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Few tips for a healthier 2015:

Our Weight Reflects Our Lifestyle Choices
Posted by: : Paul EbelingPosted on: January 10, 2015

Our Weight Reflects Our Lifestyle Choices

By just eating fewer calories and exercising more usually does not work very well when trying to lose weight because not all calories are alike.

By now we should all know that processed fructose in particular causes leptin resistance far more effectively than other sugars, with refined sugar coming in close second. Glucose is not nearly as harmful in comparison.

Fructose also blocks the burning of fat.

So, instead of focusing on calories, we need to address the quality of the foods we eat, and avoid chemical exposures. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as BPA and phthalates, for example, can cause or exacerbate weight gain.

Below is a short list of proactive, easy-to-remember guidelines that can go a long way toward improving health, nutrition, and body weight, as follows;

1. Exercise regularly, and stay active all day long.

Engage in high-intensity Peak Fitness exercise to burn fat and increase muscle mass (a natural fat burner). Also, strive to sit less meaning much less. Ideally no more than 3 hrs a day, and walk 7,000 to 10,000 steps a day in addition to a regular exercise program.

2. Consider intermittent fasting

If insulin/leptin resistant and/or are overweight, boost the body’s fat-burning potential by incorporating intermittent fasting. This is 1 of the most powerful approaches to reverse insulin resistance. It is only necessary to do until your insulin resistance resolves.

3. Buy real food, preferably whole organic and locally grown, and cook from scratch.

Avoiding processed foods will automatically reduce your sugar consumption, which is the root cause of insulin resistance and weight gain. Buy organic produce, that cuts exposure to pesticides and GMO (genetically engineered) ingredients, and in avoiding processed foods, we automatically avoid artificial sweeteners and harmful processed fats like trans fats and vegetable oils such as peanut, corn, and soybean oil, the latter of which actually degrades into oxidation products when heated that may be more harmful than trans fat.

That said, most of us need 50-85% healthy fats in their diet for optimal health.

Sources of healthy fats to add to your diet include avocados, butter made from raw grass-fed organic milk, raw organic dairy, coconuts and coconut oil, unheated organic nut oils, raw nuts and seeds, organic pastured egg yolks, and grass-fed meats.

Always opt for organic grass-fed meats to avoid GMO...

To see the full article please visit:
http://www.livetradingnews.com/weight-reflects-lifestyle-choices-91369.htm #.VLOkPnuAlCs

Big Ag Indeed: Organic Food Expected To Reach $105 Billion Next Year
Organic marketing may like to portray itself as small mom-and-pop farmers standing up to Big Agriculture and corporate food, but they have a business juggernaut that would be the envy of anyone in any business.

And it's going to get better.

The report new “Global Organic Foods&Beverages Market Analysis by Products, Geography, Regulations, Pricing Trends,&Forecasts (2010 – 2015)” analyzes the organic food, beverages, and supplements market by products and geography and studies the major market drivers and opportunities for organic food and beverages in major geographies of North America, Europe, Asia, and the Rest Of the World (ROW). They forecast that the global organic food and beverages market will grow from $57.2 billion in 2010 to $104.5 billion in 2015 - 12.8% growth per year and almost 100% in 6 years, even during the ongoing economic malaise.

That is smart salesmanship.

Obviously marketing deserves much of the credit; the target customer willingly embraces implied and overt claims that organic food is more nutritious, ethically superior and even outright falsehoods like that it used no pesticides. As a result, the giant retailers that organic farmers supposedly dislike, such as Wal-Mart, Tesco, and Safeway, are selling organic products. The organic food and beverages market is also expected to benefit from subsidies, financial aids, and R&D programs conducted by different government and non-government organizations such as FiBL (Switzerland), APEDA (India) and USDA (U.S.) to support conventional farmers to switch to organic farming.

North America is expected to witness to have had an average growth rate of almost 70% between 2010-2015 (11.9% CAGR). The rest of the World (ROW) segment (which includes Latin America, Australasia, and others) is expected to witness the highest CAGR of 16.2%. In 2010, Europe had the largest share in the global organic food and beverages market with revenue of $27.8 billion. Germany is the biggest consumer in Europe with a share of 32% of organic food and beverages in the region.

Asian organic food market is expected to grow at an estimated CAGR of 20.6% from 2010 to 2015. Japan leads the Asian countries in terms of organic food consumption with nearly 54% of the share in 2010. Fresh produces (fruits and vegetables) are the highest selling organic food categories with 37% of the organic foods segment in terms of revenue. Organic supplements are the fastest growing segments in the organic industry with an estimated CAGR of 22.3% from 2010 to 2015; with Europe expected to continue its dominance in the segment for the same period.

Big Ag Indeed: Organic Food Expected To Reach $105 Billion Next Year

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Has this ever happened to you?

You walk into the local supermarket, shopping list in hand, and find yourself in the colorful produce section. You snag a plastic bag, and start picking out some shiny conventional apples. Just as you think you've selected the right ones, you notice another display of similar looking apples (maybe even more odd shaped and of various colors) in a fancier rack with a sign that reads, "Organic," in bold letters.

The first thing you'd notice is the difference in price, and you say to yourself: Is it worth paying more?

It's true that organic foods tend to be more expensive --sometimes 40%-50% more-- but that's often because of the higher cost of organic farming practices.

What is the difference between organic and non-organic foods?

The Mayo Clinic says the word "organic" refers to the way farmers grow and process agricultural products, designed to encourage soil and water conservation and reduce pollution. Examples of organic farming practices include the use of natural fertilizers to feed soil and plants, and using crop rotation or mulch to manage weeds.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture requires all organic foods to meet strict government standards which regulate how foods are grown, handled and processed. The three factors the USDA considers include pesticides, food additives, and the environment.

Pesticides: When farmers spray pesticides, it leaves residue on the produce that we later consume. Organic farmers use insect traps, careful crop selection, predator insects or even microorganisms in place of pesticides to control crop-damaging pests.

Food Additives: Organic regulations also ban or severely restrict the use of food additives, processing aids and fortifying agents used in non-organic products like preservatives, artificial sweeteners, coloring and flavoring, as well as monosodium glutamate.

Environment: Organic farming practices benefit the environment by reducing pollution and conserving the quality of water and soil.

Although non-organic foods may have the same amount of nutrients than organic foods, they also can have synthetic pesticides, hormones and additives, none of which may be good for our bodies.

Check out this list of the 10 foods you should only buy and eat organic..

10 Foods You Should Only Buy Organic If the cost of buying all organic isn't within your budget, we make it easy and show you the 10 best foods to buy organic.

(Great interview with the founder of Earthbound Farm Organic published by takepart.com)

How a Small Raspberry Farm Transformed the Organic Food Industry

Myra Goodman talks about founding the company that made bagged baby salad greens a supermarket star.

July 11, 2014 By Kristina Bravo

Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., Myra Goodman didn’t eat a lot of greens. Just like the typical American household, her family had a diet largely comprised of takeout and microwavable foods.

All that changed later in her life. Goodman and her husband cofounded Earthbound Farm Organic, one of the biggest growers of organic produce. The couple sold the company in 2013. Now Goodman has released her third cookbook, Straight From the Earth, which features vegan recipes she refined while living on her farm in Carmel Valley, Calif. The author and organic pioneer talked to us about TV dinners, forgoing pesticides, food labels, and why eating vegan might be the cheap and easy way to a healthier diet.

TakePart: What did you eat growing up?

Myra Goodman: My parents are both immigrants. My mom’s from Hungary, and she totally bought into the American, convenient processed foods. I was raised on TV dinners most nights, buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and once in a while we had a homemade meal of these things called minute steaks. My mom would season these thin slices of beef with Accent, which was basically a hundred percent MSG. I grew up without any connection to healthy food or where my food was grown. I lived on the 11th floor in Manhattan, and I’d look out my window, and I craved greenery, and I didn’t know how to get it.

TakePart: How did you finally get your fix?

Goodman: I went to college at the University of Vermont. I needed fresh air and trees, and I was just so happy in the country. Then I had this big experience in India and decided that I was going to change the world. I transferred to Berkeley, and I was going to go to school for international relations and get a job at the U.N. and live in the city. I had this year where I had to decide which graduate school I wanted to go to and prepare for the GREs. But me and my boyfriend at the time, Drew, had this opportunity to move onto this little heirloom raspberry farm in Carmel Valley that was pretty dilapidated. We fixed it up in exchange for paying rent.

TakePart: Why did you decide to go the organic route?

Goodman: Drew and I didn’t know much about farming. It was a conventional farm, and we were kind of given a crash course in how to use the chemicals. When it was time to use them, we just really felt like we didn’t want to apply them.... We had no idea that farming uses so many toxic chemicals. It was really an instinct of self-preservation. We didn’t want to handle and apply them in our backyard. We didn’t want to eat food grown with them. We didn’t want to sell this food to our neighbors, and so we taught ourselves to farm organically.

TakePart: When did Earthbound Farm start to really grow?

Goodman: Our first really big customer was Costco, who started buying from us in 1993. In the beginning Costco didn’t want to put “organic” on the package because they thought it was a turnoff to consumers. Back then, organic was just shriveled apples and wilted vegetables in these teeny little dark health food stores. There were no Whole Foods; there were no big natural food markets. So Costco originally didn’t want it to have organic on it. But by the late '90s we started putting “organic” on the label. I think organic has hit the mainstream, and that took a lot of time, for its reputation to change.

TakePart: Why do you think people started embracing organic?

Goodman: When the USDA started regulating organic, which I believe was in 2002, that really changed the industry. Having the USDA-certified label legitimized organic. Before then, different states had different requirements for what was organic. Consumers never really knew what they were getting. Once the USDA regulated it and there was a seal, it gave consumers a lot more confidence. It gave retailers more confidence that what they were selling was organic. For farmers, it gave them an impetus to start transitioning some of their crops to organic. That was a very big step for the organic industry.

To see the full interview please visit: http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/07/11/earthbound-myra-goodman