Posts Tagged ‘getting healthy’
Monday, May 30th, 2011
Galia and David Myron enjoy drinks out of fresh coconuts. Plant-based can be so enjoyable!
Galia Myron Tracks Generations As Whole Food, Plant-Based Diets Flourish
Want to know more about the health, food habits, values, preferences, or sex lives of Generations X, Y, or Z? How about Baby Boomers or Matures, women vs. men, or green trends? Galia Myron, publisher of the richly comprehensive site demodirt.com, reports on every aspect of demographics as she both follows and observes a vegan path. She especially enjoys covering trends on plant-based diets, animal rights, environmental issues, and health.
Galia observes that, a few years ago, the fastest growing vegan group was boomer men who were motivated by health considerations. Now she finds more young people choosing animal-free diets for ethical reasons. Marketers are also (more…)
Tags: demodirt.com, demographics, family, Galia Myron, getting healthy, Janice Stanger, lose weight, Plant-based nutrition, vegan, weight loss, whole foods, whole foods plant-based diet
Posted in Plant-based nutrition | Comments Off on Why Now Is a Great Time to Be Vegan
Sunday, May 15th, 2011
Why Serving Sizes Undercut Health and Weight Loss
Meals limited by portion control can feel so skimpy.
Run-of-the-mill diets focus on controlling the amount you eat by limiting portions. This is an attempt to fit a manmade, arbitrary concept (“serving size”) into a natural biological system (your body). While this strategy may work for some people for a short time, the long-term outcome is often counter to health and weight goals.
The USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 is typical. Some of the serving sizes this report lists include:
• Bread: one slice
• Cooked rice: half a cup
• Cut up vegetables: half a cup
• Fruit: one medium piece
• Cooked beans: half a cup
• Milk: one cup
• Cooked meat, poultry, or fish: one ounce
• Soft margarine: one teaspoon
• Sugar: one tablespoon
Here are six reasons that portion control ultimately will not succeed in getting you to a trim weight and (more…)
Tags: 2010 USDA Guidelines for Americans, getting healthy, Janice Stanger, lose weight, nutrition facts, Perfect Formula Diet, phytochemicals, Plant-based nutrition, portion control, serving size, vegetables, weight loss, whole foods, whole foods plant-based diet
Posted in weight loss | Comments Off on Six Reasons Portion Control Will Make You Overweight
Saturday, May 7th, 2011
This microgreen forest rewarded my gardening efforts only 5 days after I had planted the seeds.
An Indoor Microgreen Garden Can Be Inexpensive and Fun
Microgreens are the perfect crop to bring nature into your home – and with tasty results. Microgreens are very young vegetable and herb plants, usually an inch or two high and with one or two sets of leaves. You usually have to wait only a week or two from the time the seed first starts to grow until the time your crop is ready to eat.
You can raise these nutritious, pretty young plants to garnish almost any food. For example, sprinkle some on soups, salads, cooked grains, sandwiches, wraps, and beans. Microgreens add elegance and color as well as (more…)
Tags: getting healthy, horticulture therapy, indoor gardening, Janice Stanger, Mark Mathew Braunstein, microgreens, Plant-based nutrition, whole foods
Posted in Health | 3 Comments »
Friday, April 22nd, 2011
Dr. Wallace Sconiers, vegan almost 30 years, devotes his time to teaching others about health. I'm happy to welcome him as a San Diego County neighbor!
Dr. Wallace Sconiers Helps Others Discover Health
Dr. Wallace Sconiers has a firm handshake and energetic speech that makes you want to hear what he has to share. His youthful skin, lively eyes, and radiant health at age 61 are proof that getting older does not in any way need to equate with medical issues. I was fortunate to meet him when he came over to say hello to a group of us giving out veg literature for a meat-out event.
Vegan for almost 30 years and vegetarian for 41 years, Wallace embraces a whole foods diet. His plant-centered path started, surprisingly, on a Navy (more…)
Tags: Dr. Wallace Sconiers, getting healthy, Janice Stanger, Plant-based nutrition, reverse chronic disease, whole foods
Posted in Health | 4 Comments »
Sunday, April 3rd, 2011
Whole foods are dense with calcium because plants need this mineral to survive.
Calcium Supplements May Also Make Your Body Too Alkaline
Whole plant foods contain thousands of beneficial substances, including amino acids, vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, complex carbohydrates, fiber, and phytochemicals, health-promoting nutrients found only in plants. These nourishing elements work together to form a vital tapestry supporting vibrant health.
Yet the media and commonplace nutritional advice focus on only a few isolated food components. Calcium is one of the most overhyped nutrients, largely because of the clout of the dairy industry. The myth is that (more…)
Tags: 2010 USDA Guidelines for Americans, acid-base balance, bone health, calcium, calcium-alkali syndrome, cardiovascular disease, getting healthy, Institute of Medicine, Janice Stanger, kidney stones, nutrition facts, Plant-based nutrition, vegetables, whole foods
Posted in Plant-based nutrition | 1 Comment »
Sunday, March 20th, 2011
For high levels of radiation, stay away. Essential workers must be suited up for protection. You can't avoid low levels of radiation. Suit up with whole foods.
Diet Helps Shield You from Radiation and Cancer
The struggle to contain radioactive releases at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has focused the world’s attention on the hazards of radiation. However, even without such incidents, you are subject to harmful radiation every day.
Low-level background radiation bathes the earth. Cosmic rays are penetrating subatomic particles. According to NASA, about 100 of these particles bombard every square meter of the planet at sea level every second – and will pass through you if you are in their path. The number of powerful cosmic rays increases rapidly with altitude.
Additional radiation originates from (more…)
Tags: cancer, Chernobyl, Fukushima Daiichi, getting healthy, Janice Stanger, medical imaging tests, phytochemicals, Plant-based nutrition, President's Cancer Panel, radiation, vegetables, weight loss, whole foods
Posted in Plant-based nutrition | Comments Off on Protection from Radiation: Five Ways Plant Foods Guard Your Health
Saturday, March 5th, 2011
New Survey Shows Vegans are Happy and Thriving
In our over-stressed and rushed world, is there a simple secret to inner peace? Amid the wasteland of fast food and supermarkets crammed with thousands of processed choices, is there a straight line to health? Surrounded by pavement and parking lots, how can you feel a direct connection to the majesty of nature?
2,068 vegans took a moment to share the answers in the survey Vegan From the Inside. Respondents completed questions on what it’s like for them to be (more…)
Tags: getting healthy, Janice Stanger, lose weight, making a difference now, Plant-based nutrition, process of change, survey, Vegan From the Inside, weight loss, whole foods
Posted in Plant-based nutrition | 2 Comments »
Monday, February 21st, 2011
Until we change the way we eat, getting health care costs and the deficit under control will be a losing struggle.
Surging Health Care Costs Come Right Out of Your Pocket
The health care costs draining your personal budget come in two pieces: the amount you see directly as health care, and the hidden costs embedded in taxes, salary you don’t get, and the cost of virtually everything you buy. Health care costs gobble one out of every six dollars of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product), with that percentage rising every year. Even Warren Buffett, the wealthy business man, called health care costs a “tapeworm” dragging down the economy.
The direct costs are obvious. Milliman, a leading actuarial firm, reported that health care for a family of four in 2010 in the U.S. averaged a staggering $18,074. Of this, employers paid an average (more…)
Tags: budget definit, cardiovascular disease, Congressional Budget Office, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr. Neal Barnard, family, getting healthy, health care costs, Janice Stanger, making a difference now, Plant-based nutrition, T. Colin Campbell, Warren Buffett, whole foods
Posted in Health | 1 Comment »
Saturday, February 5th, 2011
The USDA should be teaching Americans that healthy food is also appetizing and delicious.
You’ll Need Bigger Clothes If You Follow the Government’s Advice
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) launched their Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010 with great fanfare. Mostly, the Guidelines are more of the same wimpy advice that has been making Americans fatter and sicker for the last several decades.
The 2010 Guidelines does have a new twist, though. The USDA makes a half-hearted effort to lay out a 100% plant-based eating plan. Appendix 9 of the Guidelines is labeled “Vegan Adaptation of the USDA Food Patterns.”
What a silly task, to “adapt” plant-based eating to a framework built on animal foods that create obesity and disease. This is like writing Shakespeare by (more…)
Tags: 2010, Dietary Guidelines for Americans, getting healthy, inflammation, Plant-based nutrition, reverse chronic disease, USDA, vegan, vegetables, weight loss, whole foods
Posted in Health | 4 Comments »
Saturday, January 22nd, 2011
This Misnamed Essential Can Accumulate to Dangerous Levels
This is the first-choice source of vitamin D for most people. The sun, which powers life on earth, also energizes your skin to manufacture vitamin D, which is better understood as a hormone than as a vitamin.
To understand how to get enough vitamin D without poisoning yourself with too much, first you need to realize that this essential is not a vitamin at all. By definition, a vitamin must come from what you eat. Yet vitamin D is scarce or nonexistent in virtually all foods, unless artificially added.
Nature intended that humans manufacture their own vitamin D when certain ultraviolet rays from the sun strike skin. How do we know this? Because your skin cells have the ability to make D, and will do so whenever you allow them to. Humans thrived for eons before vitamin D supplements were available, so clearly these are not necessary for healthy life.
Vitamin D is actually a hormone, a necessary substance your body makes by itself. This essential was misnamed back in the 1920s, when researchers were first discovering (more…)
Tags: antioxidants, getting healthy, Janice Stanger, Plant-based nutrition, rickets, vitamin D, whole foods
Posted in Health | 3 Comments »
