New Year’s resolutions? Ho-hum. According to a new study, most New Year’s resolutions, at least those related to eating and dieting, peter out by mid-February. These researchers tabulated data on Internet-searches for recipes from popular diets. This methodology has weaknesses, but the results were interesting. Best Diets for “Adherence” New Year dieters stayed longest on […]
One nutrition trend that peaked everyone’s interest in 2020 was “immune-boosting foods”. Understandable, too, with COVID-19 keeping the entire world terrified and “sheltering in place”. Outside the home, people were running scared about getting COVID from any place they went for necessities and from everything they touched. Marketers got right on the fears, emphasizing on […]
NO:TE: I’ve partnered with The Glutamate Association for many years, but this post is strictly my own – all based on science and any views are my own. I love dispelling food myths. There’s so much “fear of food”, and how food myths get started is as varied as the myths themselves. No food or […]
If there were EVER a time when we want comfort food, it’s now. Sure, we want nutrition, but “in these challenging times” (getting overused!), we want what we know will make us feel better, even if just for a while. What makes a food a “comfort food”? There’s no single comfort food; everyone has their […]
Every diet, whether faddish or sensible, recommends cutting back on sugar. Even if your weight is fine, sugar reduction is top-of-mind when you’re talking about strategies to improve your diet and health. The World Health Organization recommends cutting sugar to 10% of calories, but strongly encourages no more than 5%. The 2020 US Dietary Guidelines […]
When people tell me “I don’t eat meat, I’m plant-based,” the implication is that plant-based diets can’t include meat, poultry, or fish. They can! “Plant-based” means only that a majority of the diet comes from plants. Period. That said, being “plant-based” tells nothing about the QUALITY of someone’s diet. You can eat nothing but candy […]
Even “BC” (before COVID), much of the world was pretty sedentary, and our new “pandemic lifestyles” haven’t helped. Now a new WHO report says worldwide levels of physical activity have been flat for nearly 20 years. This varies by country, but globally about 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men, are not meeting […]
I’ve worked with so many overweight and obese adults and children whose weight was seriously impacting their health: diabetes, hypertension, back and joint pain, the works. But not all overweight people experience these problems. Some overweight patients have told me they’re happy with their weight and don’t feel hindered by it. As a health […]
Whether COVID-19 has you sheltering-in-place, quarantining, or just frustrated by not being able to have your usual life, lots of people seem a little down in the dumps, grumpy, and yes, even “depressed”. The “life sucks now” feelings are real, but different from true clinical depression, which can happen for no observable reason. Could “Bacteria” […]
Did Hippocrates really say, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”? Probably not, but he often gets the credit for it. At any rate, using food for medicinal purposes has been done for years, by your doctor or registered dietitian-nutritionist (RDN), or maybe grandma. It’s also been the stuff of quackery and […]