The Box-of-Real-Food Diet

I write Your Health is On Your Plate because there are a couple of things that I want everyone to really understand. First, I want you to understand that there’s a big difference between real food and manufactured calories. A huge difference, really. Real food nourishes; manufactured calories entertain (at best). Manufactured calories also cause a lot of very serious medical problems. Like diabetes and obesity, for starters. And strokes and heart attacks. Continue reading


Nourish Your Heart and Soul with Real Food

Nowadays there’s a lot of talk about “real” food. What is “real” food? It’s food that has not been processed, refined, stripped, polished, fortified, enriched or otherwise modified. It’s basically fruit, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, grains, fish, eggs, dairy products, and meats, like poultry, beef, and game, and including all the wonderful variations of these things that our brains are capable of inventing. If it’s not food, then it’s manufactured calories. This post is designed to help you figure out how to tell the difference.  Continue reading


Practice Makes Progress

A few years ago, the computer guy showed up at my office for the first time in a long while. Let’s call him Gene. Right away, I knew something had changed. I said, “Gene, how are you? You’re looking very well!” He responded with an uncharacteristic grin, and answered with a statement that all of us know, but few believe. He said, “Diets don’t work.” I sat up quick. Continue reading



Beans, Beans, They’re Good For Your Heart

The newest version of recommendations to guide our food choices has one glaring omission, and that is its lack of emphasis on beans. There is a lot to celebrate in it, the ridiculously long way in which they chose to say it notwithstanding, but still. It’s nice to know that the government finally backs my recommendation to eat eggs, for example. And thanks, Michael Ruhlman, for never taking those previous sets of guidelines [which warned us against “the evils of eggs and their concerning cholesterol levels”] seriously. Continue reading