nutrition

It’s no secret that the nutrition world has fallen in love with fermented foods. Yogurt, long heralded for its probiotic qualities, now has a lot of nutritionist competition with other fermented eats, like tempeh, kimchi, and miso—and drinks, like kefir and kombucha.

Easier said than done. What the heck is kefir, and how do you cook with kimchi? Relax, young (healthy) grasshopper. These simple meal ideas use ingredients you probably have on hand to complement the ones you just got for the first time.

Breakfast: Kombucha

The only consistency in our lives as humans is change. In Ayurvedic tradition, the autumn symbolizes the pinnacle of transition in the course of the year. We witness change and transition in the landscape and in the later rise and earlier descent of the sun, and we certainly can feel it in the air and in our bodies.

Wheat germ is the reproductive part of a grain of wheat -- thus the term germ, meaning to germinate, which left to grow becomes wheat grass. It contains the most fat of the grain and is also the most nutrient rich. It has valuable health benefits, including preventing several major diseases, as well as aiding many other physical and mental functions.

I spent years working in the fitness industry as a personal trainer and later also as a nutritional coach. Over time two things became very clear.  The first was that most people were coming to me for weight loss (even if they claimed other reasons) and the second was that their results had very little to do with me.

The 80/20 Rule: Why is the kitchen so important?

The 80/20 rule is not the brainchild of some health and fitness guru on a quest to eradicate obesity. As grand as that sounds, it is more complex than a simple snap of the fingers. From cheat days to diminishing the importance of exercise there is a lot of hype surrounding this idea of 80/20 that in fact originated over a century ago.

It is estimated that more than half of the world’s population is sustained wholly or partially on rice. The grain has been cultivated in Asia for centuries. In several Asian languages the words for rice and food are the same. There are thousands of varieties of rice, but the original form of the grain is unknown. From Asia, it traveled to India, the Mediterranean basin and Europe, and finally Africa.

It can be really alarming to realize you have a child who is a picky eater.  Are they getting the nutrition they need?  Are they getting enough calories for their growth?

It can be baffling, too, if you’ve had older children whom you raised in the exact same way, giving them all the same food choices, who eat healthily and enjoy everything.