Tag: nutrition

Sitting on the Floor Versus Sitting on a Chair

For thousands of years, humans have rested on the ground using variations of a squat, cross-legged, or kneeling position. And despite the availability of chairs and things to sit on, sitting on the floor is still common in many cultures. According to reports, many English-speaking people refer to floor sitting as “Indian style,” though it’s also known as…


Cooking for Healing: The Pungent Potency of Ginger

Herbs and spices were used by ancient cultures to heal the body, mind, and spirit. While the Western world has largely replaced these natural remedies with pharmaceuticals, roughly 80 percent of people worldwide still use traditional or ancient medicine. This isn’t surprising considering that more than 80 percent of pharmaceuticals are derived or developed from…


7 Tips for Home Fermenting

A staple method in food preservation for ages, pickling not only keeps food edible for long periods of time, but it also infuses it with healthy bacterial flora—which plays a crucial role in our digestion. With excessive antibiotic use widespread in Western medicine and commonplace in conventionally raised livestock animals, many Americans suffer from imbalances in digestive…


Why It Can Be Hard to Stop Eating Even When You’re Full

All foods aren’t created equal. Most are tasty, which is helpful because we need to eat to survive. For example, a fresh apple is palatable to most people and provides vital nutrients and calories. But certain foods, such as pizza, potato chips, and chocolate chip cookies, are almost irresistible. They’re always in demand at parties,…


Eat Food, Not Nutrients: Why Healthy Diets Need a Broad Approach

There seems to be a narrowing gap between studies about diet, nutrition, and health. And each starts another conversation about trans versus saturated versus polyunsaturated fats, or this diet versus that, or as is today’s case, fats versus carbohydrates. In a paper published Aug. 13 in the journal Cell Metabolism, researchers found that when 30 percent of a…


The Mushroom Is Becoming a Nutritional Star

Mushrooms are often considered only for their culinary use because they are packed with flavor-enhancers and have gourmet appeal. That is probably why they are the second most popular pizza topping, next to pepperoni. In the past, food scientists like me often praised mushrooms as healthy because of what they don’t contribute to the diet;…


13 Recipes to Help Reduce Stress

At some point or other, I think we’ve all had that feeling of overwhelming stress – the one where your heart is pounding too fast too much, you can’t seem to think straight or breathe properly, and frankly, you just look knackered. But guys, chill. It’s been proven that stress and nutrition basically go hand in hand….


Eat This Special Fiber for Good Gut Health

Most everybody knows about probiotics. These are foods and supplements that help strengthen the immune system, and improve digestion. A lesser known trend in the world of gut health is called prebiotics. Both prebiotics and probiotics contribute to the health of our microbiome—a name for the diverse bacterial colony that lives inside each of us. The…


Coffee May Help You Live Longer—Even With a Little Sugar

New data suggest that the health benefits of coffee persist even when a bit of sugar is added. The research shows that people who drank any amount of unsweetened coffee are 16 percent to 21 percent less likely to die than those who don’t drink it, based on data from 171,000 British participants. Sweetened coffee…


Create Better Blood Circulation With These 3 Nutrients

Over the course of an average lifetime, the human heart beats an astounding 3 billion times, pumping blood through a network of arteries, veins, and capillaries totaling a stunning 60,000 miles.  We may take these phenomenal inner mechanisms for granted, but we do so at our own risk.  The all-important circulatory system ensures that oxygen-rich…