Vitamins: Back Up Your Child’s Diet
You know that it is wise to back up your computer’s hard drive; I recommend backing up your child’s food drive with a daily multivitamin/mineral supplement. This simple habit could improve your child’s health and even intelligence. I’ll explain briefly why I feel strongly about this:
For young babies, breast milk provides an ideal food.
The match between their complex nutritional needs and the milk that moms make is spectacular. In their dance of supply and demand, babies are designed with a drive to enjoy just the right amount and moms are designed to make just the right amount. Even so, I do suggest that many breastfed babies take 200 IU of vitamin D daily, as the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends – but not because of any lack in breast milk. We are built to get vitamin D from sun exposure. Because of the amount of time babies spend indoors, and the depleted-ozone-caused need for sunscreen when babies spend much time outdoors, many babies need an extra boost of this important vitamin, linked not just to building strong bones, but also to preventing breast cancer, colon cancer and Parkinson’s disease.
I used to think that when breast feeding was over, so was the age of perfect foods. Now I understand that children are perfectly designed to thrive on a balanced variety of whole foods: fresh fruits, various veggies, whole grains, beans, nuts, and lean sources of protein and calcium. They are even designed to enjoy just the right amounts of these ideal foods, as long as their food drives aren’t tricked by empty calories, added fats, sweetened drinks, etc. Children should be able to get all of the vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients they need for optimum development by eating the right combinations and right amounts of healthful foods.
In honor of the 
Editor’s note: As we mentioned 
The versatile little soy bean is used to make such delicious foods as tofu, tempeh, miso, and soy milk, and yet it’s misunderstood, especially here in the West. Tofu is derided, scoffed at, and even feared by some, and I’m here to set things right. Our little lesson may seem technical at first, but once you read it, I think you’ll come away with a much better understanding of our high-protein friend and 
Some of the most wonderful aspects of eating a plant-based diet is choosing from the huge variety of foods at your disposal and experiencing a change in your palate. My favorite foods today were definitely not my favorite foods 25 years ago (my father owned ice cream stores), or 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago. It’s so exciting to continually eat better, learn more, and feel healthier all the time. It just 
Mexican Horchata
People often refer to non-dairy milks, such as soy and rice, as "alternatives to" or "substitutes for" cow’s milk, and the dairy industry scathingly calls them "imitation milks." By definition, the words "alternative" and "substitute" imply that the thing they are being measured against is the superior choice; that is, you choose the "substitute" when you can’t get the real thing, and so on.
If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard a thousand times: Eat Your Vegetables! From the day we moved onto solid foods until we moved out of the house, we heard this culinary command at least three times a day. Yet at some point, we tuned it out.
In my 15+ years of 
is the true-life chronicle of author 