Eating fruits and vegetables has a long list of benefits. Helping to prevent skin cancer may be another reason to make sure you get your daily doses.
A new study has found that while consuming alcohol before sun exposure can increase sun damage, eating plants based foods rich in antioxidants may actually help reduce the amount of damage.
People are constantly referring to olive oil as a “healthy fat”. Many people think it’s “good for you”, and some even go as far as to claim people “need” to eat oils. Olive oil certainly tastes good, but is it really all it’s cracked up to be? And how do oils compare to nuts as a source for fats? We think it’s important to look at the whole picture.
Dr. Michael Greger of Nutritionfacts.org puts it pretty succinctly in this short video:
We need to take better care of our country’s kids. It’s bad enough that they are being led to childhood obesity with unhealthful school lunches. But now we’re discovering that more than half of children and adolescents are under-hydrated!
This, according to a recent study by the Harvard School of Public Health, can lead to serious physical, cognitive and emotional health issues.
The study also found that almost one fourth of our children drink Continue reading
Nutritional information is included at the bottom of this recipe.
Did you know that many yogurts out on the market are just as bad for you as a Twinkie? Not only is dairy being revealed as linked to numerous health issues, but the sugar content in many store bought yogurts is mind blowing.
You might think a Twinkie is tooth-ache sweet with 19 grams of sugar. Well many of the popular brands of yogurt have up to 29 grams of sugar per serving! With the American Heart Association recommending no more than 30 grams of sugar per day for women, we might be better off with the Twinkie! Although we are not recommending that either.
The options out in the world for plain, unsweetened soy yogurt are slim. And if you can find it, it’s usually pretty expensive. Luckily it’s easy to make at home.
I’ve been making my own soy yogurt for years and someone recently Continue reading
It’s hard to escape the ubiquitous junk food advertisements everywhere we go. It’s no wonder childhood obesity in the United States is becoming more and more rampant.
You would think that kids would at least be shielded from such marketing at school. But sadly, that’s not the case. If anything, it turns out that schools have become the perfect liaisons for selling to future sugar and fat addicts. And we’re not just talking about snack vending machines, we’re talking about school lunches!
Why is this? Because there’s lots of cash to be made. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine just released a report revealing who is making the dough off of overweight children, and how they are doing it.
To paraphrase Bill Maher: “They don’t want you dead, but they don’t want you healthy. They want you sick, because that’s where the money is.” As adults, at least we can take responsibility for our own choices. But it’s just plain wrong that that they are targeting kids at their place of learning.
He still drives, helps with the yard work, doesn’t have a single ache or pain in his body, and he’s 100 years of age…so far! He’s retired heart surgeon Ellsworth Wareham and he credits his good health largely to his plant based, vegan diet which he adopted mid-life. CNN’s chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta sat down with the centenarian for an enlightening interview:
By simply staying away from animal products he has managed to keep his blood cholesterol level extremely low, thereby virtually eliminating any risk of a heart attack. Because of all the knowledge he gained in his decades as a heart surgeon, he says, “I’m dealing in an area that I understand”.
Hopefully his common sense approach will inspire others to follow his simple secrets to a long, healthy life.
I’m lucky we didn’t have soda or processed foods in the house much as a kid. It just wasn’t part of the Italian/Albanian cultural way of eating I grew up with. We ate a lot of simple, healthy foods like pasta e fagioli (beans), homemade pizza with tomatoes and olives (and no cheese), escarole and white beans, and lentil soup. The only “processing” I can think of was my grandmother asking me to go through the huge pile of uncooked lentils on her table to look for stray pebbles.
On holidays we’d have my Italian grandmother’s homemade cookies, or my Albanian grandmother’s homemade baklava. On very rare occasions we had a soda, either root beer or cream soda, as a treat. But that’s what sugar should be, an occasional, festive treat. Yet for many it’s Continue reading
In a story that’s eerily reminiscent of the tobacco industry, recent documents have shed light on the sugar industry’s history of manipulating public information to maximize profit at the expense of public health.
Finally, the word has been getting out. If you haven’t already seen them, we highly recommend the documentaries King Corn and Fed Up. Each film in its own way elaborates on how refined sugar is everywhere, and is one of the leading causes of obesity and other related illnesses. And if that’s not bad enough, the politics behind it will really make you sick!
According to a large new long-term study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, it has been found that consuming whole grain foods is associated with up to 9% lower overall mortality and up to 15% lower cardiovascular disease (CVD) related mortality: “For each serving of whole grains (28g/day), overall mortality dropped by 5%, and by 9% for CVD-related mortality.”
Replacing refined grains and red meats with whole grains is also likely to lower mortality, according to the study. “Swapping just one serving of refined grains or red meat per day Continue reading
Nutritional information is included at the bottom of this recipe.
My mom is an awesome cook, and she sometimes surprises me with amazing dishes made from ingredients I previously thought I didn’t like. I’ve never been a big fan of cauliflower, and I’m not a big soup eater.
But her vegan cauliflower soup blew me away the first time I had it. I just couldn’t stop eating it! Now it’s one of my all time faves, and I even bought an immersion blender so I can make it myself. Yum!
Besides being insanely tasty, this soup is incredibly easy to make. It’s also super healthy since with no added oil it’s extremely low in fat. So simple, so delicious. You can’t beat Continue reading
