Many claim that eating organic products means avoiding overly processed foods, thereby cutting hydrogenated oils, trans-fats, preservatives and other negative ingredients out of your diet. But lately the debate over fruits and vegetables seems to be taking center stage. The pesticides used on foods are currently a big concern for the health community, due to their many acute and chronic effects.

Everyone has seen the recent headlines stating that too much ready meat is bad for your health! That’s because it has long been known it is associated with heart disease and cancer, particularly colon and rectal cancers. Now a new, large-scale study of 500,000 middle-aged and elderly Americans shows that daily red meat consumption, at levels of as little as four ounces a day, can increase your chances of death by 30 percent!

When you discover that you have hypertension or pre-hypertension, the first thing doctors do – they prescribe medication. However, the right diet can dramatically reduce your blood pressure as well, sometimes so much that you will not need any drugs. Find out what a high blood pressure diet is and how you can easily incorporate it into your lifestyle.

IN THESE days of environmental degradation, health maintenance no longer means just an occasional visit to the hospital, but also a regular trip to the spa to de-stress.

Thus it didn’t take long for spa and natural medicine (as an alternative to drug prescription) to merge and offer a full range of wellness programs designed for health enhancement, disease prevention and sickness eradication.

The Adventist church has taught and followed the principles of healthful living for over 100 years. We were told that most of the diseases that plague mankind are passed through the common diet of meat, alcohol, tobacco. This was a very unpopular teaching for many years among the Christian community. There were alot of jokes about the Adventist people because of heir “strange” eating habits.

You can tell by the amount of grocery-store shelf and refrigerator space it occupies that soy milk has become very popular.

There are at least 30 – 40 scientific papers on soy published each month. If you do a search on PubMed, you will find almost 7,000 papers with “soy” in the title and over 19,000 with soy in the abstract. So, it would be quite easy to build a false case against soy by citing a handful of these thousands of studies.

A new study found that middle-aged Japanese-American men who reported that they consumed at least two servings of tofu a week had a faster decline in certain mental abilities and greater brain atrophy 20 years later, compared to those eating little or no tofu.

You don’t know what you’re getting in these supplements—or even what would be a good formulation. And if you did know what’s in the pills, you couldn’t tell what they would do in your body. It’s risky business. Stick with soy foods.

Soy milk has long been a popular alternative for people who are unable to drink cow’s milk (usually due to lactose intolerance). But rather than drink soy milk because you have to, more and more people are deliberately choosing soy milk because of the added health benefits.

A vegetarian meal can provide all the essential nutrients needed for good health and is also likely to be higher in fibre and phytochemicals (both are found in plant foods and important for good health). A vegetarian meal can also be lower in fat if properly planned.

“ANY DIETARY RESTRICTIONS?” MY FRIEND NANCY texted after I had said yes to an invitation for an afternoon barbecue and holiday celebration.

I was tempted to reply, “Can we have a vegetarian barbecue?” but thought I should respect the rights of my (and Nancy’s) largely carnivorous family.