Health Tips
Health Tips from Down to Earth Organic and Natural.
Help Prevent Obesity with Positive Changes
With a brand new year right around the corner, it’s the perfect opportunity to introduce healthy, positive changes into your life and help reduce your risk for obesity. Eating plant-based foods as often as possible is one of the best things you can do, not only to help prevent obesity, but also for your health and well-being in general. Here are some helpful guidelines to assist you in creating well-balanced, plant-based meals.
Tasty, Tempting, and Totally Healthy
It’s a common misconception you’ve probably heard: vegetarian food is not tasty, and living a plant-based lifestyle must mean sacrificing flavor for health. In fact, any diet can be boring if you eat the same thing all the time or don’t experiment; by living a more veggie lifestyle, your diet can potentially be more interesting and rich, as plant-based foods are naturally packed with flavor. So who says that vegetarian cooking can’t taste great?
Become A GMO-Conscious Shopper
With the risks of eating genetically modified food so uncertain, many Americans wisely try to avoid consuming GMOs as much as possible. Unfortunately, genetically modified food is not required to be labeled. Therefore, it can be hard to know if what you buy is genetically modified or not. Luckily, there are ways to avoid GMOs. The following is a guide on how to be a smart, GMO-aware shopper.
Healthy School Snack & Lunch Ideas
It’s back to school time again! Packing lunches and snacks for your kids can be a chore, but it’s the best way to ensure that what they’re eating is the healthiest and most satisfying. Plus, with proper budgeting, it saves money and your child doesn’t have to buy snacks and lunch every day.
Tasty Ways to Plant-ify Your Meals
With summer nearing its end, many of us will be heading back to school or coming back from a vacation – it’s a time that presents the perfect opportunity to adopt a healthier diet. Over 1.5 million people are expected to be diagnosed with cancer in 2012, according to the American Cancer Society. That staggering number can be alarming, especially as obesity continues to be a huge problem for Americans.
Local Summer Flavors
Summer is a great time to transition to healthier eating by taking advantage of in-season fruits and vegetables. In Hawaii, we’re blessed with an easy growing environment that produces luscious fruits and colorful vegetables in abundance.
Your Brain on Berries
There’s something delightfully sweet about a fresh-picked strawberry, still warm from the sun, or a summer picnic with blueberry cobbler and ice-cold raspberry lemonade… However you use them, the summer season is the time to shine for berries of all varieties! If it isn’t enough that these juicy jewels of summer taste great alone and in all kinds of dishes, berries are also nutritional powerhouses, full of antioxidants, fiber, vitamins and minerals. The latest research focuses on the role of berries in slowing cognitive decline in older adults.
Nutritional Benefits of Eating Organic
The positive environmental benefits of organic farming are well-documented. Organic farming preserves biodiversity and soil fertility, prevents soil erosion and reduces contamination of the water supply from toxic runoff.
"Green” Eating
Maybe you’ve already bought a fuel-efficient car, updated your home with energy-efficient appliances, low-flow toilets, dual-paned windows, and compact fluorescent light bulbs. Maybe you recycle, walk to work and use both sides of the paper when you print.
Nutrition labels: What to know to eat right
Reading and understanding nutrition labels is a key part of becoming a health-savvy shopper. The nutrition facts panel, found on most packaged foods can tell you things like how much fiber, calcium, iron, and vitamin C a food contains, it can help you compare fat and calorie counts between products, and it can help you identify which foods are low in sodium, carbohydrates, or trans-fat. It’s also where you will find specific ingredients and any common allergens. Read on to see how a quick glance at the nutrition facts can help you to shop more wisely.