healthy

With Mother’s Day just around the corner, most people are scrambling for gifts. Despite what commercial businesses might tell you, most mothers appreciate time spent with their children more than any cheesy greeting card or last-minute bouquet from the grocery store. But second to time are homemade gifts, where a tangible amount of thoughtful time and effort went into making something for your mom. Here are seven easy, holistic, and fun gifts for your mom this Mother’s Day. Get crafting!

Carrot cake holds a special place in my heart. Ever since I was little, I’d always pick the carrot cake muffin at the mall. What kid in their right mind would pick carrot cake!? This one, apparently. While all the other kids shoveled in the chocolate chip muffins, I sat with my carrot one, happy as a bunny.

Teas might feel more like a winter drink—something to cozy up with on a cold night, or wake up to on a crisp morning—but they’re just as good in spring as in winter, and sometimes even more beneficial. After several months of less sunshine, less time spent outdoors, and too many tuber and starch-heavy meals, our bodies are likely craving bitter tonics to cleanse ourselves and aid in digestion. Spring teas are often the perfect choice for this, and they offer a wide variety of benefits outside of simply being tasty and comforting.

It’s springtime, and a great time for all things floral to bloom—but the larder overflows with amazing veggies, too. Here’s a full A to K of them, with the rest coming soon!

More and more dieticians are stressing the fact that humans were never really meant to consume meat. Whether you are a vegetarian, a vegan, or not, eating seasonal offerings is a good thing, and spring offers you amazing flavors that can be dressed up as you wish. So here is what spring offers you in terms of veggies, and why you should eat them…

Recently, the New York Times published an article denouncing yoga pants. Titled “Why Yoga Pants Are Bad for Women,” the article detailed all the ways in which the popular, though pricey, black tights contribute to the idea that fitness is an everyday-all-the-day activity.

Once crocuses and hyacinths begin to bloom, I’m itching to scrub my floors, vacuum my carpets, and otherwise shed the layer of dust that winter has brought. It’s spring cleaning time!

Coconut yogurt is almost as ubiquitous as dairy yogurt, and can be found alongside typical fruit-filled yogurt cups, Greek yogurt tubs, and even almond milk yogurt. While often pricier than its dairy-counterparts, coconut yogurt has just as many, if not more, benefits—without the sometimes disastrous side effects.

Although the peak winter months have passed, the wafting scent of warm soup from the slow cooker never goes out of style. The slow-cooking “Crock-Pot” (as it is often called for the original brand name) was invented in 1940, gained popularity in the 1970s, and has especially gained favoritism in the past two decades.

Most of us tend to think that the healthiest people amongst us are those who dutifully go to the gym six days a week, work up a sweat on the bike or the treadmill, lift weights to preserve bone mass, stretch out in a yoga class, and then go home after the hour is up. While the gym-goers are probably healthier than the majority of the U.S. population, even they aren’t ideal. Why not?

When we’re growing up, we always hear that we should eat our vegetables. Our parents drilled this habit into us, and now that we’re grown up, the choice is ours—do we still eat them? If so, why do we eat them, and which ones do we focus on?