Nourish

Fighting cancer dish by dish.

by Conner Middelmann Whitney

How My Tech Breakdown Helped Me Reboot My Life

It’s Day Five of my internet vacation, and I feel like I’m slowly getting my life back.

Like many life-altering experiences, this one wasn’t undertaken voluntarily; it was foisted upon me by torrential rain that flooded the local telephone exchange, cutting off our phone line and, with it, my access to the World Wide Web. Read More

Let's Eat, Drink and Grow Old Together

Three villages in Sicily's Sicani Mountains boast more than twice as many hundred-year-olds as the rest of Europe. The secret of their longevity? According to new research, they eat fresh, unprocessed food, lead active lives and never get lonely. Mediterranean diet and lifestyle at their best. Read More

For Healthy Green Tea, Brew Your Own

Never shy about jumping on a health bandwagon, industrial beverage manufacturers have been cashing in on the benefits of green tea. (Ginseng and honey anyone? Nectarine white tea? Or, for the cancer-conscious, some green tea with pomegranate extract?) Read More

Are Glass Straws the Answer to BPA Risks?

Glass drinking straws have become all the rage as health-conscious consumers seek to reduce their exposure to potentially cancer-causing plastic compounds in their food. But does this really solve the problem of BPA and plastic food containers? Unfortunately, no. Read More

Another Reminder To Ditch Cans And Eat Fresh Food

The FDA's decision to let food manufacturers continue using bisphenol-A (BPA) in food packaging is the best news I've heard in a long time.

This may surprise regular readers of this blog, who will remember me fulminating against BPA here, here and here. Read More

Trust Kids to Like Healthy Food

If you've visited this blog before, you'll know I have a strong propensity to proselytize. Nothing religious or political, don't worry. My abiding passion is delicious, healthy home cooking, and I'll chew your ear off about it if I get half a chance. Read More

A Healthier Kind of Processed Meat

When I started to write "Nourish," the Psychology Today editors kindly asked me not to make it a recipe blog, but rather, a blog about nutrition. Fine with me—there are thousands of cooking blogs featuring amazing preparations, pictures and prose that that I couldn't even begin to hope to rival, and so I was happy to stick to good old-fashioned evidence-based health journalism. Read More

Is There Such a Thing As “Healthy Meat?”

If my previous post put you off your sausages and bacon, I'm sorry. Let me make it up to you by telling you how you can enjoy delicious and healthy substitutes for mass-produced processed meats. Read More

Bacon: Time To End This Crazy Love Affair

A new study should take some of the sizzle out of the "baconalian" feasts celebrated daily in kitchens all over America. For researchers have found that if you regularly eat processed meats, you may be increasing your risk of pancreatic cancer -- one of the deadliest forms of the disease. Read More

How to Avoid the Junk Food Trap

Have you heard the one about the nutritionist who struggled to follow her own advice? Read More

Plastic Fantastic (Not!)

Amid frenzied media reports of "deadly chemicals" in Thanksgiving foods, a new study showing that eating canned soup sharply raises concentrations of bisphenol-A in the body, and the gnashing of teeth by bloggers worried by the health risks of sous-vide cooking, health-conscious households everywhere are reverberating with the dull "thud-plunk-plop" of plastic kitchenware being flung i Read More

Making Your Home a Plastic-Free Zone

Even nutritionists have dietary blind spots; mine has been plastics.

Having written about them extensively here and in my book, I'd been very careful to avoid food containers, bottles and cans containing bisphenol-a (BPA), a man-made chemical thought to disrupt the body's natural hormone balance. Read More

Walnuts for Healthy Breasts

Shopping for vegetables at my local farm shop this morning, my eyes lit on an unexpected find: wet walnuts! "Walnuts - already?!" I exclaimed, realizing with a pang that fall is imminent. Read More

Four Ways to Add 15 Years to Your Life

The Mediterranean diet is once again making headlines with this week's publication of a study showing that this way of eating, paired with other healthy lifestyle habits, can extend our lifespan by more than a decade! Read More

Low-carb, high-protein eating may curb cancer risk

Hitherto known mostly as a weight-loss method, low-carb eating may also protect us against cancer. A new study highlights how heavy intakes of sugar and refined carbohydrates typical of the industrialised Western diet could be a factor fueling the worldwide cancer epidemic. Read More

Am I a Food Fascist?

It's not often that I am called a "Food Nazi," but it happened last week after I published this post relating my decision to bake "Faux-reo cookies" for my daughter, rather than buy her a packet of mass-produced Oreos. Read More

Faux-reo cookies

My daughter's friends have recently begun bringing sweet snacks to school to brighten the mid-morning recess of this poor child, whose mother (me) deprives her of junk food. Oreo Cookies, now available in even the smallest of French supermarkets, have become my daughter's favorite snack, so much so that she recently asked for a packet of them for her ninth birthday. Read More

Kick the can and eat fresh food

If you think that canned and packaged food isn't so bad for you, think again. Read More

Workin’ hard for the honey

Last weekend I watched this amazing footage of Tete, an African tribesman, risking life and limb to gather wild honey for his wife and children. (Please watch the video before reading on - you won't regret it.) I was struck by the extraordinary lengths humans will go to in order to savor sweet tastes when these are not easily available. Read More

Meat and Cancer: The Carnivore's Conundrum

The media are abuzz with conflicting reports about the possible cancer risks of eating red meat, reinforcing already widespread confusion among consumers. However, safe meat consumption is possible, provided you steer clear of processed meat and eat moderate amounts of red meat that's been carefully prepared, experts say. Read More

World Cancer Day 2011: Cancer can be prevented

In case you didn't know it yet: Cancer can be prevented. Read More

Should we swap aspirin for vegetables? Not just yet.

Two cancer studies grabbed the headlines this week, causing nutritionists' hearts to sink and pharmacists to cheer. One suggested that vegetables and fruits offer scant protection against cancer; the other indicated that taking low daily doses of aspirin may cut our risk of dying of this dreaded disease. Read More

Amazing Grace

When our eldest son was five, we started to say grace at mealtime. Untrained in matters of gastronomic spirituality, we began by rolling a wooden cube inscribed with six child-friendly, non-denominational prayers: whichever verse landed face-up was recited. Read More

Mediterranean diet gets UN's vote

Increasingly under threat from mass-produced fast-food, the Mediterranean diet received a boost this week when the United Nations' culture and education agency UNESCO added it to its list of cultural heritage worth preserving and promoting. Read More

Humble fruits that pack a powerful punch

For too long, plums, and especially their dried incarnations, prunes, have gotten a bum rap. This is mostly because of their unfortunate association with constipation, which they relieve quickly and naturally thanks to their high fiber content. Read More

My bold new plan: the Sit-Down Diet

Do you want to know about a diet that requires neither calorie-counting nor deprivation and doesn't involve weight-loss books, punishing exercise routines or expensive supplements? It's free, it's simple and anyone can do it. In fact, there's only one simple rule to follow: you may only eat when you are sitting down. Read More

Variety Really Is the Spice of Life

A new mantra is making the rounds in dietary cancer prevention circles: ‘Variety, variety, variety.'

No longer content with exhorting us to eat five portions of fruits and vegetables a day, scientists now say that consuming a broad and varied range of produce is where it's at. Read More

Cancer cells love sugar, and they're not fussy

Pancreatic cancer cells use the sugar fructose to help the tumor grow more quickly, researchers have discovered. Published this month in Cancer Research, these findings serve as a powerful reminder that anyone wishing to curb their cancer risk should start by reducing the amount of sugar they eat. Read More

Mediterranean diet may lower breast cancer risk

Further evidence of the Mediterranean diet's anti-cancer effects has just been published, cheering those of us who believe that this style of eating may be one of the best forms of dietary cancer-prevention around. Read More

In praise of strawberries

Summertime is strawberry time, and I am enjoying it to the full. For I have discovered that the best strawberries don't come from the supermarket, but from a farm not three miles from my home. Read More

Conner Middelmann Whitney is a nutritionist, journalist, chef, and former cancer patient.

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About Nourish

Conner's blog, Nourish, in which she describes her own efforts at anti-cancer living, leans heavily on the recommendations of the World Cancer Research Fund, a not-for-profit umbrella association unifying a global network of cancer charities dedicated to funding research and education programmes into the link between food, nutrition, physical activity, weight maintenance and cancer risk. The WCRF is acting as scientific adviser on the diet and physical-activity aspects of Conner's blog.