Exercise, not calories, is key to avoiding heart disease

Eat hearty, but keep moving is the message of a new study of almost 9,800 Americans. During 17 years of follow-up, 1,531 participants in the study died of heart disease. After adjusting for body mass index (a measure of weight in relation to height) and physical activity, caloric intake was unrelated to heart disease.

People who exercised more and ate more were both leaner and had less than half the deaths from heart disease than did those who exercised less, ate less and were overweight.

The study, by Dr. Jing Fang and her colleagues from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, N.Y., appears in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Those who eat less won't necessarily be thinner, Fang said, and eating more does not have to translate into obesity.

Read the abstract. Or read a press release about the study.