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For those of you that do not realize it, soy is a product made from beans, one of our best known and popular vegetables. The following is a guest article by Brue M. Baker. Enjoy it.

Soy is an excellent source of plant-based protein that can benefit those concerned about their heart and bone health, as well as their breast and prostate health.

Heart health benefits of soy: A meta-analysis of 38 studies indicates that consuming protein from soy foods is linked to retaining normal cholesterol levels. Another study suggests that soy protein may have antioxidant properties that helps protect bad(LDL) cholesterol from oxidizing.

Beyond the potential of soy protein to positively impact the cholesterol that travels through arteries, soy isoflavones may also support the healthy function of the arteries themselves. One study showed that menopausal women taking soy protein supplements (rich in isoflavones) experienced a significant improvement in elasticity of their arteries. Read the rest of this entry »

Learning how to plant a vegetable garden is not hard, but without careful planning and proper follow through, your garden may perform poorly. If done correctly it pays off with big benefits in so many ways. Before you know it you will be picking perfectly ripe, perfectly delicious tomatoes without having to wonder what chemicals went into growing them.

The most important part of successful gardening is to properly prepare the soil. A routine soil test gives information on any lime requirement, phosphorous and potassium needs and estimated nitrogen requirements. A good soil mixture contains two parts loam, one parts and, and one part organic matter and many pre-mixed soil mixtures are available at garden centers. When manure is added to the soil, it must be composted prior to planting, because fresh, hot manure will also burn your plants. Vegetables need a lot of nutrition to grow well, so the better you prepare the soil before planting, the better chances you have of producing a bountiful crop. For information on soil testing, call your local county extension educator or the local university soil testing laboratory. Read the rest of this entry »

Research is constantly being done on the benefits of vitamins and minerals, but garlic is actually one of the most beneficial and natural healthy foods.

Garlic has been found to be beneficial to the human body in a number of different ways. Research has shown many positive results of regular eating of garlic. For example, garlic is a natural form of an antibiotic in a general way as opposed to focusing on specific types of bacteria or parts of the body.

Garlic is generally helpful for pain relief, particularly when pain is due to problems in the circulatory system, such as angina pain. Read the rest of this entry »

How did our family traditions become centered around eating meat? Think about it. When we think of Thanksgiving, we think of turkey. If we eat pork, then New Year’s celebrations often revolve around pork and sauerkraut. At Christian Easter, the traditional meal is ham. And in the summer, we wait for that first hamburger or steak on the grill.

How did that happen to a species that was designed to eat vegetables and fruits, nuts, berries and legumes? Read the rest of this entry »

It must have felt unnatural at first, to eat animal flesh. After all, we’re not so far removed from animals ourselves. Perhaps it even felt cannibalistic. There might not have been that much intellectual distinction between humans and other animals. When humans were pure vegetarians, they were living in harmony with the earth and with the other creatures co-habiting the planet with them. Their closest animal relatives, apes, were vegetarians. Eating the products of the earth, like plants, grains and fruits that they could gather and eat would have seemed the natural order of things. Read the rest of this entry »

Vegetables do not have to be boring. Cooking frozen vegetables in the microwave to go with dinner is an easy rut to get stuck in. You might eat them plain or mix them with a little butter or salt and pepper. No doubt, even if you eat different vegetables every night, the frozen vegetables get old. Vegetarians especially need to add interest to their vegetables. The veggies comprise so much of a vegetarian’s daily nutrition that boredom could have disastrous results. If you are bored with your vegetable fare, read on. Here are five ways to make eating your vegetables a little more fun. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you ever think about how far we’ve diverted from the path of our pre-historic ancestors and their““` eating patterns? Consider how the earliest humans evolved, and what they ate. They were hunter-gatherers and did not evolve with the characteristics of carnivores. Humans aren’t made to tear animals apart and eat their flesh. When you look at carnivorous animals, such as wild cats, you can see their teeth are designed to rip and tear, not chew. Read the rest of this entry »

Many people understand the many benefits that a vegetarian diet can have for your health and the environment, but few realize exactly how many different subsets of vegetarianism there are. When it comes to vegetarianism, many people choose to be either a lacto-vegetarian or an ovo-vegetarian.

In this article, we will attempt to explain some of the differences between these two diets so that it will be easier for you to figure out exactly which type of diet you should take on for yourself. Read the rest of this entry »

Fresh fruit and vegetables deliver premium health benefits if you can pick them and eat them readily, say specialists in this field. The longer produce is exposed to air and light, the quicker the vitamins and other nutrients break down. It may take several days, or even weeks after harvest for it to reach a grocery store, and then reach you.

On the other hand, produce that is designated for freezing is flash-frozen near to its source, quickly locking in the nutrients. In fact, frozen could be more. When cooking vegetables, don’t boil away valuable vitamins. Frozen veggies like corn and peas, broccoli, and butternut squash, can now be steamed quickly and conveniently the way Steam Ease does it. Independent lab analysis compared steaming of broccoli to conventional stovetop boiling. The results showed that Steam Ease technology retains 1.5 times more vitamin C and 40% more folic acid than boiled. More information is online at Omsteadfoods

article supplied by NewsCanada

You’ve certainly heard the expression many times, “You are what you eat.” Have you ever really thought about what it means? And do you think about it when you’re making food choices?

In some ways, we do become what we eat, literally. Have you ever seen an example of your blood plasma after eating a fast food hamburger? What was previously a clear liquid becomes cloudy with the fat and cholesterol that’s absorbed from eating a high-fat hamburger. Read the rest of this entry »