Avocados

Eggs
Chickens as a rule are not given growth hormones. And research has shown that factory eggs don’t have higher quantities of contaminants than organic eggs.

Frozen food in plastic bags
The risk of leached chemicals is heightened by heat, and frozen produce is, well, as cold as ice. As long as you’re not boiling in the bag, the chance of ingesting harmful chemicals from these is low.

Spices
“Even when you’re using spices liberally, you’re consuming such small amounts of each that the risk is minimal,” says Sonya Lunder, senior analyst at the EWG.

Clothing
While there’s no question that organic cotton is excellent for the environment, the benefits it has on your personal health are unclear—it’s unlikely that pesticides remain in clothing in quantities large enough to seep into our bodies. The one possible exception is clothing treated with flame retardants (the label will tell you if that’s the case).

Upper body: Spiderman Push-up
Start in “up” part of push-up, hands directly under shoulders, body straight. Engage core; bend elbows to lower body toward floor. Press back up; bring left knee to outside of left elbow; pause for 2 seconds, then return to starting position. Do another push-up, bring right knee to right elbow, return to start; that’s 1 rep.

Make it easier: Drop knees to floor. Continue for 20 to 30 seconds.

Upper body: Plank jack
Get into “up” part of push-up position with hands directly under shoulders, body straight from head to heels. Engage core and bend elbows (keep them in toward body) to lower body toward floor. Straighten arms; at same time, quickly jump feet forward to outside of hands; jump back to previous position.

Make it easier: Instead of jumping, walk feet forward (and back). Continue for 20 to 30 seconds.

Lower body: Flying bridge
Sit with knees bent, feet on floor, hands on floor by hips, fingertips forward. Push up into reverse tabletop with knees over ankles, hands under shoulders. Lower hips, pushing them back between arms until legs straighten and weight is evenly divided between hands and feet. Bend knees; push hips back up to previous position.

Make it easier: Lower butt to mat before pushing back up to reverse tabletop. Continue for 20 to 30 seconds.

Lower body: Butt kicker
From all fours, lift hips to come into Downward Dog; walk feet forward until feet are under hips, hands under shoulders. Keeping feet flexed, raise right foot and try to touch heel to butt; lower it and repeat with other foot. Pick up pace, alternating feet as quickly as possible for 20 to 30 seconds. Next, bend knees slightly and jump both heels up to try to touch butt; continue for 20 to 30 more seconds.

Make it easier: Alternate feet during second part instead of jumping.

Mid-section: Standing knee tuck
Stand with feet together. Lift left leg straight back, hinging forward at hips, reaching hands forward by ears; keep hips level and body straight from hands to heel. Using abs, draw left knee in to chest, bending elbows to pull arms down to knee; return to previous position.

Make it easier: Hold onto chair or counter with one hand. Continue for 20 to 30 seconds; switch sides and repeat.

Mid-section: Rock the boat

Sit with knees bent, feet on floor, hands on backs of thighs. Tighten abs. Begin to roll down onto upper back, letting feet lift; generate enough momentum to rock back up. Come to standing, then jump, twisting body to left in air. Jump again, twisting back to center; lower back down and repeat sequence on opposite side.

Make it easier: Use one hand to push up off floor. Continue for 20 to 30 seconds.

Courtesy of Health.com

Compared with natural grass fed beef, meat from steers raised in feedlots contains more total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and calories. You also increase the risk of E.coli infection, by putting the cattle in to a feedlot situation.

▪    Lower in Fat & Calories - Switching to grass fed beef from conventional feedlot beef can save you 17,733 calories per year-without requiring any willpower or change in your eating habits.

▪    Higher in Omega 3 - These are good fats that play a vital role in every cell in your body; essential for brain function too.

▪    Higher in CLA (Conjugated Linoleic Acid)- Another good fat, 
a good defense against many types of cancer. One serving of grass fed beef may reduce your chance of cancer by 60 percent.

▪    Higher in Vitamin A -The meat from grass fed animals has more Vitamin A than feedlot raised animals. Rather than taking a supplement that you would have to try to absorb, as your body rejects it by flushing it out of your system. Your body readily absorbs the Vitamin A that it retrieves from the delicious cuts of grass fed beef. Sometimes when you receive your grass fed beef in the spring, you will see the evidence of this in the yellow color of the fat. Now you will also know that the yellow color of the fat is actually good for you.

▪    Higher in Vitamin E - The meat from grass fed cattle has been shown to be as much as four times higher in Vitamin E than feedlot cattle. This antioxidant is very important because it can reduce your risk for cardiovascular disease. With grass fed beef the Vitamin E is readily absorbed, unlike some supplements that are just flushed out of the system.

▪    No Antibiotics are Used - Cattle were not meant to eat a diet of grain; therefore they are given antibiotics in the feedlots to treat “subacute acidosis”.  After eating this type of meat for a period of time, your body becomes susceptible to the bacteria that these medications were meant to treat.

▪    No Growth Hormones or Steroids Used - We believe it is important for our cattle to grow at their own rate, as nature intended. Some grow faster than others and that’s okay, we watch them everyday to see that they are healthy and stress free. We choose not to go back to the conventional way of growing cattle. We feel that our family’s health and your health is worth much more than the extra pounds that some cancer causing growth hormone could produce.

Never Fed Animal By-Products - According to some studies, it has been shown that some conventional producers have done many things to further cut costs of feeding out cattle. Some producers have fed what is called “by-product feedstuff” such as restaurant garbage, stale bread, poultry feathers, and snack foods. According to Jo Robinson of Eat Wild, it seems until 1997, U.S. cattle were also being fed meat that had been trimmed from other cattle, in effect turning “herbivores into carnivores”. This unnatural practice is believed to be the underlying cause of BSE or “mad cow” disease.

Eat five to six times a day – three meals and two to three small snacks.  Include a lean protein, plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, and a complex carbohydrate with each meal.  This keeps your body energized and burning calories efficiently all day long.

Drink at least two liters of water daily (preferably from a reusable canteen, not plastic; we’re friends of the environment).

Avoid processed and refined foods such as white flour, sugar, bread and pasta.  Enjoy complex carbohydrates such as whole grains.

Know thy enemies.  Steer clear of anything high in saturated and trans fats, anything fried or anything high in sugar.

Shop with a conscience.  Consume humanely raised and local meats.

Consume healthy fats (essential fatty acids, or EFA’s) every day

Learn about portion sizes and work toward eating within them.

Reduce your carbon footprint.  Eat produce that is seasonal and local.  It is less taxing on wallet and our environment.

Slow down and savor.  Never rush through a meal.  Food tastes best when savored.  Enjoy every bite.

Take it to go.  Pack a cooler for work or outings so you will always have clean eats on the go.

Make it a family affair.  Food is a social glue that should be shared with loved ones.  Improve the quality of your family’s life along with your own.

Courtesy of Clean Eating Magazine

Full-Fat Cheese:

This dairy product is an excellent source of casein protein—one of the best muscle-building nutrients you can eat. What’s more, Danish researchers found that even when men ate 10 ounces of full-fat cheese daily for 3 weeks, their LDL (“bad”) cholesterol didn’t budge

 Pork Chops: Per gram of protein, pork chops contain almost five times the selenium—an essential mineral that’s linked to a lower risk of prostate cancer—of beef, and twice that of chicken. And Purdue researchers found that a 6-ounce serving daily helped people preserve their muscle while losing weight.

Iced Coffee:

 Apple: Turns out, an apple a day may also keep the extra weight away. Penn State researchers discovered that people who ate a large apple 15 minutes before lunch took in 187 fewer calories during lunch than those who didn’t snack beforehand. (The apples had around 128 calories.) What’s more, they reported feeling fuller afterward, too. Sure, the fruit is loaded with belly-filling fiber, but there’s another reason apples help you feel full: They require lots of chewing, which can make you think you’re eating more than you really are, says study author Julie Obbagy, Ph.D.
Eggs:

1: Deciphering food label ingredients leads to unappetizing results. Take the innocuous-sounding castoreum, which is used to enhance the flavor of puddings, candies, and some frozen dairy desserts. You might be surprised to know that it’s derived from beavers—beaver anal glands, specifically.

2: Many foods get their red coloring—”carmine”—from ground-up insect shells that can cause severe allergic reactions in some people.

3: The greater the number of cheap cuts of meat ground into a single patty, the greater the risk of contamination with E. coli. A standard fast-food burger contains the trimmings of dozens of cows raised around the globe.

4: According to research from UCLA, it takes only two months to lower levels of brain chemicals responsible for learning and memory (like BDNF) on a steady diet of processed foods.

5: Processed food is only as good as its packaging: In the summer of last year, Kellogg’s recalled 28 million boxes of cereal because a compound in the box lining (the company wouldn’t say what) was giving off a foul smell and tainting the taste of the boxed food.

6: The same company that makes metal detectors for airports also sells them to food manufacturers, who use the devices to test processed meats for stray wires, metal shards, and hypodermic needles.

7: The ingredients list for Strawberry Fruit Roll-Ups doesn’t include…strawberries.

8: Animal feed given to factory-farmed cows contains rendered roadkill and euthanized cats and dogs, as well as plastic pellets as a cheap form of “roughage.”

9: There are more than 80 ingredients in one Oscar Mayer Lunchables Breaded Chicken and Mozzarella sandwich.

10: The FDA allows 19 maggots and 74 mites in a three-and-a-half-ounce can of mushrooms.

Get Up, Stand Up
Whether you sit or stand at work may play as big a role in your health and your waistline as your fitness routine. In one study researchers discovered that inactivity (4 hours or more) causes a near shutdown in an enzyme that controls fat and cholesterol metabolism. To keep this enzyme active and increase your fat burning, break up long periods of downtime by standing up—for example, while talking on the phone.

Drink Cold Water
German researchers found that drinking 6 cups of cold water a day (that’s 48 ounces) can raise resting metabolism by about 50 calories daily—enough to shed 5 pounds in a year. The increase may come from the work it takes to heat the water to body temperature. Though the extra calories you burn drinking a single glass don’t amount to much, making it a habit can add up to pounds lost with essentially zero additional effort.

Eat the Heat
It turns out that capsaicin, the compound that gives chili peppers their mouth-searing quality, can also fire up your metabolism. Eating about 1 tablespoon of chopped red or green chilies boosts your body’s production of heat and the activity of your sympathetic nervous system (responsible for our fight-or-flight response), according to a study published in the Journal of Nutritional Science and Vitaminology. The result: a temporary metabolism spike of about 23 percent. Stock up on chilies to add to meals, and keep a jar of red pepper flakes on hand for topping pizzas, pastas, and stir-fries.

Rev Up in the Morning
Eating breakfast jump-starts metabolism and keeps energy high all day. It’s no accident that those who skip this meal are 4 1/2 times as likely to be obese. And the heartier your first meal is, the better. In one study published by the American Journal of Epidemiology, volunteers who got 22 to 55 percent of their total calories at breakfast gained only 1.7 pounds on average over 4 years. Those who ate zero to 11 percent of their calories in the morning gained nearly 3 pounds.

Drink Coffee or Tea
Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant, so your daily java jolt can rev your metabolism 5 to 8 percent—about 98 to 174 calories a day. A cup of brewed tea can raise your metabolism by 12 percent, according to one Japanese study. Researchers believe the antioxidant catechins in tea provide the boost.

Fight Fat with Fiber
Fiber can rev your fat burn by as much as 30 percent. Studies find that those who eat the most fiber gain the least weight over time. Aim for about 25 g a day—the amount in about three servings each of fruits and vegetables.

1. Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
2. Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry.
3. Avoid foods that have some form of sugar (or sweetener) listed among the top three ingredients.
4. Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients.
5. Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third- grader cannot pronounce.
6. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.
7. Eat only foods that will eventually rot.
8. Don’t ingest foods made in places where everyone is required to wear a surgical cap.
9. If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.
10.  It’s not food if it arrived through the window of your car.