Soy is an excellent source of plant-based protein that can benefit those concerned about their heart and bone health, as well as their breast and prostate health.

Heart health benefits of soy: A meta-analysis of 38 studies indicates that consuming protein from soy foods is linked to retaining normal cholesterol levels. Another study suggests that soy protein may have antioxidant properties that helps protect bad(LDL) cholesterol from oxidizing.

Beyond the potential of soy protein to positively impact the cholesterol that travels through arteries, soy isoflavones may also support the healthy function of the arteries themselves. One study showed that menopausal women taking soy protein supplements (rich in isoflavones) experienced a significant improvement in elasticity of their arteries.

This elasticity has been shown to decline with age, a change that is viewed as a risk factor for cardiovascular health. Some scientists are predicting that these isoflavone effects may prove to be as valuable in supporting heart-healthy aging as their potential to retain normal cholesterol levels.

The American Cancer Society has created guidelines for a healthy diet: Choose most of the foods you eat from plant sources. Eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables each day. Eat other foods from plant sources, such as breads, cereals, grain products, rice, pasta, or beans several times each day.

Limit your intake of high-fat foods, particularly from animal sources. Choose foods low in fat. Limit consumption of meats, especially those high in fat. Be physically active: achieve and maintain a healthy weight.

Be at least moderately active for 30 minutes or more each day. Stay within your healthy weight range. Limit consumption of alcoholic beverages, if you drink at all. For people who already drink alcoholic beverages, limit intake to two drinks a day for men and one drink per day for women. Soy foods fit guidelines 1 and 2 for a health-promoting diet.

Soy and bone health: Americans typically think of dairy products as the best source of calcium, but there are many other good sources of calcium. In fact, soy protein is an excellent source of dietary calcium, providing 50% of the daily value of this important nutrient per serving.

Soy protein may also offer bone-health advantages by replacing sources of animal protein in the diet. For long-term bone health, calcium intake is only part of the story. Urinary calcium loss is another factor that contributes to a negative calcium balance. High consumption of animal proteins, which are high in sulfur amino acids, appear to be responsible for this effect.

Soy protein, which has less sulfur amino acids relative to meat and other animal protein sources, may result in less calcium being lost in the urine and help keep calcium in the skeleton. In one study, calcium excretion was found to be 30% lower when dietary protein from soy sources was compared to equal amounts of protein from beef, fish, and chicken in healthy adults consuming a constant amount of calcium.

The isoflavones in soy foods may also help support healthy bones. A recent study showed that dietary intake of soy products containing isoflavones had a significant positive impact on bone turnover in healthy postmenopausal women.

Soy and breast and prostate health: It has long been known that many soy-consuming Asian populations have better rates of breast and prostate health than do Western populations. There are many factors involved in prostate health, but a recent, large-scale population-health study suggests soy intake as one of those factors.

In this study, men who reported frequently consuming soy milk (which contains isoflavones) were 70% more likely to maintain prostate health during a follow-up period, compared to the men who had little or no soy in their diet. A recent population-health study conducted in China investigated the relationship between soy intake during adolescence and breast health later in life.

After adjustments for known risk factors, higher soy food intakes reported during the teen years were associated with significantly better breast health when these women reached their pre-and post-menopausal adult years. Researchers believe that soy intake starting at a young age and continued throughout life is linked to maintaining breast health.

Another way that soy may promote heart, breast, and prostate health is by providing protection against oxidation damage. The soy isoflavone, genistein, has been shown to have antioxidant properties.

NOTE: While the totality of evidence suggests health benefits for soy protein , scientific opinion is not uniform on the appropriate use of soy by women with a history of breast cancer. I recommend that women with this history discuss the option of soy intake with their physician.

Soy protein and menopause: Cross-cultural studies of menopausal women have found that women in Japan experience a smoother transitional period than women in the West. Eleven soy foods are commonly consumed in Asian countries, providing an estimated 45 mg of isoflavones per day for the average person.

For the menopausal woman, soy protein has particular interest, as it is studied for both its apparent beneficial effect during menopause as well as for bone-building and helping to retain normal cholesterol levels.

Good luck on your journey towards health and wellness!

Brue M. Baker, is an expert on natural health and fitness who has helped people from all across the country sky-rocket their health and well-being. Rather than hitting your head against a wall trying every natural nutrition product out there, let Brue introduce you to what he has found to be the best natural health products on the planet. Visit DynamicHealthTips.com to receive Brue’s free newsletter.

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The most important part of successful gardening is to properly prepare the soil. A routine soil test gives information on any lime requirement, phosphorous and potassium needs and estimated nitrogen requirements. A good soil mixture contains two parts loam, one parts and, and one part organic matter and many pre-mixed soil mixtures are available at garden centers. When manure is added to the soil, it must be composted prior to planting, because fresh, hot manure will also burn your plants. Vegetables need a lot of nutrition to grow well, so the better you prepare the soil before planting, the better chances you have of producing a bountiful crop. For information on soil testing, call your local county extension educator or the local university soil testing laboratory.

Planting a vegetable garden is not hard, but without careful planning and proper follow through, your garden may perform poorly. Tilling the soil in late fall facilitates earlier spring planting. Cool versus warm planting periods are determined by your choice of cool-season vegetables and warm-season vegetables.

Successful vegetable gardening involves far more than just popping a few seeds into the ground and waiting for a tomato to appear. When sowing your seeds stretch a string between the two stakes you set to mark the row, or use a straight piece of lumber, and use it as a guide to open a ‘V’ shaped furrow with the corner of your hoe. Tear the corner of the seed package off and use your finger to tap the package lightly as you move down the row, carefully distributing the seeds evenly. Larger type seeds may be placed individually in the row. You will want to plant extra seeds in each row to allow for failed germination, and for thinning. Cover the seeds with fine soil (no clods or rocks). After the seeds sprout, the weaker seedlings should be pinched off to give the rest enough room to grow.

Vegetables that are leaves or stems, such as cabbages and onions, can usually be harvested over a long period as they are needed. Vegetables that are the fruit of the plant, such as peas, beans and tomatoes, should be picked every two or three days to get them when they are first ripe. Any vegetable garden should receive a minimum of six hours of direct sunlight during the day and grow best on soil that is well drained. Vegetable gardens do not always have to be laid out in large plots in the backyard; you can grow them nearly anywhere as long as all their growing conditions are met and your choice of plants will be largely determined by the likes and dislikes of your family. If the same garden plot is used for vegetables for many years, your crops should be rotated, so that each type of vegetable is in a different position during the following season.

Planting a vegetable garden is hard work but for both the beginner and experienced gardener the rewards can be delicious.

Author Resource: Andrew Bicknell. To learn more about planting and maintaining a vegetable garden please visit the website Garden-Choices-Net.com.

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Garlic has been found to be beneficial to the human body in a number of different ways. Research has shown many positive results of regular eating of garlic. For example, garlic is a natural form of an antibiotic in a general way as opposed to focusing on specific types of bacteria or parts of the body.

Garlic is generally helpful for pain relief, particularly when pain is due to problems in the circulatory system, such as angina pain.

There appear to be no people with allergies to garlic, which means that it can be broadly prescribed for its health benefits. Research has also shown that garlic, and in particular garlic that is aged, has positive and intense antioxidant qualities which can help with a number of circulatory diseases and even cancers. It is antioxidants that help to protect the body against what is known as free radicals in the human body. Free radicals are ions with free electrons which can wreak havoc in the body, causing rapid aging and problems with the immune system.

Garlic helps to counteract these effects, but other plants in the same family can have a similar effect. For example, onions have a great effect, although a bit less than garlic. Shallots, green onions and some edible flowers have the same benefits as well.

Garlic is excellent for supporting the hard work of the immune system. Garlic also lowers cholesterol, helps to prevent heart disease and fights all sorts of funguses that try to invade the body.

There are two ingredients in garlic that are medicinal in nature and have excellent health benefits. The two ingredients are allicin and the diallyl sulphides. Allicin is the more powerful of the two. Allicin is not found in garlic as a plant, but is released when garlic is either crushed or chopped into fine pieces. The finer the dicing, the more allicin will be created, and therefore the stronger will be the medicinal benefits. Allicin is anti-fungal in nature and is commonly used to treat many infections of the skin such as athlete’s foot and nail fungus.

Diallyl sulphides also have benefits, but not as great as allicin. Diallyl sulphides have no anti-fungal properties, but can be of great benefit for blood circulation and help to keep the overall circulatory system working to the best of its ability. Diallyl sulphides are beneficial to the immune system because they give it a much-needed boast and they also help to lower the LDL bad “cholesterol” in the body.

There are many ways to incorporate more garlic into your diet. Garlic works well with many meat and vegetables dishes and it can be included in soups, casseroles and stir-fries. If you are not well versed in cooking with garlic then check the public library, your local bookstore or the Internet for some recipes that are simple and easy for you to prepare. If eating garlic is not to your liking because of the odor then look for garlic in tablet or capsule form at your local vitamin store or grocery store.

Author Resource:- Scott Meyers is a staff writer for Its Entirely Natural, a resource for helping you achieve a naturally healthy body, mind, and spirit. You may contact our writers through the web site. Follow this link for more information on Herbal Remedies.

Article courtesy of the Come and Read Article Directory.

How did that happen to a species that was designed to eat vegetables and fruits, nuts, berries and legumes?

We can imagine that eating meat was initially an opportunistic event, born of the need to survive. The taste of cooked meat, plus the sustained energy that came from eating high-fat meat products made primitive sense even to earliest man.

Initially, finding cooked animal meat, from a forest fire, would have been cause for celebration. It’s something everyone in a clan would have participated in eating together. When man learned to hunt and moved to a hunting orientation, rather than a hunter-gatherer orientation, he would have done this in groups. They would have had to hunt in teams, and killing an animal for food would have been a group effort. Hunting and killing an animal meant food not just for the individual, but for the clan, and would have been cause for celebration when the hunters brought the food home.

If they brought the animal back to the clan, it would have taken a group effort to skin the animal and tear or cut the meat from the carcass. Everyone would have participated in this, and subsequently, shared in the rewards of their work.

It’s easy to see how, once we didn’t have to hunt for meat, but could buy it, the need for gathering and celebration was deeply ingrained in our natures. We celebrate the seasons and life’s events with family and friends, and because those early celebrations involved eating meat, that tradition has continued to modern times.

But necessity is the mother of invention. Prehistoric men who lived in frozen geographies, or who lived in an area that became devastated by fire, would have eaten anything to survive. Just like the soccer players whose plane crashed in the mountains of Chile, and were forced to eat the flesh of other players who died in the crash, earliest man at some point had to make the choice for survival, and that could have consuming meat for the first time and changing human history – and health – forever.

We can imagine that men first ate meat that had been charred or cooked by virtue of being caught in a natural forest fire. They might have subsequently eaten raw meat, if necessary, but we can also imagine that our earliest digestive systems rebelled against eating raw meat.

Imagine having eaten raw foods and vegetables for eons, and all of a sudden, incorporating meat products into your system. You may have heard friends who were vegetarians tell stories of trying to eat meat and becoming violently ill afterwards.

Biologists will tell you we’re really not designed to eat meat, but we adapted to it. However, in the timeline of human history, eating meat is a relatively recent evolutionary development.

1. Cheese Them

Vegetables are not known for their fat or protein content. Fats and proteins are a couple of things that stomachs crave though. When you need a snack to pick you up in the day, start with some fresh vegetables. Broccoli, cauliflower and lima beans are all excellent choices. They are high in fiber and vitamins. Stick your cleaned and cut veggies in the microwave with a little bit of cheese on top. Great choices are pepper jack and cheddar. Parmesan doesn’t melt as well, but it offers a little more flavor. Just cook the vegetables, uncovered for about a minute. They will release some water to mix with the cheese. The result is a creamy, crunchy, nutritious snack.

2. Carve Them

Especially if you’re having guests, shaping your vegetables with a sharp knife can make all the difference in the world. Make beautiful trays with dips and even create edible centerpieces. Start out creatively cutting peppers and filling them with a colorful mixture of bite sized pieces. Also try slicing petals onto carrots or squash. Let your imagination take over and make your vegetables into beautiful and appetizing treats. (NOTE: just do not do what some fancy restaurants do – substitute art work for quantity – ever seen those restaurants that give you small vegetarian works of art, but you only get 3 of 4 small pieces, leaving you hungry?)

3. Roast Them

Almost all vegetables lend themselves to roasting. Pick out an assortment of complimentary vegetables. You might pick a theme, such as fall vegetables. Take colorful peppers, a few different squashes and some mushrooms and spread slices on a cookie sheet. Bake them at 375° for ten to twelve minutes. The flavors will come out and blend beautifully.

4. Steam Them

You can steam fresh vegetables in your microwave or on the stove top. You need a steamer for stove top preparation, but all you need is a sealable plastic bag in the microwave. Steaming allows you to keep all of the nutrition and flavor in your vegetables. You can also choose the doneness you prefer from al dente to mushy.

5. Compose Them

Composed salads are a great way to eat uncooked fresh vegetables in a way that they are still prepared. A composed salad combines similarly sized and shaped pieces of vegetables with a dressing. Make your own dressing, or use your favorite store bought one. Just make sure to include many different colors in your salad. The finished product is pleasing to the eye and the mouth.

You don’t have to be bored with vegetables. All you need are a few more ideas of what to do with fresh vegetables in order to break away from the frozen ones. Eat your vegetables in all of the five forms listed above and have fun while you’re doing it.

Humans evolved from vegetarian creatures. Even our digestive systems are not particularly suited to eating meat. Eating meat is a relatively recent development in human history, most likely born of opportunity and necessity. Perhaps earliest man observed carnivores eating meat, and if they couldn’t find any of the natural foods they were used to eating, such as vegetables, berries, nuts and grains, then they might have assumed that eating meat would at least sustain life.

But initially we emulated the creatures we evolved from, herbivores like apes. Even to a prehistoric mind, apes would have looked similar to man, walking primarily upright, with arms and hands. We naturally would have foraged for our food, eating roots and berries, fruits and nuts. We would have watched the apes peeling bananas, or crushing nuts on stones to get at the meat of the nut.

We would have been living more moment-to-moment, constantly foraging for food. Hunting, after all, requires thought and planning. Eating meat requires preparation and most importantly, fire. Until man discovered fire, he was primarily vegetarian, living in what was the natural order of things. Vegetarian eating is a more natural way of eating, in addition to being healthier. It’s a way that’s in balance with the planet, and doesn’t seek to dominate it and conquer it.

In this article, we will attempt to explain some of the differences between these two diets so that it will be easier for you to figure out exactly which type of diet you should take on for yourself.

Lacto-vegetarians are people that believe that they should avoid eating eggs, but allow themselves to have dairy products. Lacto-vegetarians contend that they should be allowed to have dairy products since they do not lead to the death of cows, but avoid eating eggs because they are potentially destroying a life in eating them. Dairy products contain lactose as a principle ingredient, giving this type of vegetarian diet its name. If you have problems with your cholesterol levels, you may want to consider the lacto-vegetarian diet as it can help you to decrease your levels by removing meat and eggs from your diet.

Ovo-vegetarians comprise most of the other vegetarians in the world today, and they have a radically different belief structure from lacto-vegetarians. Ovo-vegetarians allow themselves to eat eggs, stating that the eggs that are made for human consumption are not fertilized and therefore do not cause any animal death. Ovo-vegetarians stress that they should avoid eating dairy products, unlike their lacto-vegetarian counterparts, because they feel that milk is produced only after a mother cow has given birth to a calf which will probably be used for its meat.

To that end, ovo-vegetarians and lacto-vegetarians follow very different belief structures and they often argue about which course of action is the right one to take.

Vegans, by contrast, are vegetarians that feel that they should avoid any type of animal product, ensuring that all of the things that they eat only contain ingredients that come from fruits, grains, and vegetables. This is a hard lifestyle to maintain, but many people find comfort in this diet once they are able to adjust.

Finally, there is a separate group of vegetarians that refer to themselves as lacto-ovo vegetarians. These individuals allow themselves to eat all of the things that the ovo and lacto-vegetarians avoid, allowing for the consumption of both dairy products and eggs. This type of vegetarian is the most commonly found type within the United States, as individuals merely refrain from eating types of meat in order to keep their diet the way that they want to.

Whatever you decide, rest assured that you are making a good decision when it comes to cutting meat out of your diet. Regardless of your individual beliefs over issues of lacto-vegetarianism or ovo-vegetarianism, by cutting meat out of your diet you are helping to promote the proper treatment of animals and will likely find numerous benefits for your health in your new diet.

Stay committed, and it will be well worth it!

On the other hand, produce that is designated for freezing is flash-frozen near to its source, quickly locking in the nutrients. In fact, frozen could be more. When cooking vegetables, don’t boil away valuable vitamins. Frozen veggies like corn and peas, broccoli, and butternut squash, can now be steamed quickly and conveniently the way Steam Ease does it. Independent lab analysis compared steaming of broccoli to conventional stovetop boiling. The results showed that Steam Ease technology retains 1.5 times more vitamin C and 40% more folic acid than boiled. More information is online at Omsteadfoods

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In some ways, we do become what we eat, literally. Have you ever seen an example of your blood plasma after eating a fast food hamburger? What was previously a clear liquid becomes cloudy with the fat and cholesterol that’s absorbed from eating a high-fat hamburger.

And when you think about it, we also become what we don’t eat. When we switch from eating meat to a vegetarian-based diet, we become less fat, less prone to many types of cancers. Our cholesterol can improve. When we’re leaner and eating fewer animal products, then many other health and fitness issues are reduced. The incidence of Type II diabetes is reduced. Blood pressure falls into normal ranges. When you’re healthier, you’re taking fewer medications. Even if you have a prescription drug benefit in your health plan, you’re still saving money with fewer co-payments on medications.

If you have a family history of high cholesterol or high blood pressure, then it’s particularly incumbent on you to revise your eating habits. Moving towards a more vegetarian diet has been shown statistically to reduce the incidence of so many of the diseases of industrialized countries. Vegetarians are statistically healthier than omnivorous persons; they’re leaner and live longer.

Isn’t it time to think about what you want to be and to eat accordingly? Do you want to be sluggish and fat? Do you want the risk that goes with eating animal products, with their high fat content? Or do you want to look like and be what vegetarians are? Leaner and fitter with a longer anticipated lifespan. It’s never too late to change what you’re doing and increase your chances for a longer, fitter life.