Food and Diet. Find daily health food tips and ideas from Dr. David Samadi. Discover healthy food for healthy living. Explore major food issues and debates related to health such as buying and cooking with organic food, genetically modified food (GMO versus Non-GMO), nutrition, dieting epidemic, obesity, disease prevention, best digestion foods.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever gone on a diet to lose some weight. Raise both hands if you have gone on more than one diet. Most likely, many of you raised both hands - not unusual considering there are dozens upon dozens of diets vying for our attention. From high protein to low fat to low carbohydrate, all of them will claim to be the latest and greatest way of eating to solve your weight loss woes.
Read MoreEven though animal products are our best sources of high-quality protein, the good news is plant protein sources can be just as healthy in providing the necessary protein you need.
Read MoreHere’s an experiment to try – tell your family liver is on the menu for dinner tonight. Watch their reaction. You should be able to tell right away who loves liver or who doesn’t just by their expression on their face after your announcement.
Read MoreThe key to eating grains is to choose grains that are considered whole and not refined
Read MoreMore than ever, the pluses of pulses as a nutritional powerhouse for achieving good health continues to grow around the globe. From as early as 800 BC, pulses have had an impact on feeding the world and their popularity helped pushed pulses onto center stage when the United Nations declared 2016 as the International Year of Pulses.
Read MoreTake a walk down the dairy aisle and you’ll notice a big change. The refrigerator case that was once dominated by cow’s milk is taking on a new look. Cow’s milk is having to give up some shelf space and is slowly being edged out by plant-based milk alternatives. You may have spotted and even used soymilk, almond, coconut, rice, cashew, oat, hemp, quinoa, or hazelnut, just to name a few.
Read MoreWhen we think of pineapple, images of Hawaiian women in grass hula skirts placing flowered leis around our necks come to mind. This exotic fruit was first introduced to the Hawaiian islands in 1813 and by 1930, nine million cases of pineapple were exported out of the state by nine different canneries. By the 1960’s, Hawaii was responsible for growing 80 percent of the world’s pineapple. Hawaii still grows pineapple but over the years, it is no longer a profitable place to grow and process this fruit. Today, Hawaii currently only grows about two percent of the world’s pineapple.
Read MoreIt happens to the best of us – weight gain. It wasn’t like you went to bed one night skinny and the next morning you woke up plump. No, the weight gain was gradual and you may be blaming everything under the sun except for one thing – your job.
Read MoreWhat would we do without water – nothing! Out of the six classes of nutrients (water, carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins and minerals) water is undoubtedly the most important nutrient of all. Our bodies cannot store water or make it on its own and each day it must be replaced as we constantly lose water through our urine, feces, sweat, skin and lungs. Most of us could go for weeks without eating food but would last only a few days without water.
Read MoreWeight loss – it’s a constant battle for many and even when a person does lose some weight, the other struggle is keeping the weight off. How do some people successfully lose significant amounts of weight and maintain the loss while others lose and then regain weight in repeating cycles?
Read MoreEdamame – ever eaten it? There was a time when very few people knew what edamame even was. But ever since Americans took a strong liking to sushi back in the 1980’s when Japanese restaurants in California served them with Japanese beer, the popularity of eating edamame has steadily grown over the years. It was in 1994 when packaged ready-to-eat edamame appeared in a supermarket for the first time.
Read MoreIs there any advantage to making your omelet with only egg whites, and not the whole egg? It does seem like a popular enough option at most diners, so there must be something to it. But how much is legitimate nutrition science, and how much is just a marketer’s attempt to make you feel better about paying more for the same thing?
Read MoreTumeric – a spice spanning several cultures has a long history dating back about 4, 000 years ago. Native to areas such as India, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia, turmeric has been used to treat a variety of conditions over the centuries and is still revered as a time-honored medicinal seasoning to this day. Over 1 billion people worldwide regularly consume turmeric as part of their diet.
Read MoreFor anyone who likes their diet soda, a new study may cause you to pause on slurping down your favorite drink. An analysis of more than 4,000 participants in the Framingham Heart Study Offspring cohort, found that those who drank at least one artificially sweetened beverage a day were almost three times more likely to develop ischemic stroke and 2.9 times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease over the course of 10 years than those who drank artificially sweetened beverages less than once a week.
Read MoreNot only do our daily food choices play a substantial role on the influence and specific type of cancer that may develop but our food choices may also provide a protective role in reducing our risk of this deadly disease.
Read MoreIt’s the little things like forgetting someone’s name or needing to constantly write yourself reminder notes. For the time being most of us just chalk it up to getting older but those common lapses of memory we all tend to share could also signal a future cognitive decline. What most of us fear is dementia, a catch-all term for a wide range of symptoms associated with a decline in memory or other thinking skills severe enough to reduce a person’s ability to perform everyday activities. We fear the cognitive decline could be a symptom of the worst of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease.
Read MoreIt appears the ban on trans fats that began in July 2007 in certain areas of the nation are doing what it was meant to do – reduce heart disease. A new study led by a team at Yale University and published in the journal of JAMA Cardiology, has found since that ban, heart attacks and stroke have fallen by more than 6 percent three years after New York City and some counties within the state banned them.
Read MoreHere is a list of 8 foods you may be surprised that are higher in sugar than you realized
Read MoreHere are 7 foods that if consumed regularly, may help give your skin a more natural glow, smoothness and with fewer breakouts getting you ready to face the season ahead:
Read MoreWe love our tea. In fact we love it so much tea is the most widely-consumed beverage in the world, second only to water. Hundreds of millions of people around the globe enjoy drinking tea and studies have shown green tea provides some of the most nutritional health benefits of all.
Green tea is made from unfermented leaves and reportedly contains the highest concentration of powerful antioxidants called polyphenols. Antioxidants are substances that fight free radicals, damaging compounds in the body that change cells, damage DNA, and even cause cell death. The belief by scientists is free radicals contribute to the aging process along with the development of health problems including cancer and heart disease. Antioxidants such as polyphenols found in green tea, can neutralize free radicals and may reduce or perhaps prevent some the damage they cause. These same polyphenols may also be the answer to a youthful glow as research has discovered that these compounds in green tea may protect skin against UV radiation as well as improve skin quality such as elasticity and dryness.
Because of the polyphenol chemicals found in green tea, researchers believe green tea’s potent health properties derive from them. Polyphenols contained in teas are classifies as catechins. Green tea contains six primary catechin compounds with one of them being apigallocatechin gallate or EGCG. ECCG is the most studied polyphenol component in green tea and the most active. Some researchers think the polyphenols in green tea, giving it its bitter flavor, seem to have greater antioxidant effects than vitamin C.
Green tea also contains alkaloids including caffeine, theobromine, and theophylline. An amino acid compound also found in green tea, L-theanine, has been studied for its calming effects on the nervous system.
Besides the possibility of preventing major chronic diseases, green tea has been used in traditional Chinese and Indian medicine to help relieve or cure other health conditions such as using it in various ways:
· A stimulant
· A diuretic to help rid the body of excess fluid
· An astringent to control bleeding and help heal wounds
· To treat gas
· To help regulate body temperature and blood sugar
· To promote digestion
· To improve mental processes
To help maximize the most health benefits green tea has to offer, there are certain steps one can take to do this:
· The best source of tea polyphenols is brewed green tea.
· Steep the tea bag or tea leaves for at least three minutes as it takes time for the polyphenols to dissolve into the water.
· Squeeze in a few drops of lemon juice which not only supplies some vitamin C but also protects the polyphenols from being oxidized and lost.
· An 8 ounce cup of fresh-brewed green tea contains about 320 milligrams of polyphenols, including roughly 190 mg of EGCG.
· It is recommended to consume about 2 to 3 cups of green tea daily to receive the health benefits it may provide.
If you are unsure if drinking green tea is safe for you or not, always discuss with your healthcare provider as to what they recommend. People with high blood pressure, heart, liver or kidney problems, or with anxiety may need to avoid large amounts of green tea or avoid it altogether.
