I had a few friends over for dinner, and I served my mom's most requested barbecue meatballs. If you know my mom, you know what a great cook she is. I learned from the best. That sauce, with the orange marmalade for zest. The smell filling up the whole house. Dinners after church, second helpings, and everyone stuffed. I grew up on these. Her recipe is already meatless, built on pecans that give them a tender, meaty bite. I just took it the rest of the way to vegan. Vegan che

Happy Labor Day weekend! Workers marched for the 8-hour day in 1886 and were told the economy would collapse. Ford put his plants on a 5-day week in 1926 and other companies called it reckless. The 40-hour week didn't become federal law until 1938. The lunch break, the thing we sometimes take for granted, came out of that same really long fight. Every one of those sounded unreasonable before it happened. Within a generation nobody could remember it any other way. I've been th

Last week I told you that breakfast cereal was invented to sell you a product. Here's the other half of that plate. In the 1920s a company that sold bacon hired a publicist named Edward Bernays. Bernays was Sigmund Freud's nephew and he is generally credited with inventing modern public relations. The company had been running ordinary ads and wanted more. Bernays told them advertising was the wrong tool. By his own account he went to a physician and asked whether a heavy brea

Quick note before we start: I'll be on the Karen Hunter Show this Wednesday at 5:30pm Eastern, SiriusXM Channel 126, talking about healthy cooking. Tune in. Today let's talk about the meal you were told you couldn't skip. For most of American history, breakfast wasn't its own category of food. It was just the first meal of the day, put together from whatever was in the house. Cornmeal mush, potatoes, bread, beans, leftovers from the night before, and meat if you had it. Wealt

Most people can tell you what they should be eating. More vegetables, less sugar, fewer drive-thrus. That part usually isn't the problem. The problem is Tuesday at 6pm, when you're tired and hungry and the vegetables in your fridge require a plan you don't have. Americans now spend more money eating out than eating at home. That flipped in 2015, and outside of the pandemic year it has only widened since. When somebody else is deciding what goes in your food, they're optimizin

Men die younger than women. About five years younger in this country, and the gap holds across almost every cause on the list. Heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers, all showing up earlier and hitting harder. Some of that is biology. A lot of it is what men have been taught about food. Think about what gets marketed to men. Protein, in quantities nobody needs. Meat as proof of strength. Portion sizes framed as a challenge. The supplement wall. Almost none of it points towa

Last week I told you that your gut bacteria thrive on variety, and that people who eat 30 different plants a week have measurably more diverse gut bacteria than people who eat 10. Then I gave that challenge to my community. The first question I got back is probably the one you are thinking. Thirty? Who is eating 30 different plants in a week? You might already be closer than you think. Most people undercount badly, so start there. Herbs and spices count. Turmeric, ginger, cin

I spent some time out on the Potomac this week, with no agenda and my phone put away, except for the photos of course 😅, listening to the water move under the boat. Somewhere in that quiet I started thinking about how much of what I teach about gut health leaves this part out. Let's talk about your microbiome, because the marketing around it has gotten out of hand. Probiotic sodas. Gut health gummies. Thirty-dollar powders promising to reset you. Kombucha at seven dollars a

If you're new here, welcome. A lot of you found me through the Karen Hunter Show this week, and this is what I do: I help you navigate the difference between propaganda and truth so we can make truly healthy choices. I'll be back on the show this Wednesday at 5pm Eastern on SiriusXM Channel 126, so tune in. Today we're taking on the loudest food fight on the internet. Seed oils. Half of social media says they're toxic sludge destroying your health. The other half, backed by t

Have you noticed that protein is in everything now? Protein water. Protein coffee. Protein chips. Protein bread, protein flour, protein candy. Walk through any grocery store and half the packages are shouting protein at you. My clients are asking me about this, and I understand why. The fitness industry is telling people they need 100 to 150 grams of protein a day. Those numbers are hard to hit even with meat at every meal, so people are chugging whey shakes, egg whites, and

Something really blew my community's minds this week during our workshop on food and mood, and the science we unpacked was so eye-opening I had to bring it to you too . Something really blew my community's minds this week during our workshop on food and mood, and the science we unpacked was so eye-opening I had to bring it to you too. Here 's something most people, including many doctors, don't fully appreciate. About 95% of your body's serotonin is produced in your gut. Not