Ancient man’s lifestyle of walking long distances daily in search of food and shelter, typified by opportunistic eating and either fasting or feasting, also meant that they had to go for long periods of time without food when none was readily available.  It makes you wonder if the human body was originally designed to have three square meals a day, with snacking on demand. The bodies of our ancestors must have been able to function without food for irregular and extended periods of time.  The body fortunately still has biological survival mechanisms that gets activated when deprived of food for extended periods. Modern man practices fasting for health reasons or for cultural or religious beliefs, such as the Ramadan fast

Mushrooms are not a vegetable as they appear to be, but are a kind of fungus.  Some wild mushrooms can be toxic, but the commercially grown edible ones are quite tasty and come in different shapes, sizes, and colours.  Adding flavour and meaty texture to many different dishes, mushrooms also provide several of the important nutrients that the body needs and is unable to make itself. Nutritional value of mushrooms: Mushrooms contain a wide range of nutritional content, such as protein, vitamins, minerals, fiber, and antioxidants, all with various health benefits to the body. Protein: Mushrooms are a low-calorie food that provide a small amount of protein. Mushrooms contain more than twice the amount of protein than most vegetables.  As

As natural sugar is high in calories and a high intake can lead to weight gain, many people switch to artificial sweeteners, which are made from synthetic chemicals that give a sweet taste without the calories.  As artificial sweeteners are 200 times or more sweeter than sugar, much less is required to sweeten food and soft drinks.  While artificial sweeteners can lower blood sugar levels and may help with weight loss in the short term, research has indicated that a high intake of artificial sweeteners over the longer term may confuse your body into storing fat and inducing diabetes. Artificial sweeteners can affect the chemistry in the body: Artificial sweeteners used in moderation may not harm the body, while research

The three macronutrients that we need in our diets are protein, carbohydrates, and fat.  During digestion, enzymes in the gut break down the most plentiful fat in our diet, triglycerides, into fatty acids and a molecule called glycerol.  Once absorbed these molecules reassemble into triglycerides, and as they cannot move freely through the watery bloodstream, they combine with protein and cholesterol to form lipoproteins.  Extra calories, sugar, and alcohol also gets converted into triglycerides in the liver; transported in lipoproteins and stored in fat cells in the body. Two of these fatty acids, omega-3 and omega-6, are essential to survive – we need to obtain both of them from breast milk initially and after that from our diet, as the

The first few weeks of breastfeeding are an amazing period of bonding time for mother and baby.  Just as amazing is the essential composition of nutrients contained in breast milk – the most complete food imaginable, cleverly adapting to the needs of the growing infant.  However, the most spectacular part of breastfeeding is the variety of containers it comes in! Apart from the optimal macronutrients (fats, carbohydrates, and proteins) to support baby development and growth, breast milk also offers protection, as it is full of essential vitamins, minerals, and vital antibodies to strengthen the baby’s immune system.  Breastfeeding also provides stem cells, the building blocks for growth and development. Different types of breast milk: Breast milk is constantly changing, depending

Less intense than cocaine and heroin, but nonetheless addictive for some people, sugar activates the same region in the brain that makes you experience a high and feelings of pleasure.  Like using hard drugs, bingeing on sugar blunts the “pleasure” response over time, making you want the sugar fix more frequently and in higher doses to experience the same feelings of pleasure.  This has dire consequences on some processes in the body. The biochemical effects of sugar: In the 1960’s and 1970’s the buzz words in food and diet became “low fat”, following on (largely incorrect) assumptions that obesity and related metabolic syndrome disease (characterized by abdominal obesity, high triglycerides, high blood pressure, high blood glucose, and low HDL cholesterol)