KTK-Nutrition

How can what you eat help you fight off disease?   What foods will help boost your immune system and keep you healthier?   Many of my students know we should be “eating healthy foods” but when asked, many have a hard time describing what those “healthy foods” are.   (My husband said to him a longevity diet would be chocolate and IPA beer.   Not sure that would be the way to a longer life.)   Can you name 5 foods that would help you fight diseases and lead to a longer life?   Yahoo has an interesting article, Add These Disease-Fighting Foods to Your Diet to Live a Longer Life .   Basically, what you are adding are foods that contain the healthy antioxidants that I have written about many times.   (See:   Antioxidants and good health .)    Focus on fruits and vegetables:   I tell my students to focus on at least 5 A Day – at least 5 fruits and vegetables a day.   Why?   Because eating fruits and vegetables lowers your risk of many diseases including heart disease , some cancers, diabet

Who doesn’t love a bowl of soup on a cold winter’s day?   Soup can be a way to add to your daily nutrition.   However, there are some soups that one should leave on the shelf.   Eat This, Not That recently wrote,   The Worst Chicken Noodle Soups on Shelves.   What soups are ones you should be putting in your grocery cart and which ones should you avoid?   What about homemade soup?   How can you make a healthy soup at home? Chicken Noodle soup is a favorite of most people.   A great soup when you are feeling ill or just want something hot on a cold day.   What to watch for in canned soups? Sodium – we all know we should “watch our sodium” but canned soups can pack a high amount of sodium in each serving.   Little or no vegetables – a good way to get some nutrition in your day is to choose a soup that has some vegetables in it.   Even tomato soup is a healthy Added sugar – we don’t need added sugar in our soup.   Most of us get way too much added sugar in our diets.   Save

Good Housekeeping Who doesn’t love going to holiday parties and enjoying all that good food to eat?   But along with enjoying all that delicious holiday food can come some unwanted pounds.   What can you do to enjoy the food but not add on the unwanted weight?   Between mid-November and mid-January, Americans gain about 1-2 pounds.   Not all that much except if one doesn’t lose those couple of pounds and they stick around until the next year’s holiday season.   Some experts think this holiday weight gain is responsible for adult weight creep.   Just a few added pounds a year ends up being many pounds over a decade.   Consumer Reports and others have a few recommendations to help avoid gaining weight over the holidays.   Try out what works for you, even try one of the tips each day. Tip 1:   Know your holiday starting weight – weigh yourself first thing in the morning.   This is your weight goal to maintain over the holiday season.   Then each day or at least once a week, check in

Getty Images/TODAY Introduction:   In the nutrition class I teach, students were asked to write a blog post on a nutrition topic.   One of those students, Sophia Cable, wrote an interesting blog post on a whole grains.   Students were also asked to conduct some of their own “research” on their nutrition topic and that research is shared in her post.     I welcome Sophia Cable as a guest author for this week’s blog post. Grains are commonly thought of as bread, rice, pasta, and oats.   Many people think that they should not be eating bread daily, or that they should never eat a plate of spaghetti.   This is not true. Foods like this can be very healthy and beneficial to incorporate into your diet.   The only thing is to make sure to choose the healthier options.   You may be asking how can bread or pasta ever be healthy?   The answer is simpler than you would think…choose whole grains. To gather a little more information about what people think and know about whole grains I asked a