Tag Archives: ayurveda

Our Favorite Vegetarian Restaurants in Albuquerque

When the state question is about your preference of chile, you know you’ve come to a good place to find great food. What you may not know is Albuquerque, New Mexico is one of the most vegetarian-friendly places you can eat in the entire country. Whether you’re looking for traditional New Mexican cuisine or something further outside your comfort zone, Albuquerque won’t leave you disappointed.

Most restaurants use the freshest ingredients they can find to ensure each dish, meatless or not, is full of signature ABQ flavor. With a host of nationally recognized vegetarian-friendly restaurants, the city is bound to leave meat eaters wanting to eat their veggies – and then some!

Enjoy our picks for coolest vegetarian restaurants in Albuquerque, New Mexico – and be sure to tell them we sent you!

annapurnas

Annapurna’s World Vegetarian Café

A local vegan restaurant specializing in Indian cuisine, Annapurna’s specializes in Ayurvedic vegan fresh food. It’s all organic and made from local ingredients. Each dish is meant to target six tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, astringent and pungent, which means every vegan and vegetarian dish is bursting with flavor. Desserts abound, too, even featuring a vegan sweet potato pie. And if you need a more centered take on happy hour, join them for Chai Daily Happy Hour.

Yelp Rating – 3.5 out of 5 stars (more…)

Posted on December 11, 2023 by Elizabeth

Reduce Cravings with Tongue Scraping

By Abra Pappa for NutritiousAmerica.com

There is a science behind food cravings, and I don’t use the word “science” lightly. It is an honest to goodness, white-lab-coat-Bunsen burner-protective-goggles science. Food “scientists” know exactly what it takes to create a food that is “crave-able.” They research and experiment and come up with specific addictive qualities or additives that food must contain in order to rank as a food that you will keep reaching for.

Salt, sugar, and fat, or chemical products that taste buds recognize as salt, sugar or fat, are key flavors that enhance a foods crave-ability.

When you eat, food residue or food particles can be left behind on your tongue. When those particles mix together with the bacteria in your mouth a coating or film is created. This coating “feeds” our craving mechanism. For instance, if you eat a fast food hamburger on a Monday, on Tuesday you may find yourself thinking about that burger again. This is not a sign of poor “willpower” or an “inability” to eat healthy food, rather it can literally be your tongue coating that is sending a signal to your brain that you want more of the food that has been left behind.

This is one of the key reasons fast food restaurants advertise to children. They know when a child “develops a taste” for their food at a young age they become life long customers.

Furthermore, when your diet is full of processed “food-like” products that are loaded with extra fat, sugar, and salt your taste buds suffer and become desensitized. Desensitized taste buds are greedy little buggers, requiring more and more food for you to feel satisfied, as satiety is signaled by flavor.

Enter the tongue scraper. (more…)

Posted on March 1, 2024 by Nutritious_America

Learn the Secrets to Ayurvedic Medicine on Dr. Oz

Tomorrow Dr. Oz will be discussing Ayurvedic medicine, or the concept that each individual body type should be treated with different medicines. Specifically, the doctor will be interviewing other doctors as they explain what they call “Secrets of Ayurvedic Medicine.”

Ayurvedic medicine is one of the world’s oldest medical systems. It originated in India. In the United States, Ayurvedic medicine is considered a whole medical system. That means it’s a complete system of theory and practice that has evolved over time in different cultures and separate from conventional medicine. Other whole medical systems include traditional Chinese medicine, homeopathy, and naturopathy. Many therapies used in Ayurvedic medicine include herbs, massage, and specialized diets.

Dr. Oz will be investigating the specific theory behind body types and Ayurvedic medicine. Dr. Oz will also discuss the many healing technique from around the globe. The guest will include Kulreet Chaudhary, MD, Phil Veneziano, Daniel Hsu, and Dr. Janet Tsai. (more…)

Posted on February 28, 2024 by Lacy

Interview with The Yoga Body Diet Author

The Yoga Body Diet is a four-week plan that inspires you to eat, move, and think according to your natural rhythms. It was written by Kristen Schultz Dollard who is also the digital director of Self Magazine, the former editor of iyogalife.com and a yoga teacher in New York. She wrote The Yoga Body Diet with Dr. John Douillard, a physician who has written and produced 18 health and fitness books, and is the current director of LifeSpa, an Ayurvedic rejuvenation and detox retreat center in Boulder, Colorado.

We had an opportunity to speak with Kristen about her new book. She shares with us some of the life-changing principles of yoga and Ayurveda, and how they can support weight loss and wellness in a way that is specific for you and only you.

What was your motivation for writing The Yoga Body Diet?

I thought I was incredibly healthy; I ate healthy and competed in triathlons. But then I was diagnosed with a hereditary hernia and learned that I had health complications that could lead to fertility issues. So to stack the odds in my favor, I decided to do all I could do for my health, and I began focusing more on the inner aspects of my health and not so much on my external health.

If you take care of your health, weight loss will happen. Stress is such a big factor in our health, yoga encourages you to embrace your shape. Ayurveda teaches us to understand our bodies and that when it comes to diet and eating, one size does not fit all.

(more…)

Posted on June 10, 2023 by heather

A Do-It-Yourself Detox for Spring

With spring knocking ever so gently on our weather-proofed windows, it is that time to get ready for longer days, sunnier skies and more time spent outdoors. According to older systems of holistic healing like Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine, spring is a call to do a clean sweep of our bodies and diets. The stagnant air of winter in combination with the lack of sunshine, exercise and too much time spent on the couch hibernating indoors has made us feel a little sluggish and perhaps even weightier, if you are one of the millions of Americans who puts on a minimum of one pound during November to March.

woman in bath

While detox products and cleansing programs line supplement shelves, you can do your own detox program at home without investing in fancy or expensive products or tonics. Yahoo Health recently posted a 5-step DIY detox regimen that includes a diet and herbal supplement regimen. The routine, which was created by Dr. Mao from the Tao of Wellness, is meant to spring clean your body and get it ready for the bright days of this celebrated season. (more…)

Posted on March 23, 2024 by heather

Introduction to Diet Aid Caralluma Fimbriata

As a very weight-absorbed culture, we are always looking for the latest, greatest and quickest way to shed some pounds. There is no shortage of weight loss products on the market today. From hoodia to green tea, the new wave of weight loss products come from nature rather than being manufactured in a sterile lab by a team of white-coated researchers.

One such product that has been picking up steam is Caralluma Fimbriata. While hoodia hails from Africa, Caralluma grows in India. In fact, it shares a lot of similarities to hoodia such as also being a succulent-based plant and it has been eaten as a vegetable by natives for hundreds of years to stave off hunger on long journeys or through bouts of food shortages.

How Does it Work?

Caralluma is believed to work its magic by blocking the opportunity for fat cells to form and forcing fat stores to be used as primary fuel. It is also believed to act on the brain, particularly, the part of the brain that controls hunger. Caralluma acts like an “off” switch telling our brains that we’re full even if we’re not. Therefore, fewer calories will be consumed and the pounds will start to come off, or so it is hoped. (more…)

Posted on October 14, 2023 by heather

Cold Weather. Warm Food.

Is it just me but for those of us who live in cold climates, do you also have cravings for warm food while rejecting the idea of eating a cold salad or sipping a glass of iced tea this time of year? As I delve more into the study of Ayurveda, the ancient Indian system of health and healing, I find that some of its main principles, such as how our eating patterns change from season to season, are right on target with what I am experiencing. In the summer, my body can’t get enough of leafy salads, fresh fruit and the occasional soft serve ice cream cone, but when the first snap of winter hits, my taste buds quickly switch to begging to be fed with warm bowls of soup and cups of hot tea with threads of steam hovering over it. According to Ayurveda, we should combat the coldness and dryness of winter by opting for food choices and lifestyle changes that employ the opposite qualities. So my insistence on warm food or perhaps your need to slather yourself in rich lotion each morning to thwart off the dry skin that winter also brings is not that far off from what the ancient Indian sages recommended thousands of years ago.

Posted on January 17, 2024 by heather

Welcome Heather!

We’re very excited at Diets In Review to welcome our newest contributor to the Diet Column, as well as a new expert voice behind those reviews you’ve come to depend on. Heather Ashare joins us this week. Heather is a writer specializing in nutrition, wellness and health. She received a Masters degree in public health from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Michigan. Heather has written for a number of health publications and magazines around the country including The Detroit News, NY Spirit and Smart Woman Chicago magazines.

Heather has also been a dedicated practitioner and instructor of Ashtanga yoga for the past six years. She has also been studying Ayurveda medicine, the ancient form of Indian health and healing for the past three years and edited the book “The Power to Heal” which is an introduction to Ayurveda.

Heather - nutritionist for Diets In Review

She currently lives with her boyfriend and their daughter in Michigan.

Welcome, Heather.

Posted on December 28, 2023 by Natalie K