Beans Really are Good for Your Heart!

“Beans, beans, they’re good for your heart.” So starts the poem many of us learned as children. And as it turns out, beans really are good for your heart. According to nutrition expert Jane Edwards, Ph.D.: “Beans help maintain normal ranges for several risk factors for heart disease: cholesterol, blood pressure, and homocysteine levels.” So […]

Xylitol: Natural Sweetener Fights Tooth Decay

January is typically considered “diet” season. It is also the season for my annual rant against “diet” products containing artificial sweeteners, and in particular aspartame, a.k.a. Nutrasweet. Aspartame was originally approved for human use in 1981 by FDA, despite vigorous objections by its own scientists. It is now an ingredient in thousands of products consumed […]

Genuine Prosciutto Melts in Your Mouth

Last time I talked about the denomination of origin standards that apply to many of the great cheeses of Europe. These are standards designed to protect the integrity and authenticity of many traditional cheeses. I likened them to an “I.D.” card that lets you know the identity of certain cheeses, so you can be assured […]

Know Thy Cheese

How well do you know the food that is on your plate? Do you know anything about the farm it was grown on? Where it was located? What the climate was like? Was it a large or small farm? And what about how it was processed after it left the farm? These are important questions, […]

Heirloom Turkeys Make a Comeback

When the founding fathers were deciding on what bird to depict on the national seal, Benjamin Franklin argued for the turkey over the bald eagle. He wrote: “For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character….the Turkey is […]