The Week In Capsule

Healthy pizza: Food scientists have come up with a recipe for the perfectly healthy pizza. The secret lies in the dough

Healthy pizza:Food scientists have come up with a recipe for the perfectly healthy pizza. The secret lies in the dough. A team of US chemists found using wholewheat dough fermented and baked under specific conditions produced a pizza packed with health-giving antioxidants.

Levels of the compounds, which combat heart disease and cancer, were raised by up to 100 per cent. The improvements favour the deep-dish, thick-crusted Chicago-style pizza which is given a long baking time.

Light breast scans: A new kind of breast scan has been developed that pinpoints malignant tumours using harmless light instead of X-rays. The technique highlights calcium crystals in breast tissue that are produced by cancerous cells. Experts believe it could be useful for younger women and others who have dense breasts as tumours in dense breast tissue are often missed by conventional mammography scans.

Aspirin benefits: Taking one to 14 standard aspirin tablets a week reduces the overall risk of death in women, especially from heart disease, according to a study published last night.

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Researchers found women who took aspirin regularly had a 25 per cent lower risk of death during the 24 years of the study. While there was considerable evidence that aspirin therapy improved survival in both men and women with established heart disease, information on its benefit for women without heart disease had been limited and conflicting, said Dr Andrew Chan and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

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"It is important to understand that an eating disorder is when someone is worried about their weight or shape. It is possible to have severe eating difficulties where weight or shape is not driving this."

- Dr Dasha Nicolls, a lead investigator and child and adolescent psychiatrist at Great Ormond Street Hospital, commenting on the first national study of eating disorders in children under 13 in Britain which found a total of 206 cases were reported over a 13-month period from March 2005.