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Celery Juice: What does the Science Say?

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Celery juice is one of the most popular and heavily Instagramed recent health trends. Suddenly, it seems like everyone is guzzling celery juice, and proclaiming that it can cure every ailment from acne to cancer to infertility. 

Confused, as I couldn’t remember ever hearing about any benefits of celery juice during my master’s in nutrition program, I decided to take a deep dive into investigating the trend and truly examine what – if any – evidence there was behind this wellness trend.

So today I’m spilling the tea on celery juice. I’m a bit anxious to post this as I fear some people may get upset with me; after all, links to peer-reviewed literature are way less sexy than colors of pretty pastel green juice and promises of perfect health. 

But after a lot of internet digging, database searching, and textbook consulting, I have come to the conclusion that yes, celery, consumed as part of a robust, diverse diet, can be healthful food. And yes, it has some healthful plant compounds…as do many other plant foods. And those celebrated in celery are not exclusive to the vegetable.

Importantly, there is scant evidence to support the alleged health benefit of consuming celery juice in humans. As far as I can tell, the trend was started by someone with no actual nutrition or medical background information, and brought to the mainstream by often as inadequately-educated health influencers.

Now, if you’re interested in joining me into the deep throws of my research journey, I’ve explained some of what I found while research celery juice in the sections below, detailing everything from healthful compounds truly found in celery, to dangers of overconsumption.

Disclaimer: As always, this is general information intended for healthy adults. Your needs may vary based on medical status, lifestyle, or life-stage. Please never replace generalized health information you’ve read online with individualized clinical care.

Don’t like reading? Take a listen to the video chat here (and/or scroll to the bottom for embedded video).

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Vegan Snickers Cups

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Dates (the food) are my favorite. Well, maybe not my favorite ever, but I’d put them on my top 10 list of foods. I love to eat them in date-caramel truffle form, stuffed with nut butter and dipped in chocolate, and/or in the form of these Vegan Snickers Cups.

I bought these extra magnificent dates at Costco recently and have been itchin’ to let them shine in some date caramel type of treat.

I was going to make some scrumptious bars (which now I still want to…maybe next week…) but then randomly had an urge to make Vegan Snickers Cups, aka date caramel, salty crunchy nuts, and nut butter, gently enrobed in chocolate.

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How Much Fiber Do I Need? And How Can I Increase My Fiber Intake?

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An Instagram follower recently asked me the following question when I was collecting questions for a Q&A: How much fiber do you actually need? And how can you make sure you’re getting enough fiber? I thought addressing this question and suggesting ways to incorporate fiber into your diet could make a useful blog post. Fiber is an essential part of healthy diet, and most Americans don’t get enough.

So here we are today. I have a yummy recipe coming tomorrow and the long-awaited post on celery juice coming Tuesday (Please pardon my delay with that one; it just takes a considerable amount of time/energy/effort to thoroughly research nutrition-related topics I haven’t extensively specifically studied before).

Okay! On to fiber:

*Disclaimer: As always, this is general information intended for healthy adults. Your needs may vary based on medical status, lifestyle, or life-stage. Please never replace generalized health information you’ve read online with individualized clinical care.

First of all, what is fiber?

Dietary fiber is substance derived primarily from plant material that is composed of non-starchy complex carbohydrates and lignin. Functional fiber also consists of non-digestible carbohydrates that have been isolated, extracted, or manufactured that have been shown to have beneficial psychological effects.

To put it simply, dietary fiber is naturally found in foods, and functional fiber is often added to foods. Both are beneficial to human health.

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Copycat Vegan Panera Strawberry Poppyseed Salad Recipe (with dressing!)

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My favorite Panera menu item of all times is probably the Panera Strawberry Poppyseed Salad! The summertime salad is a Panera classic with a cult-like following. And for good reason. The Panera Strawberry Poppyseed Salad (or ‘straw pop’ as my friend Sarah and I have dubbed it) is a seasonal slam dunk.

I had this idea for a Summertime Salad Series here on the blog – where I share one simple, tasty salad recipe per week for the rest of summer. And I could think of no better way to kick it off than with this vegan copycat Panera Strawberry Poppyseed Salad.

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Blog Anniversary Reflections and a Q&A

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Hey everyone! Today is my 5 year blog anniversary. Wow. I simultaneously can and cannot believe it. If you want to really lol your pants off, please feel free to check out my very first post.

I cringe at a lot of my old work – the bad photos, the sometimes unvegan recipes, the mish-mosh of trying out a million things, the bad advice…all of it stinks! But that’s part of life you know? You live and you learn and you evolve and improve.

I finally decided last week Monday that I love writing, making videos, and sharing both science and my life with others and needed to stop with the excuses and step up my freakin’ game already. I wanted to take my amateur, kinda icky looking site and polish the crap out of it until I felt proud of being associated with it.

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Let’s Talk About Dietary Supplements (And what precautions to take when they are marketed to you all over social media)

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Hello to my wonderful friends from all corners of the internet! Today we are going to be chatting about dietary supplements. I get a lot of questions from friends, family members, and followers about supplements. Should you take a multivitamin? Which brand? Do supplements work? What about if I workout? Do diet pills work? Etc etc. I get it. There’s a lot of confusion out there.

And then, of course, I frequently see people on my Facebook feed, or influencers on my Instagram suggested page, selling all sorts of lovely supplements, making various promises that range from weight loss to improved brain function to increased muscle strength to better sleep. Suddenly it seems like many people feel well-qualified to give dietary advice and sell supplements!

There’s also this extremely bizarre-to-me trend of influencers ingesting all sorts of pre-workout powdery concoctions, bulking up frothy beverages with all sorts of mystical potions, and getting IV “vitamin cleanses,” and acting as if these activities are not only glamorous, but also totally normal ways to improve one’s health.

All of this adds to the noise and confusions about what – if any – supplements are the best for consumers to take. And with the multi-billion dollar supplement industry continuing to grow at a rapid pace, it seems like every day we’re infiltrated with advertisement for a new “essential” supplement to add to our daily routines.

If you know me at all, you know that the spread of illegitimate nutrition information and trends is one of my biggest peeves. So rather than continuing to suppress all my feelings, or end up thrashing out irrationally, I thought it was time to use my platform to shed some truth about nutrition-related issues. Including supplements.

So let’s get into it. The highs, lows, unknowns, and in between of dietary supplements.

Disclaimer: As always, this is general information intended for healthy adults who are not pregnant or breastfeeding. Your needs may vary based on medical status, lifestyle, or life-stage. Please never replace generalized health information you’ve read online with individualized clinical care.

No One Regulates Supplements Before They Hit Shelves

If there’s one thing you should be aware of as a consumer, it’s that no one regulates supplements before they hit the market. That’s right – no one – not the FDA, USDA, etc – regulates dietary or herbal supplements for quality, safety, or purity before you’re able to pick up a bottle at your local drug store.

The FDA does prohibit companies from marketing adulterated or misbranded supplements, meaning they have a legislation in place that prohibits tainted products from hitting store shelves, and outlaws manufacturers from selling products that aren’t as advertised. However, since there is no pre-sale testing required for a product to hit the market, a lot of stuff very easily slips through the cracks.

That means you could, quite literally, be spending your hard earned money on sugar pills, pills that don’t actually contain the amount of supplements advertised on the bottle, or contaminated supplements that contain all sorts of unwanted components, including prescription drugs and heavy metals. All of these have happened, and all of them are worrisome.

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Late June Vegan Eats

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Hey everyone! I am writing this post from my phone while Millie sunbathes in the grass as a break on our walk. Anyways, let’s get onto some recent vegan eats, leaving off where this post left off! Whoop!

Vegan Doughnut from Cranky Al’s

My sister got me a vegan doughnut from Cranky Al’s. It was my first ever Cranky Al’s doughnut. I’m not the biggest doughnut fanatic but for some reason I am always trying to like them (do you know what I mean? Or have foods like that?).

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Vegan and Gluten-Free Recipe Roundup

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Hey everyone! I had a request to share some vegan and gluten-free recipes from an Instagram follower. So, I thought I’d share a roundup of some of my favorite vegan and naturally gluten-free recipes that already exist on this blog.

Also, this is the perfect moment to introduce my new recipes page! You can now very easily search by popular category or for a specific recipe. Check it out!

I do not follow a gluten-free diet; however, I often cook gluten-free by coincidence and am always open to trying gluten-free products and/or experimenting with gluten-free ingredients.

Without further adieu, here is round-up of some kbaked vegan and gluten-free recipes!

Vegan Blueberry Flax Breakfast Muffins

The most popular recipe on my blog! Made with oat flour and flax, these Vegan Blueberry Flax Muffins are naturally gluten-free.

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What Is PM 2.5?

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If you read or watch any news about pollution, you have probably seen or heard the phrase “PM 2.5.” But what is PM2.5? And how does it impact human health?

In today’s post, I’m going to feature some more environmental health-focused writing. I do a fair share of environmental health writing, but don’t do it very often on this platform. But I want to give it a whirl! So today, right here right now on my blog, we’re going to take a look at what PM stands for, what it is exactly, and why it’s relevant to human health. Get excited!

PM, Defined:

First, let’s start off by defining “PM,” which stands for Particulate Matter. Particulate matter is an air pollution term for a mixture of extremely small solid particles and liquid droplets found in the air, made up of a variety of compounds including acids (such as nitrates and sulfates), metals, organic chemicals, dust, and soil.

Where does PM come from?

PM and PM precursors (which later form PM) come from a variety of human-caused sources, including motor vehicles, power plants, factories, dry cleaners, gas stations. There are also a couple natural sources of PM, including PM emitted from volcanoes and wildfires.

Size Matters:

The size of PM is directly linked to the potential for PM to cause health impacts. Generally speaking, the smaller the particle, the deeper it can penetrate into your lungs, and thus, the more likely it is to do damage. Particles smaller than 10 micrometers in diameter are focused upon, due to their potential to be inhaled and cause detrimental health impacts.

PM 2.5 versus PM 10:

‘PM 10’ refers to dust particles 2.5-10 micrometers in diameter. These particles are smaller than the width of a human hair and can be inhaled.

Particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter are known as “PM 2.5,” and are too small to see with the naked eye. PM 2.5 can penetrate deeper into the lungs than PM 10, and thus is more likely to get into the blood supply and be carried throughout the body. Likely due to their high potential to cause negative health impacts, they are the most talked about in popular media.

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Nutrition Chat: Facts About Dietary Fats

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Everything you need to know about dietary fats.

Hello friends! Today I’m going to be adding to my “macronutrient” category of info, by telling you what you need to know about dietary fats and nutrition. Dietary fat is one of the three essential macronutrients, along with protein (which I wrote all about here), and carbohydrates. There is constant confusion about what’s good and bad in terms of fat, so I thought I’d break down the current state of science for all my lovely readers.

Side note: welcome to my new site! I will slowly be updating all of the previous posts to look more polished with printable recipe cards, and will be working on a more user-friendly recipe tab page, and pumping out a lot more nutrition and environmental health science-based content! Whoo! I appreciate your patience as I get the page to exactly where I want it aesthetic/interface-wise, as I’m a one-woman show without the budget for a web-designer over here :-).

What even is “Fat?”

Now back to dietary fats! As I mentioned above, fats are one of three macronutrients (along with protein and carbohydrate). Macronutrients are what make up the human diet and give the body energy, meaning they have calories. This is how they differ from micronutrients (like vitamins and minerals), which are also essential, but do not contain energy (calories).

As I mention in this article, fats contain 9 calories per gram. This makes them the most calorically dense macronutrient, as both protein and carbohydrates contain 4 calories per gram.

Fats, also known as “lipids” in much of the science world, are comprised of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms, with both hydrophilic (water-loving) and a hydrophobic (water adverse) ends.

Lipids are important structural molecules in the body, and serve a variety of functions, including making up the phospholipid bilayer that surrounds every cell. Lipids are also important for making hormones and steroids, which serve important cell-to-cell communication functions. They also serve a role in the growth and development of tissues.

How Much Fat Should I Eat?

Dietary fats were once demonized as “low fat” diets took over in the 80s and 90s. It seems these days, fats are making a comeback. Some people even take it to the extreme with the “keto” trend (which I will devote an entire separate post to talking about), and consume lots of fat and protein and minimal carbohydrates.

Yet, fat is still often feared by many dieters hoping to loose weight, and many products still market their “low fat” content as an asset. So it is often, understandably confusing, for most people to know much fat they should eat.

According to the Institute of Medicine, fat should make up 20-35% of total caloric intake for healthy adults, meaning roughly 1/5-1/3 of the calories you take in should come from fat.

Obviously, different individuals in different stages of life with varying medical conditions may have slightly different needs. But for most, 20-35% of dietary intake from fat is considered optimal.

So What Fats Are Not Good For Human Health?

I don’t often make statements about thing being “bad” for you (as I believe deeming foods ‘good’ and ‘bad’ oversimplifies things much of the time), but I can tell you this: there is substantial evidence that trans fatty acids (aka ‘trans fat’) raises LDL cholesterol and is detrimental to heart health, and considered a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases and stroke.

There is also speculation that trans fat impacts the metabolic system and may be linked to insulin resistance and type II diabetes. The lack of certainty due to these later two points may be due to differences in study designs and the inherent difficulty of studying and measuring the human diet.

But one thing seems quite certain: trans fats are linked to coronary heart disease. And they should be avoided, whenever possible.

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