I recently had dinner with a friend who is fit, active, healthy and tries to eat well; he’s doing everything right. We got to talking about food labels and marketing claims. He told me that he reads the labels and that he thinks he’s making good healthy food choices. It soon became apparent that he was reading the product claims on the front labels and occasionally, the nutrition facts label, but not the list of ingredients. I challenged him to read the ingredient list on the foods in his cabinets.  We pulled out the first item handy, Progresso Bread Crumbs, [Read More]

We have all seen or heard horror stories around today’s “factory farms.” It is sometimes to hear or see it and go on eating business as usual.  We want changes to be made and at the same time, we know we need to get back to eating more vegetables and less processed foods. As a result, some of us choose to forego meat completely and opt for a totally plant-based diet (though the plant horror stories pour in daily as well! Even organic plants are increasing grown from GMO or compromised seeds or in soil that has contaminants so the [Read More]

Despite popular belief that it’s the cholesterol in your food that influences cholesterol in the bloodstream, that has not been proven to be the case. Your body makes 75% of the cholesterol it needs to survive for healthy brain and cell function. The other 25% it MUST take in from the food you eat. When you eat more cholesterol in your diet, the body simply adjusts its cholesterol production downward to compensate. Research confirms that eating cholesterol-rich foods does not increase your cholesterol levels; the body is an adaptive, reactive mechanism which responds to changing conditions and balances appropriately. (There [Read More]

A friend of mine called me recently and said she’d read an article about a really important test to assess your wellness and she was concerned because she had gone through her records and her doctor had never given her that test. She wondered if she should demand it or change doctors or what she should do. When she told me the article was about homocysteine, I knew she had read that high levels of homocysteine in the blood are reliable risk factors for heart attack, stroke, diabetes, cancer, neurological conditions such as Alzheiner’s and Parkinson’s, thyroid concerns, infertility, depression, [Read More]

You can’t pick up the paper or scan the online headlines without seeing something about cholesterol and heart health. Recent headlines challenged the guidelines and argued more people need statins. If you read my previous article on cholesterol, you’ll know why that’s not the answer. In this article, I’d like to share with you why why LDL cholesterol is not ‘bad’ and why having your good LDL numbers doesn’t mean you are safe from a heart attack or stroke. Cholesterol levels are not a good predictor of your heart health and in this article, you will begin to see why [Read More]