Weird night in Europe recently, according to the New York Times:

What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.

According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers wandered just over a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

Juxtaposed against that black comedy in the paper's Most Emailed list was the story of another kind of invasion: the nightly encroachment of the "family bed babies" into mommy and daddy's sheets and blankets. For some reason, the article relates, the 1990s were the dawn of the co-sleeping era, when exhausted parents bought a few hours of sleep by sharing their beds, their warmth, and their heartbeats with their babies. The price – no more sex for the parents – was deemed a steep but fair deal.

Now, we're told, as those co-sleeping kids grow into large, gangly collections of limbs, they still insist upon invading their parents' beds nightly. And parental defenses appear inadequate: buying fancy Harry Potter-inspired 4-posters and Cinderella beds may delight the kids while the sun's up, but at night the family bed is the only hot spot in town.

Keep Reading…

Actually, I'm as wacky as the next guy, so it's kind of surprising that I didn't really get into a book called The Isaiah Effect, which combines ancient Essene prophecies with modern quantum physics to explain how we can rediscover the lost arts of prophesy and prayer to avoid global destruction and instead usher in an era of peace and love.

Probably I'm down on the book because the author, Gregg Braden, was unshaven in the photo on the back cover, and he looked pretty good. Me, when I don't shave for a day or two, I could audition for "third hoodlum" in a Jackie Chan movie. 

Keep Reading…

Q: What are your thoughts on wheatgrass juice?  The stuff I have read is pretty powerful, but it's hard to know who to believe, as you know.

A: Two things about wheatgrass:

Keep Reading…

Take a few seconds and think about the word "disease." What comes to mind?

Most of us think of a "disease" as a fixed state of decreased health. It's something that can be "caused" and sometimes "cured" or "managed," but it's definitely an "it."  A thing. A noun. Something that either exists or doesn't exist.

Big deal, you say? Howie's been reading the dictionary again. Who cares?

In a meeting with T. Colin Campbell (author of The China Study, the only book ever pitched on bended knee by Gary Player live on the Golf Channel), a bunch of us were examining the current model of health care. Dr. Campbell, who has made a career of looking at the obvious and seeing trends that nobody else notices, threw out a comment that our prevailing definition of "disease" is very limiting, and actually leads us to do things that don't really work very well.

What is he talking about?  Keep Reading…

Andrea Beaman is one of the most sensible and kind voices out there on the topic of feeding and treating yourself right. What other health and nutrition guru would admit to smoking the occasional cigarette (but only after a couple of drinks!), and explain it in a way that shows us how to quit all our unhealthy addictions?

Andrea was FitFam's guest on the December Member Call. Listen online (60 min) or download the mp3 below to discover:

• several healthy holiday treats
• whether short fasts during the holiday season will make things better or worse
• the mindset shift that allows anyone to "find the time" to prepare healthy food every day
• three convenience foods that can turn anyone into a healthy short-order cook on a moment's notice
• how to quit smoking by not quitting smoking
• the secret to breaking food addictions without struggling or feeling deprived

Q: Is it better to eat several small meals throughout the day ("grazing"), or two or three larger ones, assuming I'm getting the same number of calories either way?

A: Let's say you run a business, and one of the things you need to do is check and respond to email. If you're like almost everyone I know, you get lots and lots of emails. More than you want. More than you know what to do with. And more than you can effectively respond to with 100% accuracy and attention.

You can't just stop doing email. If you didn't communicate effectively with folks, you'd be out of business. But you can't just do email either. You do the minimum to keep you functioning, and then spend the rest of your time doing more strategic work.

Keep Reading…

Q: I want to get my boys off the fast foods, but I'm not ready to start learning how to cook. What ingredients should I definitely stay away from  And are there any ingredients that sound bad but are OK?  Keep Reading…

In today's Disease-Proof Blog, Gerald Pugliese writes in a sad and amazed tone about the American love affair with fried food:

America is obsessed with fried food! And you don’t need to be a health expert to see it. Fried and deep-fried foods are all around us, from French fries to deep-fried Twinkies, Oreos, and Coca-Cola—like drinking it isn’t bad enough. Yes America, we’ve got a frying fetish!

Never is it more evident than at local carnivals and state fairs.

Well, your intrepid FitFam blogger has done the unthinkable: I went undercover to the North Carolina State Fair last month, and managed to capture these exclusive photos of ACTUAL signs advertising ACTUAL fried foods that I could smell, see, and get that tickling feeling in the back of my throat that preceeds an urgent need to vomit.

I'm no Morgan Spurlock, willing to actually put it into my body, but I still think it took a lot of intestinal fortitude (literally!) to take these pictures. Gerald, please sit down before viewing…  Keep Reading…

Students in England's state schools are up in arms over the government ban on junk food lunches, according to an article in today's New York Times:

Five months after the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver succeeded in cajoling, threatening and shaming the British government into banning junk food from its school cafeterias, many schools are learning that you can lead a child to a healthy lunch, but you can’t make him eat.

The fancy new menu at the Rawmarsh School here?

“It’s rubbish,” said Andreas Petrou, an 11th grader… “We didn’t get a choice,” he said of the school food. “They just told us we were having it.”

Goodness! What is this evil and draconian menu foisted upon the helpless children of the Empire?

The government’s regulations, which took effect in September, have banished from school cafeterias the cheap, instantly gratifying meals that children love by default: the hamburgers, the French fries, the breaded, deep-fried processed meat, the sugary drinks.

Now schools have to provide at least two portions of fresh fruit and vegetables a day for each child, serve fish at least once a week, remove salt from lunchroom tables, limit fried foods to two servings a week and cut out candy, soda and potato chips altogether.

Why is this so objectionable? Two reasons:  Keep Reading…

Are you ever confused about what makes up a healthy diet?

Have you ever heard mixed messages from doctors, from experts, from the media?

This confusion is no accident – it's exactly what is intended by the sickness profiteers – the people whose economic fortunes depend on your inability to tell healthy from unhealthy food.

I've written an article that sheds a lot of light on the subject, and explains the truth about one particularly horrible illness: cancer. It contains information that you will have a very hard time finding in the mainstream media, and shows you how to make yourself and your kids virtually cancer-proof.

Download the article by right-clicking here.