Homemade soy yogurt recipe

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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.

home-made-soy-yogurt-recipe

I’ve been making my own soy yogurt for years and someone recently Continue reading →

School lunchroom becoming the gateway to obesity and disease

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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.

Killer sugary drinks – literally

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Well we can’t say we’re surprised, but the numbers are pretty staggering: a comprehensive new study that has been ongoing since 1980 attributes as many as 184,000 deaths annually world wide to the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. The United States alone had more than 25,000 deaths per year attributed to the drinks.

soda sugar sweetened beverages

The study was conducted by researchers from Harvard in association with several other universities. The research included 62 dietary surveys in 51 countries, with Continue reading →

Vegan tuna salad – for salad or sandwich

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Nutritional information is included at the bottom of this recipe.

Nothing fishy going on around here!

We’ve got a very quick and simple vegan tuna salad recipe that’s super low in fat and satisfyingly delicious. We can’t take all the credit for it though. The recipe was inspired by Mimi Loureiro’s incredibly yummy and hugely popular “Chuna Melt” at her O2 Vegan Cafe in Cambridge, MA.

vegan tuna salad sandwichThis vegan tuna salad is one of our go to meals when we are feeling super hungry but don’t want to cook. It literally takes minutes to prepare and always Continue reading →

America waddles on Dunkin’

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Came across this hilarious graphic on the web, too funny! Maybe because it’s true?

America waddles on DunkinOf course the same can be said of all the other fast food junk food peddlers, but at least they don’t have runners in their logos!

Healthy, strong, and 100…what’s the secret?

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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.

California’s dirty secret

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California is running out of water. As usual profit motivated corporations create all sorts of confusing misinformation about the situation to obscure the real culprit, but if you look closely it’s crystal clear what the problem is. Almost half of the average Californian’s water footprint is due to the consumption of meat and dairy.California has led the nation in dairy production since 1993, and it can take as much as 2000 gallons of water to produce ONE gallon of milk! And it takes about 600 gallons of water to make a pound of cheese. Of course the water foot print of beef and other meat is enormous as well. The drought is a nightmare, but simply cutting meat and dairy consumption can help keep us all California dreamin’.

First ever junk food tax in North America

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We’re very excited that this month the Navajo Nation will be instituting North America’s first ever junk food tax! While it’s certainly not a game changer in the world of junk food, it’s “one small step for mankind” in the direction of public policy actually encouraging health for a change.

junk-food

The new tax is 2 percent on soda, chips, and other junk foods. In a related positive development, in 2014 the Navajo Nation removed a 5 percent tax on vegetables and fruits. Now that’s a real treat!

Processed food and soda health food? Dieticians paid to say yes!

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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.

lovelowfat-lentils

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 →