Hello!
It’s official! Desktop Carrot is now Eat for Years (E4Y). As you navigate E4Y, you’ll see that you have access to almost all of the old content and much more to come. Eat for Years will continue to provide fun, easy nutrition information with specials on gastrointestinal health and an emphasis on making changes today that will help you live more and better tomorrows.
To your future,
Colleen
My husband routinely opens his stories with “So, I was listening to a podcast…” and I like to tease him about it.
Now it’s his turn to rib me because ‘I was listening to a podcast’ about a new tech product designed to help you break bad habits and form good ones.
A lot of what I recommend on my blog and in my counseling sessions involves behavioral change (e.g. eat slower), and some people struggle with this more than others. An 84-year old recently told me that habits are tough to break, especially at 84.
Fortunately, there are all kinds of resources available to help you change a behavior, a topic that I plan to address further in future blog posts. But, for now I want to tell you about two particularly imaginative devices.
By Devin Roen
Greetings friends!
Who wants to learn about bile acid diarrhea (aptly shortened “BAD”), a condition commonly found in patients with IBS?
Better question: who doesn’t?!
Let’s start with a few basics.
Bile—a digestive juice used to help breakdown fats—is made in the liver and stored in the gallbladder. When you eat something containing fat, your liver pumps bile into the gallbladder and the gallbladder squirts bile onto the fat entering the small intestine.
Last week I blogged about the health benefits of nuts, including improved heart health, weight management, and a decreased risk of a variety of diseases.
Go figure that this week, this fun infographic showed up on my twitter feed, courtesy of Daily Burn.
Click image to enlarge.
For many people, snacking on nuts is an excellent way to satisfy hunger pangs and ward off binge eating later in the day. Personally, I find them particularly suitable for satisfying a sugar craving.
However, we can have too much of a good thing. A serving of nuts is roughly 1/4 cup or 150-200 calories. Limiting your portion is important for both your waistline and your digestion. Too many nuts can wreak havoc on even the most resilient guts.
Take a mental snapshot of this infographic for the next time you’re going “nuts” for nuts.
It’s 3 o’clock at work. You’re tired, you’re hungry and you’re about five seconds away from seeking out the leftover pastries from the morning breakfast meeting.
What should you do? Reach for a handful of nuts or a tablespoon or two of all-natural nut butter.
This week marks the one year anniversary of the Webb “cleanse,” better known as the Webb “curse” by those who elected to join me for my 10-days of no added sugar, gluten, starchy vegetables, highly processed foods, artificial sweeteners, dairy or alcohol.
The main goals of the “cleanse” were to encourage us to read food labels, gain a better understanding of what’s in our food, try foods that we might otherwise not, eat more vegetables, and feel extra energized and healthy.
I’ll admit it was a challenge (for me, giving up my glass of wine was agony, and I’m pretty sure my brother would have preferred a birthday cake versus a birthday pineapple), but many valuable lessons were learned.
One of the participants, my friend Howie, kept a detailed journal of his observations, struggles, and food intake that I’ve been meaning to share with others with dietary restrictions who can relate to his experiences. I was reminded of it this week after finding out that he’s in the midst of his second Webb “cleanse.”
Thanks, Howie, for keeping the tradition alive!
Here are Howie’s entertaining journal entries from 2015. I’ve highlighted some of his more significant findings.
As we look forward to summer picnics and barbeques, you might want to take a second to explore the potential health risks associated with grilling meat and learn what to do to minimize the potential dangers.
Healthy grilling is easy when you know some basic facts about how grilling affects our food.
The problem with grilling meat at high temperatures is that it can result in the formation of two dangerous compounds: heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).
So what the heck are HCAs are and why are they dangerous?
By Colleen McConnell
You may have heard about the potential benefits of omega-3 fats for conditions like heart disease, but did you know that there is considerable research on the possible benefits of omega-3 fats on the development and progression of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)?
Omega-3 fatty acids are essential anti-inflammatory fats. They’re “essential” because we can obtain them only through food or supplements since the human body cannot synthesize them. Their anti-inflammatory properties are thought to help the gut recover from IBD flares and ease symptoms.
Admittedly, there are a number of healthy foods I love but had no idea how to cook to them at home. At the top of my list of intimidating foods was the artichoke.
Who can blame me when two of its anatomical parts are called the choke and the thorns?
However, I made a commitment to embrace the artichoke because it’s full of dietary fiber, vitamin C, vitamin K, folic acid and other disease-fighting substances. Plus, it’s naturally low in fat and calories.
Continue reading
Studies suggest that approximately one in every 100 Americans have celiac disease, yet 97 percent of them go undiagnosed.
But what exactly is this increasingly common disease?
Celiac disease, sometimes referred to as gluten-sensitive enteropathy or celiac sprue, is a hereditary autoimmune disease that results from an abnormal response to eating gluten.
Gluten is a type of protein that is found in the grains wheat, rye and barley. In people with celiac disease, the body sees gluten as an enemy and responds by attacking, or inflaming, the very parts of the small intestine necessary for absorbing nutrients.