High Protein Snacks: Essential for Boosting Energy and Health

/
High Protein Snacks: Essential for Boosting Energy and Health

In today's fast-paced world, it’s important to strike a balance between convenience and nutrition, especially when it comes to snacking. With the increasing awareness of the importance of protein in our diets, high-protein snacks are gaining popularity for their ability to keep hunger at bay while providing essential nutrients. Choosing snacks that are high in protein can increase satiety, help maintain energy levels, and support muscle growth and repair.

Read More

Banned in Europe, But in Your Food: What You Should Know About U.S. Additives

/
Banned in Europe, But in Your Food: What You Should Know About U.S. Additives

If you’re living in the United States, you’re likely to be eating food that contains chemicals that have been banned in Europe and other parts of the world. This is true even if you follow a “healthy” diet. Food safety regulations differ globally, but generally speaking, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is a lot more cautious than the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) when it comes to approving chemicals for human consumption.

Read More

7 Tips to Eat Healthy When You Don't Have Time to Eat

/
7 Tips to Eat Healthy When You Don't Have Time to Eat

Guest post by Leon Collier

We all move fast in a high-speed carousel and with that haste, we forget that one of our vital necessities is to feed ourselves.

Even if we can't change the way we work at the moment, we can use a few tricks when we don't have the time to cook a lavish meal.

It seems that we have no choice but to identify quick and effective ways to integrate healthy eating habits into the busy daily schedule. You’ll discover it in our recommendations, and along the way, you’ll also find ingenious solutions that can work for you.

Read More

Plant-based diets: can they help reduce chronic inflammation and its associated diseases?

/
Plant-based diets: can they help reduce chronic inflammation and its associated diseases?

Globally, the incidence of end-stage diseases that are caused by chronic inflammation are on the rise. Many of the foods that are consumed daily in a typical Western diet, including processed foods, dairy, meat, and/or trans fats, cause chronic inflammation, which lead to life-threatening diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, asthma and stroke. There is a growing body of clinical evidence that clearly demonstrates that switching to a plant-based diet can greatly reduce your chances of developing one of these end-stage diseases, although this does not mean that you have to give up meat or animal products altogether. In fact, the current landscape of debate on veganism, vegetarianism, and meat-heavy diets is muddied by polemics, making it difficult for the average person to make an informed choice. So what does the science actually say about the effects of plant-based diets on chronic inflammation and its associated diseases?

Read More

Why you should be drinking hibiscus water

/
Why you should be drinking hibiscus water

You might recognize the large, colorful red, yellow, white, or peach flowers of the hibiscus plant, especially if you live in one of the tropical, sub-tropical, or temperate climates in which it grows. In the Caribbean, hibiscus is used to make sorrel, a sweet drink that is made from the dried boiled leaves of the hibiscus sabdariffa species, flavored with spices like cinnamon and ginger, and frequently consumed around the Christmas holiday season. Did you know that aside from adding a rich and vibrant display to your garden that attracts beneficial pollinators, or providing a delicious beverage for the holiday season, hibiscus has several different medicinal uses? The flowers and leaves of this plant have been used for millennia for culinary purposes, and to make teas and liquids that can remedy a number of medical conditions, including high blood pressure, upset stomach, and bacterial infections.

Read More

Paprika chicken wings (recipe)

/
Paprika chicken wings (recipe)

This is one of my favorite go-to recipes for a quick and healthy dinner. It doesn’t require any marinating beforehand (although you can do that if you like for richer flavor), and with a few simple ingredients you can have it on the table in under an hour! It’s a favorite with my kids, too, and we rarely have leftovers!

The real secret to the rich taste, though, is good-quality Hungarian paprika. Hungarian paprika is one of several kinds of paprika (including sweet, smoked, and Spanish pimentón) used in cooking. It has a complex flavor (with at least 8 varieties) and ranges from mild (flavor) and bright red (color) to spicy and pungent with a pale orange color.

Read More

Back-to-school healthy eating: starting out right, staying the course

/
Back-to-school healthy eating: starting out right, staying the course

With the beginning of another school year comes the inevitable question for every parent whose child has dietary restrictions, or whose kid’s school doesn’t have a cafeteria: what should I pack for lunch? In the first weeks of school this may not be much of an issue: you try the old standbys, only to eventually become bored with them. Maybe this year you want to make more of an effort to pack healthy (healthier) lunches. Maybe you are weaning your kids off packaged processed convenience foods that you know are not healthy for them.

Read More

Beyond the Hype: The Science behind developing healthy eating habits

/
Beyond the Hype: The Science behind developing healthy eating habits

Americans’ thinking about food has shifted dramatically over the past 2 decades. With major changes to the food industry (think the introduction of GMOs, the mainstreaming of organic foods, the popularity of celebrity chefs, and the growing number of documentaries about our eating habits – e.g. “Super Size Me”, and the problems with the industrial food complex), a growing number of people now think that eating healthy is important.

However, although many of us want to eat healthy, or think that we are eating healthy, the evidence says otherwise. In fact, most Americans do not get the recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables and consume waaaay more sugar and saturated fats than they should...

What if you’ve been trying to eat healthier but can’t seem to break your unhealthy food habits? What if you eat pretty healthy already but want to make some small improvements to your diet? What if you know someone who has a very unhealthy diet and wants to improve his or her eating habits?

Read More

Can seasonal eating keep you from getting the cold or flu?

/
Can seasonal eating keep you from getting the cold or flu?

The news out there is pretty bad: the flu is worse this year in the US, and the flu vaccine is only up to 30% effective. Strangely (to me), doctors and health care workers are making blanket recommendations that everyone should get the flu shot. As for me, I’ve taken the flu shot exactly once in my lifetime, when I was pregnant with my second child, and only at the insistence of my Chinese medicine doctor (who helped me overcome secondary infertility to achieve a healthy pregnancy at the age of 41). And yet, we rarely get the flu in my household, even when we’ve been exposed to many people who are clearly sick with it. In fact, my 7-year old is the only one in our household who ever gets a cold or flu, and it's always a mild version that she's able to overcome in a day or two.

Read More

Can you really reduce inflammation with dietary changes? (roundup post)

/
Can you really reduce inflammation with dietary changes? (roundup post)

This post is the 3rd and final one in a 3-part series on chronic inflammation. For this post, I asked the opinions of four experts in the fields of medicine, wellness, and holistic healing for their advice on treating chronic inflammation with diet and herbs.

This roundup post is a little different from others you may have seen. In addition to the opinions of experienced professionals, it also refers you to several additional pieces of information – 3 clinical studies and online courses offered by 2 physicians -- that can help you learn more about the causes and health outcomes for chronic inflammation, and treatments that involve making dietary changes to reduce or eliminate it.

Even if you pursue a healthy lifestyle, eating well and exercising regularly, you may still be feeling fatigued, foggy, bloated, or experiencing joint pain or frequent respiratory infections. This roundup post + has something for anyone who may be feeling the effects of chronic inflammation, so read on…

Read More

Three factors that influence unhealthy food choices (they have nothing to do with being rich or poor)

/
Three factors that influence unhealthy food choices (they have nothing to do with being rich or poor)

A few weeks ago I woke up and read a Twitter conversation sparked by an article written by award-winning food writer Jane Black. Since then, I have thought a lot about the article and the conversations that followed in the Twitterverse. Jane’s guest column, on the website of the Stone Barnes Center for Food and Agriculture, points out how elite foodies are fundamentally out of touch with the reasons behind why less-affluent, rural, and/or poor families hadn’t made a switch to healthier eating.

What struck me most about her essay was her observation that one of the main obstacles preventing less affluent people in red-state America from eating healthy didn’t have anything to do with ignorance, lack of desire, or rebellion against elite coastal foodie cultures. It did have to do with economics, but not in the way you might think...

Read More