Womens Things

Whether you wake up with nausea or cravings, a healthy breakfast is very important if you are pregnant. These easy-to-use and largely pre-cooked breakfast options are filled with essential nutrients to keep you healthy, support your baby's growth and start the day as best as possible. Pregnancy Breakfast ideas will lead you on the way of getting better nutrition.

Breakfast with salmon and cream
Smoked salmon is not a good choice for pregnant women because of the risk of listeriosis. But that's not a reason to miss omega-3 fatty acids in salmon. These healthy fats are important for the development of your brain! Choose a variety of baked fish and enjoy them with cream cheese in your favorite bagel. Look for mini-bagels that are actually much closer to the size of the good portion than the huge coffee variant. If you can find a variety of whole grains, you will receive another nutritional bonus for you and your baby.

Breakfast with apples
Are your morning's crazy? It's still not an excuse to skip breakfast, especially with this simple option. Prepare this oatmeal the day before and enjoy by preparing your meals or parking at your desk. Just mix 1/2 cup of oatmeal with 1/2 cup of milk in a mason jar, sprinkle with a tablespoon of chopped walnuts and rub in the middle of an apple. Shake and let stand overnight in the refrigerator, and ready: Breakfast is served!

Breakfast smoothie
How about a glass of super foods in the morning? This shake is full of vitamin C that comes from fruits and protein, calcium come from the yogurt. And you probably know how important it is to have enough folic acid in during the. So to properly arrange the requirement amount of folic acid you have to follow pregnancy breakfast ideas. Leafy vegetables such as spinach will serve the purpose. Chia seeds are an important plant source of omega-3s; the beneficial fatty acids that scientists believe are needed. To make this super-loaded smoothie, mix 1/2 cup almond milk, 1/2 cup yogurt, a kiwi, a handful of spinach and a tablespoon of chia seeds.

Egg, cheese breakfast
If you're having trouble getting enough vegetables during the day, try starting the day with a full serving. This burrito is also a source of protein. Eggs, beans, and cheese help you get the extra 25 grams of protein you need now. To prepare, sprinkle two scrambled eggs, two tablespoons boiled beans (canned), two tablespoons grated shredded cheese, such as cheddar cheese, and a medium-sized tomato cut into a tortilla. Season with salt and pepper and roll, fold up and down.

Breakfast with eggs and avocado
Start the day with a useful dose of chorine from eggs, a superstar nutrient for expectant moms. It helps to improve the function of your brain (so you will never forget breakfast again) and discusses the development of your baby's brain, especially during the last trimester. And your belly will thank you for the fiber of all toasts and avocados.

Boiled egg and avocado with toast
Start the day with a useful dose of choline from eggs, a superstar nutrient for expectant moms. Recent research shows: In the morning we can't get required nutrition, so get in the breakfast an egg yolk contains about a quarter of the hill you need each day. It helps to improve the function of your brain (so you will never forget breakfast again) and discusses the development of your baby's brain, especially during the last trimester. And your belly will thank you for the fiber of all toasts and avocados.

Weight Gain Breakfast for Mom

There is no question that cold cereals revolutionized the American breakfast table. No longer did mom have to cook hot cereal, eggs or meat, and kids could independently prepare something for themselves before heading off to school. At the turn of the twentieth century, the creation of cold cereal basically began with two enterprising men who saw the possibilities and took a gamble. And breakfast has never been the same.

In the late 1890s, a rather eccentric man named John Harvey Kellogg, ran a health sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, and had created a bland, tasteless food for his patients with digestive issues. A few years later, his brother Will decided to mass-market the new food at his new company, Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, adding a bit of sugar to the flakes recipe making it more palatable for the masses, and a star was born.

Around the same time, C. W. Post, who had been a patient at Kellogg's sanitarium, introduced an alternative to coffee called Postum, followed by Grape-Nuts (which have nothing to do with either grapes or nuts) and his version of Kellogg's corn flakes, naming them Post Toasties, and America's breakfasts were never the same.

Both men could thank an enterprising gentleman by the name of Sylvester Graham, who forty years earlier had experimented with graham flour, marketing it to aid "digestive problems." He created a breakfast cereal that was dried and broken into shapes so hard they needed to be soaked in milk overnight, which he called granula (the father of granola and graham crackers).

Capitalizing on that original idea, in 1898 the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) began producing graham crackers based on the experiments of Sylvester Graham, first promoting them as a "digestive" cracker for people with stomach problems; (Seems a lot of people had digestive problems even back then.)

Fast forward and other companies were sitting up and taking notice. The Quaker Oats Company, acquired a method which forced rice grains to explode and began marketing Puffed Rice and Puffed Wheat, calling them a marvel of food science which was "the first food shot from guns" (oh boy, would they come under fire for that one today, no pun intended);

1920s Wheaties was introduced and cleverly targeted athletes as they proclaimed to be the "Breakfast of Champions;"

The 1930s saw The Ralston Purina company introduce an early version of Wheat Chex, calling it Shredded Ralston (sounds a little painful);

Soon Cheerios appeared and would become the best-selling cereal in America, worth about $1 billion in sales in 2015.

No one can dispute the convenience and versatility of dry packaged cereal. In the last fifty years, this multi-billion dollar industry has spun off multiple uses, unlimited possibilities and targeted kids with clever packaging, outrageous names, flavors, colors and choices (all loaded with sugar of course). What could be more American than corn flakes?

 
 
Congratulations on your healthier new lifestyle! Plenty of things will change, including your diet. But don't worry, nobody said that you can't have your sugar fix when you crave for it! Although you have to be more careful with the ingredients of your desserts, it doesn't mean that the delicious taste will be compromised!

Try these 3 guilt-free desserts that are incredibly mouth-watering:

Apple Extravaganza

What you need:

    2 apples, sliced into skinny wedges
    1 lemon, juiced
    2 tablespoons chocolate chips, divided
    2 tablespoons chopped pecans
    1 tablespoon peanut butter
    4 teaspoons coconut oil, divided
    1 teaspoon finely shredded coconut

Mix together 1 tablespoon chocolate chips and 2 teaspoons coconut oil in a microwave-safe bowl and heat in the microwave until melted. In a separate bowl, combine peanut butter and remaining coconut oil and heat in the microwave until melted. Arrange apple wedges on a plate and sprinkle with lemon juice. Pour chocolate mixture followed by peanut butter mixture. Top with remaining chocolate chips, pecans and coconut.

Gluten-Free Choco Avocado Brownies

What you need:

    2 large avocados
    3 eggs
    1 cup coconut sugar
    1/2 cup cocoa powder
    1/2 cup chocolate chips
    1/2 cup brown rice flour
    1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Scoop out the flesh of the 2 avocados and place in a food processor. Add the coconut sugar and cocoa powder to the blender and blend until smooth. Add the eggs, brown rice flour and baking soda and continue processing just until eggs are well-combined with the mixture. Carefully fold in chocolate chips. Pour the batter in a greased 8x8 inches brownie pan. Bake in a pre-heated oven (350F) for 15 minutes. Allow to cool completely before slicing and serving.

Dark Chocolate Chewy Cookies

What you need:

    2 eggs
    10 pcs. dried dates, boiled
    2 cups almond butter
    1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
    2 tablespoons water
    2 teaspoons vanilla extract
    1/2 teaspoons baking powder
    1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Combine softened dates, water and sea salt in a food processor and pulse until coarsely ground. Add almond butter, vanilla extract and baking powder to the food processor and blend until smooth. Stir in (by hand) the chocolate chips. Form mixture into balls and arrange on greased baking sheets. Bake in a pre-heated oven (350F) for 8 to 10 minutes. Allow to cool for several minutes in a cooling rack before serving.

Satisfy your sweet tooth without feeling guilty - try these delicious guilt-free desserts!

We have a new question that gets asked of us more and more these days. It's how to go about making the strongest Kava possible. Well, lucky for you, there are many ways to make your Kava as strong as possible!

First, anyone who has experience with Kava knows that Kava drinks are usually made with water or coconut water. Fruit juices are often added, but mainly, Kava drinks are made from water.

The trouble is, is that Kavalacatones, the active ingredients in Kava responsible for the pleasurable effects, really like to be extracted into fats. Fats include liquids we all know well, such as milk, soy milk, coconut milk, and many others. Oils are also fatty, but who wants to make a drink out of olive oil? Not me!

The other problem is that fats and oils do not get along together. If you have ever had balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing, you know that you have to shake the oil and vinegar to get them to blend. And even then, it only blends long enough to get onto your salad! So, let's do a little bit of math:

Kavalactones account for just 10% of the total Kava root powder material. Doesn't that mean we could use a 10% fat solution for our drink to get that 10% of Kavalactones? Well, unfortunately, it doesn't work exactly like that. Things like soy milk are already water-based, and have plenty of water in them. So, if we wanted the strongest possible drink without any extra additives, we could simply use 100% milk, soy milk, or almond milk as these are already blended with plenty of water, instead of just water.

Kava Additives

But there are more than a few natural products that act as emulsifiers. What's an emulsifier you say? Glad you asked! Emulsifiers help bridge the gap between water and oils (or fats). Emulsifiers allow water and fats or oil to play nice together, and stay blended in your drink. So, if your salad dressing had an emulsifier added to it (many do), you would never have to shake your dressing!

Knowing that, what might be typical emulsifiers for Kava? Having water and fats play nice together does indeed make for stronger Kava drinks. One very common emulsifier is coconut milk and another is soy lecithin. These are used quite often as a way to give your Kava that extra "kick". Both are safe, and vegan as well. So, they're popular choices. There is another product available online called Kava Blender. This is an organic rice-based product that does a very similar job to soy lecithin, but as a powder instead of a thick, gooey substance or in granule form. I really like it and prefer that over soy lecithin at the moment.

Heating Your Kava

I also get asked whether or not Kava can be heated up. Even though the breakdown point for Kavalactones is only 140 degrees Fahrenheit, we have made plenty of Kava tea, Kava brownies, and a stack of other Kava-related items that still had plenty of kick to them. So, although Kava isn't approved as a food ingredient, there are many reports online of people making treats out of Kava and enjoying a Kava brownie alongside that Kava drink. And, from personal experience I can say that this is an effective way of having a stronger Kava experience without actually making strong Kava.

Drink More Kava

Let's now look at the more obvious ways of making strong Kava. One of the easiest ways is to simply drink more of it! I know the focus of this article is making strong Kava, but the beautiful thing about Kava is that there is no immediate tolerance to it as you're drinking it. This makes it possible to enjoy several shells over the course of a few hours. In social situations, my friends and I will enjoy several cups ("shells") of Kava over the course of a few hours.

It doesn't matter how strong you make your Kava, the effects only last about an hour or so when taking single servings of Kava. But, when you start to consume more than just one shell an hour; say 2 shells per hour, some very relaxing and pleasurable effects start to take hold. And that is when things can get very interesting.

Another simple way to increase the effectiveness of your Kava is to simply add stronger Kava into the drink you're making. This is most easily accomplished by using items such as Kava Tincture Plus or Kavalactone Paste 55%. These items are both emulsified, and will blend easily with any Kava extraction that you're working on. If you're looking for a bigger initial "kick" then these simple additives are the perfect solution to making strong Kava drinks.

And, just like anything else, both responsibility and moderation is the key to having a safe and fun time with Kava. It's completely legal throughout the world for personal use (except Germany as of this writing), but can have effects that could make it more difficult to drive. So, if you plan on making strong Kava, please make sure you're in a safe place such as a Kava bar or your own home, and get familiar with the effects before venturing out into the world.

In Summary

So, what have we learned about making strong Kava drinks today? That it is indeed possible, and fun at the same time! You can extract into something that already has natural fats in it such as soy milk, almond milk, or even cow's milk. That will make a stronger Kava drink than if you had extracted into only water.

There are also additives that can be quite effective, and are only needed in small amounts. Next, there's always simply drinking more Kava! It's not technically making stronger Kava, but it definitely is concentrating your Kava inside your body.

Tromping down memory lane, who could forget these (now somewhat ghastly) staples of our early diet:

Cheez Whiz... much like Velveeta, this processed food made its debut in 1952 and was piled on crackers and spread on white bread
Hostess Twinkies and Cupcakes
Jello
Popsicles
Hot Dogs
Potato Chips
Scrambled Eggs and Bacon
Peanut Butter
S'mores
Iceberg lettuce with watery bottled dressing
Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
Campbell's Tomato Soup
Yoo Hoo (chocolate flavored soft drink developed in New Jersey in 1928 and manufactured by Keurig Dr Pepper)
Swanson Frozen Dinners
Meatloaf (smothered in ketchup)
Tuna Noodle Casserole
Baked Alaska
Deviled Eggs
Chicken à la King
Red Delicious Apples
Welsh Rarebit
Ry-Krisp Crackers
Succotash
Spam
Bubblegum
Salisbury Steak
Meatballs and Spaghetti
Toll House Cookies
Brownies

and some of the first convenience foods:

1950. Minute Rice
1951. Ore Ida Foods (frozen potato products)
1953. Eggo Frozen Waffles
1954. General Mills Trix cereal
1955. Kellogg's Special K cereal
1956. Imperial Margarine

It's fun to look back and see which of these bastions of the early years we still consume and even enjoy, and which ones we wouldn't eat on a bet (can you spell J-e-l-l-o?). We've traded sugary cereals for Irish Steel Cut Oatmeal, Chinese take-out for spicy Thai noodles, Cheez Whiz for goat cheese and Brie and fish sticks for fish tacos. Our first bite of KFC fried chicken is an ancient memory, our first McDonald's we probably can't even remember and our first white Minute Rice a bland, boring starchy filler. Many of us still embrace peanut butter, but it's the natural organic variety, not sugary Skippy.
Baked Alaska? Good luck finding it on any restaurant menu these days. Head lettuce has given way to crunchy Napa cabbage, arugula and romaine, cremini, portobello and shitake mushrooms and and the revered avocado added to salads, sandwiches and our new favorite Mexican foods. Risotto rice with savory veggies, beautiful pasta dishes with nary a meatball in sight, endless flavors of tortilla chips and salsas, designer pizza, white chicken chili, fresh fish with flavorful sauces or just grilled on a barbeque.

Okay, so maybe you have a box of Twinkies or Little Debbie snack cakes hidden in the linen closet; a stash of Hershey bars under the dish towels in the kitchen; or a jumbo bag of Lay's Potato Chips in the trunk of your car (in case you get stranded on the freeway for several hours). You're in control, aren't you? And sometimes you just draw the binds, don't answer the phone and down an entire bottle of Pinot Grigio wine with your Laughing Cow cheese triangles (on Ritz Crackers, of course). Life is good. Food is good. And aren't we lucky. We can pick up a roasted rotisserie chicken at the supermarket, a carton of garlic mashed potatoes, pop a bag of frozen vegetables into the microwave and have a whole dinner in less than 15 minutes. What a world. And not a jiggly bowl of cherry Jello in sight.

Later I'm going out for shrimp tacos drenched in fresh lime juice and Pico de Gallo. And maybe some double chocolate swirl gelato. This Boomer is a full-fledged foodie with no end in sight.

In short, Russian cuisine can be divided into four main eras:

Old Russian cuisine (9th-16th centuries);

In the medieval period most Russian beverages turned national: mead, khmel, kvass, cider. Beer appeared in 1284. In 1440-1470s Russia discovered vodka made from rye grain. Until the 17th century milk and meat were not popular. Meat boiled in shchi (cabbage soup) or for kasha was not even roasted until the 16th century.

Old Moscow cuisine (17th century):

Starting with Peter the Great, Russian nobility borrowed some of West European culinary customs and traditions. Rich nobles who visited countries in Western Europe brought foreign chefs with them to expand their repertoire. It was at this time that minced meat was introduced into Russian cuisine: chops, casseroles, pates and rolls became quite popular, along with non-Russian (Swedish, German, French) soups, which appeared in the 17th century: solyanka, (beef soup) and rassolnik (potato and pickle soup) containing brines, lemons and olives appeared at the same time and were hppily integrated into the cuisine. It was during this period that such well-known delicacies as black caviar and salted, jellied fish appeared.

In the 16th century Kazan and Astrakhan Khanates along with Bashkiria and Siberia were annexed to Russia. New food products such as raisins (grapes), dried apricots, figs, melons, watermelons, lemons and tea made their first appearance, much to the delight of the populace. During the short growing season, even poor farmers could enjoy a variety of fresh fruits, along with drying them for the long winter months. Foreign chefs cooked their national dishes, which harmoniously fitted in Russian cuisine. There was also the time of German sandwiches, butter, French and Dutch cheeses.

Petersburg cuisine (end of the 18th century-1860s)

The French expanded the assortment of starters by adding a number of old Russian meat, fish, mushroom and sour vegetable dishes the variety of which can be a surprise for foreigners. Because cold weather could last as long as nine months in some regions, preserved foods were a large part of Russian cuisine, and households would store as much food as possible to last through the long winters. This included smoking, salting, soaking, and fermenting. Cabbage could be used all winter to make shchi, or be used as a filling for dumplings. Soaked apples were often served to guests or in some side dishes. Pickled cucumbers were a main ingredient in many dishes, including several traditional soups. Salted and dried meat and fish were eaten after religious and pre-holiday fasts. Overall, it was a pretty spartan diet, with most economic groups using what was available.

Traditional Russian foods are heavily influenced by filled dumplings, hearty stews, soups, potatoes and cabbage:

+Borscht one of Russia's best-known foods, a chunky, cold stew made with beets and topped with sour cream

+Beef Stroganoff - strips of beef sauteed in a sauce of butter, white wine, sour cream (called 'smetana' in Russia), mustard and onions; eaten either straight or poured over rice or noodles

+Sweet-and-Sour Cabbage - cooked in red wine vinegar, applesauce, butter and onions.diced apples, sugar, bay leaves

+Solyanka Soup - a hearty soup made from thick chunks of beef and/or pork, cooked for hours over a low flame with garlic, tomatoes, peppers and carrots

+Golubtsy.- Shredded or minced beef wrapped in cabbage and steamed/boiled until cooked; found all over Eastern Europe

+Olivie. - a kind of potato salad made with pickles, eggs, bologna and carrots mixed with mayo

+Blini - thin, crepe-like pancakces topped with savory or sweet toppings like minced beef, caviar, or apples

+Potato Okroshka.- cold soup made from buttermilk, potatoes and onions, garnished with dill; Vichyssoise (often attributed to the French, it was actually created at the Ritz Carlton in NYC in 1917 but of course disputed by French chefs, who insist they created it)

+Knish - mashed potatoes, ground beef, onions and cheese filled inside thick dough pastry and deep fried/baked

+Khinkali - dumplings of ground beef and cilantro

+Khachapuri - thick, crusty bread shaped like a boat and filled with a variety of melted cheese

+Zharkoye - a beef stew made with potatoes, carrots, parsley, and celery, spiced with garlic, cloves, and dill; served hot with sour cream

+Pelmeni - dumplings made from thin, unleavened dough, filled with minced meat, mushrooms and onions

+Shashlik - classic shesh kebab

+Tula Gingerbread - similar to our gingerbread, but may contain jam or nuts

+Pirozhki - pastries filled with meat, potatoes, cabbage or cheese, similar to Polish pierogi

+Morozhenoe (rich ice cream); well hey... now you're talkin'

+Chak-Chak (Russia's attempt at funnel cakes... would we make that up?)

You'll notice a distinct absence of fresh vegetable salads, seafood, pasta and rice.They are just not part of their basic diet. And of course Russia is certainly not known for their desserts. Even Chicken Kiev is generally credited to several NYC restaurants who claim they created it, not to any native Russian chef or restaurant. (gee... you can't believe anything these days).

So next time you get a hankering for some borscht or a kinkali, you just may have to whip it up yourself. There is not a preponderance of Russian restaurants anywhere in the U.S. nor the desire for them. Few people thnk of blinis or knish when planning Sunday dinner. But who knows? You might just discover a whole new world of cuisine when you stick your toe in the Russian diet (oh dear, that didn't come out right). Go for it.

Moong Sabut Dal is loaded with Vitamins, Enzymes, Minerals and other nutrients that your body needs to ensure its proper functioning. It not only has a number of health benefits, but also skin, hair and beauty benefits. It is highly recommended for everyone to include Moong Sabut Dal in their diet because of their health benefits, especially for the vegetarians, as they have all the nutrients your body requires. People, especially the young generation mostly hates pulses or lentils, though they have endless benefits to offer that you need to know. If you want to explore its benefits, scroll down to the below-mentioned points.

    Cholesterol Controller: High cholesterol level increases the health problems and makes a person weak, which increases their chances to get in touch with more and more diseases, thus, if you want to reduce such risk or balance the cholesterol level in your body, Moong Sabut Dal is something you need. So, make sure you include them in your diet in a healthy quantity.
    Balance Blood Pressure: Another major reason to eat Moong Sabut Dal is that it'll help you lower high blood pressure, and thus, is a must for the blood pressure patient. These may keep your health in check.
    Fight Cancer Cells: Moong Sabut Dal contains a high level of amino acid that'll help to fight the cancer cell and minimize your risk to get any such disease. It lowers the cells that form cancer and keeps you healthy.
    Deal With Diabetes: They are diabetic friendly and maintain the ideal level of blood sugar in your body. It is highly recommended for diabetic patients, but make sure you consult your doctors before adding them to your diet, as they'll help you know the ideal quantity as per your body type and current health condition.
    Aid In Weight Loss: Moong Sabut Dal is good for the one, who wants to drop some pounds from their body. It'll supply enough nutrients to your body that it requires and help you be in shape without doing much

These are a few benefits of eating Moong Sabut Dal. So, what are you waiting for? Include them in your diet plan and reap all their health benefits. Make sure you buy good quality from a trusted company. Eating them is a cost-effective way to keep your health in check. So, make sure you adopt the habit of eating them and their benefits will surprise you for sure.

What is a GMO? GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organisms or Genetically Engineered. It is the process of taking genes from one species and forcing them into the genes of another species. The inserted genes come from species, such as bacteria and virus. Why is this being done? It's to benefit the chemical companies so that they can sell more pesticides. What happens is the plants are injected with foreign genes to allow them to be resistant to Roundup and BT Toxins. Roundup and BT Toxins are poisons! Yet it's being blasted on all our fruits and vegetables! The chemicals are also destroying our soils and water! The process is unnatural for the plants. A lot of other countries have banned GMO's because they know its poison! Yet, it's widely used here in the USA and is in major commodity crops such as corn, soybeans, cottonseed, Canadian grown canola and sugar beets. Also, 70-80% of all boxed and packaged foods are made from GMO's!

Several animal studies show Serious Health Risks associated with GMO foods including:

1. Infertility

2. Immune Problems

3. Accelerated Aging

4. Faulty Insulin Regulation

5. Major Changes in Organs

6. Major Changes in the gastrointestinal system

7. Causing major Allergies to GMO and non-GMO foods

You may be wondering why the FDA has allowed this harmful process to be part of our food supply. In 1992, The Food and Drug Administration claimed they had no information showing that GMO foods were substantially different from conventionally grown foods. Thus, being safe to eat. However, internal memos made public by a lawsuit reveal that their position was staged by political appointees who were under orders from the White House to promote GMO's. Also, the person in charge of creating the policy was Michael Taylor, the former Attorney for Monsanto, the largest biotech company. He later became Monsanto's Vice President. The FDA scientists had warned that GMO food can be unpredictable, have hard to detect side effects, causing allergies, toxins, new diseases, and nutritional problems. They used long-term studies but their suggestions and studies were ignored!

So, how can we protect ourselves and our families? First, educate ourselves on GMO foods. Second, read ALL FOOD LABELS and INGREDIENTS before purchasing food items. Please understand that labels such as "All Natural", "Gluten Free", and "Organic" mean absolutely NOTHING! It's a Marketing tactic! We now must read every ingredient listed on the label. A key to remember is if the ingredient is more than 5 to 8 ingredients and contains words you can't pronounce, leave it on the grocery shelf!

Avoid food products that make health claims. 

This sounds counterintuitive, but consider: For a product to carry a health claim on its package, it must first have a package, so right off the bat it's more likely to be a processed rather than a whole food. Then, only the big food manufacturers have the where-withal to secure FDAapproved health claims for their products and then trumpet them to the world. Generally, it is the products of modern food science that make the boldest health claims, and these are often founded on incomplete and often bad science. Don't forget that margarine, one of the first industrial foods to claim it was more healthful than the traditional food it replaced, turned out to contain transfats that give people heart attacks. The healthiest food in the supermarket - the fresh produce - doesn't boast about its healthfulness, because the growers don't have the budget or the packaging. Don't take the silence of the yams as a sign they have nothing valuable to say about your health.

Avoid food products with the wordoid "lite" or the terms "low-fat" or "nonfat" in their names. 

The forty-year-old campaign to create low-and nonfat versions of traditional foods has been a failure: We've gotten fat on low-fat products. Why? Because removing the fat from foods doesn't necessarily make them nonfattening. Carbohydrates can also make you fat, and many low- and nonfat foods boost the sugars to make up for the loss of flavor. Also, by demonizing one nutrient - fat - we inevitably give a free pass to another, supposedly "good," nutrient - carbohydrates in this case - and then proceed to eat too much of that instead. Since the low-fat campaign began in the late 1970s, Americans actually have been eating more than 500 additional calories per day, most of them in the form of refined carbohydrates like sugar. The result: The average male is seventeen pounds heavier and the average female nineteen pounds heavier than in the late 1970s. You're better off eating the real thing in moderation than bingeing on "lite" food products packed with sugars and salt.

Avoid foods that are pretending to be something they are not.

 Imitation butter - aka margarine - is the classic example. To make something like nonfat cream cheese that contains neither cream nor cheese requires an extreme degree of processing; such products should be labeled as imitations and avoided. The same rule applies to soy-based mock meats, artificial sweeteners, and fake fats and starches.

Avoid foods you see advertised on television. 

Food marketers are ingenious at turning criticisms of their products - and rules like these - into new ways to sell slightly different versions of the same processed foods: They simply reformulate (to be low-fat, have no HFCS or transfats, or to contain fewer ingredients) and then boast about their implied healthfulness, whether the boast is meaningful or not. The best way to escape these marketing ploys is to tune out the marketing itself, by refusing to buy heavily promoted foods. Only the biggest food manufacturers can afford to advertise their products on television: More than two thirds of food advertising is spent promoting processed foods (and alcohol), so if you avoid products with big ad budgets, you'll automatically be avoiding edible foodlike substances. As for the 5 percent of food ads that promote whole foods (the prune or walnut growers or the beef ranchers), common sense will, one hopes, keep you from tarring them with the same brush - these are the exceptions that prove the rule. Bogus health claims and faulty food science have made supermarkets particularly treacherous places to shop for real food, which suggests the next two rules.

Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle. 

Most supermarkets are laid out the same way: Processed food products dominate the center aisles of the store, while the cases of mostly fresh food - produce, meat and fish, dairy - line the walls. If you keep to the edges of the store you'll be much more likely to wind up with real food in your shopping cart. This strategy is not foolproof, however, since things like high-fructose corn syrup have crept into the dairy case under the cover of flavored yogurts and the like.

Eat only foods that will eventually rot. 

What does it mean for food to "go bad"? It usually means that the fungi and bacteria and insects and rodents with whom we compete for nutrients and calories have gotten to it before we did. Food processing began as a way to extend the shelf life of food by protecting it from these competitors. This is often accomplished by making the food less appealing to them, by removing nutrients from it that attract competitors, or by removing other nutrients likely to turn rancid, like omega-3 fatty acids. The more processed a food is, the longer the shelf life, and the less nutritious it typically is. Real food is alive - and therefore it should eventually die. (There are a few exceptions to this rule: For example, honey has a shelf life measured in centuries.) Note: Most of the immortal foodlike substances in the supermarket are found in the middle aisles.

Get out of the supermarket whenever you can. 

You won't find any high-fructose corn syrup at the farmers' market. You also won't find any elaborately processed food products, any packages with long lists of unpronounceable ingredients or dubious health claims, anything microwaveable, or, perhaps best of all, any old food from far away. What you will find are fresh, whole foods harvested at the peak of their taste and nutritional quality - precisely the kind your great-grandmother, or even your Neolithic ancestors, would easily recognize as food. The kind that is alive and eventually will rot.

Eat foods made from ingredients that you can picture in their raw state or growing in nature. 

Read the ingredients on a package of Twinkies or Pringles and imagine what those ingredients actually look like raw or in the places where they grow: You can't do it. This rule will keep all sorts of chemicals and foodlike substances out of your diet.

Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. 

Imagine your great-grandmother (or grandmother, depending on your age) at your side as you roll down the aisles of the supermarket. You're standing together in front of the dairy case. She picks up a package of Go-GURT Portable Yogurt tubes - and hasn't a clue what this plastic cylinder of colored and flavored gel could possibly be. Is it a food or is it toothpaste? There are now thousands of foodish products in the supermarket that our ancestors simply wouldn't recognize as food. The reasons to avoid eating such complicated food products are many, and go beyond the various chemical additives and corn and soy derivatives they contain, or the plastics in which they are typically packaged, some of which are probably toxic. Today foods are processed in ways specifically designed to get us to buy and eat more by pushing our evolutionary buttons - our inborn preferences for sweetness and fat and salt. These tastes are difficult to find in nature but cheap and easy for the food scientist to deploy, with the result that food processing induces us to consume much more of these rarities than is good for us. The greatgrandma rule will help keep most of these items out of your cart.

Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry.

Ethoxylated diglycerides? Cellulose? Xanthan gum? Calcium propionate? Ammonium sulfate? If you wouldn't cook with them yourself, why let others use these ingredients to cook for you? The food scientists' chemistry set is designed to extend shelf life, make old food look fresher and more appetizing than it really is, and get you to eat more. Whether or not any of these additives pose a proven hazard to your health, many of them haven't been eaten by humans for very long, so they are best avoided.

Avoid food products that contain high-fructose corn syrup. 

Not because high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is any worse for you than sugar, but because it is, like many of the other unfamiliar ingredients in packaged foods, a reliable marker for a food product that has been highly processed. Also, highfructose corn syrup is being added to hundreds of foods that have not traditionally been sweetened - breads, condiments, and many snack foods - so if you avoid products that contain it, you will cut down on your sugar intake. But don't fall for the food industry's latest scam: products reformulated to contain "no HFCS" or "real cane sugar." These claims imply these foods are somehow healthier, but they're not. Sugar is sugar.

Avoid foods that have some form of sugar (or sweetener) listed among the top three ingredients.

Labels list ingredients by weight, and any product that has more sugar than other ingredients has too much sugar. (For an exception to this rule, see rule 60, regarding special occasion foods.) Complicating matters is the fact that, thanks to food science, there are now some forty types of sugar used in processed food, including barley malt, beet sugar, brown rice syrup, cane juice, corn sweetener, dextrin, dextrose, fructo-oligosaccharides, fruit juice concentrate, glucose, sucrose, invert sugar, polydextrose, sucrose, turbinado sugar, and so on. To repeat: Sugar is sugar. And organic sugar is sugar too. As for noncaloric sweeteners such as aspartame or Splenda, research (in both humans and animals) suggests that switching to artificial sweeteners does not lead to weight loss, for reasons not yet well understood. But it may be that deceiving the brain with the reward of sweetness stimulates a craving for even more sweetness.

Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients. 

The specific number you adopt is arbitrary, but the more ingredients in a packaged food, the more highly processed it probably is. Note 1: A long list of ingredients in a recipe is not the same thing; that's fine. Note 2: Some products now boast, somewhat deceptively, about their short ingredient lists. Häagen-Dazs has a new line of ice cream called "five." Great - but it's still ice cream. Same goes for the threeingredient Tostitos corn chips advertised by Frito-Lay - okay, but they're still corn chips. In such cases, apply rule 60 for dealing with treats and special occasion foods.