It’s been about ten years since I gave this talk at Ursuline College in Cleveland, Ohio. That’s quite a long time. I remember there weren’t enough spaces for the whole title, so it was changed from Your Health to Our Health. That also works. There’s a lot here that I still use, Continue reading
Category Archives: Nutrition
Fake Fruit Names for Your Breakfast Cereal
A while back I wrote a post about the high profit-margin-to-cost of the breakfast cereal business. Today I have more to say on breakfast cereal, not about the manufacturing process or profit margins, but about the pervasive use of fruit-related words in the naming of these products.
If I had just ten seconds to share advice on improving your nutrition, I suspect you already know exactly what I would say: Eat more fruits and vegetables. And I don’t think that would surprise anyone. We all know that fruits and vegetables are nutritional powerhouses, and we also know that everyone should be eating more of them, especially since most of us don’t eat enough produce to begin with. Continue reading
And the Winner is Real Food
Years ago, the article Can We Say What Diet is Best for Health?, by David Katz and Stephanie Meller from Yale University School of Public Health, was published in the Annual Review of Public Health. A related essay by James Hamblin, Science Compared Every Diet, and the Winner is Real Food, was subsequently published in the Atlantic.
Katz and Meller compared low-carb, low-fat, low-glycemic, Mediterranean, DASH, Paleolithic, and vegan diets, concluding that “A diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention.” Michael Pollan said, “Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.” More recent research continues to confirm these findings. Continue reading
“Healthy” Fats Get Under My Skin
It rankles me when people use the term “healthy fats.” We don’t make a distinction like that when we’re talking about carbohydrates, although there are certainly carbs that are nutritious and carbs that are not. Continue reading
Is it Really Food?
While talking with patients about how to improve the nutritional value of their meals, we used to talk about real food that had not been processed, refined, stripped, polished, fortified, enriched or otherwise modified. Fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, grains, fish, eggs, dairy products, and meats. And that’s about it.
Here are some guidelines: The first is not to eat anything you have to be told is food. If you have to be told it’s food, it isn’t. Like “processed American cheese food.” Talk about truth in advertising. Some products at the supermarket have names that have nothing whatsoever to do with food. Like Miracle Whip®. Or Cool Whip®. These are not foods either, and that’s why I’m not buying. Continue reading
Grandma’s Special Button, by Anat Nurko
My friend, Anat, has written a book in which she shares the story of how one family learns about a different way of nourishing onself so as to remain strong and healthy. Continue reading
A Greens Perspective on Nutrition
Have you ever noticed that a great many different cuisines incorporate dishes that pair some type of green leafy ingredient with some type of fat-rich ingredient? In the Mediterrean it might be simply green leafy lettuce and olive oil, parsley salad with tahini dressing, or sauteed greens + pignola (pine) nuts, not to mention pesto itself (basil + pignolas, traditionally). In Northern or Eastern Europe you might find cabbage and mayonnaise (cole slaw), or spinach with bacon dressing. In the far East it might be deep-sea fatty fish and seaweed (sushi). If you take the time to look, you will find green leaves combined with fats over and over again in cuisines the world over.
This cannot be a coincidence. I am going to predict that someday we will discover that eating greens with fat increases the availability, perhaps by gut absorption, of certain nutrients in the greens. Or maybe the fats. Or maybe both. Continue reading
YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Colorful Vegetables
At our house, we make an extra effort to eat plenty of produce. It might come in the form of broccoli/cauliflower soup, tossed green salad, minestrone, tomato-cucumber salad, sweet potatoes, pickled beets, sun-dried tomatoes, guacamole, homemade applesauce. At the moment we have tangerines, blackberries, strawberries, apples and persimmon in the refrigerator, along with bananas, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and a pomegranate on the counter. Tomorrow night we’re going to have baked apples stuffed with dried figs and shredded coconut.
Our meals usually have a lot going for them in the form of produce and color. Color means phytonutrients, and phytonutrients mean antioxidant power. Colors might include red, green (light, medium, and dark), white, yellow, brown, blue, orange. As much color as we can pack into each meal. And, as my mom taught me, the more colors at a meal, the better. Continue reading
Musings on Obesity & Malnutrition
In sharp contrast to the common perception of obesity as an overindulged state, I have come, over many years, to understand obesity as a manifestation of a malnourished state. It was partly through the act of fasting on Yom Kippur that my thoughts on obesity began to evolve in this direction. I wrote an earlier version of today’s post many years ago, as I was beginning to formulate my thoughts on this issue.
Once a year, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, Jews around the entire world fast from sundown to sundown. This year, Yom Kippur begins tonight, on Sunday the 24th of September, and continues through tomorrow night. Putting aside for now the reasons why we do this, I’d like to talk about the results of such an endeavor, the what happens when you fast. Continue reading
YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Green Herb Sauce
At this time of year, fresh herbs are growing everywhere, and large bags of zucchini, tomatoes, and other fresh vegetables continue to appear in the coffee room at work or maybe on your front steps, seemingly from out of nowhere. So even if you don’t keep a garden of your own, this is a great time of year to whip up a batch of an herb sauce that will channel the magical properties of those gorgeous vegetables. Not to mention that it will increase the likelihood that you and your lucky friends and family will eat more of the nourishing and colorful phytonutrients hiding inside all those beautiful vegetables, especially the phytonutrients in the herbs and other deeply colored green leafy veggies. Continue reading