Some people have trouble digesting whole grains. Sally Fallon, founding president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, points out that people traditionally soaked or fermented their grains, often for a few days, before cooking. Soaking grains, or fermenting them by soaking in hot water with vinegar, neutralizes the phytic acid and makes the grains easier to digest. All grains contain phytic acid in the outer layer of the bran. Phytic acid combines with certain minerals in the body, such as calcium, magnesium, copper and iron, and can block absorption in the intestines, which may lead to digestive disorders, mineral deficiencies and bone loss. Eight hours of soaking in warm water will neutralize the phytic acid, and greatly improve the nutritional benefits of grains. Even an hour of soaking will help.

 The most common grain in our culture is wheat. Many people are allergic to wheat but don’t know it. Wheat products are heavily subsidized and promoted by the government in the food pyramid, and the food industry incorporates it into almost all breakfast cereals, cookies, cakes and crackers. Gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, rye and oats, is difficult for many people to digest. If you are sensitive or allergic to gluten, you can experience bloating, constipation or gas after eating wheat and other glutenous grains. Other related problems are allergies, celiac disease, brain fog, chronic indigestion and candida. Sometimes the symptoms occur immediately after eating, but they can also take time to manifest. Whole grains are great to have a part of your diet, but please be mindful of how you eat them and when you eat them.

Tags: Food by joshua
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Almost everyone craves sweets. Instead of depending on processed sugar, you can add more naturally sweet flavor to your daily diet and dramatically reduce sweet cravings. Certain vegetables have a deep, sweet flavor when cooked—like corn, carrots, onions, beets, winter squash (butternut, buttercup, delicata, hubbard and kabocha), sweet potatoes and yams. Some lesser-known vegetables that are semi-sweet are turnips, parsnips and rutabagas. And there is another group of vegetables that don’t taste sweet, but have an effect on the body similar to that of sweet vegetables. These include red radishes, daikon radish, green cabbage, red cabbage and burdock. They relax the body and energize the mind. And because many of these vegetables are root vegetables, they have a grounding effect, helping to balance out the spacey feeling people often experience after eating other sweets.

Other delicious ways to incorporate sweet vegetables into your daily diet include eating raw carrots, baking sweet potato fries, roasting squash, making soup with corn and onions or boiling beets to put on top of your salad.

Tags: Food by joshua
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A lot of people go to great lengths to make sure they are eating healthy food, but they don’t bother to exercise regularly. Movement aids digestion, assimilation, circulation and respiration and is a crucial part of any healthy person’s regimen. Many people don’t like exercising. It’s challenging for them to find an exercise they enjoy. Think about what you loved to do as a kid. Did you dance, bike or hike? This is a good place to start when looking for a new exercise routine. Look for a gym or yoga studio near your home or on the way to the office where you can work out. It’s important to find a location that’s convenient, and where the atmosphere is pleasant, comfortable and welcoming. This will enhance your chances of going regularly.

Exercising can be an opportunity to reconnect with nature, perhaps by going to a large park if you are a city dweller. Getting out to a rural environment—somewhere you can breathe clean, fresh air, hear the birds and see the sky—on a regular basis can be very healing. We can live without food for months, and without water for days. However, we cannot live without air for more than a few minutes, so it makes sense that air quality is essential to life quality.

Tags: Primary Food by joshua
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It’s rare to meet someone who feels entirely supported by his or her family, friends, coworkers, boss and significant other. Sometimes the answer to getting the support you need is as simple as asking for help from these people or from a professional. Other times, the answer may lie in creating new relationships and letting go of the old ones that no longer serve you. Start by looking at the relationship you have with yourself. When you find ways to nurture and love yourself, you will be better able to communicate your needs to others.

Figuring out what kind of love relationship works best for you is crucial. For many, a happy marriage early in life is their main goal. They are clear that they want to have children and build a firm structure for their whole life and for future generations. Others look for alternatives to marriage or wait until later in life to marry or settle down with one person. Many people feel pressure from their families or society to get married and have children, while this is simply not the right path for some. It is important that you take time to determine what you want, and then work practically and positively toward it. Having a dream is one thing; making it happen is another. We all need support on this very important issue, so find people in your life that can offer it to you.

Tags: Primary Food, Relationships by joshua
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Holistic health and wellness is becoming more and more mainstream. When the concept of mind, body, soul connection is freely talked about on Oprah, you know that people are serious about finding a path to health and happiness that works for them. Oprah says that in order to look and feel your best, you have to connect the mind, body and soul. You have to work from the inside out.

This week Oprah started a 21-day cleanse, eliminating animal food, caffeine, sugar, alcohol and gluten. Her guest, Kathy Freston, author of Quantum Wellness: A Practical and Spiritual Guide to Health and Wellness, suggests the cleanse as a way to jump start your journey to health. Her book outlines 8 pillars of wellness:

1. meditation
2. conscious eating
3. exercise
4. visualization
5. spiritual practice
6. self work
7. service
8. fun activities

Kathy says that the most important wellness pillar is conscious eating. What you eat not only affects your personal health but that the food we eat, how it was prepared and where it comes from affects everything around you. What you eat enters your bloodstream, influences your energy and how you relate to others.

Kathy’s 8 pillars of health are similar to the Integrative Nutrition concepts of primary and secondary food. Food is an important form of nourishment, but food is not the only thing that satisfies us. Integrative Nutrition’s unique concept of primary food looks at how physical activity, spirituality, career and relationships nourish our soul. No matter how you break it down, an integrated approach to health and happiness is the way to go.

Tags: Food by joshua
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Many fashionable diet theories today are advising people to avoid carbohydrates, naming them as a culprit in America’s obesity crisis. This advice is a huge and faulty generalization. By looking at the delicate, thin bodies of Japanese people, who consume high-carbohydrate diets composed of large amounts of rice and starchy vegetables, it’s impossible to conclude that all carbs lead to weight gain.

Whole grains have been a central element of the human diet since the dawn of civilization, when we stopped hunting and gathering and settled into agrarian communities. Until very recently, people living in these communities, on all continents, had lean, strong bodies. In the Americas, corn was the staple grain, while rice predominated in India and Asia. In Africa, people had sorghum and millet. People in the Middle East enjoyed pita bread and couscous. In Europe, it was corn, millet, wheat, rice, pasta and dark breads. Even beer, produced by grain fermentation, was considered healthy. In Scotland, it was oats. In Russia, they had buckwheat or kasha. For generations, very few people eating grain-based diets were overweight.

People are gaining weight today because they eat too much chemicalized, artificial junk food. If Americans were eating bowls of freshly cooked whole grains and vegetables every day instead of processed junk food, people would not be getting fat. Whole grains are some of the best sources of nutritional support, containing high levels of dietary fiber and B vitamins. Because the body absorbs them slowly, grains provide long-lasting energy and help stabilize blood sugar.

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Learning the art of simple meal planning will help you get all the nutrients you need as well as release you from dependency on restaurant food, fast food and other processed foods. You eat differently when you  feed yourself at home versus when you are out and about. Restaurant food is usually very salty and highly flavored, as it’s designed to be a taste sensation and it often comes in very big portions. By buying and preparing your own food, you can eat in accordance with your body’s actual needs and you are less likely to overeat or consume excess salt and flavoring.

Cooking delicious, satisfying meals in a brief period of time is a skill worth learning. It’s not difficult, but it takes practice. At first, you may burn the rice or overcook the greens but that’s okay. Give yourself permission to make mistakes.

For many people, the task of cooking seems daunting. They are puzzled, and ask questions like, “How do plain, ordinary vegetables turn into such a delicious meal in a few minutes?”

Here are a few ways to easily make plain vegetables more exciting:

·         After cooking, it usually only takes 3 minutes of steaming  or sautéing, add 1 tablespoon olive oil or toasted sesame oil to every 2 cups of veggies.

·         Add 2 bay leave or 1 teaspoon cumin seeds to the cooking water.

·         Sprinkle cooked veggies with toasted pumpkin, sesame, flax or sunflower seeds. Or sprinkle with almonds, walnuts or dried shredded coconut.

·         Sprinkle greens with fresh herbs: mint, dill, basil, parsley, cilantro or scallion.

·         Use tamari soy sauce or umeboshi vinegar to add extra flavor to cooked veggies.

·         Squeeze fresh lemon or lime juice over steamed vegetables.

·         After steaming, quickly stir-fry with a pinch of sea salt, olive oil and garlic.

Few cookbooks address the initial, most-challenging period. They don’t mention that cooking a meal takes much longer when you are an inexperienced chef than it does when you have had some practice. Cooking takes some patience and practice. In a short time, you will be effortlessly washing, chopping, cooking and nourishing yourself and others.

Tags: Food, Healthy Tips by joshua
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Tags: Food, Healthy Tips by joshua
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The less healthy a food is the more money companies spend on its marketing. Advertising is a multi-billion industry charged with stimulating the buying impulses of the biggest consumer society on the face of the earth. We are constantly bombarded with ads encouraging us to eat and drink more. From the billboard on the side of the bus to the back cover of a stranger’s magazine on the subway, from commercials slotted between songs on the radio to the ones that interrupt our favorite television shows, we are inundated by commercial messages every day.

For children, it’s even worse. Every Saturday morning, children are bombarded with about 200 junk food ads for high-sugar and high-fat foods like Pop-tarts, cereal bars and many types of processed cookies, cakes and snacks. Is this really what we want to teach young people in America today? Good nutrition is crucial in the formative years, but our kids are eating junk, especially in the school system, and it shows. We now have an obesity epidemic among children. Scientists predict our children are the first generation in American history to live shorter lives than their parents.

Tags: Politics by joshua
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Weight loss is a huge issue for Americans today. Our society idolizes people who are thin. But with an overabundance of snack foods, junk foods and fast foods, combined with a lack of daily exercise, many Americans struggle with their weight. One of the most popular New Year’s resolutions is to lose a few pounds. Many people turn to counting calories as a way to get fit. When they have trouble following their own diet regimen, they look for help in the more than $30-billion-dollar diet and weight loss industry.

Many people who have lost weight and kept it off have looked past the diet books and fads and found what works best for their own bodies. I encourage people who want to lose weight to experiment with different methods and see what works.

4 Tips for Weight Loss:

1. Always Eat Breakfast. People who eat breakfast are much more successful at keeping weight off. When you skip meals, you become calorie deficient and usually end up binging later in the day. 

2. Drink More Water. By replacing soda, alcohol or coffee with water, you can cut a significant amount of calories from your daily routine. Many people can effortlessly lose 10 pounds by simply replacing soda with water throughout the day. 

3. Get More Sleep. Growing evidence supports that missing out on sleep can increase your appetite. Most people need about 7-8 hours of sleep each night. 

4. Be a Food Detective. Read food labels and don’t eat anything you can’t pronounce. Stick to simple, whole foods to nourish your body.

Tags: Healthy Tips by joshua
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