Janice Stanger, PhD's Blog

"The Ocean Needs Sharks More Than I Need Soup"

2012-05-15T07:29:48Z

Judy Ki Has Retired to a Career of Advocating For Sharks, Chickens, Pigs, and Politically Courageous Candidates

The family meals of Judy Ki’s Hong Kong childhood paved the way for her current whole foods, plant-based diet. She grew up in the Chinese tradition of eating fresh veggie dishes with only small amounts of meat and fish. Judy’s mom taught her to respect animals, including the lizards whose role was to keep down the insect population in the family garden.

Judy, a humane advocate, political activist, and retired middle school science teacher, is a San Diego neighbor. I admired Judy’s work, meeting her at community events and through Facebook, where Judy describes herself as “proud bunny-hugging, bleeding-heart, do-gooder.” She took the time to share her path to activism with me recently over a bountiful salad and baked potato lunch.

At age 20, Judy moved to the US for educational opportunities. She chose California because she disliked cold weather.

An environmental caucus of the Democratic Party in San Diego in 2007 was a turning point for Judy. “A beautiful young blonde lady gave me a Vegan Outreach pamphlet. The year before I had read the book Fast Food Nation and was shocked at the treatment of animals raised for food. After reading the pamphlet on the realities of factory farming, I knew I had to take action,” Judy recalls. She had just retired from a 27 year career with the San Diego Unified School District, and finally had time to devote to activism.

She started by going to Washington DC for the Taking Action for Animals conference sponsored by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). Meanwhile Judy was slowly transitioning her diet. She had stopped eating factory farmed animals right after getting the Vegan Outreach pamphlet. She still consumed some sea animals, but tapered off these choices. Soon she was happily sticking to a 100% plant-based diet.

Read the rest of Judy's journey into activism and quest to save sharks. Please be inspired - you can make this much of a difference yourself!

How To Get Animals Out of Our Vegetables

2012-04-09T00:14:12Z

Davie Maxwell Pioneers Compassionate Farming for Delicious Leafy Greens

Whole food, plant-based diets and veganic farming are natural partners. Veganic gardeners grow crops without manure, bone or blood meal, or other animal products. While plant-based nutrition is a blossoming trend, raising cruelty-free crops is evolving more slowly.

Using veganic methods, Davie Maxwell grows the world’s healthiest, tastiest leafy greens on his 5-acre Hidden Oasis farm near Vancouver, Washington, a short drive from Portland. I was deeply impressed with his quiet dedication, compassion for the critters that nibble his crops, and eagerness to share his learnings when I visited him on a recent trip.

Seventeen years ago, Davie smoked, ate greasy meat and processed foods, and drank soda. Then he had a relatively minor medical problem that kept him in the hospital, just for one night. That was enough for him. He decided to learn to take better care of himself so he would never have to walk into a hospital again. “Once was enough to last me a lifetime,” he winces.

But change to a healthier vegetarian diet was one step at a time. “If someone back then said I was going to be vegan and specialize in growing greens, I would have thought they were nuts,” Davie told me.

Davie grew flowers when he first started to improve his diet, but after a year or two switched to focusing on leafy green nutrition powerhouses.

Click here to read the rest of Davie's story and learn more about growing crops without slaughterhouse and factory farm products

How To Make Delicious Green Sandwiches

2012-03-18T02:42:14Z

These Toppling Creations Can Be Your Go-To Lunch

Green smoothies are everywhere. Thousands of recipes offer intriguing ways to blend leafy greens, such as kale, chard, and spinach, with fruits, plant milks, chocolate, ice, and more for a thick, cold, satisfying drink. Often filling enough to be a meal on their own, green smoothies can be a delicious part of a whole foods, plant-based diet.

Green smoothies often aim to be slightly sweet. People who are not much into leafy green vegetables can enjoy them, because the fruit and other ingredients mask the taste of the greens. So even if you are shy about leafy greens, you can get a healthy dose of raw vegetables in your drink.

Green sandwiches are different. Green leafy veggies are the stars and their taste and texture are fundamental to enjoying the sandwich.

Leafy green vegetables are wonders of taste, nutrition, and appealing color. Calorie for calorie, these foods pack in more vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals (beneficial substances found only in plants) than anything else you can eat. These vegetables also give you omega-3 fatty acids.

Remember, leaves are the nutrient factories of planet earth, harnessing sunlight to drive life on our planet. It’s no wonder that eating leafy vegetables protects against disease and spurs weight loss.

I used to eat nut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch every day in the office for probably a decade. The last few years, however, I’ve branched out to creating green sandwiches. My inspiration was a goal to get more greens effortlessly into my daily menu. I began experimenting with sandwich possibilities and quickly discovered how simple and delicious green sandwiches are.

Here’s what I’ve learned about making green sandwiches

Click here to read the secrets to the best green sandwiches

Three Honest Books Show You How to Beat the Tobacco, Food, and Drug Industries

2012-03-04T06:59:22Z

Protecting Yourself Made Easy

The corporate takeover of health is here. You can see the results in soaring health care costs, millions felled by preventable illness, and acceptance of chronic disease as a way of life.

This post is the hundredth blog on my site. Myth-busting remains my specialty and whole foods, plant-based diets my passion. I’m celebrating by sharing with you three books that taught me how to spot corporate disinformation as easily as a keen-nosed dog can find smelly garbage. These models of myth-busting inspired me in writing The Perfect Formula Diet and still keep me going:

• The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America; Allan M. Brandt, Ph.D.

• Appetite For Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back; Michele Simon

• Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine; Dr. John Abramson

Here are insights from each book.

THE CIGARETTE CENTURY

While pretty much everyone these days admits cigarettes are unhealthy, what you might not know is the sordid history of the tobacco industry. These corporations pioneered underhanded methods to deliberately confuse and mislead consumers for decades while hundreds of thousands suffered agonizing deaths from lung cancer and heart disease.

I’m placing this book first in my list of myth-busters, since the food and drug industries make profitable use big tobacco precedents. Here is a sampling of tactics all three industries love (although big tobacco may be stymied in using some now):

The Healthy Longevity Secret

2012-02-06T07:12:05Z

Six Ways Whole Foods Fuel Long and Active Years

An enjoyable retirement is a great American dream. People save up financially for decades, often planning to spend retirement traveling, with family, and fulfilling long-postponed goals.

The sad fact is that many have their retirement kidnapped by poor health. Americans with Medicare see an average of seven different physicians in a year. Even at age 55, more than half of people have more than one chronic health condition. These medical problems vacuum up money needed for more fun and meaningful activities. The pain and disability of illness are potent barriers to desired activities and quality of life. Yet much of this suffering can be avoided and even reversed.

Whole plant foods are healthy life span enhancers that work together as a powerful team. Here are six reasons why.

• Protective phytochemicals

• Perfectly packaged nutrition

• Inflammatory balance

• Durable, fracture-resistant bones

• Detoxification from toxic chemicals

• Optimize the functioning of your genes

Phytochemicals. Whole plants, including vegetables, fruits, beans, potatoes, whole grains, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices, are brimming with health-boosting compounds called phytochemicals.

Plants form these natural chemicals because they are protecting themselves. Phytochemicals protect vegetation from harm, repel natural insect enemies, and allow plants to flourish.

The range of phytochemicals, eaten together in whole foods and forming a powerful team in your body, can encourage detoxification, neutralize the free radicals that damage and age your cells, balance your immune system, protect brain functioning, keep hormones at ideal levels, reduce blood pressure, and attack bacteria and viruses. You can’t obtain this impressive array of benefits, which supports a long and vigorous life, with animal foods, supplements, or heavily refined foods.

Optimal overall nutrition. Just as whole plant foods deliver the blend of natural phytochemicals your body is designed for, so these foods are the ideal source of the other nutrients that boost lifespan.

All plants need protein, fats, complex carbohydrates, and minerals to survive. All are dense with natural vitamins. As just one example, consider folate.

Click here to continue reading about the secret to healthy, active longevity

Eight Key Questions to Ask Before Going on a Diet

2012-01-03T04:59:35Z

And Why the Best Diet Is No Diet At All

Going on a diet is a serious decision. The eating plan you choose will impact your health, appearance, quality of life, self-image, and self-confidence. With so many diet choices, it’s easy to just go ahead with whatever is trendy or to follow the lead of co-workers, family, or friends.

You can lose weight on just about any combination of foods as long as you keep calories in check. But if you are undermining your health and metabolism in the process, you are making yourself into a time bomb for illness and future stubborn weight. Getting thinner will do you little good if your health and energy deteriorate.

With so much at stake, you can maximize your success by doing a little probing before making your choice. Here are the eight key questions that will guide you to the effective answer.

ONE. How fast will I lose weight? The answer you want to hear is “a pound or two a week.” This may sound slow to you compared to brash promises of some programs. Actually this rate of weight loss is sustainable and can be geared to fat loss (rather than the temporary water loss that is often a hallmark of rapid weight decreases). Plus cutting food intake drastically slows your metabolism, making it progressively more difficult to continue weight loss.

What’s more, given the polluted state of our planet, there is a certainty that you have highly toxic persistent organic pollutants (such as dioxins, DDT, flame retardants, and many more) dissolved in your body fat. When you lose fat too fast, these substances will flood your liver quickly, with a potentially profound effect on your health. This is because these pollutants are fat soluble, not water soluble. The liver is your organ to detoxify these dangerous chemicals and send them out of your body.

TWO. How much weight will I lose? BMI (Body Mass Index) is a measure of how your weight relates to your height The best answer is that you will lose enough weight to get to the ideal BMI of between 20 and 23. Research indicates that this BMI is the most protective against disease, and would be considered to be a trim weight without being skeletal.

Beware of diets that don’t give an answer, or hold up a set number of pounds or percent of your current weight. The amount you need to lose is based on your height and where you are starting.

Read the other six questions that will help you, a co-worker, friend, or family member figure out the best diet

The Perfect Formula Diet Top 10 List of Plant-Based Happenings in 2011

2011-12-19T06:17:12Z

Actually Eleven of the Top Good, Bad, and So-What Legacies of 2011

As 2011 speeds to its end, it’s time to reflect on the top events, organizations, trends, and people that will have a lasting impact on American food choices. The Perfect Formula Diet (PFD) 2011 awards point the way to making 2012 a better year for you and the planet.

THE BEST FOOD OF THE YEAR:

Kale – Kale was all over the media in 2011. This vegetable is universally recognized as dense with minerals, vitamins, phytochemicals (beneficial nutrients found only in plants), and fiber – all with barely any calories. WebMD calls kale “the queen of greens” and notes it is growing in popularity.

A recent Huffington Post blogger calls kale “the new beef.” This is way too kind to the beef industry. However, the point is that you can get all the nutrients in animal foods by eating kale, in a way that is infinitely healthier for you and the planet. Kale comes in many varieties and colors, with flat or curly leaves. You can enjoy kale raw or include it in just about anything you cook. Find this easy-to-grow powerhouse in farmers markets and supermarkets all over the country.

MOST FUN WAY TO CONSUME THE BEST FOOD OF THE YEAR:

Green smoothies – In recent years, green smoothies are leading the trend to have lots of fun with healthy foods. While green smoothies gained popularity several years ago, this drink shows every sign of attaining mainstream acceptance in 2011.

Green smoothies incorporate green leafy veggies (such as kale, spinach, or collard greens) in a blend with sweeter fruits that provides much of the flavor. However, the veggie leaves provide the color, making the drink green.

You can find endless recipes to experiment with until you find the smoothies you most enjoy. A recent google search of “green smoothie kale” yielded 343,000 results. If this is overwhelming, start with the site fatfreevegan.com for some great ideas. Expand from there with other plant-based recipe sites and cook books.

THE MOST DANGEROUS “HEALTH” FOOD OF THE YEAR:

“Wild-caught” salmon – Unless you were living in a tree with no media access in 2011, you could not escape the advice to eat more fish. “Wild caught” salmon is the most highly recommended. When you hear something a million times it must be true, right? Not!

In fact, industry and government are putting out severely skewed and dangerously incomplete “information,” then the popular media parrots the advice that people want to hear. Physicians are too busy to sort through all the thousands of published studies on fish, and fall victim to the fishy hype along with their patients.

Salmon, along with just about all fish, are full of saturated fat, cholesterol, persistent organic pollutants and many other health-killing contaminants, mercury, nasty bacteria, and worm larvae, to name some of the threats to your health from this misrepresented food. For more information, check out this post on ten reasons that seafood is neither safe nor appetizing. Omega-3 fatty acids are important, but the best food to get them from is ground flax seeds.

MEDICAL HYPE OF THE YEAR:

Click here to read the rest of the top 11 list and see the Perfect Formula Diet awards

Ten Ways Mint Helps You Thrive

2011-12-15T07:51:38Z

Enjoy the Refreshing Herb Mint During the Holidays – And Year Round

You may think of mint as a common herb that you casually use for its flavor and aroma. Minty candy canes symbolize the winter holiday season. Iced mint tea is refreshing in the summer heat.

People around the world cultivate mint or enjoy leaves from the plant growing wild. There are about 100 varieties of plants in the mint family. This herb is hardy and may even take over your garden if you start a small patch without containing the roots. .

When you understand how powerful and versatile mint is, you can use it deliberately to ward off disease and even speed recovery from illness. Here are ten great things that mint can do for your health and satisfaction.

ONE. Numerous phytochemicals in mint are powerful anti-oxidants that obliterate the free radicals that menace your cells. Damaged cells can then lead to malfunctioning organ systems. Mint is effective in interrupting this process, thus staving off illness and perhaps even slowing the rate of aging.

TWO. Mint has a strong anti-inflammatory effect. Again this is related to the phytochemicals. Chronic inflammation is at the root of most chronic illness, so the action of mint to balance the inflammation that results from any threat to your body can be beneficial.

THREE. If you are looking for an ally to fight cancer, mint protects you cells from mutation and enhances the DNA repair process. In addition, peppermint oil is steam-distilled from mint leaves. This safe process avoids the toxic hexane used to extract most vegetable oils. So mint oil does not pollute you or the environment with cancer-causing chemicals.

FOUR. Mint helps prevent infections of many types. Researchers have demonstrated mint kills harmful bacteria, viruses, fungi, and yeast that want to set up residence in your body.

Read six more incredible ways mint boosts your health and longevity

Five Top Sites to Get Toxic Chemicals Out of Your Life

2011-12-01T03:50:02Z

Must-Have Information on Harmful Chemicals in Your Home

Whether you are buying personal care and household products for yourself or as a gift for others, you need to be aware of the toxic substances that lurk in these products. Manufacturers lure you in with sexy ads and bright packaging. Chemical-laden choices promise to make your life easier and more fun.

Don’t fall for it. You are probably washing your hair, moisturizing your skin, and cleaning your kitchen with harmful petrochemicals. These toxic materials end up in your body, often dissolved in your fat. The residues wash downstream to deform and kill wildlife. No effective laws slow down industry practices in this area, and many ingredients are not even listed on the packaging. Over 85,000 manmade chemicals are now in use.

There is another way. You can protect yourself, your family, and the planet with facts to make nontoxic choices. But where will you get unbiased information to avoid toxic materials? The popular media, industry groups, and anyone with a monetary interest in the status quo are not going to be reliable guides.

Here are five top sites of nonprofits that are not afraid to speak out with the truth about personal care and household products. These sites have so much useful information you might get overwhelmed. To avoid this, a helpful strategy is to browse one or two sites with a specific product in mind. It might be shampoo, toothpaste, soap, baby products, or kitchen cleaners. See what you can find. Pick up some easy tips to start implementing. Any change in the right direction is better than doing nothing.

If you make every trip to the store a learning experience, soon you will be well down the road to a nontoxic body and nontoxic house. The important thing is to get started and don’t expect to make all changes overnight. It’s easy to keep your head in the sand and be put off by fear of knowing. But actually it’s much scarier not to know. Soon you will be teaching others.

You definitely don’t need a degree in chemistry. Read labels. If you can’t pronounce an ingredient or don’t know what it is, it’s a safe bet you don’t want to put it on your body or give it as a gift. Remember everything you put on your skin gets absorbed through your skin into your bloodstream and eventually your cells. Ditto with chemicals you breathe. Time to begin learning and exploring.

SITE ONE. Environmental Working Group. This comprehensive site showcases toxic materials as a public health issue. The information is specific enough to start you off making better choices after five or ten minutes browsing.

Here are a few of the site’s most to-the-point pages to get you started.

Click here to read about all the sites and get links to them.

How To Make the Best Soup for a Cold Even More Powerful

2011-11-21T07:33:10Z

Why Mushrooms Tune-Up Your Immune System to Stop Colds and Flu

Is there really a way, through diet, to treat and stop a cold or the flu? While chicken soup is routinely believed to be good for a cold, my post “What Kind of Soup Is Best for Colds” shows that lightly cooked vegetable soup is your most potent ally. That post tells why such soup is healing and how best to spice and eat it. The soup is best for a cold day even if you aren’t sick and just want to stay cozy and healthy.

To make your soup even more effective in fighting – and even preventing – colds and flu, add some mushrooms to the pot. Regardless of whether you use inexpensive white button mushrooms or more exotic and expensive kinds, this food revs up your immune system to fight the virus causing your illness.

Numerous studies show that mushrooms are potent for fighting cancer, so when you add mushrooms to your soup you are reducing your risk of malignancy, not just feeling better from your cold or flu.

A study of over 2,000 women in China showed women who ate mushrooms every day had a 64% reduced risk of breast cancer, compared to women who never ate mushrooms. As little as one white button mushroom a day made a difference. If the women drank green tea every day as well, their risk of breast cancer fell an amazing 89%!
A lab study of six mushroom types found the blend of these mushrooms suppressed the proliferation and invasiveness of human breast cancer cells.
Another lab study found an extract of several kinds of mushrooms made by boiling this vegetable inhibited a dangerous process in the breast. The mushroom extract blocks a substance that causes the breast to locally make estrogen, which in turn may fuel breast cancer growth. White button, shiitake, portabello, crimini, and baby button varieties were all effective in this process.

Mushrooms work with your immune system in several ways. Surprisingly, the strongest weapons in the mushroom arsenal include special long chains of glucose molecules. Glucose is the life-giving sugar that fuels your body and provides most of your energy. You may be wondering how this sugar chain (which is one type of dietary fiber) could be helpful in immune-system functioning.

This mushroom-based fiber, called beta-glucan, has a distinctive structure. This glucose chain in beta-glucan is strongly bound together in a way that’s difficult for you to digest. While different mushrooms have diverse kinds of beta-glucan (or even other types of fiber), all have a common type of structure and helpful immune effects for fighting diseases from colds to cancer.

Scientists are just starting to glimpse why beta-glucan has its well-documented protective power. Here’s what we know so far.

Read the rest of the story of mushrooms' amazing healing effects

A Place Where It's Normal To Dump Sand In Your Engine

2011-10-22T23:39:56Z

The Land of Sandy Autos: A Fable

People in the Land of Sandy Autos (LSA) start each morning taking care of their cars. The usual routine, which 99% of men and women embrace, is to mix a teaspoon of sand into a car’s fluids.

Each person has their own opinion of the best method to use, and the media buzz with experts. Some pour the sand directly into engine oil. Others swear it’s better to put the sand into the fuel tank, the brake fluid, transmission fluid, or some other target. A common strategy is to vary each day where to put the sand.

Car repair costs in LSA are out-of-control, increasing at a rate far higher than salary increases. As you are reading this, car repair absorbs fully 17% of the Gross Domestic Product in LSA. The country’s infrastructure is crumbling, schools are going downhill, and homeless people shiver on the streets. LSA cannot effectively address any of these problems because one in six dollars has to be spent on auto repair.

In fact, auto repair is an entrenched industry, the only growth area in a bleak economy. Massive car hospitals revive the sickest vehicles. College students compete for spots in mechanics training institutes, knowing they have a secure future in that career. Auto parts makers thrive. Car scientists invent ever more sophisticated fluid additives to keep the cars running longer with their sandy engines and gas tanks.

A few dissenters try to get their neighbors to wake up. “Just don’t dump sand into your cars,” they say. These dissenters never use sand in their cars, and can go tens of thousands of trouble-free miles with simple preventive oil changes and routine maintenance procedures.

Forget the government of LSA. The elected officials

Read the rest of this fable here

Fish Contains Worm Larvae

2011-10-03T05:28:29Z

Ten Reasons Seafood Is Not Safe or Appetizing

Government, media, and even health professionals flood you with advice to load up your diet with fish and fish oil. The alleged health benefits of eating fish center on a two nutrients: omega-3 fatty acids and protein.

Don’t be fooled by industry and government hype. Plants are the base of the food chain on planet earth. Plants are nutrient factories, while animals are nutrient consumers. Fish are animals, and as such get all their nutrients from plants or from smaller fish who ate plants.

On a whole foods, plant-based diet, you get all the nutrients in fish, plus many more. Your food is beautiful and appealing. All you give up on a plant-based diet are the dangerous drawbacks of fish.

Here are ten reasons to throw fish out of your diet and back into the water where they belong.

One. While fish does contain long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, these animals get this fat by eating marine algae that made the omega-3s in the first place. No animal has the ability to manufacture omega-3s.

Unhealthy fats come packaged with fishy omega-3s. For example, according to a US Department of Agriculture database, 3 ounces of cooked wild salmon has about a gram of dangerous saturated fat – just about exactly that same amount it has of omega-3s. Plus this salmon has 47 milligrams of cholesterol, a substance your body makes naturally and that contributes to clogged arteries when you eat it.

You can get all the omega-3s you need from plants, which form this beneficial fat in the first place.

Two. A much-touted “benefit” of fish is its high concentration of animal protein. Few know that animal protein can directly raise the amount of cholesterol in your blood, in addition to the role that animal fat also plays in this process. Excessive dietary protein can damage your kidneys and liver and may spark the chronic inflammation that underlies most chronic illness.

Proteins are the basis of all life, both plants and animals. These proteins are linked assemblies of 20 amino acids – the same aminos form both plant and animal proteins. Only plants can make essential amino acids, the ones you need from diet. Get your proteins directly from the plant factory, not the animal middleman.

Three. Fish concentrate persistent organic pollutants and other manmade contaminants. Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are highly dangerous chemicals that include PCBs, DDT, dioxins, and PBDEs (flame retardants), among many others. Cancer, nervous system damage, behavior problems, Parkinson’s disease, reproductive disorders, immune system disruption and autoimmune disorders, diabetes, and allergies can all result from exposure to POPs.

Animal foods are most likely the source of 89% to 99% of POPs in your body. A study of U.S. supermarkets found the product most contaminated with PBDE, a class of POPs used as flame retardants, was fish.

If you decide to go for distilled or “purified” fish oil in hopes of avoiding the POPs in whole fish, you are out of luck. Laboratory studies show

Read the rest of the reasons to ditch fish in your diet (including about the worms) here

Why the Much-Hyped Weight Watchers Study Sets You Up for Disappointment

2011-09-12T05:13:35Z

Is the Glass 6 Pounds Full or 42 Pounds Empty?

The media have been overflowing with a recent British study that compared weight loss results of visits to a doctor vs. the Weight Watchers program. A Google search for the common headline “Weight Watchers Doubles Weight Loss” got me 2.7 million results.

This research, published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, is based on a year-long study of 772 overweight and obese adults in the UK, Germany, and Australia. About half were randomly assigned to see their doctor regularly to help them lose weight (called “standard care”), while the other half attended Weight Watchers meetings for free.

The laudatory reporting makes it sound like Weight Watchers has a path to health and a trim body. A review of the actual data, as opposed to the overblown stories, shows just the opposite. The study results indicate this commercial program will disappoint in term of both health and weight. These common programs will keep you from the true weight loss secret: a whole foods, plant-based diet.

Here’s what the routine media won’t tell you. Before the study started, the average participant in The Lancet research was about 5 feet 5 inches tall, weighed 191 pounds, and had an obese BMI of 31.5 for the Weight Watchers group. BMI (Body Mass Index) is a measure of the relationship of your weight to your height, and is commonly used to determine if you are normal weight, overweight, or obese.

Over the course of the year-long study, the participants who received standard care from a doctor lost, on average, about 5 pounds. This does not include the people who dropped out of the study. These people probably lost even less, as unsuccessful results will discourage participants from continuing.

The participants who went to Weight Watchers over the year of the study, with the time spent on meetings, counseling, portioning out food, counting points, setting goals, and all the other program activities lost, on average, 11 pounds. Again, this does not include the results of the drop-outs. In other words, Weight Watchers was good, on average, for an additional 6 pounds of lost weight (compared to just going to a doctor) over the course of an entire year!

To get to a BMI of 23, a truly healthy weight as supported by numerous research studies, the participants needed to drop to 138 pounds. In other words, they had to lose 53 pounds, not the 11 they actually experienced. So maybe a year was not enough to lose that much weight? Actually at a safe pound a week, you can easily lose 53 pounds in a year. This study’s published data show that, for the Weight Watchers group, weight loss leveled off after 9 months. The data did not indicate any further weight reduction was happening or that the participants would lose more than 11 pounds over time.

So here’s the data summary for the average Weight Watchers’ participant:

Read the rest of this story here

Five Ways You Thrive With Flax Seeds for Pennies a Day

2011-09-05T17:33:49Z

Why Consuming Fish for Omega-3s Is Like Eating Radioactive Vegetables

You can’t eat a single nutrient in isolation. This includes overhyped omega-3 fatty acids. Whether you get these nutrients from food or pills, they’re part of a package.

Here’s an illustration. Just imagine for a moment you want to get more fiber into your diet and decide vegetables are the way to do this. So you buy some veggies, but they were grown near Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and have low levels of radioactivity. Not enough to kill you right away, but enough to raise your cancer risk through the rest of your life. How likely are you going to be to want those veggies? Because the fiber and everything else good in the veggies is there, but the radioactivity pollutes the whole package. You can’t have one without the other.

Essential fatty acids give you a similar choice. Do you want your omega-3s packaged with dangerous components that make you sick? Especially when you can get them in packages with lots of other substances that boost your health?

Fish and fish oil, which cleverly written ads and even many nutrition “experts” push for their omega-3s, come most often come packaged with a load of undesirable components:

Mercury
Toxic persistent organic pollutants
Cholesterol
Saturated fat
Parasites
Microbes that cause food poisoning
Drugs used on fish farms
Destruction of the marine ecosystem that supports life on our planet.

Lab analysis proves that even factory distillation leaves many pollutants behind in fish oil. So although the omega-3s are present, so are a lot of things you don’t want, but have to accept if you choose this package. Remember, plants are the base of the food chain, so there is no desirable nutrient in fish that did not originate in far more nutritious plants.

Flax seeds are a way better option, a package of gifts you want. Keep in mind you need to grind flax seed to get its nutritional benefits. The seed has a very hard shell. If you don’t grind it before eating, it will go through your digestive system intact and you get no benefit.The best way to grind flax is in a coffee grinder. Grind enough for a week or two and keep it refrigerated, or buy it already ground. Eat two tablespoons a day sprinkled on cereal, oatmeal, salads, wraps, grains, or mixed in smoothies.

Here are five ways these tiny powerhouses nourish your needs.

Read the rest of this story here

Three and a Half Satisfying Whole Foods. Plant-Based Recipes

2011-08-21T03:36:13Z

Tracy Childs, a vegan cooking instructor and wellspring for whole foods, plant-based recipes, shares these ideas for delicious meals you can make quickly. The ingredients are easy to find and the results will please you and anyone you share these dishes with.

Tracy is an instructor for The Cancer Project cooking classes. She and her partners also teach whole foods, plant-based cooking classes in San Diego through their company Veg-Appeal.

30 Minute Curried Red Lentil and Couscous Stew

Makes about 2 quarts (8 1-cup servings)

Red lentils cook very quickly and are a great source of plant protein and fiber. You won’t find yourself spending a long time in the kitchen, getting this filling and satisfying meal to the table! Serve this dish with braised collards or kale or a green salad and whole-grain bread, pita, basmati rice, chapattis or by itself.

Ingredients:

1 cup red dry lentils, rinsed

1/2 onion, chopped  or 2 teaspoons dried minced onions

2 celery stalks, sliced thinly

1 small or ½ large sweet potato or yam or 2 carrots, chopped in ¾ in. pieces, or grated

1 teaspoon cumin seeds or ground cumin

5 cups water or vegetable broth

1/2 cup dry whole wheat couscous or quinoa

4-6 cloves, minced or 2 teaspoons dried minced garlic

1/3 cup tomato paste

2 teaspoons curry powder

freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 teaspoon salt, or to taste

3 tablespoons nutritional yeast (optional)

Directions:

1. Combine lentils, onion, celery, cumin, sweet potato, yam or carrot, and water or broth in a large pot. Bring to a simmer, then cover and cook on low until lentils and vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes.

2. Stir in couscous or quinoa, garlic, tomato paste, curry powder, black pepper, salt, and nutritional yeast. Replace cover and continue cooking with a low boil until grain is tender, about 5 minutes for couscous and 15 minutes for quinoa. Turn off heat, remove cover, stir and allow the stew to cool for 5 minutes to thicken and serve.

Variation: (the half a recipe)

Read the rest of Tracy's recipes here.

Read about Tracy’s journey as a plant-based advocate, vegan mom, and well-fed traveler here.