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What Are the Environmental Impacts of Plant-Based Meats? 

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Environmental assessments of 50 different plant-based meats show them to be vastly more sustainable than animal-based meats. “There is increasing consensus that transitioning towards reduced meat consumption and more plant-based diets is a key feature to address important health and sustainability challenges” that humanity is facing, yet the graph below and at 0:25 in my video The Environmental Impacts of Plant-Based Meat Substitutes shows that the trajectory of global meat consumption has increased. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “we will have to double the production of meat and dairy to meet the predicted demand for animal proteins in 2050.” However, we would have to do the exact opposite to contain the ecological damage and “environmental impact of livestock.” “Nearly every credible forecast shows that if we’re to have any chance of meeting future food in a sustainable fashion, lowering our meat consumption will be absolutely esse...
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Why Is Sorghum One of My New Favorite Grains? 

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Learn why sorghum is one of my favorite new grains. “Despite playing a significant role in Africa and Asia as a staple grain, sorghum has only recently emerged as a potential human food source in the developed world.” And it isn’t just a principal grain in many parts of the world, but it’s “critical in folk medicine” traditions, too. What might its health benefits be ? There are some in vitro data from test tubes and petri dishes, as well as in vivo data, meaning “within the living” in laboratory animals, but only in the last decade have we started seeing human trials. In one study, participants were asked to eat sorghum pancakes or corn pancakes for supper every day for three weeks. Both groups saw significant, 20 to 30 percent drops in their cholesterol, but all participants were also “requested not to consume eggs and other cholesterol-boosting foodstuff,” so that may very well have played a role. Another study used biscuits. Those eating sorghum biscuits said they felt more...
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Is Sorghum a Healthy Grain? 

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How does sorghum compare with other grains in terms of protein, antioxidants, and micronutrients? And the benefits of red sorghum compared to black and white varieties? Sorghum is “the Forgotten Grain.” The United States is the top producer of sorghum, “but it is typically not used to produce food for American consumers.” Instead, it’s used mainly “to produce livestock feed, pet foods, household building materials…but it is a preferred grain for human diets in other parts of the world, such as Africa and Asia.” There, it’s been a staple and eaten for thousands of years, making it currently the fifth most popular grain grown after wheat, corn, rice, and barley, beating out oats and rye. Because sorghum is gluten-free and “can be definitively considered safe for consumption by people with celiac disease,” we’re starting to see it “increasingly used ” as actual human food in the United States, so I decided to look into just how healthy it might be. As you can see below and at 0:59 ...
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Ozempic (Semaglutide) and Other GLP-1 Weight-Loss Drugs: Their Uses, Side Effects, and More

Ozempic and others in a new class of weight-loss drugs have been called “ the medical sensation of the decade .” Are they worthy of all the hype? For a deep dive, please see my primer on this topic. OZEMPIC: Risks, Benefits, and Natural Alternatives to GLP-1 Weight-Loss Drugs is available as an ebook, audiobook, and paperback. You can also view my video series for free on the Ozempic topic page or our YouTube channel . Here are some of the key takeaways.   What Is GLP-1? A naturally occurring hormone in our body, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) plays a role in regulating our blood sugar, appetite, and digestion. Our gastrointestinal tract releases more than 20 different peptide hormones, including GLP-1 . The primary stimuli for secreting GLP-1 are meals rich in fats and carbohydrates , and GLP-1’s main action is to signal satiety to the brain . It also slows our digestion. Delaying the rate at which food leaves our stomach not only helps us feel fuller for longer, bu...
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How Is Natural Killer Cell Function Boosted by Forest Bathing? 

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Can the aroma of wood essential oils replicate the immune-boosting effects of walking in a forest? Studies on the effects of “forest bathing,” or shinrin-yoku in Japanese, “a traditional practice characterized by visiting a forest and breathing its air,” have found it “can induce a significant increase in the number and activity of natural killer (NK) cells” that can last as long as a month. And because natural killer cells are one of the ways our body fights cancer by killing off tumor cells, the “findings suggest that visiting forest parks may have a preventive effect on cancer generation and progression.” How? “Why did the forest environment increase human NK activity? What kind of factors in the forest environment activated human NK cells?” What is it about the forest environment? One thought is that the boost may be related to a reduction in stress. If you measure the amount of adrenaline flowing through people’s systems, did spending time in a forest—but not in a city—lower...
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Forest Bathing to Boost Anticancer Immunity 

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Natural killer cells are one of the ways our body fights off cancer, and visiting a forest can induce a significant increase in both their numbers and their activity. I’ve previously shown how exposure to nature can have self-reported psychological benefits, but there was a dearth of data on changes in objective measurements, so I was excited to see this paper on the effects of forest bathing, “a traditional practice characterized by visiting a forest and breathing its air,” on levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the participants’ saliva. The level of cortisol in our saliva is considered an indicator of our stress level, and study participants’ salivary cortisol levels were significantly lower after walking in a forest or even just hanging out in one (“forest watching”), compared to walking or just being in a city, as you can see at 0:49 in my video Boosting Anticancer Immunity with Forest Bathing .  However, the same effect was found before they went to the forest, too...
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Preorder The How Not to Age Cookbook

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I’m thrilled to announce that pre-orders are now open for The How Not to Age Cookbook , coming out on April 22. This much-anticipated culinary companion to my New York Times Best Seller, How Not to Age, is a beautifully-illustrated cookbook with more than 100 recipes developed again with Robin Robertson to help you age healthfully and vibrantly. Each of these simple, nutrition-packed dishes uses ingredients that have been proven to promote a healthy lifespan, and inspiration has been drawn from the places around the world where people traditionally live the longest.  For instance, the bright anthocyanin pigments in berries are thought to account for their benefits for our cognitive function, eyesight, inflammation, blood sugar, artery function, and cholesterol, so eat your berries, drink hibiscus tea, and enjoy savory sources like purple sweet potatoes. When it comes to our joints, strawberries, ginger, and turmeric, for example, have been found to help with osteoarthritis of the ...
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