1. Start with exercise. A healthy diet is built on a base of regular exercise, which keeps calories in balance and weight in check.

2. Focus on food, not grams. The Healthy Eating Pyramid doesn’t worry about specific servings or grams of food, so neither should you. It’s a simple, general guide to how you should eat when you eat.

3. Go with plants. Eating a plant-based diet is healthiest. Choose plenty of vegetables, fruits, whole grains and healthy fats like olive and canola oil.

4. Cut way back on American staples. Red meat, refined grains, potatoes, sugary drinks, and salty snacks are part of American culture, but they’re also really unhealthy. Go for a plant-based diet rich in non-starchy vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. And if you eat meat, fish and poultry are the best choices.

5. Take a multivitamin, and maybe have a drink. Taking a multivitamin can be a good nutrition insurance policy. Moderate drinking for many people can have real health benefits, but it's not for everyone. Those who don’t drink shouldn’t feel that they need to start.

source: read more here

The Obesity Paradox

This article is interesting on many levels. It shows how misguided we can be about the food we eat and how easily mislead we are by labelling. As a society, North Americans listen too much to marketing and too little to what our stomachs are telling us.

“People who eat at McDonald’s know their sins,” Dr. Chandon said, “but people at Subway think that a 1,000-calorie sandwich has only 500 calories.” His advice is not for people to avoid Subway or low-fat snacks, but to take health halos into account.

find out about your "health halo" here

Reality Bites....Eating Organic All the Time

Fruits, vegetables and animals can be 100 percent organic. What about people?

In a fascinating experiment — on himself — Dr. Alan Greene, a pediatrician and author in Danville, Calif., decided to find out. For the last three years, Dr. Greene has eaten nothing but organic foods, whether he’s cooking at home, dining out or snacking on the road.

read the rest of the story here

Fruit Demystified

from xkcd.com

A New Face for ADHD

The emergence of a major celebrity with attention deficit has revealed a schism in the community of patients, parents, doctors and educators who deal with the disorder. For years, these people have debated whether it means a lifetime of limitations or whether it can sometimes be a good thing.

Children with the disorder typically have trouble sitting still and paying attention. But they may also have boundless energy and a laserlike focus on favorite things — qualities that could be very helpful in, say, an Olympic athlete.

read complete article

Ten Thousand Villages Sale

On Saturday December 6 from 10-4 pm and Sunday December 7 from 12-4 pm, Fair Trade Algoma will be hosting a Ten Thousand Villages Sale (just in time for the holidays)! Come out for yummy baking, coffee and tea, and hundreds of fair trade handicrafts!!

All proceeds from the sale will support the Algoma U Student Refugee Program.

It will be held in the Shingwauk Auditorium at Algoma University.

Hope to see you there!

Would you like some sardines with your orange juice?

OFF the coast of Peru swim billions of sardines and anchovies: oily, smelly little fish, rich in nutritious omega-3 fatty acids. Their spot on the food chain is low; many will be caught, ground up, and fed as fishmeal to bigger animals.

But a few have a more exalted destiny: to be transported, purified and served at North American breakfast tables in the form of Tropicana Healthy Heart orange juice and Wonder Headstart bread. These new products promise to deliver the health benefits of fish oil without the smell and the taste — without, in fact, the fish.

read about the proliferation of functional foods and nutraceuticals here