Why is meat consumption a risk factor for diabetes? Why does there appear to be a stepwise reduction in diabetes rates as meat consumption drops? Instead of avoiding something in meat, it may be that people are getting something......

We've known that being overweight and obese are important risk factors for type 2 diabetes, but, until recently, not much attention has been paid to the role of specific foods. I discuss this issue in my video, Why Is......

The relative paralysis of our arteries for hours after eating fast food and cheesecake may also occur after consuming olive oil. Olive oil was found to have the same impairment to endothelial function as high-fat foods like sausage and......

Depression is a serious and common mental disorder responsible for the majority of suicides. As I've covered in Antioxidants & Depression, intake of fruits, vegetables, and naturally occurring antioxidants have been found to be protectively associated with depression. Therefore,......

The endothelium is the inner lining of our blood vessels. Laid end-to-end, endothelial cells from a single human would wrap more than four times around the world. And it's not just an inert layer; it's highly metabolically active. I've......

Back in the 1960s, a patient isolator unit was developed for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Because our immune system cells were often caught in the friendly fire, up to 50% of cancer patients died of infections before they could......

Fiber continues to be singled out as a nutrient of public health concern. We're getting only about half the minimum recommended intake on average. There is a fiber gap in America. Less than 3 percent meet the recommended minimum.......

Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is one of the most common disorders of the digestive tract. The two most typical symptoms are heartburn and regurgitation of stomach contents into the back of the throat, but GERD is not just burning......

The medical literature has been historically hostile to organic foods, blaming in part erroneous information supplied by the health food movement for our ignorance of nutrition. But until just a few generations ago, all food was organic. It's kind......

Are organic foods safer and healthier than conventional alternatives? Those are two separate questions. Some consumers are interested in getting more nutrients; others are more concerned about getting fewer pesticides. Let's do nutrition first. As seen in my video,......

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rates of all of our top 10 killers have fallen or stabilized except for one, suicide. As shown in my video, Antioxidants & Depression, accumulating evidence indicates that free......

In my video If Fructose is Bad, What About Fruit?, I explored how adding berries to our meals can actually blunt the detrimental effects of high glycemic foods, but how many berries? The purpose of one study out of......

If oatmeal is so powerful that it can clear up some of the ravages of chemotherapy just applied to the skin (see my video Oatmeal Lotion for Chemotherapy-Induced Rash), what might it do if we actually ate it? Oats......

The traditional Mediterranean diet can be considered mainly, but not exclusively, as a plant-based diet, and certainly not a whole foods, plant-based diet. Olive oil and wine can be considered essentially fruit juices. Even if one is eating a......

Olives and nuts are plant foods, and as such, are packed with antioxidants, raising the antioxidant level of our bloodstream resulting in lower fat oxidation and free radical DNA damage, but what's happening inside people's arteries? Researchers measured the......

One sign of changing U.S. demographics is that salsa has replaced ketchup as America's #1 table condiment. One of the popular salsa ingredients is cilantro, described as one of the "most polarizing and divisive food ingredients known." Some people......

A recent article in the journal, Meat Science, acknowledged that a sector of the population perceives meat as a food that is detrimental to their health because of studies associating meat consumption with heart disease and cancer. So, the......

Intake of saturated fats and added sugars, two of the primary components of a modern Western diet, is linked with the development of Alzheimer's disease. There has been a global shift in dietary composition, from traditional diets high in......

58,000 Americans are diagnosed with kidney cancer every year, and 13,000 die. And the numbers have been going up. Approximately 4 percent of cases are hereditary, but what about the other 96 percent? The only accepted risk factor has......

There are dietary guidelines for food, but what about for beverages? A Beverage Guidance Panel was "assembled to provide guidance on the relative health and nutritional benefits and risks of various beverage categories." They ranked them from one to......

If the fructose in sugar and high fructose corn syrup has been considered "alcohol without the buzz" in terms of the potential to inflict liver damage, what about the source of natural fructose, fruit? If you compare the effects......

In the prevention of cardiovascular disease, the consumption of fruits and vegetables is crucial. Preventing the oxidation of cholesterol may be one of the mechanisms by which fruits and vegetables reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes. However,......

In 1992 a controversial paper was published suggesting sperm counts have been dropping around the world over the last 50 years. However, this remains a matter of debate. It's notoriously difficult to determine sperm counts in the general population......

Beans, chickpeas, split peas and lentils are packed with nutrients and play a role in the prevention of chronic disease, but most can't be eaten raw. Some can be sprouted, though. Boiling is the most common cooking method, which......

In my video, Does Meditation Affect Cellular Aging?, I discussed how stress reduction through meditation might be able to lengthen telomeres, the protective caps at the tips of our chromosomes that tend to deplete as we age. What about......