Scientists may disagree on what’s so good about plants—the antioxidants? the fiber? the omega-3 fatty acids?—but they do agree that they’re probably really good for you and certainly can’t hurt. There are scores of studies demonstrating that a diet rich in vegetables and fruits reduces the risk of dying from all the Western diseases; in countries where people eat a pound or more of vegetables and fruits a day, the rate of cancer is half what it is in the United States. Also, by eating a diet that is primarily plant based, you’ll be consuming far fewer calories, since plant foods—with the exception of seeds, including grains and nuts—are typically less “energy dense” than the other things you eat.

      These days this is easier said than done, especially when seventeen thousand new products show up in the supermarket each year. But most of these items don’t deserve to be called food—I call them edible foodlike substances. They’re highly processed concoctions designed by food scientists, consisting mostly of ingredients derived from corn and soy that no normal person keeps in the pantry, and they contain chemical additives with which the human body has not been long acquainted. Today much of the challenge of eating well comes down to choosing real food and avoiding these industrial novelties.

Food Rules

An Eater’s Manual

Michael Pollan

(New York: Penguin Books, 2009.)

Introduction

      Eating in our time has gotten complicated—needlessly so, in my opinion. Most of us have come to rely on experts of one kind or another to tell us how to eat—doctors and diet books, media accounts of the latest findings in nutritional science, government advisories and food pyramids, the proliferating health claims on food packages. We may not always heed these experts’ advice, but their voices are in our heads every time we order from a menu or wheel down the aisle in the supermarket. Also in our heads today resides an astonishing amount of biochemistry. How odd is it that everybody now has at least a passing acquaintance with words like “antioxidant,” “saturated fat,” “omega-3 fatty acids,” “carbohydrates,” “polyphenols,” “folic acid,” “gluten,” and “probiotics”? It’s gotten to the point where we don’t see foods anymore but instead look right through them to the nutrients (good and bad) they contain, and of course to the calories—all these invisible qualities in our food that, properly understood, supposedly hold the secret to eating well.

      But for all the scientific and pseudoscientific food baggage we’ve taken on in recent years, we still don’t know what we should be eating. Should we worry more about the fats or the carbohydrates? Then what about the “good” fats? Or the “bad” carbohydrates, like high-fructose corn syrup? What’s the deal with artificial sweeteners? Is it really true that this breakfast cereal will improve my son’s focus at school or that other cereal will protect me from a heart attack? And when did eating a bowl of breakfast cereal become a therapeutic procedure?

      A few years ago, feeling as confused as everyone else, I set out to get to the bottom of a simple question: What should I eat? I’m not a nutrition expert or a scientist, just a curious journalist hoping to answer a straightforward question for myself and my family.

      The deeper I delved into the confused and confusing thicket of nutritional science, the simpler the picture gradually became. I learned that in fact science knows a lot less about nutrition than you would expect—that in fact nutrition science is, to put it charitably, a very young science. It’s still trying to figure out exactly what happens in your body when you sip a soda, or what is going on in a carrot to make it so good for you, or why in the world you have so many neurons—brain cells!—in your stomach, of all places. Nutrition science, which after all only got started less than two hundred years ago, is today approximately where surgery was in the year 1650.

      But if I’ve learned volumes about all we don’t know about nutrition, I’ve also learned a small number of very important things we do know about food and health. This is what I meant when I said the picture got simpler the deeper I went.

    
  There are basically two important things you need to know about the links between diet and health, two facts that are not in dispute. All the contending parties in the nutrition wars agree on them. And, even more important for our purposes, these facts are sturdy enough that we can build a sensible diet upon them. Here they are:

      Fact 1. Populations that eat a so-called Western diet—generally defined as a diet consisting of lots of processed foods and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of refined grains, lots of everything except vegetables, fruits, and whole grains—invariably suffer from high rates of the so-called Western diseases: obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Virtually all of the obesity and type 2 diabetes, 80 percent of the cardiovascular disease, and more than a third of all cancers can be linked to this diet. Four of the top ten killers in America are chronic diseases linked to this diet. The arguments in nutritional science are not about this well-established link; rather, they are all about identifying the culprit nutrient in the Western diet that might be responsible for chronic diseases. This diet, for whatever reason, is the problem.

Oatmeal is very beneficial for your skin. It cleanses your skin without irritating and drying it. It is the reason why oat meal is used as a cleanser mask and scrub. It is an excellent multi- purpose skincare treatment which relieves dryness and maintains the balance of moisture content in the skin.


Benefits Of Oatmeal For The Face:

• It helps in relieving the dryness from the skin.
• It helps in maintaining the natural moisture balance in the skin which aids in curing minor irritations of the skin.
• It is used as a skin cleanser because it removes surface dirt and impurities and provides gentle exfoliation, leaving the skin clean smooth and soft.
• It is used as a face mask because cleanse deep pores without irritating and drying out the skin.
  

Plain Oatmeal served with milk and honey for breakfast is one of my favorites, and I know its healthy and good for me. But, what are the benefits of oatmeal?

Healthy Hearts:

By combining soluble and insoluble fibre, oatmeal lowers bad cholesterol. Daily intake of 3 gms of soluble fiber from oatmeal reduces risk of heart diseases.

Incredible as it may seem, water is quite possibly the single most important catalyst in losing weight and keeping it off. Although most of us take for granted, water may be the only true "magic potion" for permanent weight loss.
Water supresses the appetite naturally and helps the body metabolize stored fat. Studies have shown that a decrease in water intake will cause fat deposits to increase, while an increase in water intake can actually reduce fat deposits.
Here's why: The kidneys can't function properly without enough water. When they don't work to capacity, some of their load is dumped onto the liver. One of the liver's primary functions is to metabolize stored fat into usable energy for the body. But if the liver has to do some of the kidney's work it can't

I love lemon. I love lemon so much that I actually eat and enjoy the taste of the rind (limes too!). Lemon is one of my favorite fruits, and as a result, I use it for a lot of things. My most favorite ways to enjoy lemon, include:

• Drinking it in my water: I carry a CamelBak bottle filled with lemon water with me all day.
• Drinking it with tea and honey: It is a great cure for a sore throat.
• Chicken Piccata: My recipe is always beefed up with lemon, and has actually been called 'infamously lemony.'
• With Olive Oil: Reminiscent of Greece, this combination on salads and fish is light, healthy and flavorful.

Although lemon is used widely in foods and recipes for flavor and seasoning, lemon can also provide a host of health benefits:

1. Detox and Beauty: Adding lemon to water, and drinking the combo throughout the day is great for your body and for your skin.

The health benefits of water melon include kidney disorders, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart care, heat stroke, macular degeneration, impotence, etc.
What’s so much the fuss about this Water Melon? Isn’t it nothing more than a ball full of water? Okay! I know there cannot be a more refreshing thing than a big, chilled wedge of water melon in tropical summers and it sports a stylish scientific name of Citrullus Lanatus. But then there are others too. So, what’s special about it? I am afraid, there are lots of them.
How about having a refreshing glimpse of them? Given below are some health benefits of water melon:

• Kidney Disorders: Water Melon contains a lot of potassium, which is very helpful in cleaning or washing off the toxic depositions in the kidneys. Moreover, it is helpful in reducing concentration of uric acid in the blood, thereby reducing the chances of kidney damages and formation of renal calculi in it. Added to these, being high in water content, it induces frequent urinating, which is again helpful for cleaning of kidneys. Also, the anti oxidants present in ensure good health of kidneys for a long.