Don’t be put off by the designation of “stew” in the title of this delicious dish. The concoction is delicious and packed with veggies (you can add more if you wish). This mix is a scrumptious way to get vegetables happily down the kid’s gullets. Use the style of smallish pasta you like best, such as penne, ziti, or farfalle.

Vegetable and Pasta ‘Stew’

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

INGREDIENTS

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 medium eggplant, unpeeled, cut into 1- to 1 1/2-inch pieces, about 3 1/2 cups

1 medium red onion, coarsely chopped

10 green onions, trimmed of roots and dark green stalks, white and light green portion cut into 1-inch pieces

1 red bell pepper, seeded, cored, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

1/2 head of cauliflower, cored, divided into florets

1 medium zucchini, trimmed, cut into 1-inch pieces

1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper, to taste

Pasta

1 pound small dried pasta, such as penne, ziti, bow-tie

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus additional for garnish

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1/2 teaspoon coarse salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

DIRECTIONS

1. For vegetables: Heat olive oil in large deep skillet. When hot, add eggplant and cook over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes, or until browned on all sides. It will absorb most of the oil. Add red onion, green onions, bell pepper, and cauliflower (add a tiny bit of oil if needed); gently toss. Cover and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add zucchini and cook, covered, for another 2 minutes. Add salt and pepper. Gently toss and set aside.

2. For pasta: Bring about 4 quarts of salted water to a boil in a large pot. Add pasta and cook al dente according to package directions. Reserve 1/2 cup of cooking water. Drain pasta.

3. In large bowl, place reserved pasta-cooking water, 1/4 cup Parmesan, 2 tablespoons oil, salt and pepper; stir. Add pasta and toss. Stir in reserved vegetables. Taste and adjust seasoning if needed. Pass some Parmesan cheese for optional topping.

Award-winning food writer Cathy Thomas has written three cookbooks, including “50 Best Plants on the Planet.” Follow her at CathyThomasCooks.com.

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By JONEL ALECCIA

Protein just got a big boost from U.S. health officials.

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The latest federal dietary guidelines tell Americans to “prioritize protein foods at every meal” and advise increasing daily intake — up to double the amount of previous recommendations.

“We are ending the war on protein,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a White House post on social media.

The guidance — including a new food pyramid — emphasizes red meat, whole milk and other animal sources of protein, while downplaying plant-based offerings.

But top nutrition experts question the protein push, saying Americans already consume more protein than they need, and there’s no new evidence that people need to drastically ramp up consumption. For many people, eating much more protein could lead to more fat and more cases of diabetes, they say.

“If you’re actively building muscle with strength or resistance training, more protein can help,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a Tufts University nutrition expert. “Otherwise, you’re getting enough.”

Others worry that the dietary advice will accelerate the trend of companies encouraging Americans to embrace extra protein in foods including bars, cereals and snacks – even water.

Sales of protein-enriched packaged food will increase at a time “when one of the main messages is ‘eat real food, eat whole foods,’” said Christopher Gardner, a nutrition expert at Stanford University. “I think they’re going to confuse the public in a big way.”

Here’s what you need to know about the new protein recommendations:

What is protein and how much do people need?

Protein is a macronutrient that is in every cell in the human body. It’s vital for growth and repair of muscle, bone, skin, hair and other organs and tissues. It’s made of building blocks called amino acids, including some that the body doesn’t make and must come from food.

For decades, the U.S. dietary guidelines and other sources have recommended that people consume 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight each day, or about 54 grams daily for a 150-pound person.

The new recommendation advises people to consume 1.2 grams to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight — up to double the previous advice. The guidance says adults should consume at least 100 grams of protein per day with half or more coming from animal sources.

The average adult man already consumes about 100 grams of protein a day, or twice the old recommendation.

Why did the new dietary guidelines change?

The previous protein recommendations were calculated to prevent a nutrition deficiency, according to a scientific review published with the new dietary guidelines.

“It represents the lowest intake that maintains equilibrium in most healthy adults but does not reflect the intake required to maintain optimal muscle mass or metabolic function under all conditions,” the review said.

The new document relied on evidence from 30 studies that looked at the effects of higher protein diets on weight management and nutrient adequacy.

It concluded that protein intakes well above the previous guidance “are safe and compatible with good health.”

What’s the harm of eating more protein?

Nutrition experts noted that trials focusing on weight reduction aren’t typically used to make dietary recommendations for the general population. And, in a new article published in Journal of the American Medical Association, Mozaffarian said there is little evidence, outside of use for strength or resistance training, that “higher protein builds muscle or provides other health benefits.”

“In fact, excess dietary protein can be converted to fat by the liver,” Mozaffarian wrote. That can increase the risk of the development of dangerous fat in the abdomen that surrounds vital organs and boost the risk of diabetes, he added.

Protein in processed foods

Other nutrition experts said the recommendation to eat more protein could be useful if it helps achieve another key goal of the new guidelines: encouraging people to eat more whole foods and fewer highly processed foods such as packaged snacks and cookies.

“The main problem with the food supply is the processed carbohydrates,” said Dr. David Ludwig, an endocrinologist and researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital.

But that will be a tall order for consumers faced with a slew of processed packaged foods — including toaster pastries, cereals and salty snacks — imbued with the halo of added protein.

“I think the American public’s gonna go buy more junk food,” Gardner said.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By MAE ANDERSON, AP Business Writer

Melia & Co appears to be a small family-run business. The sweaters on its website feature a photo of a woman hand-knitting a Christmas design. The caption says that after decades of creating knitwear that tells “quiet stories of care and beauty,” she is closing her little studio and the pieces on offer are her last.

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The website of Olivia Westwood Boutique also spotlights a charming backstory. The “About Us” section states that twin sisters run the shop their mother opened in 1972 and share her commitment to a a business “rooted in family, community and women uplifting women.” Shoppers could take advantage of a sale honoring the boutique’s late founder on what would have been her 95th birthday.

But neither store is what it appears. Both display many of the same Icelandic, Nordic and festive sweaters with identical stock images. Their website domains were registered in China in November, ahead of the holiday shopping season. Negative reviews of both proliferate on consumer review websites such as Trustpilot, where users report receiving shoddy goods that were difficult to return.

Melia & Co. did not return a request for more information about the owners. A close look at a pop-up ad describing Nola Rene, the 72-year-old Swedish knitter who is supposedly hanging up her knitting needles, reveals the word “advertorial” at the top and at the bottom, a disclaimer saying the people in the photos are models. At least three other shopping sites also sell the sweaters “lovingly hand-knitted in small batches.”

Olivia Westwood Boutique responded to an email query about where it was based and who owned the business by saying it was an online boutique “working with trusted global fulfillment partners to serve our customers.”

Online shopping scams are not unusual. About 36% of Americans failed to receive refunds after purchasing an item online that they said never arrived or turned out to be counterfeit, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in April 2025 and published in July. Faster and more sophisticated digital tools are only making it even harder for consumers to spot if what they are seeing is too good to be true.

Some vendors and fraudsters have taken advantage of AI-generated images to create websites that have an aura of artisan authenticity or that point to a long history as a trusted small retailer, said Seth Ketron, a marketing professor at The University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.

“It’s getting more and more common,” Ketron said. “If you’re not careful or you’re really paying close attention, or you don’t really even know what to look for or what AI photos look like, it’s easy to kind of just gloss over or miss that it’s probably not real.”

Misleading e-commerce ads often pop up on social media feeds or appear as banners on other kinds of websites. Experts say there are some simple steps shoppers can take to distinguish a legitimate small merchant from a suspicious one before clicking “buy.”

Check for verifiable details

Deanna Newman owns C’est La Vie, an online jewelry retailer in Ontario, Canada, and learned about mall-business impersonation scams the hard way. A person claiming to have received low-quality goods from her site left an irate comment on Newman’s Facebook page. Alarmed, she looked but she could not find a record of the order.

Newman concluded a scammer was using the name of her store for several shopping sites selling jewelry. When people went online to complain about inferior products, they landed on her site. There were C’est La Vie websites claiming to have brick-and-mortar locations in New York, Birmingham, England, Dublin, Ireland, and other cities, which didn’t actually exist.

“Sometimes people were receiving products from China and very low-grade jewelry, and then some people weren’t receiving things at all,” Newman said.

She dealt with the complaints, put a warning on her Facebook page and online shop about the misleading C’est la Vie web sites, and posted videos on Instagram and TikTok to demonstrate she was a real person with a real business. Some of the copycat sites were taken down. But an influx of poor reviews and complaints nonetheless hurt her sales, she said.

Newman advises shoppers to look for a verifiable address or other details that may indicate a site is authentic. When in doubt, reach out to the owner by email, phone or contact form. If they are genuine, they should be happy to reply, she said.

“It’s hard, because the consumer has to do a little bit of research on their side, but I would say, too, that if it looks too good to be true, it probably is,” Newman said.

Beware a sob story

Including fake hardship stories along with ads is one technique online scammers use to draw in potential buyers. Common ploys include announcing a “going-out-of-business” sale or a sale to honor a late son, daughter or grandmother.

Newman said the people who assumed her company’s name employed multiple versions of this gimmick, including having a close family member pass away. A customer who contacted Newman expressed sympathy for the loss of her son.

“I realized that they thought that I was the scam website,” she said. “So I was like, ‘Well, the good news is you haven’t been scammed because I’m sending these products, but the bad news is, you purchased from me thinking you were supporting somebody who’s going through something hard.’”

Check third-party reviews

Murat Kantarcioglu, a computer science professor at Virginia Tech, recommends checking reviews before making any online purchases from smaller businesses. Customer reviews aren’t always legitimate either, but they can be good to check as part of your research.

Sites like the Better Business Bureau and U.K.-based Trustpilot are two places to look, as well as marketplaces like Amazon and Etsy if the brand has a presence there.

“If the small business claims to be there for 30 years, they should have reviews about them, maybe from at least a couple of years back,” Kantarcioglu said.

Look up the domain

Another quick check is looking up where a website was registered. Kantarcioglu recommends doing a domain name search through the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. GoDaddy and Whois are other options.

If a company claims to be in one country but is registered in another one, that is a red flag. If the site was registered in the past few months but is marketed as belonging to an established small business, that’s another.

Trust your gut

No matter how cautious you are, it is still possible to get scammed. If something seems off, it’s better to hold off making a purchase than to make one you might regret, experts say.

“As (AI) gets better, then scammers or people doing dubious business practices are going to have an easier time duping people, because things are gonna look more and more convincing,” Ketron from The University of St. Thomas said. “So every time tricks like these come out or publicity is generated around them, people that engage in these kinds of practices figure out ways of doing it … that becomes more challenging” to detect.

By WAFAA SHURAFA, SAMY MAGDY and SAM METZ, Associated Press

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — A Palestinian baby died from hypothermia on Tuesday in the Gaza Strip, underscoring the grim humanitarian conditions in the territory as world leaders were gathering at a Swiss resort where President Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan is high on the agenda.

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Shaza Abu Jarad’s family found the 3-month-old on Tuesday morning in their tent in the Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City.

“She was freezing, and dead,” the baby’s father, Mohamed Abu Jarad, told The Associated Press by phone after a funeral. “She died from cold.”

The man, who worked in Israel before the war, lives with his wife and their seven other children in a makeshift tent after their house was destroyed during the war.

The family took the girl to the Al-Ahly hospital where a doctor pronounced her dead from hypothermia, said her uncle, Khalid Abu Jarad. The Health Ministry confirmed that the baby died from hypothermia.

The family is among hundreds of thousands of people sheltering in tent camps and war-battered buildings in Gaza which experiences cold, wet winters, with temperatures dropping below 50 Fahrenheit at night.

As Palestinians in the war-ravaged enclave languish in displacement camps, Trump hopes to establish his new Board of Peace at the World Economic Forum in Davos. But the initiative, initially conceived to oversee the Gaza ceasefire, faces many questions over its membership and scope.

Israel on Tuesday began demolishing the Jerusalem headquarters of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, pressing ahead with its crackdown against a body it has long accused of anti-Israel bias.

Shaza Abu Jarad was the ninth child to die from severe cold this winter in Gaza, according to the strip’s health ministry, part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals. The U.N. and independent experts consider it the most reliable source on war casualties. Israel disputes its figures but has not provided its own.

More than 100 children who have died since the start of the ceasefire in October — a figure that includes a 27-day-old girl who died from hypothermia over the weekend.

The ceasefire paused two years of war between Israel and Hamas, allowing allowed a surge in humanitarian aid into Gaza, mainly food.

But residents say shortages of blankets and warm clothes remain, and there is little wood for fires. There’s been no central electricity in Gaza since the first few days of the war in 2023, and fuel for generators is scarce.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said recent biting cold and rainfall in Gaza were “ultimately a threat to survival.”

Trump’s Board of Peace was initially seen as a mechanism focused on ending the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

But recent invitations sent to dozens of world leaders show that the body could have a far broader mandate of other global crises, potentially rivaling the U.N. Security Council.

Trump says the body would “embark on a bold new approach to resolving global conflict,” an indication that the body may not confine its work to Gaza.

The panel was part of Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan that stopped the war in Gaza in October. Many countries, including Russia, said they received Trump’s invitation and were studying the proposal. France said it does not plan to join the board “at this stage.”

Magdy reported from Cairo and Metz reported from Jerusalem.