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Objective: This study aimed to measure associations between gallbladder disease and protein intake patterns, separated by quantity and type (vegetable vs. animal), among postmenopausal women.Methods: Analyses were based on 130,859 postmenopausal women enrolled from 1993 to 1998 at 40 U.S. clinical centers in the Women's Health Initiative clinical trials and observational study. Women were excluded if they reported a history of gallbladder disease prior to baseline. Cox proportional hazards regression models, adjusted for gallbladder disease risk factors, were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for associations between energy-adjusted protein intake and gallbladder disease.Results: In this study sample, 8.1% of postmenopausal women self-reported incident gallbladder disease. In multivariate analysis, women in the highest quintile of energy-adjusted vegetable protein intake (>24.0g/d) had a lower risk of gallbladder disease (HR, 0.87; 95% CI, 0.81-0.93) as compared to women in the lowest quintile (<16.3g/d) (Ptrend<0.001). Total protein intake was modestly protective against gallbladder disease (Ptrend<0.021). Animal protein intake was not associated with gallbladder disease risk. The protective effect of vegetable protein held stable only for women without history of diabetes (HR, 0.86; 95% CI, 0.80-0.92) and without recent weight loss (HR, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.80-0.97).Conclusions: Vegetable protein intake is inversely associated with gallbladder disease risk in our sample of postmenopausal women. In addition to weight management, healthcare providers could emphasize vegetable protein as an additional dietary modality to promote lower risk for gallbladder disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Higher dietary acid load can result in metabolic acidosis and is associated with faster kidney disease progression in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). However, the relationship between dietary acid load and incident CKD has not been evaluated.Methods: We conducted prospective analyses of the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study participants without CKD at baseline (1987-1989, n = 15,055). Dietary acid load was estimated using the equation for potential renal acid load by Remer and Manz, incorporating dietary intake data from a food frequency questionnaire. Incident CKD was assessed from baseline through 2010 and defined as estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) <60 ml/min/1.73 m2 accompanied by 25% eGFR decline, CKD-related hospitalization or death or end-stage renal disease identified by linkage to the US Renal Data System registry.Results: In the overall study population, 55% were female, 26% were African-American and mean age at baseline was 54 years. During a median follow-up of 21 years, there were 2,351 (15.6%) incident CKD cases. After adjusting for demographics (age, sex, race-center), established risk factors (diabetes status, hypertension status, overweight/obese status, smoking status, education level, physical activity), caloric intake and baseline eGFR, higher dietary acid load were associated with higher risk of incident CKD (hazard ratio [HR] for quartile 4 vs. 1: 1.13, 95% CI 1.01-1.28, p for trend = 0.02; HR per interquartile range increase: 1.06, 95% CI 1.00-1.11, p = 0.04).Conclusion: Dietary acid load is associated with incident CKD in a population-based sample. These data suggest a potential avenue for CKD risk reduction through diet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the efforts of the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP) to develop a relatively low-cost vegetable protein mixture suitable as a complementary food for infants and young children. As it turned out, the resulting product became popular with older children and adults, and its superior nutritional benefits were widely recognized by the population. This effort led to broader studies by INCAP of the nutritional quality of vegetable protein mixtures, including raw materials, processing to convert them into human-grade products, product formulation, and commercialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]