This is the time of year when many families are juggling gift buying and ordinary demands – like the food budget. Because of this challenge, I decided to write about a not so holiday-like issue – the food budget. I guess that I should proclaim my bias from the get-go. I’m writing about how the […]

I haven’t been paying much attention to the weather in most places around the northern hemisphere, but I know that here in the mountain west, the weather has been glorious. Of course, that’s my personal opinion. I suppose if I were into skiing, then I’d be bummed, as it’s not really been very cold. Yes, […]

Life is so complex today. Years ago I had dismissed ramen as a low-cost junk-food, high-calorie, palatable because of cheap additives, but except for calories, nutritionally impoverished. Now I am awakened to the bizarre finding that these shelf-stable bricks of twisted noodles are near the top of the food chain in two significant populations. One […]

Just yesterday, I copied a smoothie recipe from an online source. One of the ingredients was coconut oil; I asked; “Why would I add this to my smoothie?” A week or two before that I was in a conversation with a young woman who is studying nutrition at a holistic health establishment and she shared […]

As so often happens two items cross my pathway in a close proximity and cause some neurons to say; “Look, these two answer one another.” That very thing happened last week. A study in a Pediatrics journal that didn’t make sense seemed to be answered by John Oliver, a comedian. The first was a puzzling […]

This past week I read a very entertaining and eye-catching article about edible rainbows by Maura Judkis. If you don’t get the Washington Post or missed the article, at least take a peek so you can see the rainbow bagels available in Brooklyn at the beginning of the article. If you’re unaware of what’s happening […]

Although the food processors are doing a fabulous job of masking the inclusion of excessive added sugar in processed foods the fact remains that the public health professionals have done an equally fabulous of helping the public realize that too much sugar is a detriment to health. As the public health educators continue to help […]

I’ve written quite a bit about the drawbacks and undesirability of processed foods; I’ve often used the words highly processed but a newly released study has amplified the term “ultra-processed” and has shown how harmful it is, and brought me back to the subject. The new study is published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) […]

The term “Hedonic Hunger” gives a name to a very powerful concept in understanding why we overeat certain foods; and why we can’t stop ourselves once we start eating them. Hedonism is from the Greek, and it means seeking pleasure. Hunger is normally not out of control; it is regulated by our bodies in a […]

Another five years have gone by and thus the new 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines have been released jointly by the Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). You may think that the guidelines don’t really have much to do with you; but by understanding them, your own diet can be improved. […]