Healthy Eating Science

Why do most diets fail? Why does one person eat a certain meal and gain weight, while another eating the same meal loses pounds? Why, despite all the advice about what to eat, are we all still getting fatter? The answers are much more surprising - and fascinating - than we've been led to believe. The key to health and weight loss lies not in the latest fad diet, nor even in the simple mantra of 'eat less, exercise more', but in the microbes already inside us.

From her office in the University of Minnesota's Health and Eating Lab, professor Traci Mann researches self-control and dieting. And what she has discovered is groundbreaking. Not only do diets not work, they often result in weight gain. Americans are losing the battle of the bulge because our bodies and brains are not hardwired to resist food - the very idea of it works against our biological imperative to survive.

Almost all of us are missing essential vitamins and minerals from our diets that leave us feeling unwell and unable to achieve our health goals—even those of us who take our daily multi, buy organic produce, or have tried to kick-start our health with different dietary habits. Now, bestselling author Dr. Sarah Ballantyne throws all of that out the window in favor of a simple yet radical idea: choose foods to meet our nutritional needs.

These days, probiotic yogurt and other "gut-friendly" foods line supermarket shelves. But what's the best way to feed our all-important microbiome - and what is a microbiome, anyway? In this engaging book, science journalist Katherine Harmon Courage investigates these questions, presenting a deep dive into the ancient food traditions and the latest research for maintaining a healthy gut.

Nature puts a “survival switch” in our bodies to protect us from starvation. Stuck in the “on” position, it’s the hidden source of weight gain, heart disease, and many other common health struggles. But you can turn it off.

Most of us eat 3 meals a day with a smattering of snacks because we think that’s the normal, healthy way to eat. But when we look at the eating patterns of our distant ancestors, we can see that an intermittent fasting eating pattern is normal—and eating 3 meals a day is not. In The Intermittent Fasting Revolution, prominent neuroscientist Mark Mattson shows that frequent periods of time with little or negligible amounts of food is not only normal but also good for us.

Cameron Diaz shares her formula for becoming happier, healthier, and stronger in this positive, essential guide that is grounded in science and inspired by personal experience. Throughout her career, Cameron Diaz has been a role model for millions of women. By her own candid admission, though, this fit, glamorous, but down-to-earth star was not always health-conscious. Learning about the inseparable link between nutrition and the body was a life-changing lesson.

Your Body in Balance provides step-by-step guidance for understanding what's at the root of your suffering - and what you can do to feel better fast. Few people realize that a simple food prescription can help you tackle all these and more by gently restoring your hormone balance, with benefits rivaling medications. Neal Barnard, MD, a leading authority on nutrition and health, offers insight into how dietary changes can alleviate years of stress, pain, and illness. What's more, he also provides delicious and easy-to-make hormone-balancing recipes.

Why, despite the many advances in science and technology over the past few decades, does our health only seem to be getting worse? Why, despite so much time and energy spent studying the foods we eat, are we more confused than ever about nutrition - what good nutrition looks like, and what it can do for our health? The Future of Nutrition offers a fascinating deep-dive behind the curtain of the field of nutrition - with implications both for our health and for the practice of science itself.

Through a compassionate lens, Metabolism Repair for Women explores how both eating behavior and energy expenditure are not under conscious control. Instead, they’re subject to the brain’s regulatory mechanism. And if you have metabolic dysfunction (i.e., insulin resistance, hypoglycemia, and/or weight gain), it’s because something is amiss with that regulatory mechanism.

The scientific evidence behind why maintaining a lifestyle more like that of our ancestors will restore our health and well-being. In Go Wild, Harvard Medical School Professor John Ratey, MD, and journalist Richard Manning reveal that although civilization has rapidly evolved, our bodies have not kept pace.

Our evolutionary ancestors once possessed the ability to intuit what food their bodies needed, in what proportions, and ate the right things in the proper amounts—effortlessly balanced. When and why did we lose this ability, and how can we get it back? David Raubenheimer and Stephen Simpson answer these questions in a compelling narrative, based upon five "eureka" moments they experienced in the course of their groundbreaking research.

Healthy Cook’s Anti-Inflammatory Diet & Cookbook Transform your health and vitality with Healthy Cook’s Anti-Inflammatory Diet & Cookbook . Authored by Albert Orbinati, Ph.D., this engaging guide goes beyond recipes—it's a complete wellness manual for those seeking to alleviate chronic inflammation, improve gut health, reduce stress, and embrace detoxification. Dive into over 100 meticulously crafted recipes , each featuring nutrient-packed superfoods and flexible options to suit various dietary preferences.

Few people are aware of the importance of sufficient testosterone levels in women. A healthy dosage helps women slim down, improves mood, lowers the risk of cardiac disease, increases energy and libido, prevents osteoporosis, enhances skin tone and texture, and may even prevent cognitive decline - yet more than 90% of women over age 45 suffer from low testosterone levels. In The Hormone Secret, Meraglia offers an evidence-based 30-day plan to restore healthy levels of testosterone and balance other hormones based on lifestyle modifications.

Calorie information is ubiquitous. We see authoritative numbers that tell us the calorie count of what we're about to consume everywhere. Here's the thing, however, that most people have no idea about. All of the calorie counts that you see everywhere today, are wrong. Dr Giles Yeo, obesity researcher at Cambridge University, challenges the conventional model and demonstrates that all calories are not created equal. He addresses why popular diets succeed, at least in the short term, and why they ultimately fail, and what your environment has to do with your bodyweight.

Our basic right to healthy food is at risk. What can we do? Written in an astute, engaging style, armed with examples from her own homesteading lifestyle, small farmer Nicole Faires' Food Confidential gives you the tools to fight the intangible battles as well as the practical ones.

In The China Study, T. Colin Campbell revolutionized the way we think about our food with the evidence that a whole food, plant-based diet is the healthiest way to eat. Now, in Whole, he explains the science behind that evidence, the ways our current scientific paradigm ignores the fascinating complexity of the human body, and why, if we have such overwhelming evidence that everything we think we know about nutrition is wrong, our eating habits haven’t changed.

This book is all about the single most powerful move that humans can make to promote health, reduce obesity, lower the cost of health care, nurture our fragile environment, conserve our energy resources, feed the world’s steadily growing population, and greatly reduce the suffering of animals in factory farms all over the world. As Dr. T. Colin Campbell says, “It turns out that if we eat the way that promotes the best health for ourselves, we also promote the best health for the planet."

For millennia humans have fasted for spiritual, emotional, and physical reasons—as a way to heal their bodies, reconnect to the sacred, regain a sense of life’s purpose, and allow their souls to detoxify. We are evolutionarily designed to fast, and the body knows how to do it very well. Fasting allows the body and all its systems to rest, purify, and heal. Offering step-by-step guidelines to fully prepare yourself for a deep fast, Buhner explores what to expect during and after spiritual, emotional, and physical fasting and detoxification.

In Low Insulin Lifestyle, Dr. Ali Chappell shares her personal journey with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), while also providing scientific insights into her approach for managing the condition. As a Registered Dietitian with a MS and a PhD in nutrition, specializing in reproductive endocrinology, Dr. Chappell has devoted her career to assisting women with PCOS in managing their symptoms.