February 2012 – HumanaNatura

Anytime Turkey Salad Meal!

February 29, 2012

We all need a handful of go-to protein foods to successfully transition to lifelong salad meal eating the HumanaNatura way. This step gives us both convenience and variety. While you think about this important idea, we’d like to add that turkey is a great choice for your short list! We often think of turkey in the form of giant whole birds served at holidays, but the truth is that smaller, easy-to-prepare portions of turkey are available throughout the year for most of us. They make a delicious, lean, healthy, and often low-cost everyday protein food.

This delicious and super-satisfying salad meal starts with a turkey breast cooked simply in a covered pan with a splash of olive oil, dried garlic and onion bits, paprika, turmeric, tarragon, lemon, and just a bit of red pepper. It’s sliced after cooking and paired with our usual generous half-plate of greens, along with slivered celery pieces, sliced strawberry, diced orange, and a few raisins and pistachios. It’s all finished with parsley, coriander, a little more lemon, and black pepper. Extra yummy and a nice break from chicken, or whatever else is at the top of your go-to list!

Learn more about creating naturally delicious and optimally nutritious meals through OurPlate, HumanaNatura’s simple healthy eating and meal rating tool, and experience how this science-based and completely natural approach to daily meals can change the way you eat, feel, and live. Perfect your skills at making delicious and naturally healthy salad meals that follow the OurPlate guidelines via the Meals tab above, our popular article Perfect Salad Meals, or the Natural Eating section of our comprehensive Personal Health Program.

Once you have begun eating the HumanaNatura way, we hope you will begin to explore your other opportunities for new, more natural, and healthier life between meals – through HumanaNatura’s complete and naturally open-ended system for lifelong and lifewide health and fitness. Info is available at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.

Tell your friends about HumanaNatura… encourage new health!

Your New Week’s Resolutions?

February 26, 2012

We all know about New Year’s resolutions, and how they often do not produce their intended results. Part of the problem with annual commitments to change is that they do not happen often enough. If we truly want to change the way we live and who we are, it’s a daily and even momentary practice of committing, acting, observing, learning, and committing again.

For this reason, we need to make resolutions often, far more often than we may realize, and also regularly assess our thinking and actions amidst this new resolve. When we reach this stage of sustained personal commitment, we often encounter a second issue – not knowing how, as much as what, to change. Questions of both what and how to change are a big part of HumanaNatura’s natural health system and our crucial practice of guiding our lives with a Natural Life Plan.

If you really want to change – making your life better, healthier, and more naturally fulfilling – HumanaNatura can help. Even before you explore our four natural health techniques, a great first step is to begin to make New Week’s resolutions, instead of annual ones. This creative step forward can reinforce your desire for change and increase your motivation to explore the principles and practice of healthy personal development.

While you inspire yourself in this new way, you can also begin to eat more naturally and enjoyably right away too. Changing your life at mealtime can improve your physical health, while infusing your new growth orientation with the idea that healthier and higher quality life is not just a more focused state, but a happier one too, every day of the year.

OurPlate Score: 10

Perhaps this terrific HumanaNatura salad meal will inspire you to begin the week with a fresh start and new commitment to healthier and fuller life. First meals of the week like this are easy to prepare, motivating, and 100% in keeping with HumanaNatura’s extra-healthy OurPlate meal guidelines. It features sautéed shrimp, scallops, calamari, and red onion seasoned with curry, ginger, and a bit of red pepper. This creates a naturally lean, delicious, and satisfying protein serving, which is then paired with a generous half-plate of greens, julienne cucumber and mango, sliced avocado, and diced tomato. It’s all garnished with a few pistachios and finished with parsley, paprika, coriander, anise seeds, and a bit of black pepper. A great way to start a new and healthier week, and life!

Once you have begun eating the HumanaNatura way, we hope you will resolve to explore your other opportunities for new, more natural, and healthier life between meals – through HumanaNatura’s complete and naturally open-ended system for lifelong and lifewide health and fitness, available at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.

Tell your friends about HumanaNatura… encourage new life & health!

Critical Look at The China Study

February 24, 2012

A new article by Vin Miller – The China Study: Is Animal Food Really Unhealthy? – has just been re-published by HumanaNatura. The original article appeared on Vin’s RageWellness website and we are pleased to be able to include his thoughtful analysis in HumanaNatura’s article library. In the article, Vin explores the science that both supports and calls to question key conclusions from the popular, pro-vegan book, The China Study. Vin concludes that the case for veganism is not as strong scientifically as The China Study suggests and that “animal food can indeed be part of a diet that promotes excellent health.”

Vin’s science-based conclusions are of course consistent with HumanaNatura’s essential health technique of Natural Eating, embodied in our OurPlate healthy eating model, which proposes that a diet rich in raw vegetables that includes lean animal proteins and removes unnatural carbohydrate-rich foods is not just more natural, but will prove optimally healthy for most of us. You can read Vin’s excellent, well-researched article via HumanaNatura at Critical Look At The China Study or on Vin’s RageWellness blog.

Learn more about creating naturally delicious and optimally nutritious meals through OurPlate, HumanaNatura’s healthy eating and meal rating tool, and experience how this simple, science-based, and 100% natural approach to daily meals can change the way you eat, feel, and live. Perfect your skills at making delicious and naturally healthy salad meals that follow the OurPlate guidelines via the Meals tab above, our popular article Perfect Salad Meals, or the Natural Eating section of our comprehensive Personal Health Program.

Once you have begun eating the HumanaNatura way, we hope you will explore your other opportunities for new, more natural, and healthier life between meals – through HumanaNatura’s complete and naturally open-ended system for lifelong and lifewide health and fitness, which you can access at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.

Tell your friends about HumanaNatura…promote new health!

Beautifully Balanced Salad Meal!

February 22, 2012

OurPlate Score: 10

Sometimes HumanaNatura salad meals come out good, sometimes great, and other times, even better than great! This delicious, healthy, and beautifully balanced example of the last category begins with a quick stir-fry of sliced pork and veggies seasoned with ginger, turmeric, tarragon, anise seeds, and just a bit of red pepper to accent the wonderful mix of natural flavors. We then pair this warm protein portion with our usual half-plate of cool raw greens, diced cucumber and grape tomatoes, and a handful of fresh blueberries. A meal like this doesn’t need much else, so we garnished and finished it simply with a few pistachios, parsley, coriander, a bit of lemon peel, and some cracked black pepper. Satisfying and also leaves you wanting more…and ready in about ten minutes!

Learn more about creating naturally delicious and optimally nutritious meals through OurPlate, HumanaNatura’s new healthy eating tool, and experience how this simple, science-based, and 100% natural approach to daily meals can change the way you eat, feel, and live. Perfect your skills at making delicious and naturally healthy salad meals that follow the OurPlate guidelines via the Meals tab above, our popular article Perfect Salad Meals, or the Natural Eating section of our comprehensive Personal Health Program.

Tell your friends about OurPlate & HumanaNatura…promote new health!

Sweet, Hot & Cool Salad Meal!

February 17, 2012

OurPlate Score: 10

This extra-tasty HumanaNatura salad meal combines simple and inexpensive ingredients to create a plateful of rich and complementary flavors. It starts with pan-fried tilapia and red onion seasoned with ginger, turmeric, red pepper, and tarragon. This spicy mix is then paired with a half-plate of arugula and the cool and sweet of julienne cucumber, diced cherry tomatoes, and slivered strawberries. It’s garnished simply but piquantly with pistachios, parsley, anise, and cracked black pepper. Delicious, different with almost every bite, and ready in under fifteen minutes!

Tell your friends about OurPlate & HumanaNatura…promote new health!

Living Without Unhealthy Stress

February 15, 2012

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By Mark Lundegren

Stress matters. Though it can seem purely psychological and abstract, stress is more deeply a physical phenomenon that tangibly affects our health, well-being, and even longevity.

A new study, published jointly by medical researchers at Harvard University and the University of British Columbia, underscores this critical point and the importance of managing both intense and chronic stress for a long, happy, and healthy life.

In the new study, published in Circulation and summarized in the medical press, the research team found that people subject to extreme stress, in the form of the death of a loved one, were 21 times more likely to have a heart attack in the first 24 hours after the death and six times more likely in the first week. Both differences in heart attack rates are of course well above the threshold for medical significance.

Our Need to Focus on Chronic Stress

As important and perhaps surprising as these findings are, it is essential to add that the principal problem with stress today is its chronic or ongoing forms rather than its intense or acute varieties. Protracted conditions of stress in us reliably lead to significant biochemical and immunological disruptions in our bodies and then progressive reductions in our health and natural functioning across our lives. A list of important consequences from unaddressed chronic stress is available at The Effects Of Chronic Stress.

Continue reading “Living Without Unhealthy Stress”

Delicious Ahi Tuna Salad Meal!

February 12, 2012

OurPlate Score: 10

This HumanaNatura salad meal looks exotic but is actually fairly inexpensive and simple to prepare. It features a pan-seared and ginger seasoned ahi or yellowfin tuna fillet with a half-plate of raw greens, sautéed red onion, tomato and orange pieces, and fresh berries. It’s all garnished with roasted and lightly salted sunflower seeds, parsley, coriander, tarragon, and black pepper. And while we do recommend limiting fish from high in the marine food chain, it only makes an occasional treat like this that much more delicious..enjoy!

Tell your friends about OurPlate & HumanaNatura…promote new health!

Naturalized & Healthier Stir-Fry!

February 9, 2012

OurPlate Score: 10

This HumanaNatura salad meal takes the stir-fry to a whole new and far healthier level. It features a sauté (via a wok or pan) of sliced pork, red onion, ginger, and broccoli florets, a contrasting mix of sliced kiwi and blueberries, and our usual half-plate of mixed greens along with diced tomatoes and cucumber. It’s garnished with a few pistachios, parsley, paprika, coriander, grated lemon rind, and black pepper. While you can get healthier just by looking at the photo, why not try your hand at making this simple, quick, and perfect-ten salad meal today!

Tell your friends about OurPlate & HumanaNatura…promote new health!

Cancer Prevention & Treatment

February 7, 2012

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By Mark Lundegren

Cancer has been in the news these last few weeks, and the news has been decidedly more hopeful than in the past.

Based on a series of recent studies and meta-analyses, scientists are now increasingly and more definitively prioritizing our risk factors for many common and aggressive cancers, allowing us all to reduce our chances of getting these diseases by as much as half. And at least as importantly, long-envisioned immunotherapy regimes for treating existing cancers are entering clinical trials and showing early results that are promising if not remarkable.

Let’s begin a recap of recent cancer news by highlighting a new and quite extensive study of factors leading to common cancers that was recently published in the British Journal of Cancer (BJC). It concluded that readily alterable lifestyle choices accounted for over 40% of cancers in the UK, prompting calls there for urgent public action. These high-risk factors include: 1) smoking, 2) being overweight, 3) an unnatural absence of fruits and vegetables from our diet, 4) excessive alcohol consumption, and 5) immoderate sun and UV exposure. These new findings build on prior research showing that inadequate exercise also can be an important direct and indirect (especially by influencing body weight) lifestyle risk factor for cancer.

There’s more. The BJC published another new cancer study, this one based on research conducted by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Its findings were consistent with widespread and still growing research linking red meat and processed meats to increased cancers. The new study specifically suggested an almost 20% increased risk of deadly pancreatic cancer for each 50 grams (2 ounces) of processed meat consumed each day.

Continue reading “Cancer Prevention & Treatment”

Start the Week In Healthy Style!

February 6, 2012

OurPlate Score: 10

We never know what a new week will bring, but at least we can start each one with health and style! This quick and easy-to-prepare first meal of the week features a shrimp, turkey, and red onion egg scramble, a melange of orange bits and berries, and a half plate of mixed greens, lightly warmed broccoli, and diced tomato…all garnished with a few pistachios, parsley, paprika, coriander, and black pepper. Good morning, Monday!