by Melissa Diane Smith

(Opinion) – If your New Year’s resolution is to lose excess weight in 2012, don’t make the mistake that virtually everybody makes and follow a weight-loss strategy that’s destined to fail. Most people believe that exercise is the key to losing weight. Unfortunately, that’s dead wrong. It’s nice to believe we can eat anything we want and burn off the calories to lose weight, but that just doesn’t work in practice. As I wrote about before in “Think You Need to Exercise Harder to Lose Weight? Think Again,” research shows that what we eat is the most important factor in whether we lose weight or not.

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Are you starting 2012 off not knowing the basics about genetically modified foods and the health risks associated with them? If so and if you live in Tucson, there’s an easy way to remedy that situation: Attend a couple of short movies.

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by Melissa Diane Smith

The GMO Tipping Point Network of Tucson, a chapter of the Institute for Responsible Technology’s national Tipping Point Network, has joined forces with the GMO Free Project of Tucson, an already established non-profit group, to more efficiently hold events, use social media, educate people, and lead the non-GMO movement in Tucson, especially before and during Non-GMO Month this October. Numerous public events, including public showings of two different movies – “Deconstructing Supper” and “The Future of Food” – in September will be held, as well as our main event online, an Eat GMO Free Challenge on the GMO Free Project of Tucson Facebook page during October.

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by Melissa Diane Smith

There are good reasons for men to pay attention to symptoms early.

Every single person I meet or hear about with gluten intolerance is female. I feel like the only guy who has it, writes one man on a celiac forum. Do men really have gluten intolerance far less often than women, or do they pay less attention to symptoms that are common signs of gluten intolerance?

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I am happy to announce that I am now accepting clients not just from throughout the United States, but also from other English-speaking countries including Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom. I continue to emphasize integrative holistic nutrition focusing on the whole individual, the particular health conditions and health history a person has, the habits/lifestyle he or she has, and the health goals he or she wants to achieve. I specialize in customizing gluten-free diets, grain-free diets, and/or low-carb/low-glycemic diets for the individual and am increasingly educating and counseling clients on the dangers of genetically modified foods (often called GMOs or genetically modified organisms) and how to avoid them in their diets.

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by Melissa Diane Smith

(Opinion) When our founding fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776 covering our rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, I’m sure they could not foresee that the food that sustains us and is essential for those rights would be changed so drastically between then and now by greedy corporations focused on profit. I doubt they could have ever conceived of the idea that the real food they ate for nourishment would be manipulated in such horrendous, harmful, underhanded ways without the people’s knowledge that it puts our very right to Life, Health and the pursuit of Happiness at risk. Back then who could have ever imagined packaged fake foods made with refined flour, sugar and long lists of chemical ingredients that no one can pronounce, meat from animals pumped up with drugs and unnaturally raised on outrageous amounts of toxic corn, and corn and soy sprayed with harmful chemicals and genetically tampered with to withstand those toxic chemicals when everything else sprayed with the chemicals dies?

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by Melissa Diane Smith

(Opinion) There are many positive signs that there is a growing movement of people trying to get healthy: More people are eating gluten free, more are buying organic foods, more are paying out of their own pockets for complimentary and alternative medical treatments, and more are growing their own food in their own gardens.

But amidst those encouraging trends, there are several key health and nutrition concepts that most people, including many who eat gluten free, are missing or have never even heard. Part of my mission for this site is to inform you about health information you don’t hear elsewhere. So, to provide food for thought for the new decade, here is my list of the top concepts people need to understand to protect their health in the next decade and beyond:

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by Melissa Diane Smith

(Opinion) The decade of 2000 to 2009 was a breakthrough decade in our awareness and understanding of gluten intolerance.

In 2000, celiac disease was considered very rare and non-celiac gluten sensitivity was hardly on anyone’s radar screen (except for a few researchers’ and doctors’ – and mine as well. I published Going Against the Grain in 2002.)

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by Melissa Diane Smith

(Opinion) – Confused about the health care debate? Or have a strong viewpoint on one side or another? Either way, consider this: The health care debate really is a disease care debate because nutrition, the key factor that affects our health and prevents disease, isn’t part of anything that is being discussed.

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