Tag Archives: barry sears

Use Summer Vacation to Teach Children About the USDA MyPlate

By Len Saunders, MA

Children may be away from school and locked into summer mode, but July and August may be a great time to teach them about proper nutrition and healthy lifestyle through the USDA’s MyPlate.

As informative as the old MyPyramid used to be, quite honestly, it made nutrition a task to understand for most children. From their point of view, what does a pyramid have to do with food or nutrition? MyPlate does put it into perspective for kids at a level they can understand. They look at the plate, and see the food groups laid out for them in a form of a pie chart, distributing the percentages of the foods needed daily. For children, sometimes simple and basic is more effective to get a message across to prepare them for a healthy future.

Respected author and creator of the Zone Diet, Dr. Barry Sears agrees. “The earlier dietary habits are instilled in children, the longer they last.” (more…)

Dr. Sears Answers Readers’ Questions About The Zone Diet

Dr. Barry Sears HeadshotLast night, Dr. Sears and the Zone Labs hosted a live video chat, giving participants the opportunity to ask the creator of The Zone Diet questions. In addition to being an authority on the way food affects hormones, he is a two-time New York Times bestseller. His first book, The Zone, has sold more than 2 million hard-cover copies world-wide.

Dr. Sears started the video session by talking about how we can trigger our genes with our diet. You can’t change your genes, but you can change their expression through diet and lifestyle. He argues that many health problems, both for overweight people and those who are considered to be at a normal weight, leads back to cellular inflammation. He says that once you eat a diet that reduces cellular inflammation, you will not only lose weight but also improve your heart health. Dr. Sears insists that being overweight is not because some moral failure, but simply a genetic predisposition.

If talking about cellular inflammation sounds like way more detail then you can handle, it’s OK. Dr. Sears explained some simple ways to reduce inflammation through diet. First, increase your omega-3 fatty acids by taking fish oil supplements.  Then adjust your diet. That diet should consist of about one third lean protein (about the size of the palm of your hand) and two-thirds “colorful carbohydrates” also known as fruits and vegetables.

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