A simple recipe to make stewed apples without added sugar and with warming spices. Growing up in a Midwest family, we went all-out for Sunday morning breakfast. It always included my dad’s stewed apples, pancakes, bacon, scrambled eggs with cheese, and muffins. Now I’m bringing back those stewed apples NS style! I promise this is…
What should we eat—and not eat—to lower the cardiovascular disease risk factor lipoprotein(a)? Lipoprotein A, also known as Lp(a), is an independent, genetic, and causal factor for cardiovascular disease and heart attacks. At any level of LDL cholesterol, our risk of heart attack and stroke is two- to three-fold higher when our Lp(a) is elevated.…
What could help explain severe coronary disease in someone with a healthy lifestyle who is considered to be at low cardiovascular disease risk? A young man ended up in the ER after a heart attack and was ultimately found to have severe coronary artery disease. Given his age, blood pressure, and cholesterol, his ten-year risk…
How do the nutrition and health effects of quinoa compare to other whole grains? “Approximately 90% of the world’s calories are provided by less than one percent of the known 250,000 edible plant species.” The big three are wheat, corn, and rice, and our reliance on them may be unsustainable, given the ongoing climate crisis.…
Implausible explanations for the obesity epidemic serve the needs of food manufacturers and marketers more than public health and an interest in truth. When it comes to uncovering the root causes of the obesity epidemic, there appears to be manufactured confusion, “with major studies reasserting that the causes of obesity are ‘extremely complex’ and ‘fiendishly…
Like the tobacco industry adding extra nicotine to cigarettes, the food industry employs taste engineers to accomplish a similar goal of maximizing the irresistibility of its products. The plague of tobacco deaths wasn’t due just to the mass manufacturing and marketing of cheap cigarettes. Tobacco companies actively sought to make their products even more crave-able…
The power of the “eat more” food environment can overcome our conscious controls. Food and beverage companies frame body weight as “a matter of personal choice.” Even when we aren’t distracted, the power of the “eat more” food environment may sometimes overcome our conscious controls of overeating. One look around the room at a dietician…
We all like to think we make important life decisions, like what to eat, consciously and rationally, but if that were the case, we wouldn’t be in the midst of an obesity epidemic. The opening words of the Institute of Medicine’s report on the potential threat posed by food ads were: “Marketing works.” Certainly, there…
The unprecedented rise in the power, scope, and sophistication of food marketing starting around 1980 aligns well with the blastoff slope of the obesity epidemic. In the 1970s, the U.S. government went from just subsidizing some of the worst foods to paying companies to make more of them: “Congress passed laws reversing long-standing farm policies…
Why are U.S. taxpayers giving billions of dollars to support the likes of the sugar and meat industries? The rise in calorie surplus sufficient to explain the obesity epidemic was less a change in food quantity than in food quality. Access to cheap, high-calorie, low-quality convenience foods exploded, and the federal government very much played…