Making Health Science Simple

All of us live in modern times, but are from ancient ones. We are billions of years in the making, and have long-evolved natural needs and capacities that lead to and ensure our natural health and fulfilling life. When we live in harmony with our ancient nature today, our health and well-being increase. But when we live contrary to this nature – as we often do in our time for a variety of reasons – our health and quality of life reliably regress, as does that of the people we influence.

Through science, we now know that our natural health is really that straightforward in practice, implying a needed new synthesis of natural and modern life in many areas. We also know that we now have the opportunity in our science-rich times to expand upon and greatly progress our original natural health and vitality. Unfortunately, the science underlying our natural health and its new modern potential can be involved and complex.

Unless we find ways to make key health principles simple and clear to everyone, many of us (and thus all of us) will live with lowered levels of health and quality of life than is possible in the modern age.

An optimal modern natural diet explained simply via OurPlate

With this important idea in mind, HumanaNatura recently began its OurPlate healthy eating campaign, our first public health outreach effort. The OurPlate campaign was intended to immediately and vividly counter the U.S. government’s new and dubious MyPlate nutritional guidelines. But OurPlate has allowed HumanaNatura to do much more than set MyPlate straight. It has demonstrated the power of a simple and actionable summary to communicate and motivate use of the science of optimal Natural Eating in the modern age.

Already, in just a few short months, we have reached thousands of people around the world with the message that science-based and rapidly health-advancing  natural nutrition can be easily understood and practiced every day, remaking our lives and expanding our health perspective. Based on our success, look for more “health science made simple” campaigns from HumanaNatura in the months ahead, as a vital complement to our in-depth, science-leveraging, and revolutionary natural health system.

In the meantime, you can learn more about creating naturally delicious and optimally nutritious meals through OurPlate, HumanaNatura’s simple healthy eating guide and meal rating tool, and experience how this 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, you can explore your many opportunities for new, more natural, and progressively healthier life between meals – via HumanaNatura’s complete and naturally open-ended system for lifelong and lifewide health and fitness. Check out an overview of our health programs at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.

Tell others about HumanaNatura…create new life and health!

World’s Healthiest Cupcakes!

OurPlate Score: 8

There’s not much you can say about most cupcakes that is good from a health standpoint. After all, almost every ingredient that goes into them is unhealthy – carbohydrate and lectin-rich grains, health-destroying sugars, and artery-clogging fats. Cupcakes are small and cute of course, qualities that naturally minimize the amount of unhealthy food involved. But these qualities also prove extra-stimulating to our brains and make cupcakes harder for us to resist. To make this familiar modern food healthy, we really need to throw out all the ingredients and start from scratch, but can keep their appealing form and even use this appeal to encourage healthier snacking.

This  HumanaNatura variation on traditional cupcakes is a far healthier alternative, but keeps their appealing smallness and cuteness. Our “World’s Healthiest Cupcakes” begin with a base of chopped greens and then add an appetizing mix of natural foods and tastes, in this case parboiled broccoli bits, a small wedge of cucumber, a sliver or two of red onion, a few blueberries and pearl tomatoes, and a bit of chopped dates. The cupcakes are lightly dressed and finished with parsley, paprika, coriander, and black pepper. Have one anytime. Seconds or thirds? Sure, why not!

Learn more about creating naturally delicious and optimally nutritious meals through OurPlate, HumanaNatura’s simple healthy eating guide and meal rating tool, and experience how this 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, you can explore your many opportunities for new, more natural, and healthier life between meals – via HumanaNatura’s complete and naturally open-ended system for lifelong and lifewide health and fitness. Check out an overview of our health programs at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.

Tell others about HumanaNatura…encourage healthy new life!

Spicy Sliced Pork Salad Meal!

OurPlate Score: 10

Eating optimally the HumanaNatura  way and using HumanaNatura’s OurPlate guidelines couldn’t be easier. This delicious salad meal took minutes to prepare, uses simple ingredients, reflects our best science about healthy nutrition, and is a joy to serve and have at mealtime. It begins with a cold-sliced and then gently re-warmed fillet of pork, one that was previously pan-cooked with red and black pepper, turmeric, ginger, and finely diced onion. This lean and spicy protein is combined with a generous bed of arugula, diced cucumber, orange wedges, quartered grape tomatoes, and just a bit of thinly sliced raw red onion. It’s a rich combination of tastes that is garnished simply with pistachios, parsley, coriander, and black pepper. A fast, attractive, satisfying, and extra healthy meal – enjoy!

Learn more about creating naturally delicious and optimally nutritious meals through OurPlate, HumanaNatura’s simple healthy eating guide and meal rating tool, and experience how this 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, you can explore your many opportunities for new, more natural, and healthier life between meals – via HumanaNatura’s complete and naturally open-ended system for lifelong and lifewide health and fitness. Check out an overview of our health programs at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.

Tell others about HumanaNatura…encourage healthy new life!

Healthy Cross-Quarter Greetings!

Greetings from HumanaNatura at the cross-quarter! In the natural year, we are halfway between the relative calm and balance of the last equinox and the more extended and evocative time that is the coming solstice.

Right now, it is a great time to make added progress on your Natural Life Plan, so that you can celebrate your life and health successes as fully as possible when the solstice arrives.

If you have not yet created a Natural Life Plan – guiding your use and expression of the third HumanaNatura technique of Natural Living – the links we have provided will take you to our planning worksheets and seven-step planning process. Together, these resources will help you begin more intentionally health-centered and progressive life in the days and weeks ahead.

Our newest community newsletter was released today as well, which is published eight times yearly in harmony with the natural year. To receive future HumanaNatura newsletters and learn about the benefits of membership in our global practitioner-activist network, go to Join HumanaNatura.

Tell your friends about HumanaNatura…promote new life and health!

Stress, DNA Health & Aging

It is well-understood that chronic stress is associated with premature aging. We can observe this phenomenon for ourselves and scientists now understand some, though not all, of the mechanisms by which physical, physiological, and psychological stressors accelerate the cellular and tissue degeneration that accompanies all forms of aging. Perhaps best understood of these mechanisms are the effects of stress-response hormones such as adrenaline, which have been shown to alter and impair physiological functioning and anatomical integrity when they chronically (and thus unnaturally) circulate at high levels.

Visible stress effects after 2.5 years as U.S. President

A new study published in Molecular Psychiatry by Duke University scientists sheds added light on what may prove to be an equally important mechanism for turning chronic stress into unnatural degeneration and aging – a reduction in DNA integrity, resulting in an inability of cells throughout the body to reproduce properly over time.

Natural Rainbow Salad Meal!

OurPlate Score: 10

Need a little inspiration to begin eating optimally the HumanaNatura  way and using HumanaNatura’s essential OurPlate guidelines? Here is a gorgeous example of the OurPlate approach in action, using simple natural foods and easy preparation methods. This colorful and delicious salad meal starts with a large green foundation that includes arugula, julienne-cut celery and cucumber, and a slightly cooled saute of broccoli florets and red onion. For a protein, we’ve used a generous pan-seared cut of ahi tuna seasoned simply with garlic and onion bits, and a shake of red pepper. The meal is garnished with quartered grape tomatoes, pistachios, parsley, paprika, coriander, lemon, and black pepper. Easy, delicious, fairly low-cost, and super-healthy – enjoy!

Learn more about creating naturally delicious and optimally nutritious meals through OurPlate, HumanaNatura’s simple healthy eating guide and meal rating tool, and experience how this 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, you can explore your many opportunities for new, more natural, and healthier life between meals – via HumanaNatura’s complete and naturally open-ended system for lifelong and lifewide health and fitness. Check out an overview of our health programs at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.

Tell others about HumanaNatura…encourage healthy new life!

Lean, Fast & Easy Salad Meal!

OurPlate Score: 10

Want help eating naturally the HumanaNatura  way and using HumanaNatura’s OurPlate guidelines? Here’s an optimally-healthy example of a HumanaNatura salad meal made in ten minutes using simple natural foods that are or should be in all our refrigerators. It begins with a generous bed of greens and a mix of diced cucumber and orange, halved pearl tomatoes, and thin-sliced and cross-cut red onion. This extra-healthy salad meal foundation is paired with a sliced sautéed turkey breast, and then it’s all garnished with pistachios, parsley, paprika, coriander, anise, and black pepper. Lean, fast, easy, and delicious – and a gateway to progressive life and health the HumanaNatura way!

Learn more about creating naturally delicious and optimally nutritious meals through OurPlate, HumanaNatura’s simple healthy eating guide and meal rating tool, and experience how this 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, you can explore your many opportunities for new, more natural, and healthier life between meals – via HumanaNatura’s complete and naturally open-ended system for lifelong and lifewide health and fitness. Check out an overview of our health programs at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.

Tell others about HumanaNatura…encourage healthy new life!

Beyond ‘Hybrid’ Natural Eating!

OurPlate Score: 10

Are you beginning to eat the HumanaNatura way and using HumanaNatura’s OurPlate guidelines to plan your meals? In practice, many of us start to eat more naturally with a ‘hybrid’ approach. By this, we mean using more natural foods, but still thinking about and organizing meals along traditional lines. As examples, we might replace grains with a serving of fruit, or starchy vegetables with a small salad on our dinner plate. These steps make our meals much healthier, but still pay homage to an approach to eating, and to living, from an earlier and less healthy period in our history.

A more advanced and tradition-transcending alternative is to begin fresh and build our meals in new ways that make the most of natural human foods – nutritionally and aesthetically – which is a key idea behind HumanaNatura’s advocacy of salad meals. This added step moves us beyond hybrid eating, and may help to reveal other traditional patterns of thinking and action that hold our health and lives back. With salad meals, we don’t have a salad with our meals, we have a salad for our meals. It’s a change that can have important health impacts and lead the way to new health insights in other areas of our lives.

Today’s inviting salad meal uses a modern and more optimal approach to healthy natural eating. It starts with a spicy stir-fry of pork and shrimp, seasoned with turmeric, ginger, and red and black pepper. This delicious double protein is paired with a bed of arugula and a mix of chopped cucumber, julienne-cut mango, and pearl tomatoes…and then it’s all garnished with pistachios, parsley, paprika, coriander, lemon, and black pepper. Naturally yummy, super-healthy, and made in and encouraging a progressive new overall pattern of life and health!

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. Check out our overview at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.

Tell your friends about HumanaNatura… encourage new health!

Red & Green Tuna Salad Meal!

OurPlate Score: 10

Another terrific salad meal made the HumanaNatura way and using HumanaNatura’s OurPlate guidelines! This meal is extra healthy because it uses fish instead of meat, helping us to follow HumanaNatura’s recommendation to limit red meat and eggs to no more than 25 percent of our total protein.  Though the fish used is from high in the marine food chain and thus slightly less desirable than simpler seafood varieties like shrimp, scallops, and baby squid (since they generally have less mercury and other accumulated toxins), game-fish like swordfish, tuna, and salmon are still a healthy, lean, and nutrient-rich protein choice when used in moderation.

This delicious and satisfying salad meal begins with a spicy pan-seared tuna steak, seasoned with turmeric, onion and garlic bits, and black pepper. It’s paired with a green salad base and extra red veggie and fruit mix that includes a half-plate of mixed greens, diced cucumber, quartered grape tomatoes, and sliced fresh strawberries. Before serving, we’ve garnished it all with slivered almonds, parsley, paprika, coriander, anise seeds, and black pepper. A great way to begin, pause from, or finish your day!

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. Check out our overview at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.

Tell your friends about HumanaNatura… encourage new health!

Natural Limits of Red Meat

The idea that there are natural limits to the amount and type of red meat we consume remains controversial, even as many of us now understand this is likely the case. In our time, thoughtful people remain unconvinced that there are significant natural limits to red meat intake, often citing high meat consumption in aboriginal populations and the fact that our body weight can be held at natural levels via a diet that is high in red meat but low in carbohydrates. At the opposite end of the spectrum, others suggest that red meat should not be in our diet at all, and even that a vegan or animal-free diet best optimizes our health.

Since neither of these opposing points of view are supported by a preponderance of science (see, for example, Low-Carb Diets Linked to Atherosclerosis and Critical Look at the China Study), the more pressing question is instead how much and what types of red meat are optimal and best advance our health and longevity. We know that some amount of red meat is natural in humans, a regular part of the diets of many long-lived groups of people today, and potentially offers some health benefits - greatly increasing B-vitamins and minerals like iron, for example. But a wide variety of research suggests that too much red meat, especially of the processed variety, is significantly health-reducing. But how much and what forms of red meat are too much?