Pooling 51 cohorts from four continents, higher ultra-processed food intake tracked with more digestive disease, depression and anxiety, diabetes and metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular events, obesity, cancer, high blood pressure and death from any cause, with risk climbing as intake rose. Each extra 100 g a day was tied to 14% more cardiovascular events.

For practice: strong dose-response evidence to pair with the AFP editorial; the authors note diets were self-reported and the links are associations, not proof of cause.

A UT Southwestern and Parkland randomized trial compared culinary medicine classes with standard nutrition therapy. HbA1c fell 1.15% with nutrition therapy and 0.55% with culinary medicine, but attrition left the trial underpowered.

For practice: a useful, honest data point when presenting culinary medicine outcomes; larger trials are still needed.

An editorial reviewing mostly observational links between ultra-processed foods and cardiometabolic disease, cancer, gut and mental health, and mortality, while noting that not every processed product carries the same risk.

For practice: supports counseling toward less-processed, plant-forward eating patients can enjoy and keep up.

A 150-patient pilot at two Dallas hospitals gave meals, produce boxes with recipes, or usual advice for 90 days. Delivery and retention were very high and quality of life improved with food support, though ER visits and readmissions did not fall.

For practice: patients favored produce boxes they could cook with family, a point for culinary medicine over ready meals.

Among 1,458 stressed employees at an academic medical center, 10 minutes a day of app-guided meditation for 8 weeks lowered perceived stress and job strain versus waitlist, with benefits holding at 4 months.

For practice: a short daily dose was enough, relevant to busy clinicians and physician well-being programs.

In 400 online participants, four weeks of slow coherent breathing improved stress and mood, but no more than a carefully matched placebo breathing practice did.

For practice: a reminder to frame breathwork benefits carefully; delivery and personal guidance may matter.

Segers and Depoortere review how the brain's master clock, set by light, and clocks throughout the gut, set largely by when we eat, govern digestion, motility, gut hormones, the intestinal barrier, the microbiota, and glucose, lipid and bile acid metabolism. They close with behavioral and drug strategies against chronodisruption.

For practice: grounds meal-timing guidance, such as regular mealtimes aligned with daylight, in gut physiology.