Healthy Foods for a Healthy Lifestyle

There are several fad diets that will lead to successful weight loss if you follow them exactly as they are designed. That doesn't mean every food that fits into a diet is a healthy food, but it does mean you have to change your eating patterns to fit the diet's rules.

Rather than worry about following a fad diet, think about your health and your lifestyle instead. Start by learning which foods are good for you. Continue Reading >>

Bonnie's Vegetarian Kitchen

Are you tired of trying to figure out what to eat, wasting time in grocery store line-ups, and cleaning up after dinner? Are you juggling a full schedule and just too busy to cook? If you are looking for a healthier, more convenient option to fast food or take out meals then look no further...what you need is a Personal Chef!

A Personal Chef can offer you a wide range of home made, healthy and delicious meals prepared fresh and delivered to your door. There is no simpler nor economical way to put nutritious meals on your table. And you can eat exactly what you want, when you want, without effort and without waste. Whether you need meals for an individual, family, or as a gift for a friend or loved one, Bonnie's Vegetarian Kitchen has an option that will suit your needs. Continue Reading >>

Ten Tips to Building a Better Burger

First enjoyed by the ancient Greeks, asparagus continues to be among the most popular green vegetables around. Beautiful and easy to prepare, it seems almost too good to be true that it’s also good for you and versatile. As an appetizer, a first course, soup, or a vegetable dish alongside an entrée—asparagus is wonderful in all its incarnations. > more

Ten Essential Healthy Foods

By: Tom Shea
Find out what made our must-eat list and get new ideas for adding them to your diet.

Eat Well

The key to healthy eating is variety. Try to incorporate these foods into your diet. Eating wholesome food doesn’t mean the flavors have to be bland: these ingredients can be used to make an array of meals that are tasty and good for you. Continue Reading >>

Make Over My Lunch, Health.com!

By Ross Weale

Grabbing a sandwich midday might seem like a simple enough choice, but it turns out that we make some of our biggest nutritional mistakes at lunch.

Health magazine’s Samantha Heller joined NBC’s Jenna Wolfe to make over the lunches of the Weekend Today show staff and share simple ways to make healthy adjustments to your favorite lunch picks.


Read More

Tthe IA Kitchen

Ireland has recently undergone a culinary revolution. Always maintaining a healthy respect for meals made from the freshest ingredients, it has made strides in the creation of new and exciting tastes that are intrinsically and deliciously indigenous. Continue Reading >>

Cookbook Reviews

Many sustainable cookbooks are more than just recipes. They contain colorful stories about regions around the world; they explore the food particular to that area; and they can help educate you on the differences between sustainable and industrial food. Here we share with you the best of the sustainable cookbooks we’ve found. Cookbook Reviews

Health Tip: Eat More Vegetables

(HealthDay News) -- Instead of getting bored with the same old vegetable choices that take too long to prepare, choose convenience and variety in your vegetables.

Here are easy ways to get plenty of vegetables in your diet, provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture:

• Buy fresh vegetables that are in season -- they'll be at their peak flavor, and often less expensive.


• Keep plenty of frozen vegetables on hand for quick and easy microwave meals and sides.
• Look for conveniently packed vegetables, such as washed and peeled carrots, pre-washed bags of salads, and cut vegetables.
• Save time by making a baked potato in the microwave instead of the oven.
• Alternate your veggie choices and how you cook them. Try them raw and crunchy, then try them steamed.

Weekends are worst for weight loss

People who diet and exercise are less likely to lose body weight during the weekend, new findings have suggested.

In a study supported by the National Institutes of Health, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine discovered that people did not lose as much weight on a weekend because they were eating more and exercising less.

"We thought weekends would present a problem for some people attempting to lose weight, but the consistency of our finding before and during the interventions was surprising," said Dr Susan B Racette.

A number of different lifestyle changes such as increased leisure time on a weekend meant that people were struggling to lose weight.

"On weekends, human lifestyle patterns can be very different. People have social events, parties to attend, and if they have children who play sports, they might be at fields all day long, relying on concession stands for food," added Dr Racette.

Research by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey revealed that around 67 million American adults are obese, and an additional 75 million are overweight.

5 Ways Your Healthy Eating Habits Can Save the Planet

In honor of Earth Day, easy ways to make life here a little healthier for everyone
by Julie Upton, RD

Thanks in part to factory farming and our national appetite for processed convenience foods, scientists say one calorie requires seven times that much fossil fuel. In other words, your 400-calorie breakfast of cereal, fruit, and milk required 2,800 calories worth of oil. No wonder our food costs are soaring along with OPEC's oil prices.

In honor of Earth Day today, April 22, I plan to decrease the carbon footprint my lifestyle makes with these five pledges. Making them will mean that I'll be eating more delicious seasonal, plant-based foods as well.

1. Swear Off Bottled Water
I'll be using my reusable CamelBak bottle, which is also free of harmful bisphenol plastics. I'm also mixing more Crystal Light and other flavored drinks myself instead of guzzling sodas that come in bottles or cans. Sure, you can recycle, but the EPA estimates that less than one third of plastic soft drink bottles are recycled, so why not try to reuse instead?

2. BYOB
Paper or plastic? The answer is neither, because both bags require huge energy inputs to create, and both contribute to pollution. The best option is to use a bag made of cloth or canvas that you can reuse. I keep several reusable shopping bags in the trunk of my car so I have them handy when I make quick stops at the supermarket. If I do take a plastic or paper bag from the store, I reuse and recycle them.

3. Support Local Farmers
I'm going to support farmers more by shopping at the local farmer's market whenever possible to cut back on the energy required for transporting food. Spending my money at farmer's markets means that I'm supporting local or regional farmers that help to keep farmers farming—instead of becoming real estate agents for the next suburb.

4. Packaging Points
Foods that require processing, packaging, and then shipping across the U.S. or world are sucking up precious limited fossil fuels. My pledge is to buy more foods in bulk and shop the perimeter of supermarkets, where the foods are often less processed. I'll skip products that come individually packaged and look more closely at food packages to support companies that are using recyclable packaging.

5. Eat Lower on the Food Chain
According to the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Systems, a diet that gets 28% of its calories from animal-based products (meats, poultry, dairy) uses twice as much fossil fuel as a vegetarian diet. In adddition, livestock produce an estimated one billion tons of earth-polluting waste each year. Bottom line: It's better for the earth for you to eat grains and legumes, rather than the animals that feed on them.

Even Dietitians Break Their Own Rules

Chocolate for breakfast, drinking before five—my rules are good guidelines, but they're not law
by Frances Largeman-Roth, RD

Like many responsible adults, I follow lots of rules. Some are for safety—look both ways before crossing the street; don’t leave perishable food out for more than two hours. Others are my own self-imposed, because-it’s-healthy-for-me and I-want-to-set-a-good-example limitations. These rules include the following.

No snacking after dinner, unless it’s a piece of fruit.
Always select the whole-grain choice.
Chocolate is best rationed out into small, sinful desserts.
No coffee after 11 a.m.
Don’t drink alone before 5 p.m.
There are others, but I won’t bore you. I highlight these because I broke them all on a recent work trip to New York City.

I’m always thrilled with the small groceries in New York, which are filled with the kinds of foods that I have to search high and low for in Birmingham. I bought a bar of marzipan, that continental almond-paste confection, covered in dark chocolate. The first night I was there, I sliced off a morsel and enjoyed the combination of bittersweet chocolate and thick and nutty marzipan. I went to bed satisfied.

The second night, after schlepping around for hours in Chelsea and eating a fairly healthy Vietnamese dinner, I returned to my hotel room exhausted. I sliced off another piece of the marzipan. And then another. Soon I said screw it and ate the rest of the bar, thereby breaking rule #1. I wouldn’t feel so badly about that if I hadn’t started the following morning with chocolate waffles filled with a creamy layer of peanut butter at Norma’s. This was not a whole-grain breakfast option, nor was it in keeping with my law of chocolate being a dessert item. Goodbye rules #2 and #3.

And because my neighbors at the hotel were loudmouths with a tendency to slam doors, my sleep had been delayed and disrupted. This gave me the perfect excuse to break rule #4 on each day of my trip. Perhaps it was my new devil-may-care attitude that allowed me to throw rule #5 to the wind as well. It was scarcely 4 p.m. when I ordered a glass of Prosecco sparkling wine at the hotel bar, but I rationalized that I had only been to one holiday party this year and therefore hadn’t been overly boozing it.

OK, so I broke five of my rules. They’re good guidelines and by sticking to them I can have a few glasses of wine each week and not fret too much about dinners out. But no one got hurt due to my lapse in willpower, and (shocker!) I didn’t gain five pounds. This all goes to show that you don’t need to be good all the time, just most of the time.

Can New Nutrition Ratings for Food Make Us Healthier?

I don't think we need a "nutrition-based GPS system" to tell us spinach is better than taffy
by Julie Upton, RD

A new food-ranking system called the Overall Nutrition Quality Index (ONQI) is about to make your grocery shopping a healthier or more confusing experience, depending on whom you ask. The ONQI is already in many stores and will debut nationwide this spring. Later this year, the ratings of about 50,000 foods and food products will be available online.

But I'm not convinced it will help any of us make better food choices.
The ONQI is based on evaluating some 30 different nutrients and dividing the good (vitamins, minerals, protein, phytonutrients, etc.) by the bad (saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, added sugars, glycemic load, etc.). The end result is a formula that scores a product based on its nutrition facts and some other nuances that help shape a healthy diet. Continue reading »

Could a Giant Warehouse Be Your Your Healthy-Food Store?

Yes—and here's the argument for the Costco diet
by Scott Mowbray

I live in a gigantic city and generally shop for my food every day in small, independently owned stores, but sometimes I visit a suburban town in Colorado and shop in a gigantic chain operation: Costco.

This particular Costco is about the size of the hangar in which they assemble Boeing 747-400s, and it disrupts any known supermarket routine; you can’t follow the "shop the perimeter" rule of healthy-food buying or you’ll be eating tires, televisions, and gallon jugs of hair conditioner. Last week they seemed to be selling a tent large enough for a platoon, a sample of which was hanging from the roof. Continue reading »

My "Biggest Loser" Online Weight-Loss Challenge

You may not get slimmer if you give your credit card to an online weight-loss site—but your bank account might
by Julie Upton, RD

After reading online about how horrible NBC’s The Biggest Loser is from a dietitian’s perspective, I decided to watch an episode. In case you’ve missed it, it’s the show where Average Joes struggle to face their diet demons while competing to win $250,000.

Then I logged on to BiggestLoserClub.com to see if there if there was helpful advice or tools for those who wanted to lose weight. Boy, was that a mistake. I signed up, paying the monthly fee to join. As part of the initial fee, you’re supposed to receive three books, including a cookbook and fitness program, as well as access to an electronic newsletter. What I received, however, were nothing more than charges to my credit card and shipments of unwanted weight-loss supplements. Continue reading »

Escape From Recipeville

How I stopped cooking by numbers
by Frances Largeman-Roth, RD

I’ve always been a strict recipe follower. Maybe it’s because I’m a dietitian (amounts of butter and sour cream matter) or because I’m pretty Type A. But I’ve never understood how some folks can just go forth and make a dish without knowing exactly what they’re going to put in it.

Those people have always seemed like artists to me—able to riff on tradition and follow an innate culinary compass to greatness. I, on the other hand, have always felt like a chemist—if I didn’t add the correct amounts of compound A and B, my results would be less than satisfying.

Plus, since my kitchen time is limited by a busy schedule (whose isn’t?), I believe it should be productive, and I don’t want to end up with a concoction that no one wants to eat. I’m happy to announce that I’ve finally left the land of the chemistry geeks and I’m flirting with the cool kids.
Continue reading »

Cooking 101

A novice chef’s quest to create something edible in a closet-size kitchen
by Mara Betsch

I am no domestic goddess. I am a doodler in an Italian family where cooking is an art. My family finds this hysterical, and conversations at holiday meals inevitably end with coffee, dessert, and tales of my culinary catastrophes. Here’s a taste from last year’s festivities.

“Remember the time Mara put baking soda instead of baking powder in the peach cobbler?” my dad asks the table. “It tasted like peach toothpaste.” Laughter erupts.
Continue reading »

Compliments to the Condiments

Overlooked jars and bottles can rescue dinner
by Frances Largeman-Roth, RD

I’m ashamed to call myself a food editor these days. My wine glasses are seeing far more use than my pots and pans, and I haven’t made a real trip to the grocery store in weeks. I’ll blame it on recent travels.

When my husband, Jon, is in town (he’s a consultant), I’m far more likely to spend time making dinner. But when it’s just little old me and Millie, our furry canine dictator, I’m just as bad as every other American. OK, not quite. I lean more on fast-yet-healthful foods than fast foods, enjoying Amy’s Kitchen organic, vegetarian frozen dinners and my own gussied up English muffin sandwiches (black olive tapenade really elevates them). I’m a firm believer that you can do almost anything with top-notch condiments. And though Jon growls at me for the wide assortment of half-full bottles and jars in the fridge, I keep them in stock. I think of them as accessories—you could go without them, but life just wouldn’t be as fabulous. Here’s my roundup of the essentials. Continue reading »

Vegetarian Diets for Children: Right from the Start

© Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine

Eating habits are set in early childhood. Vegetarian diets give your child the chance to learn to enjoy a variety of wonderful, nutritious foods. They provide excellent nutrition for all stages of childhood, from birth through adolescence.
Infants
The best food for newborns is breast milk. If your baby is not being breast-fed, soy formulas are a good alternative and are widely available. Do not use commercial soymilk. Babies have special needs and require a soy formula that is developed especially for those needs.

Infants do not need any nourishment other than breast milk or soy formula for the first several months of life. Breast-fed infants need about 2 hours a week of sun exposure to make vitamin D. Some infants, especially those who live in cloudy climates, may not make adequate amounts of vitamin D. In that case, vitamin D supplements may be necessary.

Breast milk or infant formula should be used for at least the first year of your baby's life.

At about 4 to 5 months of age, or when your baby's weight has doubled, other foods can be added to the diet.

Add one new food at a time, at one- to two- week intervals. The following guidelines provide a flexible plan for adding foods to your baby's diet.

4 to 5 Months
Introduce iron-fortified infant cereal. Try rice cereal first since it is the least likely to cause allergies. Mix it with a little breast milk or soy formula. Then offer oat or barley cereals to your baby.

6 to 8 Months
Introduce vegetables. They should be thoroughly cooked and mashed. Potatoes, green beans, carrots, and peas are all good first choices.

Introduce fruits next. Try mashed bananas, avocados, strained peaches, or applesauce.

By 8 months of age, most babies can eat crackers, bread, and dry cereal.

Also, by about 8 months, infants can begin to eat higher protein foods like tofu or beans that have been cooked well and mashed.

Children
Children have a high calorie and nutrient need, but their stomachs are small. Offer your child frequent snacks, and include some less "bulky" foods like refined grains and fruit juices. Do limit juices however, since children may fill up on them, preferring their sweetness to other foods. Calorie needs vary from child to child. The following guidelines are general ones.


Food Groups for Children
Breads, cereals, and grains
Includes bread, hot and cold cereals, pasta, cooked grains such as rice and barley, crackers.
A serving is 1/2 cup pasta, grain, or cereal or 1 slice of bread.

Beans. Nuts. Seeds
Includes any cooked bean such as pinto, kidneys, lentils, split peas, black-eyed peas, navy beans, and chickpeas; soy products such as tofu and soymilk; all nuts and nut butters, seeds, and tahini (sesame butter).
A serving is « cup beans, 4 ounces tofu, 8 ounces soymilk, 1 tablespoon nuts or nut butter.


Vegetables
Includes all vegetables.
A serving is « cup cooked or 1 cup raw.


Fruits
Includes all fruits and fruit juices.
A serving is cup cooked fruit, 4 ounces fruit juice, dried fruit, 1 piece fruit.


Recommended Servings
Ages 1 to 3 (Preschoolers)
Grains: 4 servings
Beans, Nuts, Seeds: 5 servings total, to include 1 serving beans, 1 serving nuts or seeds, 3 servings fortified soymilk.
Vegetables: 2 servings, to include at least ¬ green leafy vegetables such as kale, collards, broccoli, Swiss chard, turnip greens, mustard greens.
Fruits: 2 servings

Continue the full article >>

Dad loses 30 pounds, climbs Kilimanjaro with teen daughter

Story Highlights

• Bill McGahan felt miserable when his weight peaked at 225 pounds


• Dreading workouts, he set a goal to climb Mount Kilimanjaro with his daughter


• He exercised and ate lean meats and raw vegetables to lose 30 pounds


• McGahan, daughter reached their goal and plan to climb more summits

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- From the outside, Bill McGahan looked like he lived a pretty good life.

He had a great marriage, four beautiful children and a great job in real estate. But the truth of the matter was he felt horrible.

McGahan, who was in his mid-40s, was overweight at 225 pounds. He could barely fit into his clothes; he snored loudly and didn't have the energy to play with his then 12-year-old daughter and 8-year-old triplets.

Bad eating habits, alcohol and a sedentary lifestyle had caught up with McGahan, who said he began to realize he could no longer eat the way he used to in college.

"I was on the see-food diet: What you see is what you eat," said McGahan. "Tons of carbs, pasta, pizza, steak, fries ... all the good stuff."

McGahan knew he needed to change his eating and exercise habits, but he wasn't getting the results he wanted at the gym. There also was something more important than losing weight -- he wanted to be healthy enough to play baseball and spend quality time with his kids.

He hated working out, so instead of focusing on diet and fitness -- he decided to set another goal.

"Fathers who are in their mid-40s sometimes struggle to find things to do with their seventh-grade daughters," said McGahan. "They're just not interested in the same stuff." Watch more on Bill McGahan's climb to fitness »

McGahan and his daughter started searching the Internet for something they could do together. After scouring dozens of Web sites, they finally settled on an unusual plan -- to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

"To me that was a great thing because it gave my workouts and my running a purpose," said McGahan. My objective was to get to the top of the mountain and get to the top of that mountain with her ... and have a good experience doing it."

The goal supercharged him into action. He eliminated greasy, fat-laden food from his diet and began eating more healthy cereals, salads, lean meats and raw vegetables.

The 6-foot-1 father started working out with a trainer to build up his body strength. He also began running 25-30 miles a week.

All of his hard work and training paid off. In 2006, McGahan and Sara reached the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, one of the highest peaks on Earth.

"We were 100 yards from the top and we knew we were going to make it," McGahan said. "I put my arm around Sara and said, 'You did it, Sara,' and she said, 'No, Dad. We did it together.' "

McGahan said that was one of the greatest moments of his life.

One of the best parts of the trip was getting to know his daughter, McGahan said. He was impressed with her and inspired by her determination.

So what does Sara, now 14, think about all of this?

"I love my dad," said Sara. "He's really funny and I was glad I took the climb with him."

The father-daughter duo have already set their next goal -- to climb seven summits around the world.

In June, he's climbing Mount Rainer with two high school classmates. One month later, he'll scale Mount Elbrus in Russia with his wife and daughter.

"I want to get to these next couple of mountains and I want to do it with her," said McGahan. "I'm not giving up."

I-Report: Have you lost weight? Send your story, photos and video

Nutritional Programs for Vegetarians

© Elson M. Haas M.D. (Excerpted from Staying Healthy with NutritionPublished by Celestial Arts)

Some aspects of vegetarianism have been discussed in Chapter 3, Protein, and this type of diet was more fully described in Chapter 9. Here I explore the particular nutrient needs of those following a vegetarian diet, as well as reviewing briefly the many advantages and a few disadvantages of this most humane diet.

Vegetarianism has a long history, and a primarily vegetarian diet is still the most common type on the planet. Even in America, most people’s diets were mainly vegetarian until the turn of the twentieth century, when beef consumption began to increase; it continued to increase steadily until only recently.

A change to a vegetarian diet automatically reduces intake of both protein and saturated fats unless there is a marked increase in consumption of dairy foods and eggs. One of the biggest problems with the contemporary American diet, which I have discussed earlier, is the focus on (or obsession with) protein as the staple of the diet. This is probably responsible for the increase in cardiovascular diseases and cancer because it also naturally increases the intake of saturated fats. We need to return to a focus on whole grains, legumes, and vegetables to give us the high-complex-carbohydrate, high-fiber, high-nutrient, and low-fat diet that is so essential to good health and longevity.

Vegetarianism is indeed becoming more popular again. It has support from the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society, who in their subtle way are finally acknowledging that diet is an important component of health and disease. Many more diet books and cookbooks are focusing on the vegetarian diet, and more athletes, business people, and others are adopting this diet and lifestyle plan.

It is clear to me that vegetarianism makes a statement about both health and planetary consciousness. In a provocative new book, Diet for a New America, John Robbins discusses the inhumane treatment of animals and the waste of resources (water and land) by the cattle and poultry industries. Our diet says a lot more about us than just our personal tastes, as Mr. Robbins tells us on the book cover: "How your food choices affect your health, happiness, and the future of life on earth." We all need to be more vegetarian even if we are not "exclusively" vegetarian. Supporting the current carnivorous planetary program is a factor that creates pollution, economic imbalance, and relative starvation, and this is what, I believe, we are trying to change for the health and peace of our future generations—our children.

In my experience, vegetarians often adopt many other positive health habits in addition to eating more naturally. Those who are vegetarians more for health than for religious reasons tend to eat wholesome foods, avoiding the refined flour and sugar foods and other empty-calorie treats, which are also vegetarian "foods." I believe that even the Seventh-Day Adventists, the most celebrated group of vegetarians, at least in the medical literature, could have a much healthier diet and better statistics if they would adopt these principles. Still, as a group, they have lower triglyceride and cholesterol levels and a lower incidence of cancer, heart disease, and obesity than the meat-eating population. A decrease in chronic diseases and an increase in longevity go hand in hand with vegetarianism.