Is Coconut Oil Good For You?

is-coconut-oil-good-for-you

Okay, the coconut oil
debate has finally gotten under my skin. I think it was an article
that popped up a couple days ago, written by a “nutrition expert”
who was boldly defying any health concerns about coconut oil, and basically
claiming it to be a miracle cure-all for everything from hair growth to jock
itch. Anytime someone takes a hard nosed position like that it makes my
eyebrows raise up a bit. I think the article popped up on my Facebook news
feed, and today, I honestly couldn’t tell you who wrote it. But, it did
motivate me to see if I could get to the bottom of this question:
“Is coconut oil good for you?”

Food trends, especially health food trends, come and go with the
tide, but sometimes we can get caught in a virtual rip tide of
information. When this happens, it is hard to take the necessary time to
really get the information we need to make an informed decision about what is
best for our basic, whole food nutrition needs. It becomes almost impossible
for the average person to distinguish between product
marketing
, and nutrition facts. So, I
decided to break down the skinny on coconut oil and hopefully make it
easy to understand.

In summary, you could say that coconut oil provides
some health benefits, but at the end of the day, it is still 90%
saturated fat. We’ll get into the details of coconut oil’s fat make up in
this article. But suffice Read More


A Superfoods List for Your February Grocery Shopping

superfoods-list

I love following seasonal foods.
And, I try to fit a seasonal food article into the mix before each season
passes. Being it February, there are plenty of nutritionally wealthy fresh
foods that you can add to your February superfoods list the next time you
head to the store.

The key to incorporating a good balance of superfoods into your
diet is not to go crazy buying tons of trendy seeds and exotic juices with
flashy packaging, but to learn how to tap into natures own virtual
nutrition “power plant.” Yes, that is a pun, to make the point that
there are dozens of nutritionally awesome plant based foods out there that
you might already be eating every day, or that are sitting right under your
nose at the market.

A Superfoods List of Some Easy To Find Winter
Foods

The word “superfood” is actually a marketing word, and
not really scientific at all when it comes to nutrition, as explained in this
Wikipedia
link
. So why do I use the word? For one thing, to get you to read
this article. Ha! See I am even on the wagon. But seriously, I understand
what you are really looking for when you pay attention to the word
“superfood.” So, my goal is to teach you how to actually get all
those outstanding nutrients, instead of being taken for a ride by some food
manufacturer. The key is to shift your thinking from “I need a
specific product because it’s a superfood”
to
“I get plenty of super foods in my natural, delicious,
seasonal diet every day.”

The fact is, many of the most common fruits and vegetables
that we all grew up eating can be  Read More


How to Detox Your Body Every Day

how-to-detox-your-body

Have you thought about doing a
detox but don’t know where to start? The word detox is flying around quite
loosely these days. People are talking about it a lot! The word
“detox” gets almost 30,000 internet searches a month! Many of us come
to think that “doing a detox” is some kind of big thing that we
have to endure for a week or a month. There are certainly many detox methods
out there that would require this kind of mindset. But what if I told you
that our bodies were already designed to be in a perpetual state of healthy
detox, and all you have to do is make some choices each day to support your
body to do what it was naturally designed to do? Sounds to good too be true,
right? It’s not! You and anyone can learn how to detox your body in your
everyday life just by employing these simple habits, principals, and
more.

8 Tips on How to Detox Your Body Every
Day

Read More


Do Multivitamins Work?

do multivitamins work?

Do multivitamins work? Are
multivitamins just a waste of money? This is an ongoing question, and the
answers seem to change with the ebb and flow of supplement and wellness
marketing trends. I have broken down some of the basic questions around multivitamins
that I receive, and provided information to help make more informed decisions
when choosing whether or not to take them.

Are Multivitamins Necessary?

It depends on who you ask. The nutritional supplement industry,
with it’s roughly $60-billion in US sales alone, will respond with a
resounding “yes!” However, if you start asking the experts, you
might find a different answer. More and more doctors are acknowledging that
extracting (a.k.a. isolating) a single nutrient or vitamin and putting it
into a pill may not be the best way to deliver the nutrition to our bodies.
 “We believe
that the case is closed — supplementing the diet of well-nourished adults
with (most) mineral or vitamin supplements has no clear benefit and might
even be harmful,”
concluded the authors of an
editorial summarizing the new research papers, published Dec. 16, 2013
in the Annals of Internal Medicine. “These vitamins should not be used for
chronic disease prevention. Enough is enough.” They went on to urge consumers
to not “waste” their money on multivitamins. Further research on this subject
revealed to me many doctors and experts making similar
statements. Read More