In the “at least things haven’t gotten worse” department, the price of food and other essentials stabilized somewhat but remains well above what it was pre-pandemic. Factors maintaining high prices include the continuing effects of the pandemic on the food chain and the impact of the Russia/Ukraine war.

Meanwhile, climate chaos (a phrase that’s much more accurate than the anodyne “climate change” or “global warming”) is already causing havoc, contributing to higher food prices by bringing droughts to some places and floods to others, leading to crop failures and economic hardship.

In many parts of the world, climate chaos will continue to hamper food production, particularly in areas suffering from prolonged drought and relying more and more on groundwater — leading to accelerated aquifer depletion. This threatens to create massive disruptions when wells run dry — something that’s already happening in many places and is likely to intensify dramatically in the years ahead.

I was stunned by a recent opinion piece in the New York Times about Uzbekistan’s disappearing Aral Sea. A photo accompanying the article shows rusted boats stranded in a lifeless desert that used to be a thriving port — now 75 miles from the nearest body of water.

All these developments highlight the critical importance of eating lower on the food chain. Doing so can save massive amounts of land, water, and other natural resources — and can significantly reduce the food system’s contribution to climate chaos.

And, as we frequently discuss on this site, eating more plants, fewer animals, and less processed food can also be a great move for your health.

In short, the mission of the Food Revolution Network is more important than ever.

A Couple of the Many Lives Changed by the Food Revolution

At FRN, we’re privileged to hear, almost every day, from people whose lives have been touched by our message. Some of the stories we hear make us cry! And all of them fill us with determination to carry on and to spread the word.

Here are just a few of the memorable member stories from 2023:

WHOLE Life Club member Diane M. from Saugerties, NY, USA, wrote:

“With WHOLE Life Club, I sought support and information to help me on my journey to a…  whole food, plant-based diet. It has done that and a whole lot more! I have lost over 120 pounds since September 2022. My A1c dropped from 10.4 to 4.5, my triglycerides are now in a normal range, my LDL cholesterol has dropped tremendously, and my HDL cholesterol is in a healthy range and creeping higher. I feel so much better, with more energy, motivation, and a healthier mindset. Thank you to WLC and all its members! I enjoy how positive everyone is, and the nonjudgmental way the leaders include everyone as they teach, no matter what phase students are in on their journey.”

Plant-Based Coaching Certification graduate Terry Baker from Oro Valley, AZ, USA, wrote:

“Food Revolution Network’s Plant-Based Coaching Certification was truly the answer to my prayers, and I am so eternally grateful. I value the PBCC so highly because not only did I learn about the vast intricacies of the human body and exactly what it needs to be truly healthy at any age, but also I gained the knowledge and confidence to successfully share this vital information with others, hoping to end unnecessary suffering and disease. Do not hesitate in taking this course! You have no idea what a beautiful, powerful, and positive impact you could have in this world! Thank you to EVERYBODY in the Food Revolution Network for making this course possible.”

The Future of Plant-Based Eating

More and more people around the world are showing an interest in moving toward a more plant-based diet, and the number of people who make the shift is also increasing.

Veganuary — a fun portmanteau of vegan and January — broke all previous records with more registered participants than ever, from nearly every country in the world. And many of those folks maintained a more plant-based diet after the 31 days of the event.

More and more restaurants, businesses, and other organizations are responding to an increased demand for plant-based options — and sometimes leading it — by cutting down on animal products or eliminating them altogether. NYC Health + Hospitals, which operates 11 public hospitals in New York City, now serves plant-based meals to inpatients by default. Not only are the meals healthier than before, but they’re also changing perceptions of how “hospital food” tastes — with chefs creating dishes inspired by Latin American, Asian, and other cuisines representing the populations served by these institutions.

In a move that might have seemed unbelievable just a few years ago, the US Conference of Mayors (a nonpartisan organization that includes the mayors of all 1,400 US cities with populations of 30,000 or more) ratified a resolution supporting a plant-based approach to fighting the epidemic of chronic disease, mitigating climate chaos, and saving money desperately needed by the municipalities.

The number of restaurants offering plant-based menu options is also increasing. According to research by the Plant Based Foods Association, 95% of restaurants that offer plant-based selections expect sales of those items to remain steady or increase. And four times as many foodservice operators were planning to add plant-based options as the number that were planning to remove them.

A student-led campaign in the UK, Plant-Based Universities, is working to get all university catering facilities to transition 100% of their menus to plant-based. Begun in late 2021, the campaign has given a voice to students who are voting to remove animal products from university food halls specifically to address the climate crisis.

And in the US, Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts won our “best acronym” award by introducing the Peas, Legumes, and Nuts Today (PLANT) Act in the House of Representatives on July 28, 2023. If passed, the act would establish an Office of Plant-Based Foods and Innovative Production at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and help fund farmers who produce ingredients specifically for plant-based foods, like legumes and mushrooms. It would also create a research program to further the development of plant-based proteins that could replace meat and offer technical and financial assistance to businesses that move the food industry in a more plant-forward direction.

Plant-Based Diets Continue to be Better for Your Wallet, Health, and the Planet

One of the nice things about advocating for more plant-based eating is that it tends to make people’s lives better right away — starting with their wallets. A study by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine found that adopting a low-fat vegan diet led to a 16% reduction in grocery bills, for an average savings of $500 per person per year.

If you’d like to avail yourself of the economic advantages of a plant-based diet, a good place to start is our article 7 Healthy Recipes for Eating Plant-Based on a Budget.

While the benefits of a whole foods, plant-based diet to your pocketbook can be felt immediately, it might take a few days, weeks, or months to notice health improvements. But scientific research continues to find more and more evidence that such improvements are likely.

A 2023 study published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine followed 59 patients with type 2 diabetes as they were placed on a low-fat, plant-predominant diet for six months, along with receiving standard medical treatment. By the end of the study, 37% of the patients, whose average age was 71, had their diabetes in remission.

A 2023 study published in the journal Nutrients looked at how diet, genes, and lifestyle factors contribute to obesity by analyzing body fat in adults. Researchers discovered that a plant-based diet helped reduce the risk of obesity, even for those with a genetic predisposition to higher body fat.

Another article published in the past year collected data from 55 recent human trials on the effects of a plant-based diet on cardiovascular disease. The authors wrote that the preponderance of evidence showed that incorporating more plant foods into the diet can protect against heart disease and may also help prevent other chronic conditions.

Plant-based eating, especially a diet rich in whole foods, was also found to be predictive of mental health. A 2023 study found that a high-quality plant-based diet may offer protection against depressive symptoms and should be considered as a lifestyle-based treatment for people suffering from the condition.

And in November 2023, the results of a carefully conceived and remarkable randomized controlled trial involving 22 pairs of identical twins were published in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) Network Open. The study authors concluded: “The findings from this trial suggest that a healthy plant-based diet offers a significant protective cardiometabolic advantage compared with a healthy omnivorous diet.”

What About the Earth?

One of the major drivers of the trend toward more plant-based eating is increased awareness of the scope of the chaos wrought by human-made climate change. While switching to electric vehicles and replacing energy-guzzling appliances with more efficient ones are steps in the right direction, the impact of these actions pales in comparison with the effects of adopting a plant-based diet.

Research published in the prestigious journal Nature in 2023 found that, on average, vegans produce 75% fewer food-related greenhouse gas emissions than meat-eaters. And plant-based dietary patterns also reduce harm to land, water, and biodiversity.

Becoming a B Corp

Speaking of impacts on the world around us, we wanted to share some exciting company news about FRN. In 2023, FRN submitted an application for B Corp status with high hopes that the submission will be approved in 2024 (our Owners and Board members are Ocean Robbins and John Robbins, as you might guess).

A B Corp, or benefit corporation, is a type of company that’s recognized for meeting higher standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. B Corps are committed to generating positive impacts on society and the environment.

The application process includes an extensive review of the company’s mission and where its impact is and is not aligned with that mission. The review looks at things like donation of money, products, or services to social causes and at-risk communities; decreasing pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and production of waste; use of renewable energy and resources; support of tree planting and other forms of carbon sequestration; equitable compensation of team members; integration of mission-related responsibilities into employee performance evaluations and job descriptions; and providing employment and advancement opportunities for women, people of color, and other traditionally marginalized groups.

Since we started FRN in 2012, our mission has been front and center. We’re committed to healthy, ethical, sustainable food for all! So becoming a certified B Corp seems to be a natural next step to formalize our values.

Our 2023 Contributions to the Food Revolution

In 2023, thanks to you, our million+ community members, and 25+ FRN staff, we accomplished an amazing amount.

• We published 106 articles on nutrition, health, and sustainability topics and more than 148 new plant-based recipes. Our content reached more than six million unique readers, and our website was accessed over 13 million times.
• Through customer purchases of our digital products, we supported the planting of over 75,000 organic fruit or nut trees that will sequester more than 6,000 tons of carbon dioxide while providing food to low-income communities with Trees for the Future.
• In terms of non-digital products, Food Revolution Network put out its first physical cookbook this year. Real Superfoods: Everyday Ingredients to Elevate Your Health was published by Hay House on October 31, 2023. Over 9,800 people took part in the Real Superfoods Challenge leading up to its publication. And the book was an Amazon bestseller in its first week!
• Ocean delivered a captivating and inspiring TEDx Talk at the prestigious TEDx Alexander Park this year, and the excitement is contagious! His presentation, entitled “Eating Your Way to Happiness,” has already racked up more than a million views.
• Ocean was a featured speaker at Holistic Holiday at Sea, a plant-based cruise to the Caribbean, where he presented two keynotes. More than 150 FRN members and hundreds of other wellness enthusiasts participated in the cruise. To find out more about the cruise and get a $50 onboard credit for the next one, visit the Holistic Holiday at Sea website.
• Across our social media pages, Food Revolution Network had a combined reach of 5.6 million people, over 6.2 million impressions, and over 560,000 followers. Video content was the preferred medium on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.
• The 2023 Food Revolution Summit was a special one, debuting as a full docuseries for the very first time. This year’s Summit reached 437,302 participants who viewed over 209,800 hours of empowering and groundbreaking content.
• We debuted FRN’s first foray into the coaching world with our Plant-Based Coaching Certification (PBCC). New and experienced coaches learned unique skills to help them empower their clients to transform their lives through a plant-based lifestyle. In the first cohort, PBCC welcomed 244 students. Graduation timing is flexible, but by the end of 2023, more than half of the inaugural cohort had already graduated. After completing a brief exam administered by the Lifestyle Prescriptions University in partnership with the nonprofit Lifestyle Medicine University Foundation, graduates received 24 CE/CPD credits from the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching and 24 CE/CPD credits from the CPD Standards Office. Additionally, for RDs/RDNs, all activities offered by the Food Revolution Network’s Plant-Based Coaching Certification were eligible to receive CPEUs by the Commission on Dietetic Registration.
• FRN helped over 10,468 people improve their blood sugar balance and metabolic health with our Tackling Type 2 Masterclass and course with Brenda Davis, RD.
• Over 46,990 people received transformative guidance on implementing a healthy diet with our Food for Health Masterclass, and nearly 2,900 went on to enroll in the Plant-Powered & Thriving course it introduces.
• We shared The Need To GROW — an award-winning, solutions-based environmental documentary — with more than 181,300 audience members.
• We gave an awe-inspiring look into the mushroom kingdom to more than 61,600 people with the film Fantastic Fungi.
• The groundbreaking health film From Food to Freedom debuted to over 81,300 viewers.
• Our Healthy Heart Masterclass reached over 23,500 people, with 1,500 enrollments in the Healthy Heart course with holistic integrative cardiologist Mimi Guarneri, MD.
• FRN relaunched our Brain Breakthroughs Masterclass, taught by husband and wife neurologist team Drs. Dean and Ayesha Sherzai, to over 31,700 people, and shared their Healthy Brain course with over 1,750 people.
• More than 19,850 people participated in our first-ever Eat the Rainbow Challenge with the reopening of WHOLE Life Club registration.
• We helped over 3,300 people take small steps every day for two weeks with our 14-Day Plant-Powered Accelerator. Participants received healthy eating secrets straight to their inboxes to support lasting changes to their diets.
• And within WHOLE Life Club, we provided 53 Action of the Week videos, 12 expert interviews, 312 recipes, and monthly live member events (In the Kitchen Live Calls, Culinary and Coaching Q&As, and Community Connection Calls) with our WLC community, which has grown to more than 10,000 active members.

The Most Popular Food Revolution Network Blog Posts Published in 2023

These were FRN’s most popular new posts of 2023.

• Is Bone Broth Good for You? (88,432 views)
• Plant-Based Lysine: Do You Need Meat To Get Enough Lysine? (87, 715 views)
• The Importance of Fiber in Gut Health and Hormonal Balance (64,881 views)
• Goitrogens: Should You Worry About Their Effect on Your Thyroid? (58,403 views)
• The Zesty Truth About Limes: Exploring Their Health Benefits and Potential Risks (50,054 views)

The Most Popular Food Revolution Network Recipes of 2023

Snacks dominated the top-viewed recipes list this year, along with a couple of tasty and legume-filled curries. Unsurprisingly, our Super Simple Homemade Date Paste made the top ten again but has been dethroned as the most popular recipe.

Our most popular recipes for 2023 were:

• Easy Cheesy Herbed Crackers (18, 474 views)
• The Best Creamy and Crunchy Snack! (14,486 views)
• Thai Almond Chickpea Curry (13,409 views)
• Super Simple Homemade Date Paste (13,403 views)
• Sweet Red Lentil Curry (13,214 views)
• Creamy Vanilla Cinnamon Chia Pudding (13,206 views)
• Cherry Cheesecake Smoothie (12,376 views)
• Super Seedy Granola (9,794 views)
• Oatmeal Banana Bites (9,393 views)
• Sheet Pan Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp (9,139 views)

On a Personal Note

In 2023, my dad, colleague, and dear friend — and FRN cofounder — John Robbins, experienced the progression of a health condition, post-polio syndrome, that has had a significant impact on his life and on our family. He is working with it in a profound way, and we shared about it in this video. We have received nearly a thousand deeply moving responses to this sharing, and they have lifted our family’s spirits. The way my dad is working with this condition is profoundly moving to me — and to many other people, too.

My dad and I are profoundly privileged to work with an amazing team of 25+ at FRN. This is, without a doubt, the most friendly, cooperative, dedicated, accountable, and effective team either of us has ever been a part of. The FRN team works virtually, and as much as digital tools like Zoom and Slack allow us to collaborate and be in each others’ lives, they aren’t a perfect substitute for in-the-flesh human interaction. So I’m delighted to share that in October 2023, we hosted our first in-person team retreat since 2019.

Thank You for All that YOU Do

We work hard at FRN, and sometimes the mission that we’ve staked out, along with the tasks and deadlines that bring that mission to life, can feel daunting. So it’s important for us to constantly remind ourselves that the food revolution movement is a mission much bigger than my dad, much bigger than me, much bigger than any one person, and much bigger than the FRN staff. It’s a movement that is growing and gaining traction, saving lives and bringing healing to our world.

And that movement includes you, about whom I’ve saved the last word.

FRN has a voice and influence because of you. When famous and influential people and brands consider whether to partner with us, one of the things they look at is our “reach.” Because we’re over a million members strong, we can work with the folks who gave the world movies like Fantastic Fungi and The Need to GROW. We can interest a book publisher like Hay House in publishing our cookbooks (with another coming back for final editing next week for publication in 2024).

We can attract an all-star lineup to share their ideas in our annual Food Revolution Summit because they know that a huge audience is there to “eat up” their wisdom — and use it to improve the lives of themselves and their loved ones, their communities, and the entire world.

There’s a video that was published in 2009 on YouTube that went viral and has now amassed over 24 million views. Titled “Sasquatch Music Festival 2009 — Guy Starts Dance Party,” it’s a 3-minute clip showing a lone dancer doing a series of pretty goofy moves. After a while, he’s joined by his first follower and then a second. A little over one minute into the video, it suddenly turns into a dance party — a mass movement. The energy grows and becomes contagious. When I first watched it, I wanted to jump through my laptop screen and join in.

Without you, dear reader, my dad, our staff at FRN, and I would still be the first three dancers, enjoying ourselves but lacking impact at scale. Your willingness to embrace the mission and the frequent calls to action — and to share and amplify the messages and make them your own — is what allows us to make the contributions highlighted above.

So please know how absolutely grateful we are to you for all the ways you generously support our work and provide loving and helpful feedback to help us improve. And for all the ways you assume leadership in your families and communities, day in and day out.

Like: Moving toward a plant-based diet. Choosing organic produce when you can. Buying local, from farm stands and farmers markets. Buying less and loving more. Donating to worthy causes. Loving the people you love with your whole heart. Trying new healthy recipes from our blog articles. Sharing articles, films, and healthy food with friends and loved ones.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Thank you for caring about the food that you eat and the food you share with others. Thank you for caring about the well-being of the people who produce that food.

Thank you for aligning your actions and purchases with your values, and for being willing to look at inconvenient truths and adapt your behavior accordingly.

Thank you for all the ways in which you strive to be the change we all wish to see, and to manifest, in the world.

Here’s to all we accomplished together in 2023, and to the healing, compassion, and beauty we’re creating, one meal at a time.

May all be fed. May all be healed. May all be loved.

Ocean Robbins and John Robbins

Cofounders, Food Revolution Network

Tell us in the comments:

• How has the food revolution impacted your life in 2023?
• What was your favorite Food Revolution Network article from this past year? What made it special for you?
• What are you looking forward to in 2024?

Featured Image: iStock.com/Irina_Strelnikova

Read Next:

• Food Revolution Network’s End of Year Review: Looking Back on What We Accomplished in 2022
• Why the Global Rise in Vegan and Plant-Based Eating is No Fad (30x Increase in US Vegans + Other Astounding Vegan Stats)

The post Looking Back: Food Revolution Network’s 2023 Year in Review appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

But by the end of the 20th century, the dieting trend was starting to decline. The reality that diets very rarely produce sustained weight loss started to sink in. People gradually shifted their emphasis from shrinking their size to improving their health.

The Health at Every Size and Body Positivity movements were central to this shift. And the Dove brand received widespread praise for its Real Beauty campaign, featuring models with full-figured bodies.

By the 2010s, polls were showing record lows in the percentage of people who wanted to lose weight, and news outlets were reporting that fewer than 1 in 5 people in the US was dieting. All this spelled trouble for the weight loss industry.

Fast forward to the present day, and — shazam! — the semaglutide drugs Ozempic and Wegovy have hit the scene. It turns out that people still want to lose weight after all.

The New Weight Loss Drugs

If companies needed reassurance that weight loss can still be big business, they’ve gotten it. Novo Nordisk, the Danish corporation that makes Ozempic and Wegovy, is now the most valuable company in all of Europe, with a market capitalization of $425 billion dollars, an amount greater than the entire economy of Denmark.

But what are these drugs, and how do they work? Are they really that effective for weight loss? What are the benefits of being on them, and what are the side effects? And, more importantly, are they safe?

There are indeed some surprising benefits — and also eye-opening risks — to semaglutide drugs for weight loss. And in this article, we will cover all of them. We’ll even introduce you to an alternative approach that research shows produces weight loss results equal to Ozempic and Wegovy, without the negative side effects. (Hint: it’s not weight loss surgery, and Big Pharma is not involved).

But first, we need to start at the beginning. Should people even try to lose weight in the first place? And why have conventional approaches to weight loss failed them?

A Rise in Obesity and its Health Effects

Over the last 50–75 years, the average weight of the human population has risen steadily, in lockstep with dramatic changes to our food supply.

According to the World Obesity Atlas, by 2035, fully one-half of all people worldwide, over four billion people, will be living with overweight or obesity. And that’s not good news, for many reasons.

There is still a tremendous stigma associated with excess weight, making overweight and obesity difficult to live with, both socially and psychologically. Obviously, we should continue to strive to reduce that stigma. And people should aim to be healthy, and to love and respect themselves, their bodies, and the people around them, no matter their size.

If negative stigma were the only issue, universal size acceptance and body positivity would be the straightforward answer. However, research continues to confirm that body size is not at all irrelevant to human health.

Furthermore, health-promoting efforts like exercise do not fully offset the risks of carrying excess weight. For example, in a large study of over 50,000 people, researchers found that even robust levels of physical activity don’t neutralize the profoundly damaging toll that obesity takes on cardiovascular health.

Alas, excess weight is simply not benign. It’s linked with mental health conditions like depression and anxiety, conditions of poor well-being like fatigue and chronic pain, potentially life-ending conditions like heart disease and 13 forms of cancer, and, of course (as we were all reminded by the media over and over in 2020 and 2021), severe illness and potential death from diseases like COVID-19.

Bringing our body composition in line with the body fat ratios that our ancient ancestors used to have may well be the healthiest for longevity, not to mention quality of life along the way.

The Truth Behind Weight Gain and Weight Loss

So, what’s driving all this weight gain?

It’s easy to assume that our sedentary lifestyles are to blame. But research shows that active people in hunter-gatherer tribes actually burn no more calories than sedentary people in the Western world.

How can that be?

It turns out that, when we’re very active, the body compensates by burning significantly less fuel the rest of the time, resulting in little to no change to overall daily energy output.

Keep that in mind the next time you think you’ll go to the gym to “burn off” the food you’ve just eaten. You can do that workout, and it will absolutely be healthy for you overall. But when you come home afterward, your body will shift into low gear. (And after a few days, you will have burned no more total calories than if you had just stayed home.) This is part of the reason why exercise won’t make you thin.

Ultra-Processed Foods

More and more experts are starting to converge on the opinion that the true cause of the obesity pandemic is all the ultra-processed food we’re eating. And indeed, solid research shows that ultra-processed foods drive us to eat more and gain weight quite rapidly.

In fact, even when controlling for total presented calories, energy density, and grams of protein, carbohydrate, fat, fiber, sugar, and salt, on a processed foods diet (versus an unprocessed diet of nearly identical composition), participants in the above trial ate significantly more and gained weight in as little as two weeks.

People eating ultra-processed foods don’t just gain weight, though. Their brains and bodies change. Inflammation rises, baseline insulin levels go up, and triglycerides increase. Together these changes are associated with leptin resistance, a condition that means the brain never gets the signal to stop eating.

Plus, ultra-processed foods are addictive, creating the same deficit in dopamine receptors that’s characteristic of cocaine and heroin addiction. And this change in brain chemistry causes powerful food cravings that further drive people to overeat.

This is all bad news for humankind because ultra-processed food consumption is only becoming more and more prevalent.

Today, a full two-thirds of the calories children consume is not what their grandmothers would have called “food” at all, but rather industrial concoctions born in a factory and poured into a plastic wrapper. And the trends aren’t stopping — they’re just going global.

Every 10 hours in 2023, a new McDonald’s opened in China, with a record 900 new franchises added by the end of the year. That’s on top of the roughly 1,200 new KFC and Pizza Hut stores that opened in China as well. The US has spread its “cuisine” around the world — with devastating effects.

How the Brain Can Sabotage Weight Loss Efforts

On a personal level, for the 70% of people in industrialized countries today carrying excess weight, the conundrum is that once weight is gained, it’s incredibly difficult to shed for good. And this is by design.

The brain is happy to allow us to gain weight. After all, fat stores are what will keep us alive when food becomes scarce over a long winter. But the brain fiercely protects our current body weight (even if it’s too high for optimal health) by launching a full-fledged hormonal assault when we lose weight. It very deliberately toggles our hormonal dials: lowering thyroid hormones (reducing our metabolism), increasing ghrelin (triggering hunger pangs), and lowering leptin (so the brain comes to think we’re starving), making sustained weight loss about as easy as holding our breath while climbing a long staircase.

Many people engage in yo-yo dieting and ultimately find themselves demoralized. In a nutshell, diets don’t work. People tend to lose perhaps 2–7% of their starting weight (when they might be aiming to lose several times that much). And then, almost always, they gain it back. Indeed, weight loss programs don’t tend to publish results beyond one year, because after that, weight regain is the norm.

Enter Ozempic and Wegovy

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No wonder people are looking for a different solution. And for people who have tried everything else, the new weight loss drugs are offering much-needed hope again. Celebrities of every ilk, from actors, models, and comedians to business magnates and even the former Prime Minister of the UK, are talking about their use of these drugs. But is the hype warranted? Let’s dive in.

What Are the New Weight Loss Drugs and How Do They Work?

Semaglutide drugs were originally designed to help control blood sugar levels in people with type 2 diabetes. They work by mimicking the hormone GLP-1, which has an appetite-suppressing effect.

Tirzepatide drugs, which are also part of the current weight loss trend, mimic both GLP-1 and the hormone GIP, but overall have a similar effect. They increase insulin released from the pancreas and decrease glucagon from the liver, which balances out blood sugar. As a result, people lose weight because they become less interested in eating.

Additionally, these drugs modulate dopamine levels in the addictive centers in the brain, resulting in fewer cravings and decreased anticipation of pleasure from eating. In animal models (FRN’s stance on the use of animals in medical research is here), these drugs were able to reduce cocaine, amphetamine, alcohol, and nicotine use, too. And in fact, reports are flooding in that people on Ozempic and Wegovy are not just eating less, they’re also smoking fewer cigarettes and losing their taste for alcohol.

With the double whammy of less hunger and fewer food cravings, weight loss results can average upwards of 15% of starting body weight. This is many times greater than what people can expect from a conventional weight loss program.

From that perspective, it definitely is the case that semaglutide drugs can work for weight loss. However, from the perspective of a 300-pound person looking to lose perhaps 35–60% of their body weight, the prospect of losing 15% of their starting weight isn’t exactly a home run.

For context, the average person getting Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery — the approach that results in the most dramatic weight loss but also comes with a 3.34% mortality rate — can expect to lose a lot of weight initially and then regain a fair bit, settling at a net loss of about 25% of their starting weight after five years. Certainly, weight loss surgeries are far more invasive and involve a host of risks. But are weight loss drugs risky, too?

Is Semaglutide Safe?

The question “Are they safe?” requires us to consider our standards for safety and our tolerance for risk. Is driving a car safe? Flying in an airplane? Jumping out of an airplane with a parachute?

One might argue that carrying a lot of excess weight isn’t “safe,” which means it really comes down to managing risk. So, what are the risks of semaglutide and other weight loss drugs?

Gastrointestinal Symptoms

The main side effects of semaglutide drugs are gastrointestinal in nature, and they can range from very mild to severe. Many people who start on these drugs experience symptoms like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, sharp pain, belching, gas, bloating, or intestinal blockage.

For some people, the side effects are problematic enough that they stop taking the drug. In fact, many prominent celebrities have done so because it made them feel too sick. But most people find that the side effects subside with continued use. Starting on a low dose and then gradually increasing it can reduce the likelihood that GI symptoms will be debilitating.

Unfortunately, we don’t have any clear long-term data on what these drugs do to the gastrointestinal system over time.

Thyroid Cancer Risk

People taking semaglutide drugs may also have an increased risk of developing thyroid cancer, so people with a family history of the disease are cautioned not to take them. As a result, the FDA has put a black box warning (its highest level of warning) on the Ozempic and Wegovy packaging for thyroid cancer.

That said, a meta-analysis of 45 randomized controlled trials showed an increase in thyroid disorders, but not thyroid cancer. Because these instances are rare occurrences, more research is needed.

Muscle Reduction

Finally, many outlets have reported that semaglutide drugs reduce lean muscle mass (rather than just fat mass). But there are also several studies that contradict that claim — so the jury is still out on this point.

How Much Does Ozempic or Wegovy Cost?

One of the biggest downsides to semaglutide drugs for weight loss is the financial cost. Getting a weekly injection (and yes, most of these drugs are administered by injection) of Wegovy can cost over $1,300 per month in the US — that’s around $16,000 per year. The drugs are priced significantly lower in other countries (although still expensive). But these sky-high prices are resulting in insurance companies dropping these medications from their plans, so getting coverage can be difficult.

There are innumerable plans, and policies change frequently, so a Google search is not likely to help you determine whether insurance will cover Ozempic or Wegovy. If you have health insurance, the best way to find out is to contact your insurance provider directly. There are some coupons and programs that help people pay for the drugs. But the bottom line is that the financial investment is likely significant.

And the cost doesn’t just impact the user. Any time insurance providers, even including governments, pay for an expensive treatment, the cost is ultimately absorbed by everyone in their covered pool — through higher premiums and/or taxes. This means that if costly weight loss drugs come to be used widely, the price of medical insurance could go up for just about everyone.

Weight Regain

If you’re not prepared to be on the drugs for the rest of your life, then it’s also important to know that, once the drugs are discontinued, most of the weight tends to come back rather quickly.

One large study found that participants regained two-thirds of the total weight they’d lost within the first year of stopping the medication. This is perhaps not surprising. When you stop taking cholesterol medication, you expect your cholesterol to go up again. The same logic applies to semaglutide drugs.

It would be nice if the brain would adapt to your new, lower weight and allow you to maintain it as a “new normal.” But it doesn’t. This means that someone taking the drugs for weight loss will either need to prepare to be on them for life or adopt new lifestyle interventions that will allow them to manage their weight when they wean off.

The trouble is that, when appetite and cravings are artificially suppressed, motivation is not strong to adopt rigorous new eating habits. If the person could have done that in the first place, they would have lost weight without the drug.

Are There Long-Term Studies on the New Weight Loss Drugs?

Unfortunately, no. We don’t have a lot of long-term data on Ozempic or Wegovy. But the first GLP-1 agonist to be approved for type 2 diabetes was Byetta (Exenatide) in 2005. You can think of it as a first cousin to Ozempic and Wegovy.

That drug does have a study on long-term outcomes. Results showed that Exenatide continued to provide blood sugar stabilization to type 2 diabetics with no unexpected adverse events for seven years.

Semaglutide drugs also seem to protect people from death and adverse events from heart disease, so much so that the FDA has approved Ozempic as a treatment for heart disease.

In a double-blind, randomized clinical trial with 17,604 patients, weekly semaglutide injections were found to reduce cardiovascular events like strokes and heart attacks by 20%.

Are There Alternatives to Ozempic and Wegovy?

Since the Ozempic and Wegovy craze has hit the world, reports have been coming out that eating more fiber (the kind naturally found in whole, plant-based foods) can have a semaglutide-like effect.

Interestingly enough, just the act of chewing increases GLP-1 release. It also decreases the release of ghrelin, the hunger hormone. That’s super interesting because ultra-processed foods are designed to minimize chewing, and experts have highlighted the stark difference in chewing intensity and frequency between eating the standard American diet versus a diet of whole, real foods.

In short, it’s reasonable to conclude that, if you’re eating the right foods, the results that people are getting with Ozempic and Wegovy should be achievable through diet alone.

And, there is a line of research that shows exactly that. Over the past nine years, a habit-based program focused on eliminating ultra-processed foods and eating only whole, real foods, Bright Line Eating, has published weight loss results comparable to semaglutide drugs.

Full disclosure: I developed this program, which grew out of my decades of research in the field, and I’m the CEO and owner of an organization that champions bringing this body of work into the world. The following graph shows the weight loss results, published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, of many of the most common commercial weight loss programs, compared with Bright Line Eating and semaglutide drugs.

References:

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Bright Line Eating is the only commercial weight loss program that addresses the addictive nature of ultra-processed foods. Indeed, it’s tailored mainly for people who score between 7 and 10 on a Food Addiction Susceptibility Scale that goes from 1–10. By taking this short quiz, you can see how you score.

Research also shows that losing weight within a community like Bright Line Eating is associated with positive “side effects” such as higher energy, greater feelings of connection, better quality of life, decreased depression, and fewer days of poor mental health — and that with this way of eating, hunger and food cravings go steadily down.

The Future of the Weight Loss Industry

Without a doubt, the genie is out of the bottle. Weight loss drugs are here to stay. And the development of further drugs in this category is progressing rapidly.

Currently, the drugs approved for weight loss require regular injections because the peptides in semaglutide don’t absorb well through the digestive system. But Novo Nordisk has innovated a pill form of semaglutide called Rybelsus that the FDA has already approved for the treatment of diabetes.

In November of 2023, the FDA also approved Zepbound, a new tirzepatide drug developed by Eli Lilly, for weight loss. Given the multibillion-dollar market that’s available here, there’s no doubt that the rapid development of new options will continue. And as generics come out (Novo Nordisk’s patent on Ozempic expires December 5, 2031), the cost will eventually come down at least somewhat from the current stratospheric levels.

About 45% of people polled in the US say they would consider taking a weight loss drug. That comes down to 16% if it’s not covered by insurance. But these are people who have come to believe that sustained weight loss is largely impossible without a pharmacological or surgical solution.

But the results of Bright Line Eating highlight the reality that lifestyle-based approaches are worth pursuing, and that ultra-processed food addiction needs to be addressed for people to be successful.

Losing weight when you’re hungry and plagued by food cravings is unsustainable. We now live in a world where there are drugs that can take away excessive hunger and addictive food cravings. But emerging evidence shows that we can eat to reduce hunger and cravings as well. Not to be Twiggy, but to be healthy.

Tell us in the comments:

• Are you trying to lose weight or have you tried to in the past?
• What do you find most challenging about weight loss?
• Do you plan on trying a semaglutide drug like Wegovy or a more natural alternative?

Featured Image: iStock.com/CR

Read Next:

• What No One Tells You About Weight Loss
• 11 Top Weight Loss-Friendly Foods

The post Are Semaglutide Drugs Like Wegovy and Ozempic Safe and Effective for Weight Loss? appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

If so, you might be a plant-based eater. Or (are you sitting down right now?) you might instead adhere to quite the opposite: a carnivore diet.

Carnivore diets — and yes, there are several — have surged in popularity in the last few years. Starting on the far fringe of nutrition and wellness, the carnivore movement has burst more into the mainstream through books by doctors, publicity on podcasts, and testimonials from popular wellness influencers and online personalities.

While low-carb diets are nothing new (Atkins, South Beach, and keto are all examples), carnivore diets take this trend to a whole new level. Instead of just low-carb, many of them are “zero-carb,” promoting the exclusive consumption of animal-derived foods while shunning most (or all) plants.

Carnivore diet advocates claim that eating nothing but animals is the optimal way for humans to eat. They believe that by doing so, you can achieve your ideal weight, grow big muscles, alleviate autoimmune disease, cure brain fog, and improve your digestion. And if the diet seems extremely limiting, don’t worry; advocates believe you can still get every nutrient you need from animal products alone.

So in this article, let’s explore if there is any scientific basis for these carnivore claims. And while we’re at it, we’ll also look at the diet’s environmental impact. Rather than fan the flames of this particular culture war, let’s separate fact from fiction to make well-informed decisions about our nutritional paths.

What Is a Carnivore Diet?

A carnivore diet means getting the vast majority (or all) of your calories from animal products. A typical carnivore menu includes red meat, game meat, fish, poultry, and organ meat. Some versions also include dairy and eggs, or small amounts of low-starch vegetables like avocados and cucumbers, while others do not. The diets are either extremely low-carb or often no-carb, which means, by definition, excluding all or most plant-based foods.

Carnivore diets are similar to certain forms of keto (ketogenic) and Paleo (Paleolithic) diets, which are often meat-heavy and plant-poor, but carnivore dieters go an extra step. Instead of meat being the centerpiece of every meal, it’s basically the only piece. This puts eaters into ketosis, the body’s “emergency state” that allows it to convert stored fat (and, in extreme cases, protein) into ketone bodies that can be used for fuel when the body’s preferred fuel, carbohydrates, isn’t available.

But for die-hard carnivores, avoiding plants isn’t just about achieving ketosis. There’s also an avoidance of plants because of “antinutrients,” a refrain also seen with Dr. Steven Gundry’s warnings against lectins.

Proponents of carnivore diets make the case that animal products are easier to digest than plants. Asking followers to “[T]hink about it from a plants [sic] point of view,” Dr. Paul Saladino claims that since plants can’t run away or fight back, they create their own pesticides to deter over-predation. And so animals like us experience compromised health because those compounds mess with our digestion, preventing us from absorbing some nutrients and causing intestinal and immune distress.

But in reality, many animals do eat plants (and thrive off them). And many of the antinutrients in plants have profound health benefits and are mostly eliminated anyway during cooking.

We’ll see in a bit if the facts support or contradict this dietary approach. First, though, let’s go deeper into the weeds — or the organs, if we’re relying on flesh-based metaphors here — to explore the prominent subtypes of carnivore diet you’re likely to encounter.

Carnivore Diet Subtypes

The Carnivore Diet

The “standard issue” Carnivore Diet was popularized by Shawn Baker, a former orthopedic surgeon and diet influencer. Baker had his medical license revoked in 2017 by the New Mexico Medical Board for ethical violations and “incompetence to practice as a licensee.” (To some of his fans this only proves that Baker is a truth-teller fighting a corrupt system.)

Baker’s version of the diet allows the consumption of only meat, fish, and other animal products like eggs and certain dairy products.

The Ancestral Diet

The Ancestral Diet is similar to the Paleo diet but prioritizes meat over all other foods. In a nod to reality, it includes seasonal fruits and vegetables in small amounts. It also allows some dairy and fermented foods. Ancestral Diet adherents characterize it as more than just a diet; they see it as a comprehensive philosophy of living that includes a return to nature.

Pros of the Ancestral Diet include avoidance of processed foods and inclusion, although limited, of some plant-based foods.

The Lion Diet

The Lion Diet is where carnivore meets elimination diets. Those on a Lion Diet limit themselves to beef, salt, and water. It got a lot of press when Mikhaila Peterson, daughter of best-selling Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, promoted it as a cure for depression, rheumatoid arthritis, muscle weakness, night sweats, asthma, insomnia, PTSD… and a whole lot more. Jordan Peterson adopted the diet as well, and promoted it on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast and his own popular YouTube channel.

The Nose-to-Tail Diet

The Nose-to-Tail Diet has been popularized by Dr. Paul Saladino and Brian Johnson, an online influencer known as the “Liver King” due to his propensity to consume raw liver on the regular. The muscle-bound Johnson has nothing but scorn for most modern men, whom he accuses of being submissive, sub-primal, and weak. They have been brainwashed to eat vegetables rather than dominate, kill, and eat other species, he argues, and so lead mediocre and unsatisfying lives.

Theories of human development aside, this diet consists of eating all parts of the animal, including organ meats, connective tissue, and bone marrow (essentially nose-to-tail of an animal), as well as some fermented plant foods.

The Plant-Based Backlash

When you listen to the rhetoric of some of the carnivore movement’s most enthusiastic proponents, you might get the idea that, in addition to any health benefit or scientific claim, there’s also a significant element of backlash to plant-based diets.

Traditionally, meat-eating has been associated with masculinity and machismo (although films like The Game Changers are starting to challenge that association), so the rise of plant-based eating has triggered a “culture war” response that goes far beyond nutrition. There’s a lot of name-calling and invitations to settle differences through MMA cage matches, for example.

I haven’t personally been invited into the octagon by a carnivore enthusiast to duke it out, but I do have a number of friends who adopted a carnivore diet approach and initially experienced some of the promised benefits. Their inflammation lessened, and most lost weight — at first.

None of them stuck with it long-term, because they found it — and I’m quoting them all here — “gross.” But still, their stories left me with questions. How could they possibly benefit, even for a short time, from a diet so diametrically opposed to the plant-based diet that most science shows is the healthiest for humans? Isn’t too much meat bad for everything from heart disease to type 2 diabetes to obesity?

Let’s dive in to explore the health claims of carnivore diets, and what the research really says about eating this way.

Health Claims of Carnivore Diets

Carnivore advocates claim a broad array of health benefits. I don’t have the space here to examine every single claim, so I’ll focus on the most common ones: weight loss, brain health, reduced inflammation and remission of autoimmune disease, and improved digestion.

Spoiler alert: The scientific evidence supporting these claims is — and I’m being extremely charitable here — limited and inconclusive. There are no long-term, large-scale clinical trials that specifically examine the effects of carnivore diets on any of these aspects of health. Instead, there are a lot of anecdotes, a few online surveys, and small studies of limited scope and duration.

Carnivore Diets and Weight Loss

Currently, no studies have been conducted that looked at weight loss with carnivore diets. However, the theory that low-carb diets are supposed to lead to weight loss is known as the Carbohydrate-Insulin Model (CIM) of obesity.

Proponents assert that eating carbs triggers a release of insulin, which, according to this model, leads to hunger and overeating, and ultimately, fat storage and excess weight.

One study did show that low-carb diets high in animal foods can lead to weight loss. But, the diet did include some plant foods. The bigger issue, though, was its severe calorie restriction. The study’s average low-carb dieter took in fewer than 1,500 calories per day — an amount that all but guarantees weight loss in most people, regardless of the foods consumed.

A clinical trial published in the prestigious journal Nature Medicine in 2021 tested a low-fat, minimally processed, plant-based diet against a low-carb, minimally processed, animal-based diet.

Participants could eat as much of their assigned diet as they wanted — no limits other than personal preference and satiety. And the results directly contradicted the predictions of the Carbohydrate-Insulin Model. Those eating the low-fat diet consumed almost 700 fewer calories per day than the low-carb eaters. “Despite the large differences in calorie intake,” the researchers reported that “participants (expressed) no differences in hunger, enjoyment of meals, or fullness between the two diets. Participants lost weight on both diets, but only the low-fat diet led to a significant loss of body fat.”

Indeed, other studies have shown that the most weight-loss-friendly foods are, in fact, plants. A study published in the British Journal of Nutrition even concluded that each additional year of adopting a vegan diet decreases the risk of obesity by 7%.

Meanwhile, increased fat intake and high-fat diets (looking at you here, carnivore diets) actually have a strong association with increased body weight and risk of overweight and obesity.

Carnivore Diet and Brain Health

Proponents of carnivore diets often describe better cognitive function and improved mental clarity. But, as of this writing, no scientific studies have been conducted to investigate these claims.

The only evidence I could find was a survey of people who belonged to carnivore groups on social media. Of course, a survey is inherently lacking objectivity in some pretty big ways. For one thing, only people who had been on the diet for at least six months were invited to take the survey. It stands to reason that if someone had a worsening of symptoms after, say, two months — they would probably stop the diet. And, for another, the group of people “surveyed” were themselves members of identity groups that subscribe to the ideology of the diet enough to belong to a group of fellow adherents.

This seems kind of like asking a group of fish if they enjoy swimming; you’re unlikely to get an unbiased opinion.

Nevertheless, in the context of this less-than-objective methodology, many of the survey respondents reported high levels of satisfaction and improvements in overall health and well-being, including cognitive and psychiatric symptoms, which they attributed to their diet.

There are many possible reasons for these alleged improvements. Of course, the carnivore diet could have been helpful, at least in the short run, for this particular collection of people. Or it may be a case of the placebo effect, which can, at least in the short run, lead to dramatic benefits for a great many people.

But mental gains can also be plausibly explained by what carnivore dieters have eliminated: substances like alcohol, refined sugars, and processed foods. It’s not hard to imagine many people feeling better after giving those up.

Diet is one of the key lifestyle factors that can be modified to significantly reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. But it’s plant-based diets that contain key nutrients like polyphenols and fiber that protect against the insulin resistance that can lead to Alzheimer’s.

There’s also solid evidence that plant-based foods can boost mood. Plus, the more saturated fat (remember that for most people the vast majority of the saturated fat in their diet comes from animal products) that people consume, the higher their risk of developing neurodegenerative disorders. Mono- and polyunsaturated plant fats, on the other hand, reduce that risk.

If there’s one food that you can think of as a brain superfood, it’s actually leafy greens — although greens are not allowed on a strict carnivore diet. However, in one study, those who ate the most greens were the proud owners of brains that were functionally 11 years younger than those who ate the fewest.

Other brain protectors include berries — eating blueberries and strawberries delayed cognitive decline by two and a half years in one study. Some interpretations of the carnivore diets do allow fruit — ostensibly because plants “want” us to eat their fruit to spread their seeds.

Carnivore Diets, Inflammation, and Autoimmune Conditions

In the same somewhat dubious survey discussed above, some respondents wrote that adopting a carnivore diet led to improvements in various inflammatory conditions. Out of hundreds of survey respondents with prior autoimmune conditions, 10% claimed complete resolution, and another 14% reported improvement.

Mikhaila Peterson also claims she healed her autoimmune issues through the “Lion Diet” and referenced those survey results in her TEDx talk as corroborating evidence. (TEDx refused to publish her talk, explaining that it failed to adhere to their content guidelines and lacked nuance, offering a purely anecdotal experience and no actual scientific evidence.)

A core mechanism of autoimmune disease is a malfunctioning immune system. While we don’t yet understand the causes and initial triggers of many autoimmune conditions, we know that lifestyle choices, particularly related to food, can play a key role in managing and, in some cases, even reversing many of these diseases.

But it’s plant-based diets that have been proven to help with inflammation and autoimmune disease. Meat and high-fat, animal protein-rich diets on the other hand, especially red meat, have consistently been associated with more inflammation.

So how do we reconcile the science with the experience of Mikhaila Peterson and other carnivore diet adherents? It’s possible that a body in an inflamed state could find certain compounds in plants triggering, and that, in some cases, taking a break could provide relief.

But this is not a great long-term solution. Rather than live in a metaphorical “food bubble” in which nothing challenges the chronically inflamed body, the goal should be to bring down inflammation so that eating plants — which offer myriad powerful health benefits — doesn’t cause symptoms. Traditional elimination diets can allow for a more methodical and less draconian approach.

Carnivore Diets and Digestion

A study that is objectively even less rigorous than the social media study already mentioned asked a couple hundred carnivore dieters about their “beliefs and experiences.” Here as well, dieters claimed improvements in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and Crohn’s disease.

But again, the vast majority of objective research points to carnivorous dietary patterns contributing to a greater likelihood of IBD, not remission from it.

Advocates of carnivore diets claim that plant foods are high in toxins and harmful compounds like antinutrients, those nasty compounds plants produce to discourage us from eating them.

And it’s true that when isolated from the foods that contain them, antinutrients may lead to some unwanted effects. But when consumed as part of a varied whole foods diet, they participate in diverse and complex interactions with vitamins, minerals, and the gut microbiome, and can actually contribute to significant health benefits.

Another explanation for why some people experience improved digestion during the initial phase of a carnivore diet is the complete absence of fiber. However, if someone was already consuming low amounts of fiber — and only 6% of the US population gets the recommended amount — they likely lacked the microbial diversity required to adequately digest that fiber.

Fiber increases microbial diversity and gut health; studies show those consuming the most fermented and fiber-rich plant foods had a more diverse gut microbiome — and a stronger immune system, with decreased inflammatory markers — compared to those who consumed less.

Meat, of course, contains zero fiber, and therefore a meat-only diet is not a recipe for long-term health. On the contrary, one meta-analysis study found every 10 grams of fiber consumed per day cuts mortality risk by 10%.

Carnivore Diet Risks and Side Effects

We’ve looked at the purported benefits of carnivore diets. But what about the risks? Is there the possibility of unwanted and serious side effects?

In fact, there are many anecdotal reports of unpleasant and sometimes dangerous side effects with extremely low-carb or zero-carb diets. These include diarrhea, constipation, weight gain, muscle cramps, hair loss or thinning, insomnia, dry skin, itchiness, heart rate changes, brittle fingernails, and menstrual irregularity.

Bowel irregularity, whether diarrhea or constipation, is typically caused by a lack of dietary fiber. But many of the other symptoms are attributable to nutritional deficiencies and imbalances that can occur in any extreme diet that lacks diversity. The carnivore diet, in particular, is missing not just fiber but also antioxidants, polyphenols, vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and prebiotics — all of which are essential for good health.

Without vitamin C from fruits, vegetables, or supplements, carnivore dieters are actually at risk for scurvy, putting them in the company of 17th-century British sailors. And vitamin C and other antioxidants are important for combating free radicals in the body. How serious is that? The buildup of free radicals, or “oxidative stress,” is a leading cause of deterioration and disease, including memory loss, autoimmune disease, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.

Most dietitians, even those who don’t advocate for plant-based diets, consider carnivore diets dangerous for humans. Animal protein is associated with heart disease and poor markers of metabolic health such as type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Red and processed meats are considered carcinogenic, with particular contributions to colorectal cancer. And as we saw earlier, high animal product consumption is also associated with Alzheimer’s, inflammation, and autoimmune diseases.

Meat also promotes the growth of unfavorable bacteria that leads to the production of TMAO, which inflames the endothelium (the inner lining of blood vessels) and further promotes heart disease.

And high-meat diets can deliver worrisome quantities of heme iron, which has prooxidant effects that promote cardiovascular disease.

Eating plant foods, on the other hand, has consistently contributed to a reduction in chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer while promoting longevity.

All in all, relying almost solely on animal-derived foods goes against most medical and nutrition advice which is that eating more whole plant foods and less meat, eggs, and dairy is actually the healthiest way to eat.

Carnivore Diets’ Environmental Impacts

When we evaluate the health of a diet, it makes sense to look at how it impacts not just the individuals following it, but the planet as a whole. And eating mostly meat has serious implications for the environment.

Adopting a meat-free, and especially beef-free, diet is one of the most powerful things an individual can do to help fight climate change. That’s because animal agriculture is like a protein factory in reverse, cycling amino acids through animals instead of sourcing them directly from plants.

Shifting from animal to plant foods can also significantly decrease the amount of land required for agriculture, which in turn can lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Animal agriculture is a leading cause of deforestation, especially in the Amazon rainforest — one of the most biodiverse regions in the world. Forests are being cut down not just to provide grazing land for cattle, but also to create fields to grow crops that get turned into animal feed. And grass-fed meat is not much better either, as it can use even more land per pound of food produced.

Additionally, most cattle feed in the industrialized world is bioengineered (aka GMO), which contributes to a number of environmental and health problems globally.

At the risk of stating the obvious, eating nothing but animal products is not great for the animals either. More demand for meat means more animals slaughtered to meet that demand. And the overwhelming majority of that meat is produced in factory farms.

Animals so confined are given huge quantities of antibiotics to fatten them up and to keep them alive — drugs that are contributing to the alarming rise in antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

In short, what’s bad for the animals also ends up being bad for us.

Carnivore Diets Are Not Healthy — for People or the Planet

The carnivore diet’s alleged benefits have sparked fierce debate in the wellness world. But the scientific basis for these claims remains limited and inconclusive at best. While some individuals report success alleviating autoimmune conditions and experiencing weight loss through total elimination of carbohydrates, and of course I wish these people nothing but the best of health, there has so far not been a single comprehensive study suggesting that the results are replicable or sustainable.

Given what we do know about nutrition, it seems likely that you can achieve similar or better results using moderate caloric restriction, or with an elimination diet. And both of these methods are likely going to be far more healthful than eating nothing but meat and other animal products.

There are also concerns about potential nutritional deficiencies, chronic disease impact, and environmental ethics of meat-centric diets. From a global perspective, these diets magnify the environmental harms associated with meat production. And by eliminating plant foods, carnivore diet followers are missing out on powerful dietary compounds proven to increase longevity and improve health outcomes.

As researchers continue to investigate the impact of diet on our well-being, it’s evident that incorporating a wide array of nutrient sources, not limiting them, holds the key to promoting both individual health and global sustainability.

Tell us in the comments:

• Do you know anyone who’s adopted a carnivore diet?
• What do you think of the carnivore diet?
• How much do environmental concerns influence what you eat?

Featured Image: iStock.com/Luke Chan

Read Next:

• What’s All Wrong About Annals Of Internal Medicine’s Red and Processed Meat Advice

The post The Carnivore Diet: What the Research Really Says About its Impact on People and the Planet appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Even some restaurants serve bone broth now. Believe it or not, there’s a bone broth to-go chain in New York City. A quick Google search will show that bone broth products are now marketed for dogs and cats as well.

But what’s the truth about bone broth? Is it the miraculous tonic it’s touted to be? And are there any bone broth side effects or other concerns to consider?

What Is Bone Broth?

First things first. Bone broth is not the same as regular chicken broth, beef broth, or other animal broth. It’s actually closer to a stock. Bone broth is made by boiling the roasted bones, and sometimes connective tissue, of animals for a prolonged period of time. It’s often made in a slow cooker or other “set it and forget it” appliances. The long cooking time is mainly what separates it from regular types of broth.

The cooking time of bone broth — ranging from eight to over 24 hours — is intended to draw vitamins, minerals, and collagen out of the bones and into the broth. The latter is why these types of broths and stocks have a more gelatinous consistency than a typical broth.

Acids like apple cider vinegar, red wine, or tomato paste are also sometimes added to break down the beef bones (or pig, turkey, or fish bones) and extract nutrients. The liquid is then strained, the solid parts discarded, and the remaining broth seasoned. Often vegetables, such as carrots, onions, and celery, are also included.

The broth is typically sold in liquid form, but some packaged brands have also dehydrated it into a powder for “bone broth on-the-go.”

Why Is Bone Broth So Popular?

The concept of bone broth isn’t new. Many cultures, including our Stone Age ancestors, made broths from animal bones thousands of years ago. But its current popularity is linked in no small part to extensive marketing efforts as well as to promotion from health influencers.

Bone broth advocates say it can relieve joint pain and osteoarthritis, detoxify the liver, aid in wound healing, slow the aging of skin, support digestive health, balance hormones, increase energy, strengthen bones, improve quality of sleep, alleviate symptoms from certain autoimmune conditions, and even boost immune function.

As a result, bone broth is also now providing (not insignificant) profits to celebrities, food businesses, and health gurus who are cashing in on the craze. There’s even a Bone Broth Diet created by Dr. Kellyann Petrucci, a health influencer and naturopathic doctor.

Retail sales of bone broth products increased from $17.54 million in 2017 to $68.78 million in 2023. And according to a market research study, the global bone broth market is expected to continue rising for the foreseeable future.

So, What Does the Research Say About Potential Bone Broth Health Benefits?

Interest in bone broth continues to increase because of the long list of benefits it’s said to provide. But what does the science actually say? Does it measure up to the health claims?

Claim #1: Bone Broth is a Nutritional Gold Mine

Bone broth nutrition is one of its biggest selling points. Allegedly, this type of broth is a low-calorie, high-protein food that provides significant minerals such as calcium, phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium.

The earliest study to mention bone broth is from 1937, which looked at the nutritional value of both animal-based and vegetable broths. The researchers concluded that while neither was a very good source of nutrition, the broths found to provide the highest mineral content were the ones that contained the most vegetables.

Far more recently, in 2021, a study in the journal Medicina analyzed bone broth and found that it was not an especially good source of essential minerals, especially in comparison to recommended daily intakes.

While marketers tout animal broths for their mineral content, it’s the vegetables generally used in the cooking process — not the bones — that may actually be providing many of these helpful nutrients.

An average cup of bone broth contains 0–19 mg of calcium and 6–9 grams of protein. That may be all well and good, but this protein content is not terribly impressive when compared to some other sources of these nutrients.

• 1 cup cooked collard greens = 268 mg calcium
• 1 cup navy beans (boiled) = 126 mg calcium
• 1 bunch cooked broccoli raab = 515 mg calcium
• 1 cup baked beans = 14 grams protein
• 1 cup cooked quinoa = 8 grams protein
• 3 Tbsp of hemp seeds = 10 grams protein

Bone broth also doesn’t include the fiber that comes along with whole, plant-based sources of protein.

So yes, bone broth does provide some calcium, protein, and other nutrients. But so do many, many other whole foods.

A cup of cooked collards contains at least ten times as much calcium as a cup of bone broth. And a cup of baked beans contains nearly twice as much protein. But in fact, most Americans may be getting too much protein (at least from animal sources), anyway.

Claim #2: Bone Broth Will Strengthen Bones, Relieve Achy Joints, and Keep Skin Youthful

Collagen is the main protein in your body. It protects your organs, joints, and tendons; holds together bones and muscles; and maintains the lining of your gut. Your body makes its own collagen, but as you age, you won’t make quite as much of it.

Bone broth is high in collagen, and many people believe this is one of its major selling points.

Unfortunately, there is no evidence that eating collagen, whether in broth or otherwise, is directly helpful to your body. Many experts agree that because your body doesn’t absorb collagen in its whole form, the idea that eating collagen helps your body increase collagen levels just isn’t true. Your body breaks collagen down into amino acids. So, in the end, it’s just another form of protein.

You’ve probably seen collagen supplements sold for skin, nail, and hair health. Some research suggests that collagen supplements may potentially help to reduce visible signs of aging, relieve joint pain, and prevent bone loss. But the collagen in supplements is hydrolyzed, or broken down to make it more usable for the body. The collagen in bone broth is not hydrolyzed and does not have the same effects on the body.

If you want to help your body build collagen, the best way is to eat a diet rich in leafy green vegetables because plants offer rich sources of the phytonutrients your body needs to make collagen.

These phytonutrients in plants include:

• The vitamin C found in citrus fruits, dark leafy greens, bell peppers, kiwi, berries, and broccoli. Vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant that can help protect your skin, inside and out.

• The vitamin E found in sunflower seeds, almonds, wheat germ, spinach, and broccoli. Vitamin E works with vitamin C to promote collagen synthesis.

• The vitamin A found in carrots, sweet potatoes, winter squash, dark leafy greens, cantaloupe, and apricots. Vitamin A helps regulate antioxidant responses that can affect your skin’s ability to fight free radicals.

• The amino acids glycine, proline, and lysine — found, among other places, in dark leafy green vegetables, soy, nuts, seeds, and legumes. These amino acids play an important role in collagen formation.

• The sulfur-containing foods, such as garlic, onion, and members of the cabbage family, may also promote collagen production.

The bottom line is bone broth does contain collagen, but it doesn’t necessarily support collagen formation. But vegetables and other plant foods can be powerful allies in keeping your skin young, your bones strong, and your joints healthy.

For more on collagen and how to increase your body’s production of it, see our article here.

Claim #3: Bone Broth Is Good for Your Immune System

At some point in your life, you might have eaten a bowl of chicken soup when you were sick — and it might have even helped you feel better.

And in fact, a 2000 study in the journal Chest found that chicken soup could prevent white blood cells from migrating — thus preventing the worsening of upper respiratory infection symptoms.

But the researchers conjectured that the vegetables in chicken soup — not the chicken alone — might offer helpful effects when it comes to battling infections.

Would vegetable soup have been just as effective? Or more effective? We don’t know. But it seems clear that the vegetables, at a minimum, played an important part.

Warm beverages, in general, may be helpful when battling a cold because they provide hydration and help regulate body temperature. But there’s no evidence that bone broth has unique immunity superpowers. And to date, I’m not aware of any published studies about bone broth and viral illness in peer-reviewed medical journals.

Claim #4: Bone Broth Is Good for Gut Health

Bone broth is said to be good for digestion and potentially therapeutic for leaky gut syndrome — a condition in which substances can leak from your intestines into other tissue, causing inflammation.

There is a lot of gelatin in bone broth. And some research done on rats (our view on the use of animals in medical research is here) indicates that gelatin could bind water in the digestive tract and protect the lining of the intestines. There’s also some rodent research that found that the amino acids in bone broth could have anti-inflammatory effects, which might help with gut conditions like ulcerative colitis. But while both of these studies show potential in rats, it doesn’t mean bone broth can do the same for humans.

We have a very different intestinal lining than rats. It’s possible that it could help. But at this point, all we have is a theory.

What’s not a theory, because it’s been well documented, is that you can support your gut health with a variety of fiber-rich plant foods. Plant-based foods, including fermented foods, help to maintain a healthy gut microbiome by providing prebiotics, probiotics, and the lesser-known postbiotics.

For more ways to support digestive health with food, see this article.

Claim #5: Bone Broth Can Help You Lose Weight

Mark Wahlberg and other celebrities have touted bone broth as a means to lose weight. When getting in shape for the movie Spenser Confidential, Wahlberg told Entertainment Tonight he ate “just bone broth and then steamed vegetables after the first three days and then a little bit of protein at night, and that was it.”

While he did end up losing weight, it’s likely because he was engaging in intermittent fasting and a reduction in calories rather than anything in the bone broth directly contributing to his weight loss. Intermittent fasting may help fat-burning hormones in the body work more efficiently. But bone broth is not a magical weight loss pill.

Sure, you may also lose weight if you’re replacing your daily drink of soda with bone broth. Soda averages 150 calories per can, while one eight-ounce cup of bone broth averages 29 calories. But then again, you could also just drink tea or water, which deliver essentially zero calories.

And if you’re looking for a low-calorie way to get some protein, you could also just opt to add protein powder to water or vegetable broth.

But if you want to lose weight long-term, a fiber-rich and nutrient-dense plant-based diet is probably the healthiest and most sustainable way to go.

For more on what works best for weight loss, see our article here.

Claim #6: Bone Broth Can Detoxify Your Liver

Proponents of bone broth like to assert that it contains the amino acid glycine, which aids in detoxification processes in your body. There are a few studies that suggest glycine treatments can benefit nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in either humans or rats, but none look at the impact of bone broth specifically on human livers.

Since glycine is a conditionally essential amino acid that can be synthesized from other amino acids like choline and hydroxyproline, and your liver detoxifies itself, it seems unlikely that bone broth would have much effect on liver detoxification processes. The best way to protect your liver is to avoid weight gain, steer clear of excessive alcohol consumption, and eat a diet that’s high in the wide array of phytonutrients found in whole plant foods.

It’s also helpful to steer clear of toxic heavy metals in the first place. And that brings us to the potential downsides and side effects of bone broth.

Problems with Bone Broth

Aside from the questionable health benefits of bone breath, there are also some specific downsides to consider.

Lead in Bone Broth

One of the most widely discussed downsides to consuming bone broth is the potential for lead exposure.

Lead can have adverse effects on nearly every organ system in the body. Symptoms of chronic lead exposure range from memory loss and constipation to impotence and depression. And the data suggests that there is no such thing as a “safe” level of exposure to lead.

Lead can build up in body fat and attach itself irreversibly to neurons. It’s especially dangerous for children, increasing the risk of behavioral problems, hyperactivity, impaired growth and hearing, anemia, and lower IQ, even at low levels.

Now, here’s the thing: Lead and other heavy metals build up in the bones. And that’s not just true of human bones.

Boiling animal bones for a long period of time turns out to be a great way to leach lead out of them. And that’s true even if the animal bones come from organically fed animals.

In a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Medical Hypotheses, researchers looked at broth made from chicken bones and found that the broth had lead concentrations that were up to a tenfold increase compared to the water before the bones were added to it. The samples were made from organic, free-range chickens.

Today, many health enthusiasts are drinking bone broth by the case, hoping to detoxify their livers of heavy metals. Sadly, they could actually be doing the reverse, inadvertently exposing themselves to dangerous levels of lead and possibly other heavy metals.

Bone Broth Histamine Levels

Histamines are natural chemicals released by the immune system that play a key role in your body’s inflammatory response. While allergic reactions to food or external allergens can cause a release of histamines in the body, some foods are also naturally high in histamines.

Because bone broth cooks for a long time, it is one of those foods that contain high levels of histamine. While this may not prove to be a problem for most people, those who have histamine intolerance may react poorly to bone broth.

Symptoms of histamine intolerance include:

• Headaches
• Anxiety
• Gastrointestinal symptoms like nausea, bloating, and diarrhea
• Nasal congestion and sneezing
• Asthma

Sodium in Bone Broth

While you may not encounter this as much with home-cooked bone broth, store-bought bone broth products are often very high in sodium — and can have a poor potassium-to-sodium ratio. The ideal ratio is around 2:1 in favor of potassium. But some bone broths may have a ratio of up to 10:1 in favor of sodium.

High sodium intake, especially when not balanced by even higher potassium intake, can cause or exacerbate a slew of health issues, including high blood pressure, kidney disease, and type 2 diabetes. And the sad truth is that most people eating a modern industrialized diet already get too much sodium and not enough potassium. People suffering from these health conditions or who take medications that contain high sodium levels may experience adverse health effects from commercial bone broths.

Ethical Concerns with Bone Broth

There’s also the ethical side of bone broth to consider.

Many, if not most, bone broth brands use the bones of animals raised in factory farms. These animals may have never seen the sun or a blade of grass in their lives — and were likely subject to a wholly inhumane death. They were also probably given routine doses of hormones and antibiotics — an alarming practice that is fueling the development of antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

Even if the animals sourced for their bones were raised organically or free-range, the fact is, the modern animal agriculture industry is something of an environmental disaster. The cattle industry, in particular, is a major drain on resources, responsible for deforestation in some of the most biodiverse areas on Earth, and emitting greenhouse gasses at rates higher than the three biggest gas companies on the planet.

Personally — those aren’t practices that I want to support. And they don’t create products that I want to take into my body, either.

What Are Some Healthy Alternatives to Bone Broth?

If you’re interested in trying the broth trend for yourself and you want some warm nourishment for your tummy but your favorite flavor isn’t “bone,” there are many other options.

Some people are creating vegetarian and vegan broths, using mixtures of seaweed, mushrooms, miso, and various vegetables instead of bones.

Plant-based broths offer a lot of flavor and nutrients. Mushrooms contain selenium, B vitamins, iron, and zinc. Seaweed contains iodine, which is an essential nutrient for healthy thyroid function. And fermented foods, like miso paste, or anti-inflammatory agents, like ginger or turmeric, are often added as well.

These three recipes for plant-based broths just might hit the spot, especially if you are looking for new and tasty ways to infuse rich flavor and nutrients into your dishes. Each of these recipes offers exciting flavor diversity by using customizable combinations of vegetables and herbs (we even have tips on how to make these recipes zero-waste!).

Plus, if you prepare these broth recipes in an InstantPot, the flavor of the broth becomes even more concentrated.

And, of course, no animals are harmed in the making of your homemade nutritious and delicious vegan broths!

1. Homemade Vegetable Bouillon

Homemade Vegetable Bouillon is where the real magic happens. Not only does it pack a punch of phytonutrients and fiber (something bone broth can only dream of), but it’s also a delightful source of calcium, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin K, B6, and potassium. Seriously, this bouillon has got it all! This flavor-packed concoction takes the broth nutrition game to a whole new level.

2. Savory Mushroom Broth

Prepare to meet one of the superheroes of the vegetable world: mushrooms! These mighty powerhouses have earned their superfood title (just like the other veggies in this recipe). With their incredible antioxidant content, abundance of B vitamins (plus a dose of vitamin D if they soak up some sun while growing), and a treasure trove of minerals like selenium, potassium, and copper, mushrooms truly pack a nutritional punch.

But wait, there’s more! They even come equipped with two dietary fiber champions — beta-glucans and chitin — which work wonders for your gut health.

Now, imagine all these incredible nutrients infused into a heavenly Savory Mushroom Broth. It’s not just rich in flavor; it’s a broth that brings you a supercharged dose of health benefits. Get ready to sip on superfood goodness!

3. Umami Vegan Dashi

Traditionally, dashi is a seaweed stock bursting with savory, salty, and umami flavors. Drawing inspiration from this beloved Japanese classic, we’ve crafted an ultra-nourishing, plant-based version that’s brimming with minerals. Our secret ingredients? Green onions, shiitake mushrooms, and seaweed.

Let’s dive into the wonders of seaweed, particularly kombu. Not only is it a concentrated source of iodine, but it also delivers a healthy dose of vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, calcium, and other trace minerals. We’re not done yet! Kombu also boasts an enzyme called glutamic acid, which works wonders for digestion (especially for those with sensitive tummies!). Combine all these goodness-packed elements with miso paste, mushrooms, and green onions, and you’ve got yourself a delightful dashi that not only tantalizes your taste buds but also provides soothing support to your gut health and immune system.

It’s time to savor the nourishing embrace of this flavorful stock!

Bone Broth Is No Cure-All

The next time you hear bone broth touted as a magical cure-all, remember this: The science behind most of the claims about bone broth is murky at best. But the science behind the health benefits of vegetables is massive, coherent, and compelling.

Bone broth doesn’t appear to contain anything special that you can’t find in plant-based foods. And it’s not necessarily good for you. It may even have adverse effects on your health and the environment.

You’re likely better off choosing nutrient-dense, fiber-rich plant foods — whether eaten whole or in a broth.

Tell us in the comments:

• What do you think about bone broth?

• Have you made vegetable broths — and if so, what are your favorite kinds?

• Which of these vegan broth recipes are you excited to make?

Featured Image: iStock.com/Dmytro Chernykov

Read Next:

• Arsenic In Rice: How Concerned Should You Be?
• Is Grass-Fed Beef Good for Your Health & the Planet?

The post Is Bone Broth Good for You? appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

One of the many tools that people use to navigate through the confusion is guidelines that aim to tell us how much of certain foods to eat, and when to stop: serving size and portion size. While both refer to how much of a particular food is considered appropriate to eat, the two terms actually have very different meanings.

These guidelines matter because overeating is one of the leading causes of obesity, a condition that has reached epidemic proportions in the US and, increasingly, around the globe. But the fact that there are two different metrics, which are sometimes used interchangeably, can cause real confusion about how much to eat.

In this article, we’ll explore the distinction between serving size vs portion size, to help you make informed eating choices. We’ll also discuss different ways to determine how much to eat, as well as tips on managing portion control.

The goal here is to help you make informed choices about how much is best for you to eat to optimize your diet and overall health.

But First…

Let’s make sure one thing is totally clear: What you eat is at least as important as how much you eat. Eating “just one serving” of donuts won’t do your health any favors, and overeating kale probably will. On this website, you’ll find lots of articles on why certain foods are healthier than others — and the data on this is overwhelming. But for now, let’s focus on the “how much” part of the equation, because that matters, too.

So, What Is a Serving Size?

Serving size has a legal definition: the measured amount of food that is considered to be an appropriate amount to consume in one sitting. The manufacturer determines this amount, with regulatory oversight from government agencies such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

In the US, serving sizes derive from the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 9, Chapter 3, Subtitle A, Part 317, Subpart B: 317, poetically labeled “reference amounts customarily consumed per eating occasion” (RACCs for short).

Mostly, they’re based on data gleaned from national food consumption surveys.

Sometimes there’s not enough survey data to figure out how much the average person eats of, say, Fruity Blergs breakfast cereal or canned chickpeas. In that case, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) considers other sources of information, including dietary guidelines, serving sizes used by manufacturers and grocers, and serving sizes used by other countries.

A cryptic source of data is “serving sizes recommended in comments,” although the law fails to describe exactly what comments it’s referring to. Blog comments? Offhand remarks at dinner parties? Stand-up routines?

Here’s the truly mind-boggling thing about serving sizes: They aren’t technically recommendations. Instead, serving sizes are mandated by law to reflect the amount of food that people typically consume, rather than how much they should consume.

Comedian Brian Regan jokingly put it this way: “I’m in the store reading the Fig Newtons label. I looked at the serving size: two cookies! Who… eats two cookies? I eat Fig Newtons by the sleeve. Two sleeves are a serving size!”

Changes to Serving Sizes

The reference amounts customarily consumed, or RACCs, are currently based on 2003–2008 data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys. And many of them have changed over time to reflect what the FDA calls a “reality check.” A serving of ice cream, for example, is now ¾ cup, a 50% increase over the old size, which means that the same pint of Rocky Road now “serves” three rather than four. (I’d argue that it’s also serving cancer and obesity, both of which tend to be promoted by a high-sugar diet, but that’s a rant for another time.)

One package of food can also contain multiple servings, as with cookies and ice cream. But some packages acknowledge the fact that for many people, a container is a serving, by including two columns on the nutrition label: one for nutritional info per serving, and one for the entire package.

Also, some foods and beverages previously labeled as more than one serving are now required to be labeled as just one serving. This is because, according to survey and manufacturer data, people are more likely to eat or drink the entire container or item in a single sitting (or, just as likely, a single standing or driving).

How Are Serving Sizes Used?

Manufacturers use serving size to quantify nutrition data for the nutrition facts label and compare their foods to similar foods. As a consumer, the serving size can help you understand how much of a particular nutrient you’re getting.

If you typically consume a whole cup of rolled oats for your morning oatmeal, checking the label will tell you that a single serving is 1⁄2 cup of dry oats. And since that single serving provides 40 mg of magnesium, you know that your breakfast bowl provides 80 mg of that nutrient.

Remember that serving sizes are norms, not recommendations. So they aren’t reliable guides to how much you should consume for optimal health. If you are satisfied with that full cup of rolled oats, cutting back because you’re eating two servings may leave you underfed, especially if you’re omitting other breakfast foods. (For more on why oats can make an awesome and healthy breakfast, see our article here.)

Because serving sizes reflect what people consume on average, they can also change over time. In some cases, serving sizes have increased, as we saw with ice cream. Another example is soda, which went up from an 8- to a 12-ounce serving.

On the other hand, some foods have had their serving sizes reduced. A serving of yogurt, for example, is now six ounces, down from an earlier eight ounces.

Why does this matter? Because if the serving size for a food or beverage has either increased or decreased, the calories and other nutrients listed on the Nutrition Facts label will change as well.

And since serving sizes are a lagging indicator of people’s average eating and drinking habits, adhering to them — particularly in the case of highly processed foods — means that you’ll probably also consume the average number of calories. In 2022, the average person in Europe and North America consumed nearly 3,540 calories per person per day. Especially if a lot of those calories are coming from highly processed foods, that’s probably not a good thing.

Serving Sizes for Different Foods

The 1990 Nutrition Labeling and Education Act requires all packaged foods to present nutritional information on their labels, including serving size and number of servings per package.

If you’re preparing for Jeopardy! and you’ve got a strong hunch that one of the categories will be serving sizes of various foods, here are some serving sizes for different foods you can memorize.

What Is Portion Size?

Now that we’ve learned all about serving size, it’s time to tackle that other mysterious term: portion size. At this point, you might be expecting portion size to be another concept steeped in regulatory complexity.

But it turns out that portion size is basically the amount of a food or beverage that you choose to consume in one sitting. Unlike serving size, it’s not regulated by any governmental agency but often comes in the form of advice from nutrition professionals. Your “portion” can be more or less than the serving size, contain multiple servings, or just fractions of a serving.

For example, the serving size for cooked broccoli, 85 grams, is a shade under one cup. If you like broccoli as much as I do, and you have a yummy sauce to boot, your portion size might be double or even triple the serving size.

You decide on your portion, unless you’re eating out, in which case the restaurant does it for you. When you watch people serve themselves on a buffet line, you might notice that the portion sizes are often determined by the size of the plate; if the pasta primavera is spilling onto their shoes, it’s probably even more than a portion.

The variability of portion size reminds me of the “two scoops” of raisins in Kellogg’s Raisin Bran commercials. They made a very big deal about it, but never got around to defining the size of a “scoop.” There were two scoops on the big family-size box and two scoops in the tiny variety pack box — so I’m guessing that “scoop” was as malleable and imprecise as “portion.”

Determining How Much to Eat

Since both serving and portion sizes are attempts to identify ideal consumption patterns, I think it’s useful at this point to ask: How can serving or portion sizes help you eat enough but not too much food?

First, it’s important to understand that individuals have vastly different nutritional needs. Factors that may influence how much you need to eat can include your age, your current weight and height, the speed and efficiency of your metabolism, your biological sex, how active you are, and your health status and health goals.

So what is a large portion to one person might be a tiny nibble to another.

Second, serving and portion sizes are completely noncommittal when it comes to the nutritional qualities of food. Looking at food just in terms of weight, volume, or even calories and macronutrient ratios only gives us a slice of the larger (and more important) whole picture. Nutritional density — how many and what kinds of micronutrients are delivered by weight, volume, or number of calories — matters more for your diet and ability to meet your nutritional needs.

Hand Portion Sizes

With both of those caveats, you can still use serving and portion sizes to help you choose amounts to consume with awareness and intention. Measuring food by hand can help you get closer to recommended serving sizes. (It’s probably a good idea to use your actual hand, and not, say, that of Andre the Giant.)

Using human body measurements has a long history. Those who use the imperial system still measure human height in feet and the height of horses in hands. And since most of us are more familiar with our own bodies than with grams, ounces, cubic milliliters, and calories, we can use them to approximate servings.

Hand portion sizes include:

• An average-sized fist — about 1 cup
• A small, scooped handful — about ½ cup
• The palm of the hand — about 3 ounces
• The size of the thumb — about 1 tablespoon
• The tip of the pointer finger to the first joint — about 1 teaspoon

Mindful Eating

The most conscious way to determine how much you should eat may be by practicing mindful eating, which simply means consciously directing your attention to your food via your senses.

Many of us have had the experience of overeating, especially very tasty or highly processed food, when we weren’t paying attention. Moviegoers can down huge amounts of popcorn during thrillers. And all of us are susceptible to over-nibbling while watching TV, working on the computer, or attending to stressful thoughts.

Mindful eating can allow you to notice your hunger and satiety cues with sensitivity and in a timely fashion, so you can stop before you feel like you’ve swallowed a baby (or not-so-baby) elephant.

Tips for Practicing Portion Control

In addition to mindful eating, which takes practice and can be difficult for some people, there are other practical ways to guard against overeating and the resultant weight gain and health problems it can cause.

Many experts blame overeating and unwanted weight gain on portion sizes that have increased over the years. The trend of the last few decades towards “supersizing” meals has had the consequence of supersizing people as well.

And it’s not just in the United States (although many Europeans are amazed at the huge American portions and the speed at which Americans can consume them). One billion people worldwide are obese, and that number is still rising.

Fat-shaming is cruel, and as far as I’m concerned, it has no place in a compassionate society. Anybody can be beautiful, and everybody deserves love, regardless of their size or their girth.

And we also do know that excess weight is a real health issue and that it can contribute to type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and stroke, and various forms of cancer, among many other dangerous conditions.

So if you want to avoid overeating, here are some portion control strategies that might help.

1. Use a smaller plate at mealtime.

Studies have shown that we tend to think of whatever is on our plate as a portion.

2. Don’t eat directly out of the package.

If you’re going to have Fig Newtons, take out a couple and put the rest of the cookies back in the box. Better yet, skip the Newtons and just have some figs — we’re often far less likely to overeat foods that are whole and minimally processed.

3. Order smaller portions.

When eating with others, order small plates or appetizers instead of entrées; skip appetizers, drinks, and desserts in favor of a single entrée; or split dishes with friends and family. And try to eat mindfully whether you’re alone or with others — really taking time to chew and experience the flavors and textures of what you eat.

4. Use a portion guide.

Use the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine’s “Power Plate” as a guide to how much to eat of different foods. And read nutrition labels for serving size, as well as the nutrients provided in each serving.

The Bottom Line: Servings vs Portions

Understanding the difference between serving size and portion size can help you make informed choices about your diet and overall health. While the terms are often used interchangeably, they do have distinct meanings.

Serving size refers to a measured amount of food typically found on packaged foods, while portion size is the actual amount of food served and consumed at one time. By familiarizing ourselves with serving sizes and utilizing portion control strategies, we can avoid overeating and make healthier and more conscious choices about the amount of food that we consume.

Ultimately, by incorporating strategies like mindful eating, emphasizing nutrient-dense foods, and paying attention to portion and serving size, you can make positive changes to your diet and health.

Tell us in the comments:

• What foods do you tend to overeat if you’re not careful?

• Think of a food you eat a lot and take a guess at the serving size. Now check — how close were you? Did you over- or underestimate?

• What’s one food where your ideal portion size is very different from the official serving size?

Featured Image: iStock.com/RLT_Images

Read Next:

• Should You Count Calories? How Daily Calorie Intake Fits into Health
• How to Read Food Labels: Your Complete Consumer Guide

The post “How Much Should I Eat?”: Understanding Serving Size and Portion Size appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

While avocado has been a staple in Mexican and other Latin American cuisines for centuries, it’s only recently gained popularity in other parts of the world, including North America, Western Europe, and the Mediterranean. An informal analysis of the most popular cuisines worldwide (on Instagram) found Mexican food at number five.

And as the popularity of Mexican cuisine grows, so, too, the avocado. In fact, the demand for avocados outpaces that of any other fruit.

As a result, The Washington Post dubbed avocados “America’s new favorite fruit,” projecting their status as a dietary staple for years to come.

But the collective love affair with avocados, especially in North America, goes beyond their creamy taste and association with Mexican food. People are drawn to the fruit’s healthy fats and associated health benefits, including cardiovascular health, eye health, and weight loss.

In this article, we’ll discuss types of avocados, their nutrition, and their top health benefits, along with any downsides you might want to consider.

What Is an Avocado?

The avocado is an evergreen, tropical tree with green, pear-shaped, nutrient-dense fruit. The term avocado refers to both the tree and the fruit.

Avocado trees are members of the flowering plant family Lauraceae. There are hundreds of different varieties of avocado fruits.

The fruit itself is technically a berry containing one large seed. But keep in mind that the scientific definition of a berry (a fruit derived from the ovary of a single flower) varies from common usage. Botanists will tell you that eggplant is a berry and a strawberry is not. So I wouldn’t jump at a berry cobbler made by a botanist!

Avocados aren’t sweet. But they are a satisfying and versatile food with a creamy texture and a rich, buttery flavor from their high-fat content.

Where Are Avocados Grown?

With the increasing demand for avocados, it’s important to consider their source, as well as other issues surrounding the massive growth of avocado consumption.

The majority of avocados consumed by North Americans come from Mexico. In fact, in 2017, the country exported more than 1.7 billion pounds of Hass avocados to the US. Given the almost exponential rise of the avocado industry, particularly in Mexico, many people are concerned about its role in deforestation, water depletion, and increased greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition, according to Smithsonian Magazine, the popularity of Hass avocados is creating a monoculture. Native varieties of avocado are being cut down and replaced with Hass trees, which in turn impacts the local ecological biodiversity.

And Mexican truck drivers often face constant threats and danger from local drug cartels on their routes to the United States.

So what can you do?

You can vote with your dollars against a future Hass avocado monoculture. Consider giving another avocado variety a try. Also, buying locally grown avocados helps to minimize transportation distance and related greenhouse gas emissions.

If you’re in Florida, California, Hawaii, Australia, India, Mexico, Central America, or any other place with a warm climate, you’re likely to find a number of avocado varieties at your local farmers market or sustainable grocer.

Let’s look at some of the most common kinds of avocado fruit that you might find.

8 Types of Avocados Worth Knowing About

Avocado varieties vary widely in color (both their skin and flesh) and size. Some are green, others are black; and they range from only a few ounces to as heavy as five pounds.

The following are some of the most common types of avocados worldwide.

Hass Avocados

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Hass avocados — the small, dark green, bumpy variety you’re probably used to — are eaten more than any other type of avocado in the world. In fact, Hass avocados made up 95% of avocado sales in the US in 2022. And they accounted for about 80% of all avocados eaten worldwide.

All Hass avocado trees are descended from one tree planted in La Habra, California by Rudolph Hass — a mailman!

The Hass variety became so popular because it ripens more slowly than other kinds of avocados (believe it or not), changes color when ripe, and has a relatively thick skin that helped earn avocados the nickname “alligator pear.” Its creamy, nutty flavor also made it a favorite among the California elite.

Hass season is also conveniently year-round, which works out well because that’s exactly the same as my season for guacamole!

Choquette Avocados

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A Guatemalan and West Indian hybrid, the Choquette avocado variety is native to South Florida in the US. Choquette avocados are on the larger side and can weigh up to five pounds.

These bright green avocados are lighter in flavor and less oily than Hass. They have firmer flesh and hold up well in salads — though most people tend to prefer the buttery flavor of Hass.

Choquettes are grown in USDA hardiness zones 9a–10b, and many Floridians have shady Choquette trees growing in their backyards. They’re in season in Florida almost year-round, but ultimately, from June through March.

Bacon Avocados

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Not to worry — no pigs were harmed in the making of these tasty avos!

Bacon avocados are oval-shaped with relatively smooth green skin, pale yellow flesh, and a creamy, savory flavor. They tend to be a sweeter and more watery avocado variety than Hass.

Bacon avocados are hybrids of Mexican avocado varieties and are primarily grown in California. They are in season from November to March.

Fuerte Avocados

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Considered extremely flavorful, these pear-shaped, smooth green avocados are grown in California and Mexico. The Fuerte avocado has a thinner, easy-to-peel skin, and many consider it one of the best-tasting varieties.

Fuertes got their name from the Spanish word for “strong” after the trees survived a devastating freeze in Southern California in 1913.

Fuerte avocados are in season from November to June.

Pinkerton Avocados

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The Pinkerton avocado has a smaller seed than other varieties and is slightly more oblong. They’re also on the oilier side and are a cross between Hass and Rincon avocado varieties.

Pinkertons are valued for being a high-yield avocado tree and are mainly grown in Southern California.

Pinkerton avocados have a long season and are available from early winter through spring.

Malama Avocados

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A hybrid avocado cultivar developed by the University of Hawaii in the 1980s, Malamas are a popular Hawaiian avocado. Malama avocados have purple rather than green skin with yellow and green flesh.

Unlike some other avocado varieties that can ripen on the tree, Malamas do not ripen until picked.

You can get Malama avocados in Hawaii during the fall months — September through November.

Gwen Avocados

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Gwen avocados are dwarf trees that only grow to about 15 feet tall. Despite being a smaller type of avocado tree, the Gwen is a very productive variety. And the fruits are slightly larger and rounder than Hass.

Gwens are a type of California avocado and are in season during the summer months.

Shepard Avocados

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Native to Australia, these “green skin” (their skin stays green as they ripen) avocados are the second most common variety down under.

Shepard avocados are longer than Hass, have a nutty flavor, and are available from February to April in Australia.

Avocado Nutritional Information: The Skinny on This Fatty Fruit

Avocado nutrition is bountiful, offering an abundance of potassium (more than a banana!), B vitamins, and vitamin C. They’re incredibly mineral-dense, with high amounts of magnesium, phosphorus, copper, and manganese.

A cup of avocado also provides 10 grams of fiber — a nutrient that many of us are significantly lacking. They’re excellent for digestive health, and a good source of prebiotics — the food that feeds good bacteria in your gut.

Avocados contain the fat-soluble vitamins — vitamin E and vitamin K — in large amounts, which is good because they also contain a lot of fat.

However, their high fat content also equals a high calorie content. Although they are incredibly nutritious, if you are trying to lose weight, you may want to eat avocados in moderation. A serving of a typical avocado is officially one-third of a fruit (50g) and delivers about 80 calories.

Fat in Avocados

One cup of avocado provides 21 grams of fat. The type of fat in avocados, therefore, matters a great deal. And luckily, it’s mostly a mixture of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats.

Avocados contain both omega-3s and omega-6s, which are polyunsaturated, essential fatty acids. This means they’re necessary for your body to function, and that you need to get them from food. Your body uses these fats to build cell membranes and the coverings of nerves. And they’re also needed for blood clotting and muscle movement.

Monounsaturated fats, or omega-9s, are similar to the fats found in olive oil. They’re liquid at room temperature and solid at cold temperatures.

While many people debate the health effects of specific types of fat, I think that’s a bit like debating whether a trumpet is a good instrument. Taken by itself, it’s arguable. But when it’s in a talented band, playing excellent music, the equation can change considerably.

To me, avocados are a bit like one of the finest orchestras ever assembled. They’re not only delicious — but they also contain a fabulous and nutritious symphony of components that combine to create a nourishing, satisfying, and, in my personal opinion, delicious result.

Next, let’s look at how all this nutrient density adds up to a powerful set of health benefits.

6 Avocado Benefits for Your Health

Avocado health benefits are extensive and include:

1. Avocado and Heart Disease

Avocados can reduce your risk of heart disease. A 2015 study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that eating one avocado per day as part of a moderate‐fat, cholesterol‐lowering diet reduced LDL levels. This effect is potentially due to the mono- and polyunsaturated fat content in avocados, especially when it replaces saturated fat from animal products, as well as the high fiber content of avocados.

A 2022 study in the British Journal of Nutrition also found that Mexican women eating five or more servings a week of avocado had a 17% decrease in the rate of hypertension. One possible reason for this is that we know increasing potassium intake can help lower blood pressure. And half an avocado provides a whopping 487 mg of potassium — a significant contribution to blood pressure regulation.

2. Avocado and Cancer

Avocados may help prevent and treat cancer. A 2015 study published in Cancer Research found that avocatin B, a compound derived from avocado, can help kill leukemia cells.

And a 2015 research review published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry also found that phytochemicals (plant compounds) in avocados make them potentially beneficial for preventing cancer. Specifically, their carotenoids and vitamin E content have been looked at because of their antioxidant capabilities, helping fight free radicals that may lead to the development of cancerous cells.

3. Avocado and Weight Loss

Using data from the Adventist Health Study-2, researchers discovered that despite all the calories in avocados, avocado eaters actually turned out to have a reduced risk of obesity. Avocado may influence body mass and weight loss by impacting gut hormones and energy output due to mannoheptulose, a monosaccharide (sugar molecule).

In a review of clinical trials involving avocados, results also showed a steady decline in body weight among people who consumed an avocado per day. It’s thought that avocados help reduce visceral fat, a type of fat that forms in the abdomen around the organs and can contribute to metabolic syndrome.

4. Avocado for the Brain

Avocado is rich in oleic acid, an omega-9 fatty acid that’s linked to improved cognition. One study using participants 60 and over from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found that avocado eaters scored higher across the board than people who didn’t eat avocados.

Avocados may also help prevent neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. A 2016 study published in Advances in Neurobiology found that the “diverse array of bioactive nutrients present in avocado” plays a key role in the prevention and cure of these types of diseases.

5. Avocado and Eye Health

Avocados can help to keep your eyes healthy as you age. The fruit is rich in the carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin, which can help protect and maintain healthy cells in your eyes. According to a 2017 study published in the journal Nutrients, avocado can help boost macular pigment (and visual function) with age.

Because of their high fat content and fat-soluble vitamins, avocados also help make lutein and zeaxanthin more bioavailable and increase their transport and serum levels in the eyes and brain.

6. Avocado for Pregnancy

Avocados can be great for pregnant individuals. A 2016 study published in the journal Nutrients concluded that avocados are high in folate and potassium (typically under-consumed in maternal diets) as well as fiber, monounsaturated fats, and lipid-soluble antioxidants. All of these nutrients are tied to improvements in maternal health, birth outcomes, and the quality of breast milk.

Plus, Avocados Have Few Pesticides

According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), avocados are one of the Clean 15 (the list of produce likely to contain the least amount of pesticide residue).

Fewer than 2% of conventionally grown (nonorganic) avocados tested positive for pesticides.

So if you can’t afford organically grown avocados, you can choose conventionally grown varieties without any major pesticide exposure.

However, that’s not to say that avocados are not sprayed with pesticides at all. So if you want to protect farmworker health and the environment, it’s almost always better to go organic when you can.

Any Avocado Risks or Downsides?

If you’re prone to migraines or are allergic to latex, avocados might not be the fruit for you.

For those who suffer from migraines, certain foods, circumstances, or environmental factors can trigger episodes.

Avocados sometimes appear on lists of such foods due to the high levels of tyramine (a substance formed when proteins break down) they contain when overripe.

In addition, avocado contains some of the same allergens found in latex. So if you have a latex allergy, you may want to watch out to see if avocados trigger any of the same symptoms.

What About Avocado Oil?

Although avocado oil isn’t exactly a health food, it, along with olive oil, is one of the healthier oil options.

If you choose to include it in your diet, it does contain lower levels of omega-6s which can be pro-inflammatory on their own or without the presence of omega-3s. Luckily, avocado oil has both, which makes it a more balanced oil choice than, say, peanut or corn oil, which only have trace amounts of omega-3s.

Avocado oil also has a very high smoke point — 520°F — which means it’s suitable for almost all types of cooking. As most cooking is done below 400°F, there’s a lower chance of burning food when using avocado oil and creating harmful compounds like acrylamide.

However, avocado oil is one type of oil that’s often subject to food fraud. So care must be taken when choosing one to ensure you’re not getting adulterated or rancid oil.

For more on the pros and cons of olive and avocado oils, as well as on the food fraud that sometimes occurs in the olive and avocado oil industries, see our article here.

Avoca-do Include Avocados in Your Diet!

The avocado is a nutritional powerhouse that can provide you with numerous health benefits. From their healthy fats, fiber, minerals, antioxidants, and fat-soluble vitamins to their ability to lower cholesterol levels and reduce the risk heart disease, neurodegenerative disease, cancer, and other chronic disease, avocados can be a great addition to almost any diet.

While avocados are high in fat and calories, their overall nutritional value makes them a valuable addition to a balanced diet. Incorporating avocados into your diet can be a simple and delicious way to support your overall health and well-being.

Tell us in the comments:

• Are you an avo lover? What avocado health benefits do you appreciate?
• What are your favorite ways to eat avocados?
• Have you ever enjoyed other avocado varieties, other than Hass?

Featured Image: iStock.com/tashka2000

Read Next:

• 7 Tasty Toast Recipes to Enjoy Anytime, Anywhere
• Food Fraud: What You Need To Know About Olive Oil and Avocado Oil

The post Holy Guacamole! The Surprising Health Benefits of Avocados appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Why the precipitous drop in the popularity of this softball-sized, sweet, and bitter fruit? Two things, really.

The first was the decline of the Grapefruit Diet, a Hollywood-led fad that took off in the 1930s thanks to its movie star endorsements and was revived again in the 80s as the “10-day, 10-pounds-off diet.” This fad diet came about from the erroneous notion that eating a grapefruit before every meal triggered some kind of magical fat-burning reaction in your body. But by the 1990s, this theory had been debunked, and new fad diets arose to fill the vacuum.

The second factor leading to grapefruit’s decline has been a pharmacological debate over whether the fruit is dangerous to people taking certain medications. Funnily enough, this property of the grapefruit — the ability to interfere with many prescription drugs — was discovered by accident during a clinical trial looking for something else entirely.

In the 1980s, researcher David Bailey was trying to assess the impact of drinking booze on a blood pressure medication called felodipine. He needed a way to blind his test subjects, so they couldn’t tell if they were receiving alcohol or a placebo. His solution was to spike both liquids with grapefruit juice (I’m told that grapefruit juice with vodka is known as a “greyhound.”) Imagine his surprise when the juice caused levels of felodipine to rise in both the treatment and placebo participants.

Over time scientists went on to determine that grapefruits could theoretically interact with about half of prescription drugs on the market. And thus, grapefruit’s fall from grace was complete. Not only did it not miraculously burn calories, but it could render some pharmaceuticals either inert or aggressively dangerous. Yikes!

But for all its marketing problems, grapefruit is a proud member of the citrus family and is a good source of vitamin C and other antioxidants. So what’s the scoop on grapefruit? Nutritional hero or villain?

In this article, we’ll look at the science behind grapefruit’s actual health benefits, and review its potential downsides, particularly, who should exercise caution to avoid unwanted medication interactions.

Types of Grapefruit

Grapefruit is part of the citrus family. But unlike most of its other citrus friends, which originated in Asia, the grapefruit was first cultivated in the Caribbean, likely on the island of Barbados.

Its botanical lineage is also complex. Grapefruit’s parents were likely a sweet orange and a pomelo, but the orange itself is a cross between a pomelo and a mandarin. I’m guessing that family reunions can get awkward.

Because of its hybridization, grapefruit comes in a range of flesh colors, from white to pinkish, peach, red, and even golden (this last is a mutation derived from white grapefruits). The color signals the fruit’s nutritional content; the redder the flesh, the higher its concentrations of lycopene and carotenoids.

The most popular grapefruit varieties sold for eating are red-fleshed grapefruits grown in Texas. Florida boasts the more common pink and white fruits that typically end up in bottled grapefruit juice.

Grapefruit Nutrition

Like its other citrusy cousins, grapefruit is a rich source of many important nutrients. In addition to vitamins A and C, and the mineral potassium, the fruit delivers a list of phytonutrients that deserve their own verse in “My Favorite Things”: flavonoids, limonoids, carotenoids, terpenes” (feel free to sing along), as well as coumarins (which I couldn’t fit into the song’s meter but are just as important as the others).

Two of those flavonoids are named naringin and narirutin, which sound like Grimm fairy tale characters who disappear in a puff of smoke if you guess their names. In reality, they’re potent free-radical scavenging antioxidants that give grapefruits their distinctive bittersweet taste.

Other phytonutrients in grapefruit include beta-carotene and lycopene, which as we’ve seen, contribute to the flesh tone of the redder varieties.

Grapefruit is a pretty good source of fiber, too, which is severely lacking in the modern industrialized diet. If you eat grapefruit rather than drink its juice, you’ll get roughly four grams of fiber per fruit. Grapefruits are also low in calories, being mostly made up of water. That’s why those Grapefruit Diets appeared effective — in the short-term — because they did cause weight loss due to being very filling and very low calorie.

The Health Benefits of Grapefruit

Although grapefruits aren’t a miracle weight loss tool, they can contribute a significant number of health benefits. So let’s look at what the evidence says about how grapefruits can benefit your health.

Can Grapefruit Help You Lose Weight?

Since many people still associate grapefruits with extreme dieting, let’s begin by looking at the evidence that eating grapefruit can help combat obesity and its accompanying metabolic syndrome.

There’s reason to believe that adding grapefruits to your diet — in moderation (please don’t eat three a day while severely restricting all other calories) — can help you lose excess weight. While most research has been done either in test tubes or on animals (our view on the use of animals in medical research is here), there are a number of studies showing weight loss as being linked to grapefruit or grapefruit juice consumption in humans.

One possible mechanism for this involves naringenin, a metabolite of naringin that can promote thermogenesis, or the conversion of white adipose (fat) tissue into heat (which might be even better than turning straw into gold).

A clinical trial conducted in 2012 found somewhat conflicting results: six weeks of half a grapefruit prior to each meal didn’t lead to greater weight loss than the placebo group. The grapefruit group did, however, exhibit more favorable cholesterol readings at the end of the trial compared to other participants.

Grapefruit and Blood Sugar

Grapefruit may also positively impact blood sugar balance. That 2006 study I just mentioned also found that those who consumed whole (unjuiced) grapefruit lowered their insulin resistance, which is a key driver of type 2 diabetes. And a 2019 review article notes that naringenin has displayed antidiabetic properties in many test tube and animal studies.

Is Grapefruit Good for Blood Pressure?

Beans may not be the only “fruit” that’s good for your heart. A 2017 meta-analysis of three randomized human trials found that grapefruit consumption was associated with significant reductions in systolic blood pressure. And a 2022 study of post-menopausal women used lots of words that I’m unfamiliar with (multi-omics analysis, anyone?) to basically say that the flavanones in grapefruit juice appear to protect the heart by moderating the expression of genes that regulate inflammation and vascular function.

Grapefruit and Cancer

Grapefruit may also enable the body to fight cancer more efficiently. Sounding a lot like C-3PO in Star Wars, researchers in 2015 identified “grapefruit-derived nanovectors coated with inflammatory-related receptor enriched membranes of activated leukocytes” as having the potential to deliver therapeutic drugs to tumor sites.

One of the coumarins (natural chemical compounds found in plants) that’s relatively abundant in grapefruit, bergamottin, may inhibit the growth of prostate cancer cells, as well as promote apoptosis (programmed death) in those cells. It has achieved promising results across a number of different cancers, including multiple myeloma, leukemia, and cancers of the skin, lungs, liver, stomach, breast, and prostate.

Grapefruit Medication Interactions

Now that we’ve sung grapefruit’s praises, it’s time to tackle that unfortunate problem of unwanted grapefruit-medication interactions. To give you a sense of the scope of the issue, check out this four-page list of pharmaceuticals with known grapefruit interactions.

Basically, grapefruit blocks certain enzymes that help your body metabolize drugs. And it turns out that just a few enzymes perform this trick on a vast array of drugs, which explains the long list of impacted medications. One of these enzymes, CYP3A4 (no relation to C-3PO, as far as we know), serves as the main “garbage disposal” for these meds. And naringin from grapefruit essentially gums up the works of that disposal system, allowing the drug to remain bioavailable and active in the body far longer and in far higher concentrations than normal.

Naringin can also block transporters that allow you to absorb certain drugs and may even decrease the amount of other drugs. In some cases, grapefruit could make the medication more potent. In others, it may render it less effective. In some cases, it could alter the impact of certain medications. And in others, it might do nothing at all.

If that sounds confusing, consider that the severity of any grapefruit-medication interaction depends on the amount consumed, the particular drug in question, and your own unique metabolic response to that drug (and to the grapefruit, for that matter).

Some of the drugs that may interact with grapefruit include:

• Statins (to lower cholesterol)
• Calcium channel blockers (to treat high blood pressure and coronary heart disease)
• Anticoagulants and antiplatelet medicines (to prevent clots that can lead to heart attacks and strokes)
• Ciclosporin and immunosuppressants
• Entocort (for Crohn’s disease)
• Cytotoxic medicines
• And central nervous system (CNS) agents (including psychiatric drugs)

How about taking your medication a few hours apart from consuming grapefruit? Not a good idea. If you’re taking any of these pharmaceuticals, you may really need to avoid grapefruit entirely. Grapefruit’s ability to affect medication can last up to three days.

Is Grapefruit Dangerous?

Now, I don’t want you to get needlessly alarmed here; there’s a vigorous debate about whether these grapefruit-drug interactions are all that serious for the average medication user. Some clinical researchers see danger across the board, while others downplay the risks.

When David Bailey first started sharing his findings in the 1990s, a common reaction was, “Where are the bodies?” While morbid, what the question is really asking is, if this is a big problem, why hasn’t the medical establishment been seeing its effects for decades — with lots of people killed by grapefruits? Possibly because it isn’t that much of a problem; and also possibly because no one knew to look for it until Dr. Bailey handed out those fateful placebo greyhound drinks in 1989.

But better to be safe than sorry. So, whenever you receive a new prescription, you may want to talk to your healthcare team if you include grapefruit in your diet, to avoid a potential medication interaction. And if you’re currently taking prescription medications, you may want to talk with your team before adding grapefruit, to make sure it’s safe for you.

How to Eat a Grapefruit

Almost as popular as cute animal videos, “the right way to cut a grapefruit” is practically its own YouTube genre, suggesting that a lot of people have been wondering how to do so for a while. If you’re able to eat grapefruit, there are several ways to enjoy it without having to rip it apart with your bare hands or get a sharp splash of juice in your eye as you stab it with a spoon.

On its own, the classic way to eat grapefruit is by cutting it in half and scooping out the pulp and juice one spoonful at a time. This becomes a lot easier when you use a grapefruit spoon, which is serrated on the sides.

Here are three other ways to cut and serve grapefruit:

You can use grapefruit in recipes, including salads, mocktails, smoothies and smoothie bowls, frozen desserts like popsicles and n’ice cream (that’s ice cream minus the dairy), and sauces and dressings both sweet and savory (think salsas).

You can also squeeze grapefruits and drink their juice. The downside of this is that you’ll lose most of the fiber, which not only promotes satiety but also slows down the absorption of the fruit’s sugars. Eating the whole fruit is generally a healthier option, especially if you have an issue with blood sugar regulation.

That said, if you really want a cup of citrus juice in the morning, grapefruit juice delivers less sugar than orange juice and is far more palatable than lemon juice.

Grapefruit Recipes

We hope these fresh, bright, and zingy grapefruit recipes spark a few new creative ways to get your grapefruit fix. Even if you’ve been a grapefruit detester in the past, trying out these grapefruit recipes may bring newfound admiration for this bitter and juicy fruit. That said, no matter which way you decide to enjoy grapefruit, we’re sure these recipes will dazzle and delight your tastebuds!

1. Caramelized Cinnamon Grapefruit

While cinnamon and maple syrup might not be two flavors you associate with grapefruit, the flavor combination is surprisingly delightful. The natural sweetness from the maple syrup and the earthiness of the cinnamon balances the tart bite from the grapefruit, making it a delicious and refreshing snack. There are also bursts of nutrients like vitamin C and lycopene in this unique, plant-based pairing. Give it a try — we hope you love it as much as we do!

2. Summer Citrus Salad

This Summer Citrus Salad is as refreshing as it sounds. Juicy grapefruit, sweet and floral oranges, and tart blackberries are tossed in bright and zesty lemon juice. Together these tantalizing fruits create the ideal balance of sweet and sour that is simply a must-try! If you’ve been on the fence about enjoying grapefruit solo due to its bitterness, this salad is a great way to mellow out some of that flavor. If that’s not enough to convince you to give it a try, the sweet and zesty smells of all the fruits together may get your mouth watering.

3. Minty Grapefruit Tea

Minty Grapefruit Tea may sound a little unique when it comes to melding strong flavors together, but trust us — it works! When steeped, mint leaves produce a slightly sweet flavor in addition to the cooling menthol. And grapefruit adds a bit of citrusy brightness and zing. Together, they create a comforting and cozy cup of tea that’s comforting and uplifting. Enjoy this refreshing tea, hot or iced, with or without your preferred sweetener of choice.

Grapefruit Can Be a Great Fruit!

Grapefruits have long been associated with health and weight loss, often without any scientific basis. But despite its prominence in fad diets of days past, grapefruit does offer a number of real health benefits to consider.

If you are taking prescription medications, however, you may want to avoid or modulate your intake of grapefruit and grapefruit juice. But if that isn’t an issue for you,  grapefruit can be a wonderfully healthy addition to a diverse diet for its vitamin, antioxidant, fiber, and flavonoid content. Not to mention its zesty flavor!

Tell us in the comments:

• Do you eat grapefruit? If so, what’s your favorite variety?
• Have you ever been told by a healthcare professional to avoid or limit grapefruit consumption?
• What’s your favorite way to cut and eat grapefruit?

Featured Image: iStock.com/ValentynVolkov

Read Next:

• 7 Heart-Healthy Red Foods to Help You Thrive
• Bitter Is Better! Why Bitter Foods Can be Good for Your Health
• Why Daily Vitamin C is Good for Your Immune System

The post Grapefruit Benefits and Risks You Need to Know About appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

But as the number of telephone owners increased and the switchboard work became more challenging, managers came to the shocking conclusion that teen boys might not be the demographic best suited to the job. Apparently, they tended to lose focus easily. They engaged in frequent bouts of roughhousing. And according to Marion May Dilts, author of the 1941 book The Telephone in a Changing World, “when some other diversion held their attention, they would leave a call unanswered for any length of time, and then return the impatient subscriber’s profanity with a few original oaths.”

So by the end of WWI, the job of switchboard operator was mainly associated with women — who were relied upon to patch call after call through to the correct party, to facilitate communication and coordination in all areas of national life, and to do so in an effective and efficient manner.

Much like a switchboard operator used to facilitate communication and patch phone calls to the correct party, hormones have a similar job in your body. Your cells, tissues, organs, and various systems also frequently need to talk to each other. And it’s crucial that the right message gets sent at exactly the right time to the right destination. Hormones are the chemical messengers that relay information throughout your body, coordinating every aspect of your health and physiology.

When you’re healthy and in balance, that communication system works with exquisite orchestration, enabling all parts of your body to help each other get the job done. When something’s awry in your hormonal balance, however, you can experience unpleasant symptoms that sometimes devolve into outright disease.

One of the systems most responsible for the production and deployment of hormones is your microbiome, those 100 trillion cells that aren’t you exactly, but live in and on you and take on many of the critical functions that keep you alive.

When you nourish your microbiome on a fiber-rich diet, it manages the switchboard of your endocrine (hormone) system with care (like a competent and conscientious adult). When your microbiome is undernourished and fiber-deprived, however, it can create the wrong kinds of hormones at the wrong times — causing chaos throughout the body.

In this article, we’re going to look at the microbiome and how fiber impacts its makeup and function. We’ll also explore the link between fiber, gut health, and specific hormonal disorders and diseases.

Hormonal Imbalance

Hormones are essential to human health. In your body, hormones help regulate growth and development, metabolism, sexual function, reproduction, and mood. If hormone levels are too high or too low, that may represent a normal and temporary fluctuation, or it could indicate a chronic hormone disorder.

Hormones can lead to problems not just in deficiency or excess, but also if the target sites in your body don’t respond to the hormones the way they’re supposed to.

Hormonal imbalances can occur for many reasons, including life changes like puberty, pregnancy, and menopause; bouts of extreme stress; environmental factors; and certain medications. But one of the biggest factors determining the health of your hormonal system is the health of your gut — specifically your gut microbiome, which regulates the levels of many critical hormones in your body.

The Microbiome’s Role in Human Health

The microbiome is more than just a series of microorganisms taking up residence in your gut. The bacteria, viruses, and single-celled organisms that live there interact with and adapt to your bodily systems. There are many beneficial bacterial strains in the microbiome and a few harmful ones that can end up there, too. Together, these critters regulate metabolism, help you digest food and absorb the nutrients it contains, and support your immune system. All important stuff!

And nowhere are they more crucial than their role in supporting the endocrine system. Your gut microbes participate in regulating the levels of reproductive, immune, and metabolic hormones. In other words, they’re pretty darn crucial to your hormonal and overall health.

The Relationship Between Gut Health and Fiber

Factors such as age, lifestyle, and genetics all contribute to the makeup of your microbiome, but one of the biggest determinants is the food you eat. As a result, your microbiome is constantly changing based on what you feed it. And the number one nutrient that the beneficial bacteria love — which will make them stick around, reproduce like crazy, and generally have a nonstop party — is fiber.

Types of Fiber

There are two main types of fiber: soluble and insoluble. The most important difference, of course, is that insoluble fiber has two more letters and therefore will give you a better Scrabble score. Aside from that, soluble fiber also dissolves in water, while insoluble fiber does not.

Insoluble Fiber

Insoluble fiber adds bulk to your stools and acts like a broom, cleaning out your digestive tract. It also promotes healthy bowel movements and helps with insulin sensitivity, both of which have an impact on hormonal health.

Soluble Fiber

We can further divide soluble fiber into two categories: viscous and fermentable.

Viscous fiber is the kind that forms a gel when it comes in contact with water in your digestive tract. Its main claims to fame are that it helps to balance blood sugar and lowers cholesterol.

Fermentable fiber doesn’t do much for us directly. But don’t turn up your nose at it just yet. It’s food for a select group of gut bacteria: probiotics. That’s why you may know fermentable fiber by another name: prebiotics.

Without prebiotics, probiotic gut bacteria starve. And since nature abhors a vacuum, a gut without probiotic bacteria becomes a playground for harmful bacteria to colonize and wreak havoc on your health.

One specific type of prebiotic, called resistant starch, has an especially crucial role. It impacts insulin sensitivity and helps produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) in the gut. These SCFAs keep your gut and immune system healthy as they circulate throughout your body, regulating inflammation and talking to your cells and tissue.

For a deeper dive on this topic, check out our article on prebiotics, probiotics, and the little-known postbiotics, here.

All of the types of fiber are essential for an optimally functioning digestive system. To the extent that your diet is deficient in fiber, your microbiome will be out of whack (that’s not medical jargon, in case you were wondering). And that can not only cause digestive problems but can lead to a cascade of problems due to your hormonal system’s reliance on the microbiome to provide a pool of well-behaved chemical messengers.

Fiber’s Impact on Insulin

Insulin is one of the most important hormones in the body. Without it, your cells can’t get the energy they need, and blood sugars become dangerously high. When your pancreas doesn’t produce enough insulin, or when your body loses the ability to use insulin properly (a condition called insulin resistance), the result is diabetes.

You need insulin to move sugar in your blood into energy that powers your body; but it does a bunch of other stuff as well, like regulating blood pressure, storing fat, and promoting cell growth. But insulin is a double-edged sword, and too much insulin can lead to obesity, cardiovascular disease, and decreased lifespan.

While fiber can’t make up for a malfunctioning pancreas, it can help your body to need less insulin by reducing insulin resistance through its support of beneficial gut microbiota. These bacteria enhance the communication between the gut and other tissues that are involved in insulin and glucose balance. Fiber signals them to increase insulin sensitivity so less of the hormone is required to shuttle glucose from the bloodstream to the cells that need it. And fiber itself lowers blood sugar directly by slowing the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream.

A 2019 study on adolescents found several interesting things. First, only two of the over 750 participants in the study met the US daily fiber intake recommendations. Second, both insoluble and soluble fiber intakes were inversely associated with fasting insulin and insulin resistance markers — meaning the less fiber the adolescents ate, the more insulin was required to turn food into usable energy. Third, lower fiber intake of all types was associated with higher insulin levels, which as we’ve seen can cause all sorts of long-term health problems.

A 2021 meta-analysis also found that dietary fiber could significantly reduce HbA1c and fasting blood glucose in patients with type 2 diabetes. And soluble fiber, in particular, such as the beta-glucan found in whole grains and some mushrooms, can do good things for glucose levels and insulin responses, especially those mediated by hormones produced by the gut.

Fiber, Sex Hormones, and Cancer Incidence

Among the hormones impacted by fiber intake are the ones related to reproductive function. Excess circulating levels of these steroidal hormones, such as estrogen and testosterone, are linked to increased cancers of the reproductive organs.

Hormones, Fiber, and Breast Cancer

Many studies have shown that high circulating levels of insulin and its close relative insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) are risk factors for breast cancer. So how do you get high IGF-1 levels? One way is by consuming a lot of animal products, which don’t contain any fiber.

And if you consume dairy from cow’s milk, you may also be pumping up your IGF-1 levels because of a synthetic hormone called recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH). This drug is often given to cows to increase their milk production and make them mature more quickly.

Certain types of breast cancer are also affected by sex hormones such as estrogen. In fact, estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer is the most common subtype of breast cancer.

Diet affects both of these risk factors. There have been multiple studies showing that the more fiber you eat, the lower your risk of breast cancer. These include the giant Nurses’ Health Study II, which found an inverse relation between fiber and breast cancer in over 44,000 nurses. And a 2020 meta-analysis of 20 studies calculated an 8% reduction in breast cancer risk for those who ate the most fiber compared to those who ate the least.

A 2020 paper also identified a healthy gut microbiome, specifically including bacteria from the Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, and Actinobacteria phyla, as the mediating mechanism between fiber consumption and the reduction in breast cancer risk.

Several biological mechanisms may explain the beneficial effects of dietary fiber on breast cancer risk. Fiber may decrease breast cancer incidence by controlling blood glucose and improving insulin sensitivity. It may also increase serum concentrations of sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG), thereby reducing the circulating levels of estrogen in the body. Also, dietary fiber can shuttle estrogen out of the body by triggering more frequent and larger bowel movements (since excess hormones leave the body through excrement).

Fiber and Prostate Cancer

The fact that fiber increases SHBG is relevant to prostate cancer as well as breast cancer. SHBG binds the sex hormones testosterone and estradiol and decreases their biological activity, which can reduce the risk of aggressive prostate cancer.

In fact, it turns out that many diagnoses of prostate cancer are hormonally linked: sex steroids, particularly androgens such as testosterone, appear to contribute to the development and progression of prostate cancer. Again, the consumption of animal protein (which, I repeat, contains zero fiber) correlates with an increased risk of prostate cancer, and greater odds of recurrence after remission. As with breast cancer, this is likely due at least in part to increased levels of circulating IGF-1.

On the other hand, a plant-based diet can lower IGF-1 levels, putting men at a lower risk for prostate cancer. A 2012 study found that increased total, insoluble, and soluble fiber intake were all associated with a lower risk of aggressive forms of prostate cancer.

A large study that followed over 43,000 Japanese men for almost 12 years found that fiber intake may be protective against aggressive prostate cancer, and the protective association was greatest in those who consumed the most fiber.

The improved insulin sensitivity that fiber induces can also reduce that risk. Insulin may affect cancer development by influencing cell division and decreasing insulin-like growth factor (IGF) binding proteins, which increase the bioactivity of IGF-1.

Learn more about IGF-1, including how it works and how to bring IGF-1 levels down in your body.

Fiber, Satiety Hormones, and Obesity

We’ve known for a while that fiber can help fight obesity. But we’re discovering that one of the mechanisms by which it does so is via hormones produced by the gut microbiome. For example, fiber intake predicts ghrelin levels in people with obesity. Ghrelin is a gut hormone produced and released by your stomach. It’s your stomach’s way of telling the brain, “Hey, I’m empty; it’s time to eat. Create the sensation of hunger!”

Ghrelin plays an important role in promoting fat development, so it makes sense its dysregulation could influence the development of metabolic disturbances associated with diet-induced obesity.

In lean, healthy people, ghrelin levels increase before meals and drop after eating. By contrast, in people with obesity, insulin resistance, or type 2 diabetes, fasting ghrelin levels are lower, and don’t show much if any variation. In fact, ghrelin levels either drop less or not at all after eating in obese people, compared with lean ones.

One older study showed that variation in ghrelin levels was positively associated with fiber intake. In fact, fiber consumption had as much influence on ghrelin levels as total calories consumed, even though fiber doesn’t provide calories. So a high fiber intake increases the perception of satiety, reduces appetite, and lowers food intake.

This effect could be due to fiber’s ability to slow down the process of moving food through the stomach. “Decreased gastric emptying,” as this phenomenon is called (or, if you prefer, you can just think of it like “stuff stays in your tummy for longer”), allows the stomach to pull out more nutrients more effectively, and therefore downregulates hunger, since the stomach is getting what it needs and doesn’t need the brain to call for more.

Fiber may also impact levels of another hunger-related hormone, leptin. Leptin functions as a counterweight to ghrelin: It’s secreted by fat cells and signals the brain to decrease sensations of hunger. When leptin levels are high for a long time due to excess fat, the body can stop paying attention to its message of “stop eating.” 

One way to help people overcome obesity is to lower their leptin levels and stop leptin resistance, so their bodies can re-establish a balance. It’s like if someone has been shouting at you for so long that you no longer pay any attention to them, unless they stop shouting for a while, you’ll have a hard time listening to them ever again.

A small 2017 study of overweight adults found that adding resistant starch to a moderate- to high-fat diet lowered leptin levels. And a larger 2021 study of 17-year-olds also found that higher fiber intake was significantly associated with lower leptin. This may contribute to reductions in low-grade chronic inflammation and improved health outcomes, such as the prevention of obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Fiber-Rich & Hormone Balancing Recipes

Fiber is in a wide range of fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains, which are all designed to supply your body with the nutrients it needs to live a happy, healthy, and balanced life. Speaking of balance — regulate your hormones with ease as you enjoy these tasty, fiber-filled recipes for breakfast, lunch, or dinner (and maybe a tasty afternoon, fiber-filled snack, too).

1. Oatmeal Banana Bites

Packed with plenty of fiber from oats and bananas, these muffin-like bites are a tasty snack that does just the trick for proper hormone balance. The banana’s prebiotic fiber will feed your good gut bacteria. And the oats provide both soluble and insoluble fiber, preventing a spike in your blood sugar. Plus, these Oatmeal Banana Bites are super simple to make — and tasty, too!

2. Smoky Sweet Potato Black Bean Salad

Sweet potatoes and black beans are two plant-based foods that are excellent for balancing hormones, feeding a healthy gut microbiome, managing a healthy insulin response, and supplying the body with protein, carbohydrates, and phytonutrients. Plus, the combination of sweet and smoky flavors is absolutely scrumptious, making this simple, mouthwatering salad one you can enjoy anytime!

3. Moroccan Bulgur Bowl with Savory Orange Dressing

The Moroccan Bulgur Bowl is filled with a healing blend of spices, loads of fiber-rich veggies, and nourishing healthy fats to keep your hormones in check. Plus, the flavor combinations are scrumptiously unique! And the creamy Savory Orange Dressing drizzled on top of fragrant bulgur, veggies, crunchy pistachios, and cooling mint takes this meal to the next level.

Keep Your Hormones Balanced — With Fiber!

The microbiome plays an important role in human health, including influencing hormonal balance. And one of the biggest controllable factors in the health of your microbiome is fiber. Prebiotic fiber, in particular, feeds good gut bacteria that help keep your hormones where they need to be.

Fiber also helps your digestive system stay healthy and get rid of waste, which includes spent and excess hormones. Getting enough fiber doesn’t just have a positive impact on hormone levels — it can also help prevent chronic diseases and conditions like type 2 diabetes, cancer, and obesity.

By eating foods with various types of soluble and insoluble fiber, you can keep your body’s information switchboard running smoothly and effectively, without disruption in hormonal balance.

Tell us in the comments:

• What are your favorite high-fiber foods?
• Do you notice a difference in your hunger after eating a high- vs low-fiber meal?
• What fiber-rich recipe will you make next?

Featured Image: iStock.com/Inside Creative House

Read Next:

• Why Is Fiber Good For You? (And How To Get Enough Fiber!)
• How to Balance Hormones Naturally with Diet & Lifestyle

The post The Importance of Fiber in Gut Health and Hormonal Balance appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Which reminds me: How do you get into the mush-room?  Ring the porta-bella!

When it comes to mushroom talk, it could be wise to clarify. Because there’s another thing someone could be talking about: medicinal mushrooms.

Medicinal mushrooms have important health benefits and exhibit a broad spectrum of benefits and uses, including (long list coming here) anti-allergenic, antibacterial, antifungal, anti-inflammatory, antioxidative, antiviral, cytotoxic, immunomodulating, antidepressive, antihyperlipidemic, antidiabetic — takes breath — digestive, hepatoprotective, neuroprotective, nephroprotective, osteoprotective, and hypotensive properties. (Phew!)

Medicinal mushrooms are also loaded with some of nature’s finest compounds (warning: another long list coming your way), including polysaccharides, proteins, fatty acids, alkaloids, terpenoids, tocopherols, phenolics, antioxidants, flavonoids, lectins, enzymes, and more.

(That’s a lot of benefits. And you get them whether or not you even know what all those words mean.)

But there’s more. Mushrooms are also incredibly gentle on the planet. They require very little energy and water to grow, and their growing medium is compostable. As well, their growth footprint is tiny. Over a million mushrooms can be produced annually in a one-acre space. Quite simply, they’re one of the most sustainably grown foods in the human diet.

Unfortunately, not many people are aware that medicinal mushrooms even exist, never mind the powerful health benefits that they can offer. There are over 50,000 species of mushrooms — and those are just the ones that have been studied and written about! So, you can understand why it may be a bit difficult to keep track of them.

This is why I’ve chosen five of the most beneficial medicinal mushrooms out there, so that you can learn more about them, along with how they could benefit your health if you choose to give them a try.

So, What Are 5 of the Best Medicinal Mushrooms?

As mentioned above, there are countless species of mushrooms out there, and medical mushroom species are no exception. It was a bit of a challenge to narrow down the list to just five, but I’ve selected the mushrooms included here because they are well-studied and may specifically help with mental clarity, longevity, and immunity.

So, keep reading to learn about five of the most powerful medicinal mushrooms out there, along with how they can benefit your health.

1. Turkey Tail Mushrooms

Turkey tail mushrooms are multicolored fungi that can grow on both standing and fallen trees. They grow in several parts of the world, including the United States.

Turkey tail are typically disc-shaped and — as you may have guessed — often resemble a turkey’s tail.

Also known by the names Trametes versicolor or Coriolus versicolor, these mushrooms have been used for centuries as a health supplement for a wide range of ailments and preventative measures.

One of the most prominent and well-known benefits of turkey tail is its immune-boosting properties, along with its ability to help ward off certain chronic diseases.

This is largely due to compounds found within turkey tail called polysaccharopeptide (PSP) and polysaccharide-K (PSK) that may inhibit the growth of cancer cells, potentially leading to increased chances of beating the disease. This is why some researchers are now suggesting it may be wise to take turkey tail when undergoing chemotherapy and other conventional cancer treatments to complement these therapies.

PSP also stimulates the immune system, allowing for a more robust immune response to pathogens.

In addition to this, the PSP in turkey tail can benefit gut health by feeding and promoting the growth of beneficial bacteria.

Turkey tail’s compounds may also help prevent weight gain and obesity.

All in all, turkey tail mushrooms may be able to help stave off disease by boosting the immune response and inhibiting the proliferation of cancer cells.

2. Stout Camphor Fungus

That’s not the most appealing of names, I know, but this unique mushroom, Antrodia camphorata, has been widely used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat liver problems, food and drug intoxication, abdominal pain, hypertension, and itchy skin, so I’ll give it a pass.

Like most mushrooms, its benefits are thanks to a rich diversity of bioactive compounds. Stout camphor fungus contains over 78 compounds, many of which have anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and detoxifying effects.

As such, research has found it to support the immune system, bolster liver health, and protect the health of the brain.

What does a fast mushroom car say?

“Shroom! Shroom!”

3. Reishi Mushroom

The reishi mushroom — also known as Ganoderma lucidum or lingzhi — likes to grow in hot and humid locations throughout Asia. It’s been a staple in Eastern medicine for more than 2,000 years.

Reishi mushrooms deliver a rare collection of bioactive compounds that appear to provide important benefits to human health. One of the most well-known of these benefits is the ability to support the immune system. Research tells us that reishi mushrooms can boost the number of white blood cells (alone and when combined with other medicinal mushrooms), enhance their efficiency, and increase their activity — which can help the immune system to fight disease-causing cells.

Reishi mushrooms may also have benefits when used in conjunction with other forms of cancer treatment. A meta-analysis conducted by a team of researchers from Australia, Argentina, and China concluded that patients who were given reishi extract in their anticancer regimen were 1.27 times more likely to respond to chemotherapy or radiotherapy than those without it.

And other studies have suggested that supplementing with this mushroom could improve symptoms of depression, as well as boost energy levels.

Additionally, other research has found that reishi mushrooms may promote healthy cholesterol levels and act as a powerful antioxidant.

4. King Trumpet

King trumpet mushroom, often referred to as Pleurotus eryngii, is a large form of the popular oyster mushroom that is native to Europe and Asia.

All oyster mushrooms boast an impressive nutrient profile, containing high amounts of riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, phosphorus, potassium, and protein.

Research has shown that oyster mushrooms of all kinds may help to bring down chronic inflammation, and potentially reduce the risk of inflammation-related disease and colon cancer.

King trumpet mushrooms may also lower the levels of LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, thereby helping to protect the heart.

King trumpet has also been shown to protect against the growth of disease-causing cells thanks to the wide range of beneficial compounds it contains.

5. Maitake Mushroom

Although maitake mushrooms grow in many parts of the world — including the United States — they’ve historically been most popular in Japan and China, where they’ve been used for thousands of years to support health, vitality, and longevity.

And it turns out that there’s some solid science to back up the benefits of the maitake.

Research has shown that maitake mushrooms could be useful in helping to prevent or even treat cancer.

Other studies have found that maitake can also support the health of the heart by lowering cholesterol and stabilizing blood pressure, all while promoting healthier blood sugar levels.

Maitake mushrooms are also known as adaptogens. This means they could help the body respond to mental and physical stress, regulating bodily systems to help return to and maintain homeostasis.

Mushrooms for Longevity and Well-Being

Medicinal mushrooms have been used in traditional medicine for thousands of years, and now modern science is finding that a few of them, in particular, could make a real contribution to helping us be healthy, strong, and happy.

So the next time someone asks you if you like mushrooms, you might want to tell them what you’ve learned today about medicinal mushrooms!

Or you could share this rather poor excuse for a joke:

A mushroom walks into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender looks at the mushroom, points to a sign, and says, “We don’t serve mushrooms here.” The mushroom just looks at the bartender and says, “Oh come on, bartender! I’m a fun guy!”

Tell us in the comments:

• Which of these 5 mushrooms is your favorite?
• What other medicinal mushrooms do you enjoy?
• What’s your favorite way to consume edible mushrooms?

Featured Image: iStock.com/petesphotography

Read Next:

• How Mushrooms Can Help with Depression, Anxiety, and Your Overall Mental Health
• What Are the Real Superfoods? The Answers May Surprise You!

The post Nature’s 5 Most Powerful Medicinal Mushrooms (And How They Support Your Health) appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

In the face of these troubling developments, FRN’s mission feels more urgent and crucial than ever.

We focus both on what you can do to protect your health and the health of your loved ones, and also on the big picture. The good news is, as one prominent 2022 Harvard study found, the same food choices that are best for fighting heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and other chronic illnesses are also best for our planet. Each of us can shop, cook, and eat in ways that make us part of the solution on Planet Earth.

Thank you for standing with us and supporting our mission of healthy, ethical, and sustainable food for all as we navigate these changes together. It’s you and many others like you — individually and as part of our collective community — who give us the opportunity and clout to exert our influence for positive change.

In this post, we want to share some of what we’ve accomplished this year — and what gives us hope for the new year. And we want to start by telling you about two people.

Lives Changed by the Food Revolution

Lori wrote to let us know how FRN’s Healthy Heart Course changed her life. When she signed up, Lori was desperate to reverse the damage caused by a heart attack a few years earlier — and to heal from a sudden, heartbreaking loss. By following the guidance from our resident heart expert, Mimi Guarneri, MD, Lori reversed the damage to her heart, lost 26 pounds, normalized her once-stratospheric cholesterol and triglyceride levels, and lowered her blood pressure.

In her words: “I’m so excited to tell you all about my progress… Healthy Heart was just what I needed… I learned about the emotional, physical, and practical things I can do to care for my heart in everyday life. And it’s made a big difference!… I couldn’t be happier. My cardiologist, PCP, dentist, and counselor are impressed, too!”

We’re so proud of you, Lori! Way to take the information and inspiration and really act on it to achieve that heartening transformation!

And then there’s Susan, now 67 years young, who shared with us the impact that this year’s Food Revolution Summit had on her life. Sixty pounds overweight for much of her life, Susan was in pain and taking a lot of medications — with debilitating side effects. She suffered from brain fog, constant migraines, extreme foot pain, puffy eyes nearly swollen shut, and hands that were so swollen that she couldn’t bend her fingers.

Thanks to the (in her words) “incredible collection of well-educated, passionate speakers, doctors, authors, and scientists,” and to putting what she learned from them into action, Susan is now medication-free and pain-free. She lifts weights, runs, swims up to 30 laps every day, kayaks, skydives, and works a full-time job.

She writes, “I wish to heaven I could have all this to give to my adult children and grandchildren as a legacy for life… I can’t say enough about what it means to my life… I am a totally different person!”

Hope for the Future of Food

People like Lori and Susan inspire us. And not just because of their moving personal stories. They are also part of a broader movement for food, health, and justice that is beginning to shift the course of food history.

The pandemic and its fallout have been brutally challenging for many people, but there have also been a few silver linings. As it became clear that COVID-19 was far more dangerous to people with preexisting, chronic health conditions, many more people began to take a proactive interest in their health. We saw increased popularity of plant-based diets, explosive growth of meat and dairy alternatives, and consumption of more fresh produce compared to pre-pandemic years.

According to the Bloomberg Intelligence Report, plant-based food sales are now expected to increase fivefold by 2030. And 42% of consumers think plant-based food will replace meat by 2032.

​​The Russian invasion of Ukraine destabilized the world’s food supply, putting hundreds of millions of people at risk of hunger. Yet like the pandemic, this tragedy, too, is prompting some people to focus on the positive: in this case, ways to make the global food system more resilient. A 2022 study published in Nature found that Europe could more than make up for the projected shortfalls by shifting to a more plant-based eating pattern.

Our Contributions to the Food Revolution in 2022

Caption: Food Revolution Network’s CEO, Ocean Robbins attends the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health

In 2022, together with our team of 25+ staff, and thanks to you and our other 750,000+ members, we have:

• Published 100 articles on cutting-edge food and health topics, and more than 180 delicious new whole foods, plant-powered recipes, reaching more than four million unique readers on our website. In total, viewers visited pages on our site over 15 million times.
• Funded the planting of more than 100,000 organic fruit or nut trees in low-income communities, on behalf of products sold in 2022 — that will sequester more than 8,000 tons of carbon dioxide — as part of our collaboration with Trees for the Future. (More on this below.)
• Ocean participated in the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, by invitation from Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey. Sen. Booker, who chairs the Subcommittee on Food and Nutrition, Specialty Crops, Organics, and Research, pointed out that nearly $1 out of every $3 in the federal budget now goes toward health care spending, so encouraging healthier foods should be a top priority in the 2023 Farm Bill.
• Many of the policies FRN has been advocating for years were formally endorsed in the White House’s policy goals. This includes doubling the value of fruits and vegetables for SNAP (food stamp) recipients; funding “produce prescriptions” (so that doctors can prescribe fruits and vegetables to their patients as a treatment for certain conditions, and the costs can be covered by Medicare or insurance companies); and bringing more fresh fruits and vegetables into school meal programs.
• We grew our reach on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter by 29% over any previous year, reaching an average of more than 8.7 million people each month.
• Kicked off the year by launching the 14-Day Plant-Powered Accelerator, which has attracted more than 5,800 participants to date.
• Reached more than 289,000 participants with the 2022 Food Revolution Summit. (Day 1 of the 2022 Summit was the most popular, with Drs. William Li, Joel Kahn, and Michael Klaper talking with John about How Food Can Help You Heal.)
• Launched our Tackling Type 2 Masterclass and course with Brenda Davis, RD, and helped over 45,000 people improve their blood sugar balance.
• Shared the award-winning, solution-inspiring film The Need To Grow with more than 134,000 people.
• Helped another 3,300 people implement a healthy eating lifestyle with our Plant-Powered & Thriving course, and 48,000 in the related Food for Health Masterclass.
• Reached over 62,000 people with our Healthy Heart Masterclass and 2,700 people in the Healthy Heart course with leading cardiologist Mimi Guarneri, MD.
• Created and provided the Brain Breakthroughs Masterclass, taught by leading neurologists Drs. Dean and Ayesha Sherzai, to 55,000 people, and shared their Healthy Brain course with more than 2,100 people.
• Shared the awe-inspiring film Fantastic Fungi with more than 143,000 people.
• Created 53 Action of the Week videos, 13 expert interviews, 318 fabulous recipes, and held twice-monthly live member events (Coaching and Culinary Q&A, and “In the Kitchen with Nichole”) with our WHOLE Life Club community, which has grown to more than 9,500 active members. (Shameless plug: Find out more about WHOLE Life Club and how to join here.)
• Reached over 15,000 people with our new Plant-Powered Playbook and Mini-Masterclass.
• Launched our Unlocking Longevity course featuring John Robbins — with more than 16,000 people registering for the course and the Mini-Masterclass in December of 2022 alone.

As Lori’s and Susan’s stories remind us, these statistics aren’t just numbers; they represent real people who are experiencing dramatic improvements in their health and well-being. We hear accounts of healing and transformation almost every day. No wonder we’re inspired to continue our mission with dedication and enthusiasm.

A Heartwarming “Trees for the Future” Story

Caption: Trees for the Future farmer, Bassirou Seck and his family

In that spirit, I want to share a story behind those trees that FRN and our supporters helped Trees for the Future plant in low-income communities around the world.

Bassirou Seck is a farmer from Kaffrine, Senegal, who four years ago found himself farming on unhealthy soil with little to show for it. His harvests were unpredictable and meager at best, and every year the yields became worse and worse.

Determined to change his future, Bassirou joined Trees for the Future’s Forest Garden Training Program in 2018. He learned how to use regenerative agroforestry to improve his soil health, diversify his crops, and generate additional income.

The impact of Bassirou’s newfound knowledge on his land has been stunning. He now has more than 2,000 trees that form the canopy of a thriving “forest garden,” providing shade for crops, keeping moisture in the soils, and delivering a host of nutritional and other benefits. Composting has allowed him to improve his soil organically, so he’s no longer dependent on expensive synthetic fertilizers. With his diversified harvest of fresh vegetables, including tomatoes and eggplants, Bassirou is able to feed his family and even help out others when they are sick.

Every time anyone buys a product of any size from FRN, we make a contribution to enable Trees for the Future to fund the planting of an organic fruit or nut tree in a low-income community. And together with Trees for the Future, we’re doing a lot more than just planting trees that provide foliage and suck carbon out of the atmosphere. We’re also helping farmers like Bassirou to heal their land, secure their economic future, and to provide nutritious food to their families and their communities. (Find out more about Trees for the Future, and how you can chip in, here.)

Most Popular Food Revolution Network Blog Posts Published in 2022

With more than 15 million blog pages viewed in 2022, these were FRN’s most popular new posts of the year.

• How to Make Healthy Smoothie Recipes That Are Nutritious & Delicious!
• Healthy Morning Drinks to Start Your Day Off Right
• What Is Your Poop Telling You? A Guide to Healthy Bowel Habits
• Ordering Your Own Lab Tests: A Guide to Taking Control of Your Health
• 5 Common Mistakes Plant-Based Eaters Make and How to Avoid Them

Most Popular Food Revolution Network Recipes

In 2021 we were surprised by our top recipe, considering that it’s an ingredient rather than a dish. But our Super Simple Homemade Date Paste has proven itself a perennial winner, taking the top spot for the second year in a row. Did I hear someone say “dynasty”? Now, we’re trying to beat it with every new recipe we create!

Not everything stayed the same, though. Breaking into the leaderboard were three smoothie recipes — so keep those blenders handy!

Our most popular recipes for 2022 were:

• Super Simple Homemade Date Paste
• Blueberry Ginger Smoothie
• Cinnamon Apple Breakfast Smoothie
• Hearty and Healing Lentil Burgers
• Homemade Kimchi
• Morning Mocha Smoothie
• Breakfast Cauliflower Lentil Kitchari
• Everyday Lentil Lunch
• Harvest Grain Breakfast Bowl
• Broccoli and Tomato Pasta Bake

Gratitude Goes Both Ways

We’ve heard from so many of you about how our articles, recipes, programs, and courses have improved your lives. We are humbled by that gratitude, and never take it for granted.

And this is why we want to end this review by sharing how grateful we are to you. Each and every supporter of FRN — contributors, partners, members, customers, readers, blog post commenters, article sharers, and healthy eaters — helps further our mission of healthy, ethical, and sustainable food for all.

And in a tough year, we pulled together one more time to face some of the most difficult challenges of our time. War, pandemics, climate chaos, economic uncertainty, and food insecurity on a mass scale can feel like giant, even insurmountable problems.

But as we’ve seen, there are things each of us can do to bring about a world in which healthy food is accessible to all, a world in which the process of growing food makes the planet greener and more abundant, a world in which justice and sanity infuse policy and politics.

And so many of you have done those things day in and day out. Moving toward a plant-based diet. Choosing organic produce when you can. Buying local, from farm stands and farmers markets. Buying less and loving more. Donating to worthy causes. Trying new healthy recipes. Sharing articles, films, and healthy food with friends and loved ones.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Thank you for caring about the food that you eat, and the food you share with others.

Thank you for aligning your actions and purchases with your values.

Thank you for all the ways in which you are being the change we all wish to see, and to manifest, in the world.

Here’s to all we accomplished together in 2022, and to the healing, compassion, and beauty we’re creating, one meal at a time.

May all be fed. May all be healed. May all be loved.

Ocean Robbins and John Robbins
Co-founders, Food Revolution Network

Tell us in the comments:

• How has the food revolution impacted your life during this past year?
• What are you most looking forward to in 2023?

Featured Image: iStock.com/Anna Ivonina

The post Food Revolution Network’s End of Year Review: Looking Back on What We Accomplished in 2022 appeared first on Food Revolution Network.