Category Archives: Nutrition

Eat This For That: 100 Best Foods for Women

I found a terrific list of 100 healthful foods that every woman should include in her diet. Compiled by Alissa Miller on her blog at Nursing Degree.Net, she has grouped them into nine categories and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by some of the foods on her list:

• Overall health: Flax seed tops this list
• Skin Health - Includes foods with high concentrations of vitamins E and A and anti-inflammatory properties such as avocados, hazelnuts, olives and spinach

• Cardiovascular System - Onions, grapes and raspberries were a surprise to me!

• Cholesterol- Oatmeal, almonds and garlic are among 10 foods in this category
• Bone Health - Sesame seeds, beans and eggs are some of the foods that are rich in potassium, magnesium, calcium and other nutrients essential for bone health.
• Weight loss - Dried papayas, watermelon and fruit smoothies are excellent foods that will fill you up and add some sweetness – not calories – to your diet
• Nuts, Beans and Grains - Foods such as lentils, quinoa and barley provide lots of protein and a great substitute for red meat.
• Antioxidants - Cherries, artichokes, blueberries are on this list of foods that are high in antioxidants, which can help reverse the damaging effects of oxygen on our bodies’ cells.
• Super Foods - Acai and Goji berries top this list of 11 foods that are incredibly packed with important nutrients. Can you guess what else is on this list?
• Healthy Snacks - Pretzels, pistachios and graham crackers are recommended here for low-cal in-between meal snacks.
• Healthy Desserts - An oxymoron? Not according to Alissa who explains, “dark chocolate with at least 60% cocoa can reduce blood pressure and is full of antioxidants.”

10 Foods with High Amounts of Phytoestrogens

If you are experiencing menopausal symptoms typically associated with estrogen deficiency, such as hot flashes, mood swings, and food cravings, you may want to try increasing the amount of plant-based hormones – or phytoestrogens - in your diet.  Phytoestrogens are chemicals that are found in plants that may act like the estrogen produced naturally in the body.  Consider adding these foods to your weekly visit to the farmers market or grocery store.

1. Soy milk, tofu, edamame beans

2. Fermented soy foods such as miso and soy

3. Flaxseeds and sesame seeds

4. Wholegrains – such as oat bran, whole wheat and oatmeal

5. Peppers

6. Red grape juice and cranberries

7. Cranberries or red grape juice

8. Green beans, chickpeas, kidney beans

9. Broccoli

10. Celery

There are several herbs and plant roots, including dong quai, black cohosh, ginseng and red clover, that have also been reported as effective in menopause, but you should have the advice of an herbalist or naturopathic doctor before you add this to your diet.

These Foods & Beverages Will Pack On The Pounds Over Time

Managing your weight requires constant vigilance.   The average person gains one pound a year, which is hardly noticeable from one year to the next.  But if you let it go, those pounds add up slowly and before you know it, you’re 10-20 pounds over your ideal weight.  Current dietary guidlines urge people to “eat less and exercise more” to lose extra pounds, which sounds sensible. But recently, a team of researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, investigating ways to curb the obesity epidemic in this country, took a closer look at this diet mantra to see if this conventional wisdom is really good advice for preventing long-term weight gain.  What they concluded was that “eat less of this and more of that” would be more like it.

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Consuming Small Bites at a Slower Pace Can Promote Weight Loss

If you’re struggling to shed pounds and haven’t had success with any diet, maybe you should change the way you eat. Consider the findings of a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition: It showed that big bites and fast chewing makes you consume significantly more calories than if you take small bites and chew more. Presumably, when you taste food for a longer period of time, it satisfies your hunger sooner and you eat less. So the lesson here is to cut your food into smaller pieces, chew more (one physician told me to chew food 20 times!) and take the time to enjoy your meal.

A Leading Nutritional Expert’s Tips for Losing Your Belly and Finding Your Waist

Marilyn Glenville PhD, is a leading expert in nutritional health for women. The advice she offers in her 2006 book, “Mastering Cortisol: Stop Your Body’s Stress Hormone From Making You Fat Around the Middle,” explains in plain language how our eating habits are making us listless and fat around the middle – two common complaints of menopausal women.  In a previous blogpost, I highlighted  a section of her book that focused on vitamins, minerals and herbs that can help women eliminate “that bulge.” Here, I provide a top-line summary of her tips for  what and how to eat in order to lose excess weight  and belly fat in particular.  Her detailed explanations will help you understand the importance of her advice, so if you’re complaining of weight gain and belly fat,  I highly recommend that you read this book: … [Read more]

The Grapefruit Is a Power Food, But Maybe Not if You’re on HRT

While most of this country is experiencing freezing temperatures, southern California looks like one big citrus grove.  I picked these grapefruits in Palm Springs this weekend and they turned out to be my favorite kind, pink, which according  to Power Foods: 150 Delicious Recipes with the 38 Healthiest Ingredients offers about 35 times more vitamin A than their yellow counterparts.  Just one grapefruit covers your daily requirement of vitamin C and includes a range of phytonutrients, specifically carotenoid pigments.  Pink grapefruits in particular have a high ORAC value - meaning it ranks high on the government’s list of anti-oxidant containing foods – right up there with oranges, broccoli florets, cherries and kidney beans. So with all these health attributes, why do so many people avoid eating grapefruits? … [Read more]

Indulge Your Cravings for Chocolate Guilt Free

Valentine’s Day or not, chocolate is most everyone’s favorite treat and lately it has attained the status, along with leafy greens and flax seed, as a health food. A piece of dark chocolate can even help you lose weight, according to David Wolfe, a noted natural foods expert. He says Cacao, the raw bean that is rich in the antioxidant flavanol epicatechin,  is actually one of the great weight loss foods because it contains an abundance of minerals, such as magnesium, iron and chromium, that appear to shut off the appetite.

Debra Waterhouse, a registered dietician who 15 years ago wrote  Why Women Need Chocolate: Eat What You Crave to Look Good & Feel Great also thinks chocolate should be part of a woman’s diet, but for other reasons.  As she explained in her book:

Women do need chocolate as well as other foods high in starch, sugar and fat to stabilize moods, control weight and revitalize well being.  Food cravings are Mother Nature’s way of informing us that we need to eat a specific food in order to look and feel great. … [Read more]

Are These “Best” or “Worst” Foods Part of Your Diet?

The Nutrition Action Health Letter has posted on its website a list of The 10 Worst and Best Foods.  Topping the Best list are sweet potatoes (a favorite of mine), which are loaded with carotenoids, vitamin C and potassium. The delicious, sweet Mango, with its abundant supply of vitamins, came in second; and unsweetened yogurt came in third (it contains no sugary preserves).

You might be surprised at what their editors rank as the Worst Foods.  Leading the pack is Marie Callender’s Chicken Pot Pie, which they call “Artery Crust” for its high calorie, saturated fat and sodium content. … [Read more]

Banish Belly Fat With The Right Kind of Diet & Exercise

Among the top complaints about the menopause transition – besides sleep deprivation… and hot flashes… and foggy brain –  is weight gain and belly fat (aka “muffin top”).  But it seems to be a concern shared by women of all ages, if magazine covers and book sales are any indication.  Thirteen of the top 16 best-selling women’s health books on Amazon are about how to lose belly fat including the Flat Belly! Diet series of books which have claimed the top three spots on the list. … [Read more]

Cranberries Can Prevent, But Not Cure UTIs

The latest issue of Nutrition Action Newsletter hit my doorstep this week and there’s an interesting article, “Rooting for Fruit,” about using our fruit bowls as a medicine chest. Of particular interest to me was the explanation for why cranberries can help prevent urinary tract infections (UTIs)  if consumed regularly.

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