I admire the Guests the way some people admire the Kennedys.  My daughter is named Charlotte Catherine because I wanted to be able to call her C.C. as a way of paying homage to C.Z. Guest; horsewoman, fashion icon, and gardener.  In the Spring of 2002, I had a chance to attend a lecture she was giving at The Chicago Botanic Garden.  She was 83 at the time and appeared to be in excellent health.  A year and a half later C.Z. Guest died of ovarian cancer.

In the November issue of Harper’s Bazaar, I was saddened to learn that C.Z.’s daughter Cornelia is a vegan.  A quick Google search revealed that she has made this decision for health reasons.  Congestive Heart Failure turned my father, who had been an exceptional high school and collegiate athlete into the equivalent of an invalid when I was 16 years old.  Two years later, I became a vegetarian as a way of steering clear of my dad’s fate.  Occasionally, I’d lapse, but it wasn’t until I became pregnant that I permanently ditched vegetarianism.  Cornelia is almost 47, so it’s not likely that pregnancy will rescue her from her vegan wasteland.  Discipline will also make it harder to turn away from something she perceives as providing a payoff.  As a young socialite in 80′s, the article emphasizes how her equestrian habit saved her from the other popular habits of the era.  Even if she was out late, there were horses to ride the next morning.

Once, I made the acquaintance of a pro football player, who had started drinking soy and was a vegetarian during the week.  When I began inquiring as to why he was doing this, what I learned was interesting, disturbing really.  He felt this way of eating required discipline, hard work, and persistence, all of the things that helped him to be a starter in the NFL.  He was a physical specimen to behold, but was unable to credit his grandmother’s  and mother’s love of traditional southern food for his stature and strength.  This inability to give credit where credit is due is also what led Cornelia Guest to ban all animal products from her life.  The saying in their house was, “a pound of butter a day keeps the doctor away” and still she banishes the food!  It isn’t enough that her mother enjoyed robust health until she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Surly butter, cream, eggs, and meat must be to blame.

Certainly, this is what I thought because butter was king in our house and from my vantage point it had caused nothing but trouble.  My mom died at the ripe old age of 64.  Yes.  She smoked, but everybody knows food plays a part.  I’ve already mentioned that my dad lived like an invalid, who survived until he was 72 because he slept about fifteen hours a day, and swallowed prescription pills that could only be held by a giant shoe box.  Somehow, it never occurred to me that my family’s health woes could have anything to do with the bank of cabinets devoted to snack foods or that my mom liked to start her day with dessert and a glass of Folgers  Crystals.  She was very particular and always insisted on Heinemann’s Coffee Cakes.  A cursory glance at their ingredient list fails to turn up anything that belongs in a Bavarian coffee cake or any other food for that matter.  Now blaming sugar even seems far fetched because unless we were making sugar cookies from scratch, it seems highly unlikely that any of our favorite companies used anything other than High Fructose Corn Syrup and soybean oil.  My dietary choices were also hampered by my mom’s fabulous figure, never weighing more than 125 pounds, she was of the opinion that only peasants couldn’t wear their normal clothes home from the hospital after giving birth!  How could sugar, even if it was fake, be to blame?  She was thin, strong, and enjoyed incredibly robust health, until diagnosed with cancer.  Within a year, we had lost her.

That very same year, I serendipitously came across the life changing work of Sally Fallon Morrell, President of The Weston A Price Foundation.  While I hadn’t been a vegetarian for many years, it wasn’t until then that I understood the importance of having animal fat in my diet.  Fortunately, there was enough real food in our house; my mom frequently cooked from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, that I instantly knew which foods were the culprits of disease in my family.  The drive to be healthy seems incredibly strong in children who’ve lost a parent at a young age.  Gwyneth Paltrow provides a window into the extremes someone, with means, will go to in order to avoid getting cancer.  She was very close to her father and to have lost him when she was only 30 obviously took a toll.  In her new cookbook she reminisces about cooking with him and notes that health food was not the priority, hence her obsession with Veganese, a concoction made entirely from fake vegetable oils.  In addition, the starlet avoids dairy and only eats animals with two legs.  I can’t help but wonder how on earth her mother  Blythe Danner allows her lovely daughter to carry on with this warped destructive food philosophy.  Not surprisingly , Gwyneth announced that she has osteopenia a precursor to osteoporosis.  She is unable to connect the dots between her diet that is devoid of Vitamin A and D and having a disease commonly reserved for old women.  Her remedy for this which was urged by her doctors is to take prescription strength Vitamin D.  What is most disturbing is that she has enormous influence, just as Cornelia Guest has in her circle, and hordes of young girls will blindly follow their advice!

Lastly, it’s important to add that many people already understand the importance of eliminating junk food, such as sugar laden cereals and soda.  Dr. Price showed that this is only part of what is responsible for radiant health and wholeness.  Unless the all important fat soluble activators are given their due people will still experience compromised health.  Madonna’s daughter Lola is proof of this: the Material Girl’s family is on a strict organic, vegetarian, macrobiotic diet and yet the poor girl still was not spared orthodontics and additionally required a back brace for scoliosis.

Living long and living well depends on eating high-fat high-cholesterol foods. Yes.  We all have to die sometime, but that doesn’t mean it has to be via a massive heart attack, cancer,  or spending the winter of one’s life in an Alzheimer’s facility.  Traditional diets provide the antidote to these grim scenarios.  The second arrow in our quiver is that an infrastructure for excellent sanitization exists – hot water, stainless steel tanks, electrification – that should allow us to all live to a ripe old age (barring accidents).  Yet,  instead of flourishing, the diseases of civilization have never had a stronger hold on us.  It’s simply not enough to know something is bad.  While we do not need to turn our children into small nutritionists, they must be able to discern between what is true and false, and why certain principles must not be abandoned in the kitchen.

Wonder no more. Here’s the scoop on why the perky daytime talk show host is limping through life for the next three to six weeks. Long story short, she has a broken hip. But apparently it’s not as serious as you might think. Ripa explained to her studio audience that she has a stress fracture, possibly due to overexercising.”

Initially, Ripa said that she thought she had pulled a muscle. But then she went in to see a hip specialist who set her straight about the fracture. Her treatment, which might sound nice to most people, will be a challenge to the always active Ripa: lots of rest. Upon hearing that, Regis Philbin, her co-host, joked, “That’s gonna kill you!”

I found the this story on Yahoo News.  It’s an excellent cautionary tale on what awaits us when we seek our health and wellness advice from celebrities  and the people who coddle them.  We’re told that Kelly Ripa has a stress fracture from overexercising.  Clearly, there are many other things that have been left out of this story.  First and foremost, she has the body of a prepubescent girl, as she is a grown woman, it’s safe to assume she is anorexic.  Her body is so starved that it cannot even support her amateur workout regime.  Of course, you hear of pro athletes who are injured during play, but that’s different  than having a skeletal structure incapable of handling the stress of rigorous workouts.  She explains that her doctors have told her to take it easy for the next several weeks, but did any of them recommend that she significantly increase the amount of fat soluble activators in her diet, did they recommend she gain weight, did they tell her that if she eats copious amounts of real fat, she won’t have to exercise like a woman possessed?  It actually is possible to be tiny without looking emaciated.  Oh, and as a bonus that hot husband of hers might even be able to buy her something other than a training bra for Christmas.

Lauren Snyder Grosz is a Certified Nutrition and Wellness Educator. She writes for LiberationWellnessBlog.com. As a student on a lifelong quest for exceptional health and happiness, her mission is to empower people to take complete responsibility for their own health by rethinking everything we’ve assumed to be true and rediscovering what truly works based on accurate science.

In the December issue of Food and Wine there is a fascinating article titled The Conscientious Carnivore written by Kate Sekules.

Even home cooks want in. The Meat Hook in Brooklyn offers classes in pig-butchering that sell out months in advance. Classes teaching DIY enthusiasts to hunt, slaughter, and cook are popping up all over the place. In fact, instead of going to a spa with my girlfriends, which is something I’ve sadly never done, I’m going to suggest that we head to Flying Pigs Farm in New York, where we’ll learn among other things, how to slaughter chickens. The convincing will come after the Cosmos!

Coming across an article such as this in a national monthly magazine shows how interested people are in eating in a meaningful conscientious way. How refreshing that this shift is not about embracing fake meat substitutes or subsisting on vegetables and grains. Rather, it represents a growing number of people who are opening their eyes, taking responsibility, and understand the awesome idea that life requires death.

Lauren Snyder Grosz is a Certified Nutrition and Wellness Educator. She writes for LiberationWellnessBlog.com. As a student on a lifelong quest for exceptional health and happiness, her mission is to empower people to take complete responsibility for their own health by rethinking everything we’ve assumed to be true and rediscovering what truly works based on accurate science.

My nine year old daughter’s appointment with the dentist signaled it was time to take things more seriously. Charlotte didn’t have any cavities and he said everything looked really good. Though two issues really got my attention. 1) She has a slight overbite and 2) her x-rays showed her lateral incisors are coming in a bit sideways indicating the teeth might not have enough room to enter straight. People who are familiar with traditional diets know it is bunk to think these issues are genetic, when in fact, they are due to lack of proper nourishment. Having only found out about this 5 years ago, my daughter was already at a disadvantage have not benefited from these principles from conception.

As a foodie, turning our kitchen into a haven of nutrient dense eating was a delight for me. Often it puts a smile on my face to imagine how happy my mom would be to watch as I stir raw heavy cream into a glass of real whole milk. The problem was that our refrigerator and freezer contained only ingredients or potential, which is how I prefer to think of it. There really wasn’t anything you could simply grab and eat. My husband is either on the road or works from home and our daughter is home schooled so the demands for something to eat seem incessant. I’m excellent with breakfast, but the dinners I was making would take two hours when taking into account cleanup. Oh, and forget about lunch. It was non existent. I’d wonder to myself in amazement why they couldn’t simply have a glass of milk or a piece of sprouted toast with lots of butter.

And then one day it happened. I simply went on strike. Charlotte had gone to stay with her grandparents in Wisconsin for her annual summer visit and I was done with cooking! I had simply had it. We started going out to dinner. For the first three weeks this was a nice change of pace. Unless we’ve picked someplace outstanding to dine in the city (NYC) we prefer to eat at home because then I have control over the integrity of the ingredients. As the strike wore on, we both became exhausted with exercise. It was no longer fun, there are only so many places to frequent without crossing the bridge, and getting ready every night quickly lost it’s charm.

With the arrival of the Amex bill, I was forced to come up with a solution. I remembered that Liberation Wellness had recently connected with Jamie Busch who has lots of experience in the kitchen. Jamie recommended Chef Lisa of Simple Earth Cuisine. I was really looking forward to having Lisa cook for our family; her menu sounded delicious and she loves cooking in a traditional manner. Everything was perfect except the cost of her services, which I’m certain are worth every penny, but still out of reach for us. I was lamenting to a friend who lives in the apartment above us about not being able to engage Chef Lisa. A week later she contacted me with an excellent solution. She’d cook for us at a price we could afford! Kelly recently moved to NJ, from PA, to be with the love of her life. She is new to the area and ended up taking a less than satisfying job to avoid sitting around all day. Kelly is quite the go getter. Back in PA, she ran a bed and breakfast. Her favorite part of this experience was menu planning and cooking. Oh, and as fate would have it, I offered to lend her my copy of Nourishing Traditions, but her mom had already given her a copy!

Last week, Kelly delivered Pyrex dish after Pyrex dish filled with delicious satisfying meals. She has decided to start her own business as a Personal Chef to the residents of our building. I think it’s an excellent idea and am thrilled to be her first client.

Lauren Snyder Grosz is a Certified Nutrition and Wellness Educator. She writes for LiberationWellnessBlog.com. As a student on a lifelong quest for exceptional health and happiness, her mission is to empower people to take complete responsibility for their own health by rethinking everything we’ve assumed to be true and rediscovering what truly works based on accurate science.

When thinking back, I realize that my relationship with Whole Foods isn’t that different from my past romantic relationships. I was in my late twenties when Whole Foods opened their first store in Chicago and boy was I smitten, from the deli to the bakery, not to mention, aisle after aisle was brimming with enticing food stuffs that had never before been looked upon. Twas a glorious scene! Yes, this was the store for me and in my eyes everything was perfect. Of course, this was the period when I considered tofu a health food.

As I learned about the principles of nutrient dense eating things began to change. Why is this chain of stores insistent on using canola oil to prepare almost everything in the prepared foods section? People would write comments to the shift managers about this and at one point I saw a response from the store declaring the topic tabled for discussion. Wow, that is so harsh. I thought of breaking things off at that time, but simply put, they have other things I can’t do without.

And so the cycle continues…I’m enraged when they announce their low-fat vegetarian agenda, though several months earlier I was on a high when the CEO discussed his thoughts on health care reform. Things take another bad turn when it’s decided they’ll  no longer stock their shelves with the raw milk produced by the amazing folks at Organic Pastures in CA.  Though if I miss the deadline to order from my farmer, they have grass fed, unhomogenized,  dairy products from Sky Top Farms. Do you really think I believe that kids were getting drunk from drinking GT’s Kombucha? I’m not always in the mood to make it myself and my batches aren’t as predictable as his.

Sometimes, I’m doing a happy dance because it tastes great and other times I’m dumping it down the drain as quickly as possible. It was at this point that I swore the place off. The result of which was spending far too much on dining out because the Shop Rite in my neighborhood is absolutely disgusting. Suddenly, going out to eat is no longer fun and I head towards Whole Foods with a snarl on my face, I walk past a the refrigerated section and to my astonishment I see Ciara’s  great tasting Kombucha and the snarl is instantly replaced with a smile. My final example involves a pet peeve of mine. Can no one in the world make a bottled salad dressing without canola or soybean oil? Yes, finally someone can and her name is Kerry Wood. Her salad dressing even contains fermented soy sauce. It’s delicious. So right now Whole Foods and I are in a good place. In fact, I hardly even mind the solicitations from the cashiers to Help Put Salad Bars In Schools, which I translate as “let’s get more rancid oils into the kiddies.”  If they ever do a Help Add Saturated Fat To School Lunches, I’ll gladly get my check book out! Until then, I’ll simply have to be at peace with our highs and lows.

Lauren Snyder Grosz is a Certified Nutrition and Wellness Educator. She writes for LiberationWellnessBlog.com. As a student on a lifelong quest for exceptional health and happiness, her mission is to empower people to take complete responsibility for their own health by rethinking everything we’ve assumed to be true and rediscovering what truly works based on accurate science.

I’ve answered plenty of reader questions about The China Study over the years. Most simply ask, “I appreciate the research and thought you’ve put into getting us this information about how pre-industrial diets can help curb the diseases of industrialization (heart disease, diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, obesity, etc.), and I support your conclusions 100% based on my own experience. But I have friends who have read The China Study, and they say that it’s real, hard science disproving what you’re promoting. What’s your response to them?”

I’ve never written a post about The China Study, so rather than point them to my own content, I point them to a hodge podge of various posts online written by people whose scientific judgments I trust as more valid than my own — some are doctors, some have Ph.D.s in nutrition research, and some are just folks who are science junkies. While I’ve found those handful of articles to be helpful, I’ve never found any one of them individually to be all that comprehensive or thorough.

That changed yesterday.

Now, I’ve finally read what I consider the go-to article online for helping folks in love with The China Study see the light. The post is written by someone who took the raw data from The China Study and mapped it out to see if she could draw the same conclusions that the famous book’s author (T. Colin Campbell) drew.

After spending a solid month and a half reading, graphing, sticky-noting, and passing out at 3 AM from studious exhaustion upon her copy of the raw China Study data, blogger Denise Minger decided it was time to voice her criticisms. And there were many.

Her 9,000+ word essay is as thorough as they come, and she concludes with this thought:

In sum, “The China Study” is a compelling collection of carefully chosen data. Unfortunately for both health seekers and the scientific community, Campbell appears to exclude relevant information when it indicts plant foods as causative of disease, or when it shows potential benefits for animal products. This presents readers with a strongly misleading interpretation of the original China Study data, as well as a slanted perspective of nutritional research from other arenas (including some that Campbell himself conducted).

In rebuttals to previous criticism on “The China Study,” Campbell seems to use his curriculum vitae as reason his word should be trusted above that of his critics. His education and experience is no doubt impressive, but the “Trust me, I’m a scientist” argument is a profoundly weak one. It doesn’t require a PhD to be a critical thinker, nor does a laundry list of credentials prevent a person from falling victim to biased thinking. Ultimately, I believe Campbell was influenced by his own expectations about animal protein and disease, leading him to seek out specific correlations in the China Study data (and elsewhere) to confirm his predictions.

So, if you’ve been wanting an in-depth rebuttal to T. Colin Campbell’s The China Study, go read her 9000+ word summary conclusion. And if you want even more detailed analysis, take a look at the complete series of articles she’s posted over the past month as she’s dissected both the raw data and the famed best-selling book.

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Lauren Snyder Grosz is a Certified Nutrition and Wellness Educator. She writes for LiberationWellnessBlog.com. As a student on a lifelong quest for exceptional health and happiness, her mission is to empower people to take complete responsibility for their own health by rethinking everything we’ve assumed to be true and rediscovering what truly works based on accurate science.

that was hosting one of the Real Housewives of New Jersey for a book signing.  I have to confess that I’ve never seen the show, but it was a lovely warm night, so it seemed like the perfect reason to venture forth.  My cousin is a huge fan thus making the book purchase and signing mandatory.  I grabbed the Skinny Italian and composed myself to meet Teresa Giudice, who was actually quite lovely and the antithesis of what I expected.

Italian food is something I’ve trained myself to forget about, having packed on 20 lbs. in my early twenties when I first toyed with the idea of vegetarianism.  At that age it was easy to shed, but I have continued to hold a grudge against that particular cuisine.  Teresa however, has gotten my attention.

The Skinny Italian is packed with delicious recipes and old world wisdom.

This woman cooks for her family almost every night.  The traditions she was reared with make her savvy enough to eschew food she isn’t sure about, that means anything processed, but even more importantly, she gives vegetable oils, especially canola, no quarter in her book.  There is a whole page dedicated to canola oil titled “what is a Canola” where she very cogently writes about how heavily processed this particular oil is, how it comes from the rapeseed plant, while contrasting it to olive oil which is cold pressed and comes from a fruit.

I think that it’s important to point out Teresa hopes that scientists have removed the toxins from the plant so that canola oil is not poisonous to people, but that she is going to bet on the side of olive oil, which has been safely used for thousands of years.  What I love about this perspective is that she doesn’t need to understand the science on this stuff.  Teresa is relying on a tradition that she isn’t going to abandon no matter what the experts tell her.  We need our children to have the same convictions about butter, cream, and real milk.

I wish Teresa truly understood butter. She has so much right that it’s hard to imagine she wouldn’t quickly be on board.  I could spend time complaining about those little things, but it is too refreshing to find a a beautiful celebrity offering excellent advice that it would be in bad taste to nit pick.  She’s even skeptical of whole grains and suggests that we get our fiber from real vegetables.  This book isn’t limited to pasta,  there is room for pork, veal, chicken, fish, and beef.  Excellent job Teresa – show those Real Housewives of  New York how it’s done!

Lauren Snyder Grosz is a Certified Nutrition and Wellness Educator. She writes for LiberationWellnessBlog.com. As a student on a lifelong quest for exceptional health and happiness, her mission is to empower people to take complete responsibility for their own health by rethinking everything we’ve assumed to be true and rediscovering what truly works based on accurate science.

The bizarre habit of using of food scale isn’t entirely responsible for Hudson’s success. She also employed trainer extraordinaire Harley Pasternak to whip her into shape.  With Pasternak at her side, Hudson proudly proclaims that “I’m a cardio maniac!”

Let’s see, in order to look great, all you need to do is eat the same old junk in moderation and run around like a rat in wheel. How long will it be before Hudson is back to her pre movie body?  Well, the good news is that she can repeat the process ad infinitum.  People magazine will always be there to cover the story.

Lauren Snyder Grosz is a Certified Nutrition and Wellness Educator. She writes for LiberationWellnessBlog.com. As a student on a lifelong quest for exceptional health and happiness, her mission is to empower people to take complete responsibility for their own health by rethinking everything we’ve assumed to be true and rediscovering what truly works based on accurate science.

If the sun can do such glorious things for butter, can it really be something that people should take desperate measures to avoid?  This post will explore ways to get the most from the summer sun without slathering on chemically laden sunscreens.  Most people my age will associate the sun with vitamin D production, but it’s not possible to get enough vitamin D from sunlight if you live in temperate and northern latitudes.  Food sources of vitamins A and D are butter and cream, eggs, fish, shellfish, liver, organ meats, fish eggs, fish liver oils, and the fat of birds and pigs.  That said, if it has been about nine months since you last sat pool side, build your tan incrementally.  Long before you begin to burn, seek the shelter of an umbrella, and or put on airy protective clothing.  For most of us, it’s not safe to try and build a base tan over the course of a weekend.

My mom loved to sunbathe and she passed this love on to all three of her children. Our summer schedule revolved around peak tanning hours when all of us could be found reclining on chaise lounge chairs soaking up the rays.  What my mom didn’t know was that this is actually the safest time to be in the sun because at midday the UVB rays are their strongest.  These are the rays that facilitate vitamin D production.  UVA rays are the strongest in the morning and evening.  Of course, it isn’t possible to de-select one set of rays from the other, but it is possible to know the best time for sunning oneself.

When you don’t have the luxury of taking shelter from the sun, using a sunscreen is a practical solution. The problem is that ninety percent of them contain octyl methoxycinnamate or OMC for short.  This chemical even in low doses is deadly to mice and becomes toxic when exposed to the sun!  The ones that don’t contain OCM are likely to contain other questionable ingredients such as octyl salicyclate or avobenzone.  Ingredients with a proven track record are titanium dioxide and zinc oxide.  They can be found in Dr. Mercola’s Natural Sunscreen, which also is chalk full of other wonderful ingredients including antioxidant-rich green tea to help protect your skin on the cellular level.

Lauren Snyder Grosz is a Certified Nutrition and Wellness Educator. She writes for LiberationWellnessBlog.com. As a student on a lifelong quest for exceptional health and happiness, her mission is to empower people to take complete responsibility for their own health by rethinking everything we’ve assumed to be true and rediscovering what truly works based on accurate science.

This is a quote by her trainer Tracy Anderson. “I developed a cleanse where you can still eat and it’s a lot of pureed foods. I was very careful about the foods I chose to put in it.  When you do these liquid cleanses, I felt a responsibility to come up with something. Liquid cleanses do help you lose weight, but you will gain more the next week.  I wanted something where you can eliminate toxicity and break bad habits but still have your digestive system going.  That is when the baby good cleanse was born. You get to eat all day these little puree things, and the chocolate pudding I did is pretty killer.”

I really don’t know what’s sadder here, Tracy’s inability to present her reasons in a clear cogent fashion or her completely distorted relationship with food.  Ms. Aniston had a lot to do with the success of The Zone Diet and it’s not hard to imagine that her body is simply craving fat, which she is probably terrified of.  Perhaps this is why she is eating all day long.  I bet Tracy Anderson, of Gywneth Paltrow fame, has been filling her head with all sorts of dietary nonsense, like don’t eat dairy.  After all, her former client Madonna doesn’t!  Comically, this is the advice of people in the know.

Lauren Snyder Grosz is a Certified Nutrition and Wellness Educator.  She writes for LiberationWellnessBlog.com.  As a student on a lifelong quest for exceptional health and happiness, her mission is to empower people to take complete responsibility for their own health by rethinking everything we’ve assumed to be true and rediscovering what truly works based on accurate science.