The longest living people in the world

I recently wrote a post about an article online discussing Blue Zones, or places in the world where people live the longest.  This particular article covered a Greek island called Ikaria.  I learned that a book about four other Blue Zones was written just last year.  Since my 30th birthday was coming up, it seemed [...]

Food, Inc. the book

I recently wrote about seeing the film Food, Inc.  I discovered shortly after seeing the movie that the producers of the film had also created a book to accompany it.  The book is a collection of essays, many written by people that appear in the film (i.e. Michael Pollan).  It’s a really great read, as [...]

Disease-Proof Your Child

I read the book Disease-Proof Your Child in late 2006 and liked it so much, that I recommended it to several friends.  The first few chapters have a lot of great information about how diet affects health and disease.  However, the recipe section at the end of the book was never a big hit with [...]

The China Study–why we should eat less animal protein

I recently finished reading The China Study.  I got this book thinking it would be about the China study, where the health and diets of over 6000 rural Chinese were examined.  It ended up being more of a summary about the life work of researcher T. Colin Cambell, Ph.D.  I think a better title for [...]

The Unhealthy Truth

It’s not very often that I read a book that I think everyone needs to read.  In fact, since I started this blog almost two years ago, it’s only happened once with In Defense of Food.  However, I just finished reading The Unhealthy Truth, which came out last month, and I think that every parent [...]

The Western diet is fertilizer for cancer

A couple weeks ago, a dear friend of mine discovered that some neurologial symptoms he’d been having were in fact due to a brain tumor.  The tumor is located so deep in his brain that it’s inoperable.  Today, he starts radiation.  He’s 29.
My friend is a smart guy.  Within a week of his diagnosis, he [...]

How diet can curb inflammation

When I first started this blog, a friend of mine asked if I could write about why allergies are becoming so common.  Why do so many young kids these days seem to be allergic to peanuts?  Why is asthma on the rise?  At the time, I told her I suspected an environmental trigger that was [...]

I’m totally impressed

Last week, I recommended a book I’d just finished reading–The Read-Aloud Handbook.  I must confess that in our house, we read A LOT to our 3-year old.  He gets 5-10 books read to him each day, sometimes totaling more than an hour of reading.  We have recently given chapter books a try and he’ll actually [...]

Reading aloud

I’ve just finished a book that I have to recommend to every parent and educator.  It’s called The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease.  The first half of the book talks about the importance of books, libraries, and of course, reading aloud to children (even after they’ve learned to read themselves), while the second half is [...]

Shopping guide

My mother gave me a little book called The Better World Shopping Guide.  It’s written by Ellis Jones, a professor of sociology at UC Davis.  It’s not really a book, but rather a collection of tables that rate different manufacturers of products based on their corporate behavior.  Corporations have the ability to affect millions of [...]