Artichokes have been around for a long time. Originally found around the Mediterranean Sea, they were used by the ancient Romans to treat poor digestion.
Somewhere along the line, the Romans realized artichokes also made great appetizers, and they have been a traditional Italian food ever since.

The Latin name for this greenish-purple vegetable is Cynara scolymus. Sometimes called French or Globe artichoke, it’s the flower of the plant that is sold in grocery stores. But don’t confuse it with the Jerusalem artichoke, which is really a tuber that grows in North America.

One medium artichoke supplies 20 percent of the vitamin C you need for the day. With only 60 calories, it’s also a good source of potassium and magnesium, both important for a healthy heart. And like most fruits and vegetables, it’s packed with disease-fighting antioxidants that nutritionists rave about.

3 ways artichokes keep you healthy

Steps up digestion.

As it turns out, the ancient Romans were onto something when it comes to artichokes and digestion. An ingredient in artichoke leaves helps your liver form bile – something necessary for good digestion. If your liver doesn’t produce enough bile, your food doesn’t get broken down properly, and you end up with stomach pains and indigestion.

If you feel sick to your stomach, overly full, and have abdominal pain after eating a normal-sized meal, you may suffer from dyspepsia – a fancy name for poor digestion.

Several scientific studies showed dramatic improvements in people with dyspepsia after being treated with artichoke extracts. You can also get help for your indigestion the way the ancient Romans did – by eating a delicious artichoke with your dinner.

Chokes out heart disease.

Bile from your liver does more than help you digest food. It also helps break down cholesterol from the fat you eat. But a liver that doesn’t produce enough bile lets too much cholesterol get by – kind of like the I Love Lucy episode where the chocolate assembly line starts moving too fast for her to keep up. People with liver problems can have high cholesterol even if they eat a low-fat diet.

That’s where artichokes come in. Because they can help you make more bile, you might be able to lower your cholesterol by eating them. A study in Germany showed that taking artichoke extract for six weeks caused LDL cholesterol, the bad kind, to fall by more than 22 percent. As a bonus, artichokes might also be able to block some new cholesterol from forming in your liver.

Lowers blood sugar.

Your liver is busier than you might think. In addition to breaking down fatty foods, it also stores extra glucose (sugar) in the form of glycogen and turns it back into glucose whenever it gets a phone call from your blood saying that supplies are too low. This is a great system in a perfectly working body. But some people have faulty phone lines, and their livers work day and night cranking out glucose their blood doesn’t need. This overproduction of glucose can lead to diabetes and other health problems.

In animal studies, researchers found that substances in artichokes kept livers from making too much glucose. More studies need to be done, but scientists think artichokes might someday be useful to people with noninsulin-dependent diabetes. In the future, people might use plants, like artichokes, to keep their blood sugar production in check.

Pantry pointers

Choose artichokes with even, green color. Don’t buy any that look wilted, dried out, or moldy. Heavy, small heads are best.

Small artichokes are good for appetizers, and larger ones can be used for stuffing with a variety of fillings and served as an entree.

Be sure to trim about an inch off the top with a sharp knife. And then trim about one-quarter inch from the tips of the leaves since this part is inedible and rough on your hands.

Artichokes can be steamed in a steamer basket or boiled in water. They should be tender and ready to eat in about 30 minutes. If you’re in a hurry, you can microwave them more quickly. First, rinse them with water to add some moisture. Then wrap each one in microwaveable plastic wrap. For four artichokes, microwave on high for 10 to 15 minutes or until the meaty part at the base of the artichoke is tender.

You can serve these veggies hot or cold. Some people serve a dipping sauce with artichokes. It would be a shame to ruin a lowfat food with a rich sauce, so try a low-calorie, yogurt-based dip.

If you’ve never eaten an artichoke, you might be a little confused about what part is edible. The outer leaves are hard and a little bitter, but at the bottom of the leaf, where they pull away from the stem, there is a soft, velvety hunk of “meat” that you can eat by gently pulling the leaf through your teeth. After you’ve nibbled all the leaves this way, you’re left with the best part of the artichoke – the heart. This is a soft, nutty-flavored center that can be eaten whole. Just scrape off the soft fuzz with a spoon before you dig in.

We’ve all heard the news about the potential heart-health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption. It’s no wonder such stories grab headlines. They’re the nutritional equivalent of the classic media formula of “man bites dog.” As for the rest of us, we celebrate by raising a glass to our health.

But whenever I hear one of these reports, I wonder whether it actually ends up doing more harm than good. Most fail to mention the health risks of excessive alcohol consumption, which will do a body far more damage than moderate consumption will do it good. And they leave the impression that health benefits apply to men and women alike. Not so.

Most of the research regarding alcohol’s effects in raising good cholesterol, or HDL, levels looks at men and post-menopausal women. Very little, if any, evidence suggests that alcohol consumption in younger women is beneficial. Even worse, other studies associate younger women’s alcohol consumption with increased disease risk.

Up to 4 percent of breast cancers can be attributed to alcohol. According to a recent study in the British Journal of Cancer, every drink increases a woman’s chances of developing breast cancer. In a recent summary of 63 published studies, 65 percent of the studies found an association between alcohol consumption and increased breast cancer risk.

It’s tempting to dismiss these health risks by pointing to more obvious ones, like excess weight and inactivity. In fact, 54.3 percent of women age 20 to 39 are obese or overweight. But if you’re one of them and you’re trying to lose weight and increase fitness, drinking alcohol will hardly help you achieve your goals.

Add that much-ballyhooed glass of red wine a day without making any other changes in your diet or exercise, and you’ll gain nearly 15 pounds per year. In four years, you’ll be 60 pounds heavier, which won’t do much to help your heart.

Counting calories from alcohol can be doubly difficult. Not only are these calories less satisfying than those from food, these days they’re likely to come in super-sized martini glasses the size of swimming pools. Alcohol sabotages your diet in other ways as well. Lowered inhibitions can lead to overeating, while even one drink can dampen your metabolism for up to 24 hours.

Bottom line: Be honest with yourself. Don’t use health claims about spirits as an excuse to justify excessive drinking which endangers your life, liver, looks and limbs. Keep in mind that plenty of other, better ways to improve heart health are out there. Start by getting and staying fit. Exercise at least five times each week. And eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, whose antioxidants may reduce the risk of heart disease by reducing the oxidation of cholesterol in your arteries.

Most of all, remember that less is more. And get all the facts before you go looking for your health at the bottom of a glass of booze.

Jennifer Grossman is the director of the Dole Nutrition Institute. – NU

There are many advantages of being a health products distributor. Many health products distributors have the great satisfaction to know that their products make a positive difference in people’s lives. Consumers are concerned about health issues such as lowering cholesterol levels, purifying their bodies from toxins, improving nutrition and other health issues. Distributing health related products can be extremely rewarding as you see how happy people are with the changes that they are making in their lives for the betterment of their health.

Health products are traditionally just one step in the process of improving one’s health. Typically if someone orders a weight loss product, they are also focusing on exercising and nutrition to improve their health. If someone orders a health product to stop smoking, they are probably also focusing on nutrition, weight and exercise. The health products are part of the process of looking at your life and improving your health on many different levels. A small home business for health products means that you are contributing to the process of looking at choosing a healthier lifestyle.

Another advantage to being a health products distributor is the potential to make a great deal of supplemental income. The majority of health related products that you will distribute are consumable. This means that after the person finished taking all of the health supplements, they will need another bottle. More than likely, they will order replacement products from you and this will enable you to build a large repeat customer base for your new home business. There are many different consumable health related products that you can select from for your home business as a distributor. This further increases your chances of success because you are not restricted to a just a handful of products that you hope that someone will select when they visit your internet store.

Many people become successful as a distributor it is because they lucked out on a product that is seasonal or a new trend or fad. However, the problem arises when the season is over or the trend is no longer popular. The product is no longer needed by the general public and the distributor is left wondering why their new home business is suddenly going down hill and not succeeding. It is not until it is often too late to salvage the business that they realize their product was seasonal or a new trend. The advantage to health related products is that they are needed year round. They are not seasonal. It is never just a trend or a fad to be healthy. Because of this, you know that your investment of time, advertising and purchasing products will never be wasted. Consumers will always need health products.

There are many different methods to market health related products. This is a tremendous advantage to anyone that is a distributor for this niche of the market. The more methods that you can use to distribute your products the higher your success rate will be for your home business. Some products can only be marketed a few ways and this limits the potential customer base to purchase the products or services that are being offered. It makes it much harder to have a successful home business while you don’t have this worry as a health products distributor.

No matter where you go or what you’re doing these days, you are sure to be bombarded on all sides by slogans, advertising campaigns and health conscious people about your own health and how to look after it properly. This extends to every aspect of your life, including what you eat and where you can get it. This is where the organic health food store comes into your otherwise peaceful existence.

You are forced to leave your normal easy lifestyle to adopt one which most definitely better suited for you, but which is also too much hassle in this and age of convenience foods.

The world might be changing its outlook on these things and finding them lacking in anything resembling nutrition, but they are the staple of you life and you have gotten used to them to such an extent that weaning you off these foods is somewhat along the lines of weaning someone off smoking twenty packs of cigarettes a day.

You have to be dragged down kicking and screaming to the nearest organic health food store by those people who profess to love and care for you, when in reality if they cared even one iota for you, they would leave you alone in your singular little rut of eating overcooked TV dinners, greasy fat-filled hamburgers and fries, and sugar laden drinks and desserts. That’s of course assuming they care about you.

But since your family and friends are heartless monsters who enjoy seeing you suffer being in the best of health, you unfortunately have no choice but to go along with their whims and fancies of the moment. And in this case, the moment seems to be stretching out into an eternity of having to eat healthy organically grown and produced foods and this in turn necessitates your having to go on a frequent basis down to your local (or nearest) organic health food store.

Of course if you really tried hard you might be able to get back to your unhealthy lifestyle of one pot of coffee in the morning and another two or three pots as the day progresses. Unfortunately though fate does not seem to be on your side and you find that even when you try to break free of the imposed health food diet, you can’t.

Why? Because now you’re used to it and all the grease in those greasy hamburgers is enough to turn you green ? literally. This is unfortunately your lot in life now and you find yourself frequenting the organic health food store more and more often as your taste buds decide to rejoin the living, and your palate finds enjoyment once again in your meals.

Most people associate Vitamin C with the ability to fight off colds and infections. There’s a medical basis for that association because Vitamin C is known to be necessary for a normal, healthy immune system.

While Vitamin C intake is fairly simple to accomplish today with either foods rich in this vitamin or Vitamin C supplements, that hasn’t always been the case. Scurvy was once a real health concern, associated with low levels of Vitamin C in the body. The problem was rampant in areas of the world where fruits and vegetables high in Vitamin C content were rare, or where people couldn’t afford to have those vegetables as part of their daily menu.

Oranges and other citrus fruits are among the more common food sources of Vitamin C. The papaya is probably the fruit with the single highest natural Vitamin C content. A medium papaya provides more than the daily recommended allowance for Vitamin C for any normal, healthy person.

Because most people associate Vitamin C with citrus fruits, you may not realize that there are some other non-citrus sources of Vitamin C. If you simply don’t like oranges or grapefruit, you can still find fruits that are high in Vitamin C to add to your diet. Strawberries and cantaloupe are among those fruits. There are some other foods that are also good sources of Vitamin C, such as peppers.

Vitamin C has also been found to be a natural antioxidant, meaning that it helps the body fight off specific health problems and diseases and may even slow some of the signs of aging. Some people think that Vitamin C will keep you from getting a cold, but the vitamin’s natural aid to the immune system is the only real aid when it comes to colds. Instead of taking Vitamin C after you’re coming down with a cold, the best course is to be sure you have sufficient levels of Vitamin C all the time.

An important fact about Vitamin C is that the body doesn’t store this vitamin as is the case with some vitamins. That means that you need to give your body new sources of Vitamin C daily to be sure the body maintains a sufficient Vitamin C level.

Most professionals seem to agree that getting Vitamin C naturally is best. But if you’re not getting sufficient amounts of this important vitamin, vitamin supplements are a good idea. Manufacturers have met the demand for more options when it comes to vitamins, including Vitamin C. You’ll find tablets, drinks and chewables, all packed with enough Vitamin C to keep your body ready to fight off the infections that naturally come your way.