diet Tag

The Price We Pay for Eating Unhealthy

There has been much discussion of late about the high cost of eating healthy. We see articles that recommend purchasing only the “dirty dozen” organic foods: peaches, strawberries, nectarines, apples, spinach, celery, pears, sweet bell peppers, cherries, potatoes, lettuce, and imported grapes. Others suggest growing your own organic produce. Eating less meat and more rice and beans has always been sage advice to save money. Some call for simply eating less. Whatever the call to action, we have yet to see someone explore the real cost of eating unhealthy. So we decided to look at some of the costs of...

Eating Clean But Feeling Worse

How is it possible to feel worse once you’ve ditch the Frosted Flakes and french fries for kale and chia seeds? After following health blogs, impressive Instagram accounts and Facebook Pages that offer daily nutrition tips, you’ve decided to say adios to the processed foods in your life and begin eating clean. The gorgeous visuals of real, whole food seem to pretty much guarantee massive amounts of energy, a lean physique and a new way of life. You’re sold! From now on, it’s green smoothies twice a day and veggie based meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Quinoa cupcakes and raw hemp seed...

What is the HCG Diet?

You may have already heard of this controversial diet that includes Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG) injections with a low calorie diet to acheive rapid and lasting weight loss.  The HCG diet is getting a lot of hype with its dramatic effects, and health care practitioners and patients are wondering – is it safe? and will it be effective in controlling the ever growing obesity epidemic? HCG, are you kidding me?! For those who already know what HCG is, you may have concerns about injecting yourself with pregnancy hormone and hoping for weight loss.  HCG is a hormone produced in large amounts during...

Eat Like a Caveman: The Paleo Diet

We live in an era of information overload, especially surrounding nutrition. I personally have been overwhelmed and confused about food for most of my life. At times I thought I had the answer, after having followed a certain diet for months and months, only to be defeated by feeling sick and malnourished. I’ve tried The South Beach Diet, the vegan Thrive Diet, a basic whole foods organic diet, and a raw fruitarian-vegan diet After feeling highly unstable on my six month fruit kick, I began following a Paleo diet. Though it is just about the fourth month in, I can say that...

A Diet for Balancing Pitta

The diet to balance pitta corresponds to the many of the so-called “balanced” diets out there, such as the Mediterranean or Indo-Mediterranean diet, that display a mostly balanced ratio of fats, proteins and carbohydrates. In Ayurveda this diet is good for people that have an average metabolism, neither very fast nor slow, providing a balanced source of energy. In particular, this diet is good for people that have a hot temperament, and tend to get warm easily. Some of the recommendations of this diet are contraindicated for people suffering from excessive coldness. Pitta-reducing diet A pitta-reducing diet is predominant in sweet,...

Spring Cleaning Means Clean Eating

As you may know, our diet should rotate with the season.  Summer is the the time for light, refreshing food, while Autumn is the time for nourishing root vegetables.  Winter becomes the best time for hearty stews, meats and breads.  We are now in full swing of Spring, the best time for  cleaning and clean eating.  How can we clean up our diet?  What are some foods we should be consuming more often during these warming months?  I will discuss in detail a few important changes that are necessary for this time of year. Hydration:  We should always be drinking enough...

Trying the Raw Food Diet? Raw versus Cooked Food

A few months back I addressed the issue of veganism in my blog, and provided a series of snippets and references from my book, suggesting that a long term vegan diet – especially in women and children – can be dangerous. This post generated a fair amount of reaction by vegans, but it also opened up the possibility of a more nuanced, well-reasoned approach to this issue. Today I want to continue this debate, by addressing the issue of raw foodism and the raw food diet. The following is taken from my book, Food As Medicine, and is a compilation...

Eating Ayurvedic: A Diet For Everyone

The concept behind food as medicine is that food is a spectrum between nourishment and healing, and given the very large spectrum of foods, there many valid approaches to diet. But when we talk about diet, we need to understand the difference between a diet that nourishes, and a diet that heals. We need to understand how the different qualities of food impacts our health, for good and for ill. There is no such thing as a wrong food, with perhaps the exception of highly processed, refined foods, but only because they are biologically inappropriate (e.g. microparticles). But almost all...

Benefits of a Carbohydrate Rich Diet

A very popular weight loss concept today encourages the avoidance of a high carbohydrate diet. By eliminating complex carbohydrates, which are broken down into sugar - or glucose-  we are restricting the body’s preferred fuel source. This leaves the body with no choice but to switch from burning sugar to burning fat so that faster and more rapid weight loss will be achieved. While having the body in this fat burning state may be considered beneficial as suggested by specific diet plans, there are definite concerns that arise when carbohydrates are being consumed in very minimal amounts or not at...

Controlling Diabetes with a Balanced Diet and Exercise

Lifestyle changes can make a profoundly positive difference when it comes to controlling diabetes, not only from day to day but also over the long term as well. Because many medications associated with diabetes can create complications — such as the link between the Actos and bladder cancer — many people with diabetes are trying to reduce their need for medications and insulin injections in favor of a natural, balanced approach to blood sugar control. A balanced diet, meaning one that contains the right nutrients in the right amounts, is quite capable of reducing the need for diabetes health medications over...