Food Facts

Research has found that the intense taste of spices is associated with high concentrations of antioxidants and other powerful substances that have been proven to stop cancer in its tracks. Here are seven common kitchen spices that are among the top natural cancer-fighting compounds available. Most of them are probably already in your home and ready to use.

One new study recently — published in the peer-reviewed journal Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism — found that many artificial sweeteners, acting on the hormones, can actually increase the craving for sugars, leading to an increased risk for obesity and subsequent complications like diabetes and heart disease. While more research is certainly called for on this subject, avoiding the following sweeteners is truly a healthy choice.

I have long stated that if you want to be optimally healthy, you should spend 90 percent of your food budget on whole foods, and only 10 percent on processed foods. Unfortunately, most Americans currently do the opposite, and their health suffers as a result.

With most foods, the closer they are to nature, the better. It's possible to have some processed foods that are still healthy; for instance, frozen green beans have been "processed" as has butter, grass-fed ground beef, or freshly prepared almond butter.