Healthy Diet

Let’s Talk About (NOT) Drinking Calories! Perhaps you’ve seen the ad below in your travels around the internet. It’s the fall after all and one must have the proper beverage at all times! Hate to be the guy who rains on the parade, but you definitely want to avoid all these types of beverages. If you want to see what you will be subjecting your body to if you drink one of these follow this link: https://www.starbucks.ie/nutrition and then click on the “Download Beverage Nutritional PDF” and then go to page 7 of that PDF: the “Autumn 22 Promo Beverages”.

You might reasonably ask, “Don’t I eat real food?”. Actually, if you’re a typical American eating the typical American diet - chances are this concept is being challenged. Most Americans eat highly processed ‘food’ that all too often is loaded with added sugar, fat, salt and artificial ingredients. What most of us eat could be more accurately described as “Edible food-like substances." How do you know if what you are eating is “real food?" Here is a simple test...read the ingredient label. There are many whole food options that contain only real ingredients. Hint - most packaged goods in the

Those of you who are religious (and even those who are not) may have learned in the past that the Devil comes in many guises and has many names, presumably to more easily tempt fallible human beings. Well, the intentions of this blog are far more down-to-earth…nutrition, exercise and health. In our world there is also a “devil” and boy-oh-boy does he have many names. The devil of our world is….sugar. To be a little more precise, added sugar. One of the advantages of ‘real food’ is there is very little or no added sugar. If you look at the

Anytime is a good time to establish new habits but in our culture, January seems to be the most popular time to do so. So let's talk about the ‘R word’ (Resolutation). Since our beat around here is health, nutrition and diet I will confine my remarks to those topics. We all know most ‘diets’ don’t work whether you start it in January or any other time of year. Why is that? Might I suggest it’s because most diets are impossible to maintain. Anyone remember the cabbage soup diet? Are you really going to eat cabbage soup for your entire

I want to talk about changes the food industry has made that will support both of those efforts. As of 2020, nutritional labels on purchased foods have new requirements. There are several changes on these new nutritional labels. Three of which I want to bring to your attention: Portion sizes are more realistic and reflect the amount that people actually eat. In the past, food companies would often have artificially small portion sizes which made the food seem like it had less calories than it really did. However, be careful not to let these larger portion sizes be an excuse

I recently read a startling fact…in the 1970’s the average supermarket in the United States carried around 15,000 products. Today, that supermarket has almost 50,000 items... WOW! On the surface, that sounds great… more choices and variety. But scratch that surface just a bit and you will find it’s mostly just a “pseudo-variety”. Think about it…have we found a thousand new species of fish in the ocean deep? (Ah…NO!). Have we developed thousands of new strains of fruits and vegetables… not really.  What has happened is food engineers (yes, that’s a thing!) have found thousands of new and ingenious

You first have to know how to identify "real foods", and then slowly introduce them into your diet. Real food may actually cost a bit more (trust me… its worth it!) and your taste buds might need to adjust. Let me give a concrete example. If you eat the Standard American Diet (SAD) chances are the bread you eat is not real food but a chemical concoction. One brand of bread I recommend (that is actual real food and truly whole grain) is Ezekiel (I have no financial ties to the company!). Now, if you normally eat Wonder Bread, then

As often happens in medicine, we take a relatively simple concept and then give it a really intimidating name, so no one knows what the heck we’re talking about! The "microbiome" refers to the bacteria that live in our gut (intestines). There are more bacteria in the gut than cells in the human body! In fact, one could make the case (with tongue only partially in cheek) that the human body is just a vehicle for the care and feeding of bacteria! In all seriousness, what is this microbiome and why should you care about it? The microbiome is established

I remember the first time I read the Chinese proverb “May you live in interesting times”. I thought to myself…that’s a very nice sentiment. Then I found out that it is not really a proverb but a curse. My next thought was ‘that’s odd…it should be nice to live in interesting times’. Boy o’ boy...I now totally understand why it’s a curse! Say what you will about the year 2020..it was certainly ‘interesting’! The most contentious election in the life of anyone alive today, the pandemic, lockdowns, 30 million people losing their jobs, social unrest…Whoa…lets bring back the boring times

Amazing Breakthrough! Scientists have discovered a revolutionary new treatment. It makes you live longer, look younger and feel better. It decreases your risk of heart disease, cancer, and dementia. It improves immune function and helps ward off colds and the flu. What would you think if you saw that ad? Are you interested? Well, the breakthrough has already been discovered and it is called 8 hours of sleep every night! If you do even the slightest amount of research about promoting longevity you will quickly realize that adequate sleep is an absolute cornerstone for living long and healthy. I used