Every fall, when I was growing up in western Pennsylvania, my parents took me and my younger brother, Angelo, apple picking. We’d usually go in late September, always on a Sunday. Angelo and I loved picking—but even more, we loved the savory apple recipes and sweet apple treats that my mom made with the bushel of apples (roughly 45 pounds) stored in our downstairs fridge.
I’m trying to eat more vegetarian meals, so I’m obsessed with beans. And the bean recipes I’ve been making have made it incredibly easy. I thought I would feel less satisfied without having meat as part of my dinner, but beans fill me right up. Since they’re packed with fiber I never feel hungry after a meal. And my wallet isn’t suffering either—a can of beans is much cheaper than a pound of chicken or beef (and a pound of dried beans is even less expensive!). Now that’s what I call satisfaction.
I recently had a baby and am trying to lose those last few pregnancy pounds. With a young child and a full-time job, I have little time for exercise. Luckily, there’s another option: eating!
New research suggests that there’s a way to prevent this weight gain or even encourage weight loss—without dieting. The secret? Eat more fiber. Why? Researchers at Brigham Young University in Utah found that women who increased their fiber intake generally lost weight. Read more about the study below.
Mac & cheese is one of my all-time favorite comfort foods. I was a big fan of the boxed variety when I was a kid (the kind that came with a can of “real” cheese sauce, not the powdered cheese stuff, of course). And my mom was a big fan because it was a quick, easy meal that the whole family liked. But when I was finally wise enough to look at the nutrition label on those boxes, I was stunned at all the fat and sodium (and don’t forget all those unpronounceable ingredients).
Until a few months ago, I never gave much thought to E. coli. Or salmonella. Sure, I studied these foodborne bugs when I was getting my nutrition degree, but back then I saw them more as organisms that occasionally infect food, not perpetrators that destroy lives and families. And although I took note of the occasional food recalls I heard about in the news, I didn’t much worry about getting sick. That all changed when I edited an article for EatingWell’s September/October issue about all the ways food can make us sick.
