Diet and Nutrition

Eat Fewer Tomatoes to Reduce Arthritis Symptoms

By Delia Quigley for Care2.com

“If nightshades can be eaten or used sparingly, arthritis can be slowed in developing.” The Arthritis Nightshades Research Foundation

Summer gardens are bringing forth an abundance of nightshade foods destined for your dinner plate, your fresh tomato salad, or scattered across a slice of hot cheesy pizza with peppers. Nightshades or the Solanaceae family, cover some 2,800 species of plants, herbs, shrubs and trees, but the nightshade foods you most often consume include:

  • Eggplant
  • Potatoes
  • Peppers (hot and sweet)
  • Tomatoes
  • Tomatillos
  • Paprika
  • Cayenne
  • Pimentos (more…)
Posted on July 31, 2024 by GuestBlogger

Healthy Living Made Easy and Cheap

Maruchy Lachance is president of Running Ninja!, a lifestyle brand for runners by runners. Running Ninja! offers a wide variety of apparel and gifts for runners to keep you happy and inspired while you’re on the run.

I have a confession to make. I am one of the least motivated and thrifty people that I know. So when people tell me that they cannot embrace a healthy lifestyle because of time and/or money I assure them that they can.

Fitness: My lazy and thrifty fitness plan began with an old pair of sneakers and brisk walks around my neighborhood. I walked an hour every day until I had to adjust my exercise time to fit my demanding schedule. In an effort to cut the time in half I began to run. To this day I run an average of 30 minutes a day, having increased the number of miles throughout the years. Once I get home I work on toning with weights and spot training for about 10 minutes. (more…)

Posted on July 31, 2024 by GuestBlogger

Four Lessons We Learned from Dr. Hoebel

Renowned Princeton physiological psychologist and researcher Bart Hoebel has died at the age of 76. He was a leader in research on eating behaviors and the addictive qualities of food. He seems to have been a professor that invested in his students, and we hope that some of them will continue his research in his absence.

Below are just some highlights of what Dr. Hoebel’s research has taught us.

Sugar is addictive and affects brain functions the same way as cocaine and heroin.

High-fructose corn syrup leads to more weight gain than ingesting the same amount of calories via traditional sugar. It also causes abnormal increases in body fat, particularly in the belly, and triglycerides.

(more…)

Posted on July 29, 2024 by Brooke Randolph

How to Safely Start a Juice Cleanse At Home

There are a number of juice cleanses available that promise fast, foolproof results. From the Blueprint Cleanse, which promises no uncomfortable side effects to the Zen Cleanse which aims to flush toxins from your body.

With juice cleanses becoming more mainstream than ever, it’s important to do your homework and research what kind of cleanse is right for you before you begin. While some cleanses include whole foods and offer nutritional benefits, others suspect that cleanses and fasts are little more than diet hype.

“A juice cleanse is very safe and easy to do. One of the best ways to start gently detoxing the body is to add fresh vegetable juices to a good diet,” said Cherie Calbom, MS, author of The Juice Lady’s Turbo Diet and Juicing for Life. “This will start the body on a gentle detox.  Then you can progress to a day or two of vegetable juice fasting where you give your digestive system a rest.  This helps your body rejuvenate and repair damaged areas.”

(more…)

Posted on July 28, 2024 by Maris

Beginner’s Guide to Juicing: How to Make Fresh Juice

If you’re thinking of starting a juice regimen, it’s important to make informed decisions about your new diet. If you’re planning on replacing your meals with juice, you should first check with a doctor or health care provider to ensure that your new regimen is safe for your body.

However, if you are thinking about adding juice to your existing diet to up your fruit and vegetable intake, we have some tips to help you get started.

Know the importance of buying organic. According to Cherie Calbom, MS, author of The Juice Lady’s Turbo Diet and Juicing for Life, it’s very important to know what vegetables and fruit are the most heavily sprayed and which ones are the cleanest.  “Not everything has to be organic, but the most heavily sprayed produce should always be organic,” said Calbom. “Otherwise, it may not be safe to use. Familiarize yourself with the most heavily sprayed produce, known as the ‘dirty dozen’ and shop accordingly.”

(more…)

Posted on July 28, 2024 by Maris

Restaurant Customers Want Smaller Portions

small piece of fruit tart on a big plateEarlier this week, McDonald’s announced they will be cutting the portion of fries that come with a Happy Meal and including a serving of fruit or vegetables with every meal. But McDonald’s isn’t the only company that might see success with a strategy of portion-reduction, as a new report reveals that consumers want smaller portions at restaurants.

In the United States, many restaurants have offered huge servings to convey a sense of value to customers. But a market research company, The NPD Group, found that 57 percent of the people they surveyed want to eat smaller portions when dinning out. The firm surveyed over 5,000 adults. Smaller portions were seen to be the most important to consumers between the ages of 35 and 45, an age when many people find it easy to gain weight.

“We were trying to understand what constitutes healthy eating or a healthy lifestyle in consumers’ minds,” Dori Hickey, NPD’s director of product management, told Nation’s Restaurant News. “What we saw was a difference in where they’ve been and where they aspire to be.”

(more…)

Posted on July 28, 2024 by Health Buzz

Six Vegetarian Main Dishes Fit for the Grill

When you’re planning a picnic or cookout, creating a perfect menu can be challenging when you have vegetarians coming to dinner.

Though most vegetarians eat a varied, balanced diet, carnivores might have a difficult time coming up with inventive main dish options for guests with dietary restrictions.

Rainbow Sandwich: If cold cuts are on the menu for your next picnic, don’t relegate the vegetarians to cheese sandwiches or peanut butter and jelly. Tomatoes, avocado and pesto make for such a delicious sandwich that even your meat eaters in the group will want one.

(more…)

Posted on July 28, 2024 by Maris

Beginner’s Guide to Juicing: Benefits of Fresh Juice

Fresh fruit and vegetable juicing is certainly not a new idea for the raw foods community, however it is growing in popularity as a mainstream method for weight loss and detoxification.

Unlike conventional juices that are often processed with a lot of added sugar, fresh juicing involves creating nutrient-rich juices out of your favorite fruits and vegetables.

“Before you begin any juice regiment, it’s important to understand why juice is  important for your health,” said Cherie Calbom, MS, author of The Juice Lady’s Turbo Diet and Juicing for Life.  “When you understand the many health benefits of fresh juice, you’ll be much more inclined to take the time to make fresh juice.”

(more…)

Posted on July 27, 2024 by Maris

South Park Creators Bring Cheesy Poofs to Walmart

Matt Stone and Trey Parker have created some of the most cutting edge satire and cultural lampooning in TV history. Are they setting themselves up to be goofed on themselves? The creators of South Park have struck up a deal with Frito-Lay to manufacture 1.5 million packages of their famous Cheesy Poofs, Cartman’s favorite junk food snack. It’s set to appear in Walmart in August.

For a couple of guys who do such a good job of poking fun at just about everything in our society, it’s hard to imagine they don’t see the irony in contributing to one of the biggest plights in modern history: childhood obesity. Usually you would think they would be on the side of goofing on our society’s dietary problems and addictions to processed foods, however distasteful or offensive they may be. (more…)

Posted on July 27, 2024 by Jason

Black Students Affected More by Soda Ban

A new study is suggesting recent state policies that eliminate junk food from school concessions has been successful, but more so with black students.

Daily soda consumption has dropped twice as much with black students. Overall consumption of soda in the states with junk food bans has dropped by an average of .09 servings of soda each day. However, among black students is dropped .19 servings per day.

“Soda is widely considered to be a contributor to the increase in obesity because it has been associated with excess energy intake and weight gain” wrote the study’s authors. “It became a larger source of energy intake among adolescents during the same period that obesity prevalence increased.” (more…)

Posted on July 26, 2024 by Jason

McDonald’s Announces More Fruits and Less Fries in Happy Meals

One of my memories as a child was going to McDonald’s to get a Happy Meal. (It happened maybe once every six months.) I knew that my mom didn’t think that the Happy Meal was a healthy meal, but it was a treat. I still wanted to eat it more often, like my friend Beth, whose parents took her to McDonald’s every week. My mom didn’t think it was healthy, and so we weren’t allowed to have it often.

The Happy Meal that I remember is still the same. The hamburger, fries and a drink meal that was first debuted more than 30 years ago has remained virtually unchanged, although apples and low-fat milk were introduced as options in 2004 in an effort to make the kids favorite more healthy. Unless specifically requested, however, each Happy Meal included a 2.4 ounce serving of french fries. Now that I have children, I (shh!) make the same choice as my own mother – McDonald’s isn’t a healthy choice for my family and so we visit rarely.

McDonald’s is hoping to change our minds.

(more…)

Posted on July 26, 2024 by Carmen