Eating For Health

Every time you turn on the TV, there are ads for all kinds of foods and supplements.   Not everyone provides reliable information based on scientific facts. If your goal is to eat healthier in 2025, what are some easy tips to start with?      1.        Start a heart-healthy diet plan. Want a heart-healthy diet that is good for your heart and helps lower blood pressure?   Then look at the DASH diet.   It stands for D ietary A pproaches to S top H ypertension.   Much like the Mediterranean Diet, the DASH diet focuses on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, dairy (real dairy), poultry, fish, and beans.   (For more information see:   Best Diets for Healthy Eating in 2024 .) 2.         No need to skip the seed oils . I just finished reading Good Energy by Casey Means, MD.   She provides a lot of good advice except perhaps for her recommendation to avoid seed oils.   As the ...

Most people would like to live a long and healthy life.   While there is no fountain of youth, there are things nutritionists and dietitians recommend.   My husband sent me a great article, 4 simple ways to eat for longevity – and more tips we’ve gotten from nutritionist and dietitians so far this year .   I like anything that says “simple”.   So, what are some of these “simple” ways you can eat for longevity? 1.  Focus on whole foods I had a student who said he focused his eating on foods close to the earth.   What did he mean by that?   Foods that were minimally processed like fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains, real cow’s milk, real meat, eggs, and nuts.   Diets rich in these foods, like the Mediterranean and Okinawan diets, have been shown to reduce the risk of chronic diseases and promote longevity.   What if you are not a fan of eating more fruits and vegetables?   One of my students did not really like many fruits or ve...

Are you being fooled by foods promoted as “healthy” that turn out to be not so good for your health?   Some foods marketed as “healthy” can still be high in sugar, salt, or unhealthy fats.   To make informed choices one has to read labels and understand the nutritional content of foods.    What are some examples of misleading “healthy” foods?      Plant-Based Meat:   These have been the rage but now seem to have lost their popularity.   Good thing as many of the plant-based meat products are not so good for your health.   I had a student that was so proud of switching from eating a regular hamburger to a plant-based hamburger and really thought that this was so much better for her health.   Was it?   McDonald’s tested the McPlant burger based on Beyond Meat but it ended in 2022 and never went nationwide.   Burger King offered Impossible Burgers in 2019 as the Impossible Whopper.     The Burger King websit...