Month:

My oldest child recently went off to college – nearly 1000 miles away from home. Obviously, given this distance, he wasn’t going to be coming home for dinner or visit regularly on weekends! One of my biggest challenges with this life change was to help him figure out how to stay healthy. Eating in the college cafeteria and living in the first year dorms without an easily accessible kitchen presents a unique set of obstacles.

It never ceases to amaze me how manufacturers so brazenly play bait and switch with the food labels for their products. The latest ingredient game that educated consumers need to know about is seitan. This is especially true for those who may be unknowingly eating it in the form of sprouted breads such as the very popular brand Ezekiel.

The prevalence of peanut allergies continues to skyrocket worldwide. In fact, it remains the fastest growing food allergy at the present time. Frequency in US schoolchildren alone more than tripled from 1997 to 2008. Unlike other food allergies, a peanut allergy is seldom outgrown and is also one of the most dangerous. Those suffering its effects typically must carry an EpiPen for emergency treatment of anaphylaxis.

Go into a supermarket or healthfood store these days and you will be hard pressed to find products that are NOT labeled as natural. Natural is everywhere, even when a product is clearly not. Attractively presented bottles of GMO canola oil loaded with Roundup residue?  Natural!

Ice cream with added rat poison antifreeze to make it easily scoopable right out of the freezer?  

Several years ago, I wrote an article concerning the frustratingly persistent myths about wisdom tooth extraction. Whether dentists care to admit it or not, the truth is that in over two-thirds of cases, wisdom teeth absolutely do NOT need to be removed. This according to Dr. Jay Friedman DDS in a study published in the American Journal of Public Health. 

So many of you emailed about how much you enjoyed the old fashioned sugar cookie recipe I posted recently that I thought I would share another one for peanut butter cookies.

My tween actually took a conventional (yuck-o) peanut butter cookies recipe and converted it to healthy ingredients in order to make the yummy cookies pictured above.

The average person consumes around a cup of refined sugars every single day. This is 16 tablespoons per day and adds up to just shy of three pounds per week, or 152 pounds per year! In 1970, Americans ate 123 pounds of sugar per year, and 100 years ago, it was half that amount (1).