Healthy Practices

Shopping, Cooking, and Preparing Meals

How to Make Heart-Healthy Food Choices
Maintaining a healthy diet is one of the best weapons for fighting cardiovascular disease and other heart conditions.

A Healthy Kitchen Makeover
From the food you stock in the freezer to the silverware you put on the table, your kitchen is your partner in health. When you fill your kitchen with the right tools and foods, you reap the benefits.

Go for the Whole Grains
Compared with refined grains, they have more fiber and disease-fighting antioxidants. Whole grains are also a healthy way to control weight because they are digested slowly, so you feel full longer with fewer calories.

Food Freshness: What Those Dates Really Mean
Here a rundown on the dates you find on food labels and what those dates mean, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The Power of a Food Diary
Keeping a food diary is critical for weight-loss success because it helps you understand and face up to your eating habits.

Salad Days: It’s Easy Eating Green
At home or when dining out, here are suggestions on how to add the goodness of greens to your diet.

Salmonella Infections
Salmonella bacteria are usually transmitted to humans by eating foods contaminated with animal feces. Beef, poultry, milk, and eggs are common sources.

Hand Washing
Use warm water to wet your hands, then apply soap. Rub your hands together for at least 10 seconds. Rinse thoroughly to remove all soap.

Fill Your Grocery Cart with Savings
We’re all pinching pennies these days—but that doesn’t mean you have to skimp on healthy foods. Here’s a strategy to help you choose ingredients that are good for both body and budget.

The Importance of Eating Together as a Family
Eating together as a family has many benefits not only for you, but also for your children. This lifestyle habit may actually help to fend off childhood obesity.

Your Guide to Organic Foods
Fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy products, and meat can all be certified as organic if they meet FDA requirements for growth, handling, and processing.

Healthy Snacking and Dining Out

Healthy Snacking

As Snack Attacks Rise, Seek Healthy Options
Youths of all ages from 2 through the teen years snack more often. With 13 to 14 percent of children and adolescents overweight, we can blame eating between meals for part of the trend.

Nuts to You!
Nuts offer valuable fiber, protein, and nutrients such as calcium, magnesium, zinc, iron, and vitamin E.

Picking Snacks for Picky Eaters
Nutrition experts agree that a wide assortment of nutritionally balanced snacks served in moderation can be a healthy, essential part of a child's diet.

The Nutritious Apple
Apples are a convenient, wash-and-go fruit to eat. They are low in calories, nutritious, filling and they taste great. There's an apple variety for almost every taste.

Dining Out

Cutting Calories and Fat When Eating Out
To better control your calorie intake you need to know how much you eat. But if you're like most Americans, proper serving sizes are a mystery, thanks to mega-burgers, biggie fries and saucer-sized bagels.

Tips for a Healthy Restaurant Breakfast
Do you want to cut fat out of your diet, but not give up breakfast at your favorite restaurant? Try healthy alternatives such as Canadian bacon on your egg sandwich instead of cheese and sausage, or a bran muffin instead of hash browns.

Let's Do Lunch
Does your lunch just happen? Is it often a last-minute decision of where to eat and whether or not you want fries with your burger? If so, maybe it's time to show lunch a little more respect.

Understanding Menu Terms
One of the challenges of healthy eating is knowing how to spot lower-calorie, lower-fat dishes on a menu. Here's a guide to help you make informed choices.

Take-Out Foods, Restaurant Meals Tied to Obesity Trend
Obesity has become a public health crisis in the United States, in part, because Americans are consuming more calories than they did 30 years ago. A large part of that increase in consumption can be pinned on a greater use of foods prepared away from home -- those ready-to-eat items available at restaurants, grocery store food counters and fast-food eateries.

Eating on the Run
Most people find it easier to stick to a healthy diet when they’re at home and can plan their meals. But eating in restaurants, in your car, or at your desk is often a reality of modern life.

Food Safety

Chilling Meat: It's All About Safety
From the farm to the store, meat and poultry products must be chilled -- and kept chilled, packaged and handled properly so it will be safe for consumers to buy. Several government agencies have the responsibility to assure the food's safety. In the home, food caretakers must do their part to store, handle and cook meat and poultry right so it's safe to eat.

Is Pink Turkey Meat Safe?
The color pink in cooked turkey meat raises a "red flag" to many diners and cooks. Conditioned to be wary of pink in fresh pork, they question the safety of cooked poultry and other meats that have a rosy blush.

Eating Raw Clams: Is It Risky?
The FDA notes that shellfish, especially mollusks, are more likely to cause foodborne illness than fish because shellfish pump water through their bodies.

Protect Yourself from Food Contamination
These tips can help you reduce your risk of becoming ill from the food you eat at home and in restaurants.

Food Preservation: The Case for Irradiation
Irradiation is slowly gaining consumer acceptance as a way to make foods safer. Foods are bathed with low levels of radiation, which kills such deadly bacteria as E. coli, campylobacter and salmonella.

Hepatitis A
Hepatitis A is a highly contagious and sometimes serious liver disease. The hepatitis A virus is transmitted by eating food or drinking water contaminated with infected feces.

Fish Poisoning
At certain times of the year, various species of fish and shellfish contain toxins, even if well cooked. The most common type of fish poisoning in travelers is ciguatera fish poisoning.

Escherichia coli 0157:H7
This particular strain of E. coli causes a severe intestinal infection. You can get this infection by eating contaminated meat or by drinking unpasteurized juice or milk that has been contaminated.

BSE ('Mad Cow Disease') and vCJD
BSE is a cattle disease, and vCJD is the equivalent disease in humans. Both are fatal brain diseases. Researchers believe that people become infected by eating beef contaminated with BSE.

Salmonella Infections
Salmonella bacteria are usually transmitted to humans by eating foods contaminated with animal feces. Beef, poultry, milk, and eggs are common sources.

Spotlight on Summer Food Safety
Summer is the perfect time for picnics and cookouts—and for bacteria to multiply in food. Follow these tips to avoid food-borne illness.

Eating for Weight Management

Coping with Food Cravings
Some people experience food cravings only now and then, while others have them daily or weekly.

Success Secrets of Losing Weight
The majority of dieters regain the weight they lose within five years. But they could avoid doing so by gradually changing their eating and exercise habits. Your approach to weight loss should be to make changes you can keep up for the rest of your life.

The Skinny on Fat-Free Foods
When food producers cut the fat out of foods, they often replace it with extra sugar or other carbohydrates, which add calories.

Weight Matters: When Willpower Isn't Enough
Most medical weight-loss programs first try to help you make the long-term behavioral changes necessary to achieve and maintain a healthy weight. This includes exercising regularly and eating healthy food. If you still remain seriously overweight, you and your doctor might discuss these options.

Emotional Eating: How to Cope
Emotional eating affects most everyone from time to time, but regularly letting your feelings guide your food intake can affect your health.

Healthy Practices

Health Education