It’s another, little-known piece of information to understand about fructose and the health trouble it can cause.

Do you experience diarrhea, gas, bloating, abdominal pain, or other digestive symptoms after eating fruit or honey- or agave-sweetened foods ? If you do, you could have fructose malabsorption.

This condition involves an impairment of absorption of fructose in the small intestine, allowing excess fructose to pass into the large intestine, where fermentation causes intestinal distress. It isn’t the same thing as small intestine bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) or FODMAPS intolerance (intolerance to sugars in addition to fructose), both of which can cause similar symptoms.

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The Chalkboard Mag just named my Going Against the Grain book to its list of its 12 favorite holistic nutrition books to include in your wellness library of reliable resources. “These are your classics, your forever reference bibles and tried-and-tested holistic essentials,” the magazine writes.

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by Melissa Diane Smith, author of Going Against the Grain

Even if you don’t smoke cigarettes, take notice: If you’re having a hard time giving up bread, pasta, and other refined grain products, you’re putting yourself at increased risk of developing lung cancer, according to a recent study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

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by Melissa Diane Smith

Want to avoid laboratory-created, genetically modified organisms? October is Non-GMO Month – the ideal time to follow the Eat GMO-Free Challenge and learn how to remove GMOs from your diet.

A few years ago, I realized that general GMO avoidance guidelines aren’t enough for most people who want to stay away from genetically modified foods. That’s why I created the Eat GMO-Free Challenge—a series of tips to follow each day for 31 days to help people slowly learn how to remove sources of GMOs from their diet (no matter what type of diet they follow!).

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by Melissa Diane Smith

Whether you are aware of it or not, powerful multinational corporations have been exerting undue influence over government and elected officials, and gradually hijacking and taking control of our food system in ways that profit the corporations and sabotage our and our planet’s health. Increasing numbers of people are learning this, getting angry, and taking action against it, and an unprecedented food fight is currently taking place in this country that literally will decide the future of our food.

I wrote about this several years ago, but it’s a message that some people weren’t ready to focus in on then so it bears repeating. What follows is a slightly updated reprint of an article, “An Independence Day Message: Fight for the Right for Real Food,” that I wrote in 2010.

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by Melissa Diane Smith

This is a slightly revised version of an article I wrote in 2012. It is based on a presentation I gave to the Southern Arizona Celiac Support group entitled “It’s Gluten Free, but Is It Healthy?” in January 2012. Many people still don’t know this information, so I think it’s important to run it again.

The gluten-free diet is one of the most talked-about and followed diets these days for good reason: It’s the nutritional answer for the growing number of people who realize they are gluten sensitive. It’s the best example we have of food as our best medicine. The vast majority of people who are gluten sensitive have experienced the amazing feeling of having longstanding bothersome or even debilitating symptoms dramatically improve or completely go away when they eliminate gluten from their diet.

However, for all the good eating gluten free can do for those of us who are gluten sensitive, it can do plenty of harm if we eat gluten free the wrong way. Unfortunately, many people are doing that without realizing it. It’s common for people to experience a big improvement in health when they first go gluten free, and gradually develop unwanted, unhealthy weight gain or new health problems, such as diabetic or prediabetic blood sugar levels, the longer that they eat gluten free. In one study, 82 percent of people who went on a gluten-free diet gained weight in the first two years of eating that way, including 81 percent of the people in the study who were originally overweight.

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Did you see the groundbreaking Dr. Oz show on GMOs and pesticides that aired on September 22, 2014? He came out the strongest against genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that he ever has, and particularly against GM foods engineered to withstand the 2,4-D and glyphosate combination developed by Dow Chemical Company.

He had guests explaining the dangerous “pesticide treadmill” we’re on—something I explain in my new book Going Against GMOs—and he said: “I’m very concerned that I’m at the beginning of a catastrophe—one we don’t have to subject ourselves to.” He also said: “America, we are running out of time…. Let’s let Washington know we mean business when it comes to GMO foods.”

Then he ended up doing something he has never done before, asking the American people to sign a Take Action petition to demand the President step in and oppose the EPA’s approval of the new 2,4-D and glyphosate herbicide combination that new crops are engineered to withstand.

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