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Beans: A toot-orial
Don’t say you didn’t chuckle when in Blazing Saddles, Gov. Le Petomane served baked beans around the evening campfire inspiring a prodigious, albeit side-splitting cowpoke cacophony.
Admitting to it or not, humans expel ozone-depleting methane gas several dozen odiferous times daily. Not an appetizing contemplation, but, for gosh sakes, it’s a biological fact of life. If cheeky explosions didn’t occur, my snickering grandkids assert we’d explode. Hoochie mama, the humanity! Gas in our intestines comes from several sources: swallowing air, seeping into our intestines from our blood; chemical reactions, aging food and unwelcome bacteria colonizing your inner ecology. Understandably, gastrointestinal maintenance seems germane. Read the rest of this entry »
Celebration: A nutritional paradox
Hey, it’s Uncle Miltie’s birthday. Let’s party with a super-sized, double-cheese, pepperoni and sausage pizza — one with gooey cheese in the crust. Oh, yeah, and on the way to KFC, (where the one thing missing is “U”), stop by the grocery and score a gooey, psychedelically painted sheet cake with tons of icing and a bottle of chardonnay?” Why not plunge a corkscrew into the ol’ boys heart?
We’re a creative, kind and fun-loving species. We’re also gullible and adore taking chances like bungee jumping, driving without seatbelts, smoking, texting and driving, cheating on taxes, sending money to Jim and Tammy or reclining buck-naked in one of those gen-u-ine, imitation sun-tan chambers. When we get stressed and depressed, or feel the need to celebrate, we find comfort and oral entertainment from food and beverage, our best buddies. Read the rest of this entry »
The standard American diet isn’t
You know what’s caused the national health crisis? For 100 years we’ve heeded the dietary guidelines established by a litany of uneducated and irresponsible nutritionally challenged federal health “experts” regarding what’s best for the nation’s health. Ergo, they flung open the gates of degenerative disease and extended the welcome mat of malnutrition.
If we’re so intellectually advanced and know what’s best for the rest of the world, why haven’t we discovered the optimum diet required by our gift, the temple? You deserve that. Imagine how much knowledge could have been amassed regarding the human condition if we deemed it socially important. However, Big Pharma does their best spending billions of your dollars to misinform saying they are — snicker — healing gods and food has nothing to do with disease or the lack thereof. Most chronic disease is linked to a particular nutritional deficiency. The earth is eternally the superior source of human nourishment. Read the rest of this entry »
The produce aisle: God’s apothecary
My entire life would have been complete without overhearing a burly, manly man remark, “I hate veggies so much that I’d eat boogers before I’d eat spinach.”
Are you struggling to embrace a healthy diet because you “turnip” your nose at produce? Nearly three out of four Americans aren’t meeting the five-a-day of fruits and vegetables, a mere two-and-a-half cups. Unless you’re an aficionado of late-life morbidity, a shift in your culinary paradigm is essential to blossom and return to wholeness. Gardening, playing golf, wrestling with the grandkids, power shopping, housework, lugging out the trash or engaging in family walks requires a willing, energetic body. After 16 years of catering for NBA private charters I noticed remarkable changes in the athletes’ diet. Today’s players are sensitive that what they place into their overpaid body and what they eat profoundly affects their health, performance and paycheck. We observed teams who constantly ate poor diets had losing records. They didn’t think vegetables were sissy food. Read the rest of this entry »
Aging doesn’t have to suck
Are you persistently sapped and mentally done in? Feel like a wrinkled up dog-doo snow-cone? Do tackling weekend mental and physical chores feel like swimming through Jell-O? Is that what’s bumming you out, bucko?
Guess what? You’re aging. The oxidative effects of aging are predictable, but you needn’t hand over your youth to age-related disease until you’re darned good and ready. After all, no one is charge of your health but you. Disease is not a natural progression of aging. It’s a result of nutrient deficiencies and, occasionally, genes. You are what you absorb from food and drink. What you eat becomes part of you, profoundly affecting the aging process. Maximum-quality building materials from the universe, not a CEO, make a measurable difference in how you feel now and how your body wears for tomorrow. If you feed yourself poorly, you’ll look and feel old sooner rather than later, and all the spa spackle on earth won’t conceal it. Read the rest of this entry »
Seasonal Affective Disorder or normal stress response?
Courtesy of St. Francis Hospital & Health Centers
If you’ve felt a sense of letdown after the holidays, you’re not alone. For many years, seasonal affective disorder has been described and considered to be the culprit behind the wintertime blues. The disorder is caused primarily by decreased or absent sunlight.
The treatment of choice is exposure to full-spectrum light 20 minutes a day at 10,000 lumens. Unless you spend the pre-dawn to post-dusk hours in a windowless environment day after day and week after week, in Indiana, any depressed mood during late fall or winter is likely to be due to a combination of various changes and stresses over a period of months, including decreased sunlight. Read the rest of this entry »
All hail stevia!
Savvy Americans are awakening from a slumber of blind trust after discovering the white sugar they’ve been eating is a proven human toxin — not the least compatible with the needs of the holy temple’s biochemistry. Ergo plagues of diabetes, hypoglycemia, hypertension, elevated cholesterol and triglycerides, increased arterial plaque, immune suppression, insulin resistance, obesity, H1N1 and heart disease freely loiter about a once-healthy citizenry. Bluntly, sugar sucks. Read the rest of this entry »
For some, wheat’s not so neat!
Americans surely love their bread. Sorry to say, most Americans and physicians don’t identify food in context with disease. For instance, over the last 50 years of having wheat shoved down our throats in manifold forms, the Mayo Clinic reports Celiac Disease has become common, affecting 1 out of 100 people. Read the rest of this entry »
Doctors attribute this increase mostly to glutinous wheat flour and aberrant foods we have been eating and changes in the environment.
My compliments to the chemist!
Keep your trap shut. How dare you encourage folks to think for themselves! We know what’s best for them.”
As a nutritional Shock-Jock, this food-truth-seeking column has received several bullying love letters from the Corn Refiners Association informing me I’m stupid, not learned and naïve. I proudly framed them and hung them on the wall. Hey, at least they read our column. Read the rest of this entry »
Grilled-cheese redo: Nothing lost in translation
Gosh, until recently I assumed everybody grew up eating grilled-cheese sandwiches accompanied by a steaming bowl of canned tomato soup. Alas, no. Read the rest of this entry »
Twenty, 30 and 40-somethings are unfamiliar with this warm-and-fuzzy indigenous comfort food due to several generations of fast-food-oriented moms and dads indifferent to handing down tradition, opting instead for pre-made convenient, machine cuisine.