Most of us know that Kwanzaa is a week-long celebration held in the United States between Christmas and New Years to honor African-American heritage and culture. For most Americans, there is practically no such thing as a celebration without food, so we pulled together some of our favorite recipes for Kwanzaa.
Although Kwanzaa is a relatively new holiday, created in 1966, the foods used to celebrate it are based on old traditions. According to Donna Mintz, a New York City-based personal chef, savory stews and jerk-seasoned meat are excellent additions to your Kwanzaa menu.
Read Full Post >
The American vocabulary uses “fat” as a negative adjective when actually, some fat is beneficial to your health. When it comes to diet, certain types of dietary fat an aid weight loss and help improve bodily functions.
The Harvard School of Public Health says to avoid trans-fats, limit saturated fats and choose healthy fats. What are healthy fats, you may ask? The “good fats” include monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, which have been said to help lower disease risk.
Read Full Post >
It’s Shark Week again on the Discovery Channel. Sharks have always captured the public’s imagination, which helps explain the popularity and the existence of a week dedicated to the fearsome predator.
While sharks represent the main predatory fear we humans have, the irony is that sharks are endangered because they are hunted by humans. One of the reasons? Soup.
Shark soup was once just a luxury for the wealthy. But with a growing income base in Asia, the demand for shark soup is also growing. That’s bad news for the already dwindling shark population.
Read Full Post >
So, you’re looking to start a diet, or just a lifestyle change, and you really think it’s time to get back to basics. Well, you can’t get much more basic than the increasingly popular Paleo Diet, also known as the Caveman Diet.
Let’s take a trip back in time, to 10,000 years ago when cavemen had to fight for dinner, and what they ate was all natural; none of that processed man-made stuff that we call food today.
The Paleo, Paleolithic, or Caveman Diet may be known by different names, but they all share the same philosophy: our ancestors’ eating habits are worth mimicking. That is because, proponents will say, our bodies are designed for the foods that were available to our early Paleolithic ancestors.
Read Full Post >
Add yet another long-term health issue to the list of risks of being overweight. Previous studies have connected middle age obesity to dementia in late adulthood. Now, scientists may have found a link between Alzheimer’s and a hormone that helps control appetite. Leptin tells your body when you are satiated and reduces appetite. It is a hormone that is produced by fat cells. Research conducted during 12 years at the Boston University Medical Center found that those participants with the lowest levels of leptin had a 25% chance of developing Alzheimer’s, while those with the highest levels of leptin had only a 6% chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Read Full Post >
