how-to book for evaluating andunderstanding vitamin, mineral,herbal and botanical dietarysupplements.

N01Congratulations toHolly Freishtat and

Aimee Witteman, N06. Theywere both awarded Food andAgricultural Sciences NationalNeeds Graduate and Post-graduate Fellowship Grants.Since 1984, the program hasprovided training for nearly1,200 students, with more than500 graduated USDA fellowsmaking contributions in a varietyof organizations.

N02Kim Dong still has a private

practice, SNAP (Smart NutritionApplication and Practice), withtwo fellow Friedman alums,Kendrin Sonneville and VanessaCavallaro, N03. They are basedin the Boston area.

Hind Merheb Khodr is the

clinical coordinator for theSchool for Health Studies at Simmons College.

Eileen (Socorso) Teschkemarried Jeffrey Teschke in October 2005. They live in Center Valley, Pa. Eileen hasworked at Merck since gradua-tion. She has been promotedfrom diabetes research to medical education for vaccines,including the new cervical cancer vaccine.

N03 Vanessa Cavallaro,see N02.

Jennifer Nichols marriedJamie Bogumil on August 12,2006, in Mystic, Conn.

Abby Usen is back at Tufts-New England Medical Center,working as an R.D. in both the Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition Clinic and the Metabolism Center.

N04Laurie Barenblatteamed with

personal trainer James Johnsonin July 2006 to start CurbsideFitness. They offer in-home personal training and nutritioneducation to help their clientstransition to a healthier lifestyle.

Kristine Shedd writes, “I’m getting married in June 2007!”

s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n 35

N83Susan Holmanwas invited to

be a visiting scholar at theInstitute for Advanced Studiesat Hebrew University inJerusalem during the winter of 2007 as a part of itsresearch group “Piety andCharity in the Late AntiqueMediterranean World.”

N84Hugh Joseph, N94,founding director

of the New Entry SustainableFarming Project, was featured in an August 2006 BostonGlobe article about the project,which helps immigrants usetheir farming backgrounds tobecome commercial farmers in this country. About 40 farmers from Laos, Cambodiaand a half-dozen African countries currently participate in the three-year training program at farms in Dracut and Sutton, Mass.

Marguerite Klein andFrances Stern Nutrition CenterDirector Johanna Dwyer co-chaired a session on researchneeds at the Drug InformationAssociation’s Conference onProbiotics in October 2006.

N85Madeline Dalton,N94, delivered the

commencement address May12 at Alfred University, whereshe earned her undergraduatedegree in biology in 1983. The university also awarded her an honorary doctor of science degree. She is a nutritional epidemiologist andassociate professor of pedi-atrics at Dartmouth MedicalSchool. In research funded bythe National Cancer Institute,Dalton found that seeing peo-ple smoke in the movies influ-ences teens’ decision tosmoke. The Cancer Institute isalso funding a follow-up study

that will evaluate the influenceof movies on adolescent smoking behavior and identifyparental factors that mightmodify the association betweenexposure to smoking in themovies and adolescent smoking. In other research,funded by the National Instituteof Environmental HealthSciences and the Robert WoodJohnson Foundation, Dalton is evaluating the environmentaland family influences on thenation’s childhood obesity epidemic. In 2006, Daltonreceived the Alfred UniversityAlumni Association’s Distin-guished Achievement Award.

N86 Alice Shapiroshares that the

“WINS Study” is finally finishedand was published in theDecember 2006 issue of theJournal of the National CancerInstitute. She notes, “Lots of

great nutritionists worked on it for 10 years!”

N87Brenda Braatenhosted Pacific

Crest Trail hikers this past summer at her home inCalifornia, offering nutrition and trail survival advice.

N92Xiang-Dong Wang,director of the

Nutrition and Cancer BiologyLaboratory at the Jean MayerUSDA Human Nutrition ResearchCenter on Aging at Tufts, hasbeen appointed an honored visiting professor at Sun Yat-SenUniversity in Guangzhou, China.He spoke on “Carotenoids,Vitamin A and Cancer Preven-tion” at that university’s 30thanniversary ceremony. He alsospoke on “Smoking, Alcohol and Vitamin A” at the AmericanInstitute for Cancer Research’sInternational Research

ALUMNI NEWS CLASS NOTES

34 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

IN SEARCH OF…AS MUCH AS WE TRY TO KEEP IN

touch with graduates, sometimeswe lose track. Have you heardfrom any of these alumni? Let them know we miss them and would like to add them to the magazine mailing list. Send them to http://nutrition.

tufts.edu/alumni.

Mohammed A. Al-Saif, N96

Young-Shin Ahn, N93

Nkiabungu Bikangi, N86, N87

Jeanine Comeau, N99

Suratha Cumaresan, N93

Andrea Dazzi, N83

Roberta Dworkin, N84

Sulima Abdel Haliem Elballa Rhman, N04, F04

Nahimana Gitebo, N88

Lori Hennessy, N89

Homgmei Li, N93

Chun-Yin Huang, N02

Winona Lawrence, G52

Barbara Martin, G70

Robyn Meizlish, N84

Fazal Najimi, N03, F03

Catherine Newton, N03, F03

George Were, N02, F02

Ameca Ellis Park, N01

Jonathan Thrasher, N90

travel-learntravel-learn

TRAVEL TO EXTRAORDINARY PLACES WITH EXCEPTIONAL PEOPLETRAVEL TO EXTRAORDINARY PLACES WITH EXCEPTIONAL PEOPLEFrom Antarctica to Santorini, from China to

the Nile, the Tufts Travel-Learn Program combines intellectual inquiry with leisure and exploration.

There’s a perfect trip for every taste. Call Usha Sellers, Director, at 800-843-2586 or visit our website for updated details and itineraries.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!Have a new job? Is your family growing? A special project or appointment? Getting together with classmates? Keep your fellow alumni posted by dropping us a line.

Send to:Cindy Briggs Tobin Director of Development and Alumni Relations136 Harrison AvenueBoston, MA 02111or go online to nutrition.tufts.edu/alumni

CLASS NOTES DEADLINE FOR NEXT ISSUE IS SEPTEMBER 1, 2007

N05Cathy Culletonwrites, “All is well

in Sacramento. I’m busy work-ing at the Native AmericanHealth Center.”

Kelly Horton is the founderof the consulting organization,Connect Nutrition, which isbased in Seattle. The organiza-tion works with NGOs, govern-

ment agencies and universitiesto create nutrition programs thatmeet the needs of families andcommunities. While at SimmonsCollege and the FriedmanSchool, Kelly developed the ideafor her organization and enlistedcolleagues to create a networkof consultants to provide techni-cal assistance for nutrition and

health programs. Other Friedman graduates involved are Charlotte Block, N06;Patrick Rasca, N06; and Denish Moorthy, N06.

N06 Charlotte Block,Patrick Rasca

and Denish Moorthy, see N05. Monique Mikhail worked for

International DevelopmentEnterprises in the summer of 2006, and her piece on multiple-use water systems was accepted by the South-South Solutions e-newsletter of the United Nations Development Program.

Aimee Witteman, see N01.

ALUMNI UPDATE OBITUARY

36 t u f t s n u t r i t i o n s p r i n g 2 0 0 7 PHOTO: COURTESY BETH TENER

Richard G. Bell, a consumer researcher in nutritional and behavioralepidemiology at the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick,Mass., and an adjunct professor at the Friedman School, died ofcancer on February 8, 2007, at Exeter Hospital in New Hamp-shire. He was 48.

At Tufts and the Harvard School of Public Health,where he also taught, Bell was known for his abilityto engage his students with humor and his uniquestyle of pedagogy.

“Rick would be teaching a course on ‘Theoret-ical Models for Health and Nutrition Behaviors’—a subject that has the potential to be ratherdull—and have his students on the edge of theirchairs laughing,” said Jeanne Goldberg, G59, N86,a professor at the Friedman School. “He was justincredibly creative, totally out of the box.”

In one class, for example, he used the Beatles’ song “HeyJude” to demonstrate the possibilities for getting individuals tochange their behavior. At first, few students would sing with him.By the end, everyone was participating and having fun at thesame time.

“This would seem to have nothing to do with nutrition andhealth,” Goldberg said, “but in reality, it has everything to dowith it. Rick got the best out of his students.”

Performing came naturally for this Renaissance man. Bell,who preferred to be called Rick, was born in Belleville, N.J., toSidney and Rita (Stein). In high school, he taught himself to playthe piano by listening to Billy Joel songs and trying to duplicatethem. He played in the high school band and at coffeehouseswhile he attended Brandeis University. After graduating in 1980with a bachelor’s degree in economics, Bell, who had a beautifultenor voice, performed in musical theater on Cape Cod, touredwith a children’s theater company in California and acted withthe Green Mountain Guild in Vermont.

He wrote a musical, “Tempest in the Teapot,” which was per-formed in the Boston area in 1994, and at the time of his death,was composing the music for another musical, titled “100 Percent Lucille.”

Bell was an accomplished athlete from a young age. The firstbaseman was the leading hitter at his high school and consid-ered a slew of college offers before deciding to study economics.

Bell earned a master’s degree in nutrition from New York University in 1987 and a doctorate from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1999. Whilepursuing his master’s degree, Bell worked as asensory scientist at Thomas J. Lipton Inc. inEnglewood Cliffs, N.J., and later as a researchscientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Centerin Philadelphia.

His colleagues at the Natick center, where he began working in 1990, praised him for his creativity and his wide variety of research inter-ests. He specialized in nutritional and behavioralepidemiology, first as a food technologist and

later as a psychologist, and helped develop everything from thefoods soldiers eat to the clothes they wear.

In his spare time, Bell researched various public healthissues and had a private consulting practice that addressed foodallergies and the effect of certain foods on the immune system.

At the Friedman School, he participated in countless oralexaminations, served on many thesis committees and worked on grant applications with a number of faculty.

“From the time he came to Tufts, Rick was in high demand,not only because he was so bright and creative, but because he was so warm, caring and supportive of the many peoplewhose lives he touched,” Goldberg said.

Bell taught through the end of the fall 2006 semester, eventhough he was in great pain. “He said that teaching energizedhim to go on,” Goldberg said.

Last year, Bell moved from Woburn, Mass., to a home in Nottingham, N.H., that he and his wife, Beth Tener, had carefullyplanned in every detail to make both beautiful and environmen-tally friendly.

In addition to his wife, Bell leaves his mother, Rita, of Hacken-sack, N.J., and a sister, Carrie Jacobus, of Oradell, N.J. A memo-rial service was held at Deerfield Town Hall in Deerfield, N.H.

RENAISSANCE MAN TAUGHT WITH HUMOR, CREATIVITY

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PEACE OUT, JIMJim Levinson once tried to explainhis job at USAID to his daughterMira by saying he was helping tofeed the world’s hungry children.Sometime later, she had thechance to spend the day at hisoffice in Washington. It was abusy day, with most of the officeengrossed in a staffing issue. The confused 5-year-old turned tohim and asked, “How come youaren’t talking about the hungrychildren?” The question nowhangs as a plaque in his office, a reminder to him, and the manystudents who stop by, to keepfocused. For more on Levinson’scareer, turn to page 22.

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