Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[jays]

Is "ate healthier" in the following sentence correct? If yes, what's the meaning?
---------- the following -----------
In a Canadian study, workers who received weekly e-mails with diet and exercise tips ate healthier and were more active than those who didn't get them.

[redset]

It means 'eat more healthily' - eat things that are better for you, eat less of the stuff that's not so good for you. The sentence is saying that in the study, those workers who received diet and exercise tips in weekly emails tended to have a healthier diet and to get more exercise than workers who didn't receive the emails.

I don't think it's really grammatically correct, but it's quite common now in informal speech - you're using the adjective in place of the adverb. This kind of thing tends to feel quite casual, since you're intentionally ignoring certain rules (in this case you're supposed to use an adverb with a verb, not an adjective with a verb). It does seem to be becoming more common in general speech though.