Rutgers’ new hub for interdisciplinary research in food, nutrition and health aims to make New Jersey the “healthy state” and a model for the nation… The $55 million New Jersey Institute for Food, Nutrition and Health on the George H. Cook Campus formally was dedicated Tuesday as college, state and private officials looked on. Financing came from a $35 million grant from the Building Our Future Bond Act and a $10 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation… Students in the building will study the country’s major nutrition-related health issues, including obesity, diabetes and heart disease. The building, designed with nature in mind and an open-space concept, also boasts New Jersey’s largest interior living wall. There also is space for conferences, meetings, laboratories, “smart” classrooms and offices.

There have been suggestions that low levels of vitamin D might be a factor in cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease, but there’s no proof that the lack of D is actually causing the problems… A study published Monday doesn’t prove that link, but it does find that people with low levels of vitamin D lost key thinking skills more quickly that people with enough… “We’re relatively cautious in how we say this,” Joshua Miller, chair of the department of nutrition in the school of environmental and biological sciences at Rutgers University, said. He’s the study’s lead author, and worked on it while he was at the University of California, Davis… “We always say, in consultation with your doctor we suggest that older adults have their vitamin D status measured,” Miller says. “If it’s low, in consultation with their doctor, they might consider taking vitamin D supplements.”