Plums, Poetry, Public Transit, and William Carlos Williams

If you look up as you walk through the back door into my kitchen, you will see a poster written in Swedish, a translation of a poem written in 1934 by the great William Carlos Williams. In addition to being a pediatrician, Dr. Williams, from Rutherford, New Jersey, was a great poet. Here is the story of how the poster and poem, below in the original English, ended up in my kitchen. Continue reading


Toast and Jelly Waste Your Insulin

You probably already know that diabetes and obesity in the United States have reached epidemic proportions, but you may be surprised to learn that many, if not most, cases of diabetes are preventable. How? The best strategy for preventing diabetes and obesity is to learn how to conserve your body’s insulin supply. Continue reading


Insulin: A Very Good Place to Start

Here is why it’s important to use less insulin: The fact is that insulin is not your friend. You need it to live, but you want to use as little as possible. You want the levels of insulin in your bloodstream to stay as low as possible. Like sugar. The lower the better (within reason, say 80 to 99 for fasting blood sugars). When it comes to insulin, you want your levels to remain as low as necessary to do the job, not zero of course, but on the low side. Why is that? There are a number of reasons. Continue reading


The Origin of “Granola”

It will probably surprise you to learn that the term granola was coined way back in the 1870s by one Dr. John Kellogg, late of Battle Creek, Michigan, where he ran a famous health sanitarium to which patrons flocked in pursuit of health and wellness. Among his many prescient recommendations was one that should be familiar to you, dear reader — that food be prepared the old-fashioned way, using whole grains instead of stripped ones like white flour or corn syrup. Continue reading



What’s for Breakfast?

I really love snow, and last weekend Northeast Ohio finally got its first real snowstorm of the year. As you might guess, I spent a lot of time last weekend shoveling snow, so I needed a breakfast that provided a lot of fuel. That’s what I want to talk about today. Breakfast. So what’s for breakfast? In a word? Protein. In two words? Nourishing fat. In three words? No stripped carbohydrates. I’m going to share some of my favorite ideas for breakfast, but first I’ll tell you about some of the ways I learned to nourish myself when I was younger and traveling. Continue reading



Nourishing Breakfast Ideas for Kids and the Parents Who Love Them

A while back, a good friend of mine, an elementary school teacher at a small school north of Detroit, says “The kids are bouncing off the walls by 9:30.” It occurs to me that maybe their blood sugars are falling, though 9:30 a.m. is pretty early for that. Then he says that a snack usually helps get them back on track. Yeh, I think, it’s probably their blood sugars. Continue reading


Make Your Insulin Last a Lifetime

If you’ve seen my TED talk, then you know I spend a fair amount of time teaching folks how to use their insulin more efficiently so that they don’t run out, and so they have enough (hopefully) to last a lifetime. Insulin is like a valet service that escorts blood sugar from your blood to all your cells. If you don’t have enough, your sugars start to rise. The fact is that even though you need insulin to live, it is not your friend. You want to use as little as possible. You want the levels of insulin in your bloodstream to stay as low as possible. Just like blood sugar, you want your insulin levels to remain low. Why? Continue reading