San Diego Nutrition and Health

In the May 2007 issue of the online journal Nutrition, Metabolism, & Cardiovascular Diseases, researches reported that eating whole grains such as oatmeal, brown rice & barley would reduce a persons risk of clogged arteries, heart attacks and strokes. Unfortunately though, surveys show that over 40% of US adults report that on a given day they [...]

White bread, wheat bread, they both come from wheat.  So, what makes them so different, especially nutritionally speaking?  While it is true, white bread and wheat bread share a common origin, wheat, but that’s where the similarities stop.  In a whole grain such as wheat, the seed, also known as the kernel, consists of 3 [...]

Research indicates that on average 710,000 people die annually from heart disease.  What’s most alarming is that that is approximately 600,000 more deaths than from car accidents, the common flu, murders, air line crashes and lightening strikes combined.  And do you know what the real kicker is, in many cases heart disease is preventable with diet and [...]

Little by little the word is getting out and people are learning what trans fats are and why they don’t want them in their food.  A big win for the health of America occurred in December 2006.  The New York City Board of Health voted to have the Big Apple be the first city in [...]

Yesterday we identified how trans fats are created and why they’re bad news for your health.  One would think that if something was so bad for us, it would be easy to remove them from our diet.  Unfortunately this is not the case.  While food manufactures have known since the early 1990′s that trans fats [...]

Yesterday we talked about hydrogenation and that hydrogenated oils contain trans fat.  Today, we’ll continue the discussion by identifying how trans fats are created in the hydrogenation process and why you want to avoid them.  To begin, let’s review a few terms.  There are 3 different types of naturally occurring fatty acids: saturated fat, monounsaturated fat, and [...]

In the media, you may have heard talk of trans fats, hydrogenated oils, or partially hydrogenated oils and that they are not good for us.  What you may not know is why they aren’t good for you and what they are.  For the next few blogs we’ll address these questions.  Let’s start with hydrogenation and [...]

Take a look at this interesting finding.  In a study conducted by the University of California, San Diego (a little San Diego pride is appropriate here!), researchers found “that obese children who watch more than 4 hours of TV per day were 330% more likely to have high blood pressure than children who watched less than two hours [...]

Tomorrow is Halloween.  And, with Halloween comes Trick-or-Treating.  Oh the memories.  As a kid I looked forward to choosing a costume to wear, getting ready on the big day and then heading out on a mission to get as much candy as I could.  While I definitely liked candy, especially the candy bars, I wasn’t [...]

The bright orange color of pumpkin tells us that it’s loaded with beta-carotene.  Beta-carotene is an important antioxidant and it’s also a plant carotenoid that converts to Vitamin A in the body.  Research shows that eating foods high in beta-carotene can help reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease and can help combat the [...]