Tag Archives: healthy diet

The Top Healthy-Cooking Secrets

By Deirdre Imus, president and founder of The Deirdre Imus Environmental Health Center at Hackensack University Medical Center

When it comes to fighting cancer, or heart disease, or the common cold, there are many variables that are outside your control, like what will happen next, how will it feel, and when it will get better. One of the few aspects of treatment that patients can manage is the food they put into their bodies. Eating healthily is always important, but it is paramount – almost vital – when illness strikes. Continue reading

The Low-Down on BPA

by Marion Nestle, PhD, professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University

BPA has become a classic example of how point of view influences decisions about low-dose chemicals in the food supply for which the science is uncertain.

If you are a believer in the “precautionary principle,” any suggestion of harm is enough to support banning BPA until it is proven safe. Continue reading

Superbug Lawsuit Could Save Antibiotics

by Peter Lehner, executive director, Natural Resources Defense Council

Last Thursday night, a federal court ordered the Food and Drug Administration to take action on the practice of giving antibiotics to livestock through animal feed. This victory will help protect American families against superbugs and other drug-resistant bacteria. Continue reading

Salt Wars: What’s Really Too Much?

by Marion Nestle, PhD, professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University

Dietary sodium continues to generate much talk but little action.

The CDC issued a recent Vital Signs report on dietary sodium with this graphic:

Continue reading

7 Ways to Spring Clean Your Life

by Deirdre Imus, founder and president of The Deirdre Imus Environmental Health Center at Hackensack University Medical Center

Like a bear coming out of hibernation, we too are beginning to emerge from winter’s darkness into spring’s light. And just as a bear cautiously reintroduces his body to a nourishing environment, so we must turn to healthy activities that feed our soul and give us new life in this season of renewal.

Below are the seven steps I hope you’ll follow this spring to clean your body and your home: Continue reading

Are sugars toxic? Should they be regulated?

by Marion Nestle, PhD, professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University.

Nature, the prestigious science magazine from Great Britain, has just published a commentary with a provocative title–The toxic truth about sugar—and an even more provocative subtitle: Added sweeteners pose dangers to health that justify controlling them like alcohol. Continue reading

How Virtuous Circles—Not Vicious Cycles—Will Save Us All


By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, PhD, senior scientist at Pesticide Action Network

As frost silvers the still-green grass outside, and I take advantage of the mild Berkeley winter to sow a small cover crop in my garden, I’m reminded that winter is a precious time of renewal and regeneration: not only in the soil and on our farms, but also within our communities and our minds.

Along those lines, I’ve been enjoying the very mind-enriching experience of reading a fascinating new book from the U.K.-based International Institute for Environmental Development. The forward-thinking authors of Virtuous Circles: Values, Systems and Sustainability (Michel Pimbert, Janice Jiggins and Andy Jones) take a fresh look at what we need to do to survive and thrive in the coming century. Continue reading

A Cauliflower a Day Keeps the Cold Away

by Deirdre Imus, founder and president of The Deirdre Imus Environmental Health Center at Hackensack University Medical Center

Once the weather turns colder, it feels like everyone is sneezing, sniffling, coughing, shivering, and potentially getting you sick.

While it might seem inevitable that you will fall prey to that most common of colds, there are some very natural, effective ways to keep illness at bay.

First, try discerning whether you have a simple (yet, still irritating) cold, or the much more serious influenza virus. Continue reading

Building Your Community’s Food System: What You Can Do!


By Helen Dombalis, Policy Associate at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

The month of November, and really the entire fall, has been filled with a whirlwind of conversations and questions about the state of agriculture funding and our nation’s economic status. We’ve heard the new terms, created as needed by Congress and advocates, which aim to succinctly explain what’s happening: from the “Super Committee” to “mini-buses” to a “secret” farm bill. Continue reading

This Thanksgiving, Forget the Food Coma

by Deirdre Imus, founder and president of The Deirdre Imus Environmental Health Center at Hackensack University Medical Center

Thanksgiving is a time to be grateful for family and friends, as everyone gathers to pig out on junk food, and then pass out in front of the television, only to wake up hours later from your tryptophan-induced coma to eat (more), drink (more), and be merry (ish).

Sound familiar? I thought so.

This year, rather than kick into auto pilot during the holiday season and allow others to decide what you are going to eat, take ownership of your health, just like you do every other day of the year. Show your loved ones the responsible, informed eater that you are, and inspire them to make changes in their lives too. Continue reading