What to Eat…Now
A dear friend, Andrea Fein encouraged me to read Marion Nestle’s new book, an updated version (and massive volume) on her 2006, What to Eat. Called What to Eat Now, it takes us on a terrifying journey through supermarket shopping and the psychology used to encourage and influence how we shop. I can’t decide if…
How to Eat
You might be wondering what exacrly I am talking about. Don’t we just take the food we choose, chew and swallow it and our bodies do the rest? Am I over-complicating this simple process? Maybe I am, but it seems to me that in this world of social media and ‘influencers,’ we have lost our…
Another Confirmation. How Many Do We Need?
It wears me out. I see influencer after influencer (why do we listen to them?) telling us that plants are toxic and that meat, butter and other animal food products are the key to, well, everything that makes a life healthy. It’s time for a reality check since the latest research shows that 50% of…
How Did Vegans Become Villains?
(Editor’s Note: I read this article recently by another hero of mine, Chef Alexis Gauthier, chef/owner of restaurants in Soho in London. He’s a brave, outspoken advocate for animals and compassion for all beings and I simply adore how he writes and cooks. Enjoy. –Christina) It’s a strange question when you stop and think about…
The New Guidelines for Healthy Eating for Americans
Every time I think that we can’t be more gaslit or sold out by the very agencies put in place to protect our interests…you know, the interests of the American people, I am the one fooled. And once again, I am not disappointed. The ‘inverted’ pyramid has been released by the FDA and HHS; you…
What Has Immigration to Do with Food?
Like many of us, immigration is on my mind. I see the same news that we all see; I am horrified by the violence I see around an issue that should be anything but violent. For me, this issue is about food, as well human decency. My grandparents, on both sides came to this country…
How Do I Make Change?
I have been doing what I do for a long time; more than 30 years. I have worked passionately at the mission that drives my every waking moment tirelessly and with great joy. The flip side is that I have also, with my Pollyanna optimism, been pushing a rock uphill for the last 30 years.…
Here’s to 2026
Happy New Year!!! I hope 2026 is your healthiest, strongest, fittest year yet. I read this the other day, from my hero, Arnold and I could not have said it better, so here is some new year motivation from the man himself: “Monday Motivation People ask me every day how to stay motivated. It just…
Protein Harvesting?
You might be wondering what ‘protein harvesting’ means. I know that I was. It’s the sanitized word now being used to describe the slaughter of animals for our dining pleasure. It’s yet another way to market meat to us that makes it feel less gruesome and healthier for us. Most people who eat animals focus…
I Wonder Why…
I have been reading a lot about veganism lately. Having lived this lifestyle for more than forty years, I would have thought I had heard it all. But there seems to be a…new…wind blowing. I know we live in interesting times; times in which cruelty is celebrated as strength. It is beginning to translate into…
Why Don’t We Like Healthy Food?
I was happily working as a private chef way back in the day. I loved that job: the different kitchens, the varying personalities of the families I cooked for; the varying tastes and desires. It was fun, challenging and rewarding work. I was cooking for a family who were quite new to macrobiotics and plant-based…
A Chef’s Life Altering Reflection
(From Christina-I have been following Chef Gauthier for some time and have loved his evolution. His commitment to the reduction of suffering and to the welfare of animals and humans makes him one of the greats in my humble opinion. He posted this on Substack. It is more than worth your time to read and…
What Can We Do About Food Waste?
The numbers are terrifying. Here’s some food for thought, pun fully intended. Worldwide, humans waste 2.5 billion tons of food each year, but the United States discards more than any other country, around 60 million tons, (120 billion pounds) every year. Its equivalent to 40% of our entire food supply and translates to an average…
Have We Lost the Art of Consideration and Kindness?
Where are our manners? I wake each day with a sunny outlook on life. I am very blessed. I have a husband that I adore; friends and family who are loyal and loving…and honest. We live a good, if simple life with enough. All we have ever aspired to is to have enough; not more…
The Hope of Spring
As the breezes are growing warmer, wafting through our open windows with the perfume that tells us the chill of winter is finally behind us; it’s clear sailing into summer. We begin to develop a deep desire to clear our homes of accumulated winter clutter; we dust, wash windows and change bedding to lighter, airier…
The Work I Do
I truly love the work I do. And I especially love hearing from all of my viewers and followers across the country. I love that they are inspired by my program, inspired to make better choices in their lives and the lives of the people they love. I just returned from the annual public television…
No One Should Be Surprised by This One
Honestly, I feel like I have written this blog a hundred times before, but here I go again. I recently read two articles that sent my blood pressure soaring. And before you ask, I have no answers except the obvious ones. But I am getting ahead of myself. In Axios, I read that 73% of…
Cooking from the Heart
As the holidays come on the horizon in all their twinkling glory, we think about cooking. I confess that I always think about cooking, but that’s me. My passion for cooking has never waned. Decades of kitchen life, both professionally and at home…or in a classroom continually inspire me. If you cook, you know that…
Be Useful…Use Your Voice; Take Care of Each Other and Vote
We live, day to day, in what can only be called a grand experiment. Our founders were sure that a government by and for the people could succeed. Are we perfect union? Hell, no, but with each election, from city councils to the presidency, we work to create a country that is welcoming, just and…
How I’ll Spend My Summer Vacation
It will be steaming hot this summer, ‘punishing,’ I think it’s being called; as summer is known to be these days. Since it gets so warm and often muggy globally, my little boutique travel business is on hold until September. I always find it so sad when I watch groups of tourists in Rome, Florence…
An Ode to Sunday Lunch
When I was a kid, meals were considered sacred time. I always joke that if you weren’t at the dinner table, you’d best be dead. No excuses mattered. Not late volleyball or swim practice; not play rehearsals; nothing. You were expected around the table for dinner. It was a time together; it was respect for…
Well, This Is Frustrating…
It’s the season of seashells and balloons. We long to hang outside and take vacations, big or small. We savor every second of the long days and warm nights, making any excuse to stay at the beach or in the park…just a little longer. I am just back from working in Italy and Spain for…
Why Can’t We Do Better?
I was sitting in Charles De Gaulle airport, leaving Paris, heading to Rome for work. As usual, I ordered an espresso and my lovely Robert, a tea. Since we were headed to our gate, we received our drinks in paper cups with…wait for it…paper lids (all from recycled paper). Had we chosen to have table…
Food Noise?
I am all about food…and wellness. I love the communal, sensual nature of preparing luscious, healthy foods and enjoying them with people I love. As an Italian, we always joke that we are either eating, talking about what we ate before or what we might eat later. It’s true. We love everything about food, including…
Are We Just Going to Talk About It Again?
For some of us, the season of ‘peace on earth’ and ‘goodwill to all’ are little clichés that get written on Christmas cards and social media posts. Once the tinsel gets pulled from the tree and the lights and ornaments packaged up, it’s back to business as usual with division, disagreements and less than ‘goodwill…
Regenics…a Medical Wellness Company
It’s no secret that I am all about food and natural healing. I am of the mind that wellness begins in the kitchen and that Mother Nature is our best teacher. I also live in the real world and understand that sometimes, we just need help. I’m writing today about Semaglutide. You may know it…
Feeling Grateful and Letting Go
As we move into this glorious month; the month that kicks off the holiday season and allows us to deny the reality of a long, grey winter ahead, we begin to read and hear a lot about gratitude…and how we should feel it. For some of us, gratitude comes easy and for some us, we…
Where Has Civility Gone?
I have been thinking about civility a lot these days. We seem to have become a society of survival of the meanest, no longer of the fittest, as the saying goes. In my little corner of the world, I have seen an erosion of civility that extends from the grocery store to the gym to…
Nightshades and Our Wellness
I have lived a vegan, macrobiotic lifestyle for more than forty years. I came to this lifestyle through severe illness and using a rather rigid approach to eating, was able to turn my health around and enjoy the robust wellness I do today. I am forever grateful to this way of life, forever grateful. In…
I Can’t Believe I’m Writing About This Again…
Recently, I posted a photo about the smoke event in the Northeast from wildfires in Canada. I was working in Rome and was so sad to see this in my hometown of Philadelphia. I connected it to climate change and suggested, as I would if you know me, that maybe we should eat more plants…
What Is It About Healthy Eating?
I was with a dear friend and fellow cooking instructor and health activist having a coffee on a lovely spring day. Our conversation turned to our work; our missions in our lives; why we get out of bed each and every day. We talked about the fact that some days, out work feels like pushing…
Listening to Each Other
As many of you know, I am a huge fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Since high school (yup, I worked out to his vinyl exercise album, the chart of the moves pinned to my bedroom wall) I have admired his no-nonsense approach to fitness. In recent years, he has taken on the role of elder statesman,…
Why You Don’t Need a Book to Cook
Cooking has gotten a bad rap in the past decades. From Betty Friedan to talk show hosts telling women that they’re better than the kitchen, we have moved away from this sacred space (yes, you read right; sacred) at such a level that it seems like a novelty to go back into the room that…
If All You Need Is Love, We Sure Could Use More
What has become of us and our ability to be kind? When did we become randomly cruel to people we do not know because we have a keyboard at our fingertips? What makes people turn indifferent to the feelings of others? What makes us hate anyone not like us or with whom we disagree? Or…
Gas Stoves…Now What?
The articles have been around for a couple of years (many years really…), creating a low-level buzz of discomfort in the cooking community. It seems to have become more like a sonic blast now. Are gas stoves killing us and poisoning the planet? It takes someone who lives under a rock to think that anything…
An Ode to Stepping Away
It’s February, the month dedicated to hearts, from health to romance. I thought I would take the opportunity to talk to you about my thoughts. On December 20, my lovely Robert and I left for a one-month holiday in Italy. Yup; you read right: one-month holiday. We rationalized it like this: our office is often…
As the New Year Begins
As 2025 begins to fade from our memory and 2026 begins, shiny with promise and hope, let’s try something new or at least something we may have forgotten about. For the last years, our discourse, personally and politically has become…difficult on the best of days; ugly and disheartening on the worst. But what if we…
You and Your Food
My stove and I have the greatest time together. We love our time together; our warm relationship (see what i did there?); our companionship in nourishing my loved ones. She brings a balance to my days that can only come with reliability. She supports my cooking decisions. It’s that tims of year when we reflect…
Can Vegan Burger Subs Really Reduce Our Consumption of Meat?
From Christina: I saw this article online and was thrilled to see the statistics. Now all we have to work on just a little more is the compassion that goes with bailing on eating meat. Being kind to each other is everything as it allows us to live in love. Read on: How Impossible, Beyond…
May We Live In Interesting Times
There’s an old Chinese saying: “May you live in interesting times.” Never has that been truer. With political upheaval, fundamental extremism, violence at every turn, hatred and division, climate change that can no longer be ignored, we have all chosen to live in interesting times. Is there really anything to celebrate at this magical time…
Label.ology: General Tips for Reading Labels
How to Read a Label10 Tips 1. Ingredients are listed in order of their proportion in the product. So for me, the first three ingredients are the most important. They’re what make up the majority of the product you’re eating. 2. If the ingredient panel contains long words you don’t recognize, do some research and…
Label.ology: Agave Nectar (Syrup)
Label.ology In this feature, we’re taking labels…and ingredients apart. It’s important to understand all the stuff that’s in what you buy. Then and only then can you can decide if you want it in your food, on your body or in your home. So I decided to put all my years of label…
President Bill Clinton… National Treasure
From little fat boy to the national poster boy for healthy plant-based eating, the former President has become…in my view, a national treasure…a shining example of what we can do to create health if we put our minds…and wills to it. Granted, I am not the best judge here. A committed plant-centric eater for almost…
My Story of Growing up Italian and Where It Got Me to Today
My life began when I was 14. Okay, I was born fourteen years before that, but… I was raised in a big Italian and Irish family, with extended clan members roaming wildly in and out of our house and lives on a daily basis. With the exception of my Irish father, we all cooked…my brothers,…
Fit for Human Consumption
If we took cooking seriously, we could change the human condition. I’m not kidding. French food expert, Jean-Anthelme Brillat Savarin once said that cooking made us who we were; that the discovery of fire in cooking “had done the most to advance the cause of civilization.” In 1964, anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss regarded cooking as a…
I’m Mad As Hell
Ay, Ay, Ay, as the saying goes. A pandemic, lost jobs, unprovoked war and political unrest, global natural disasters, and, as Peter Finch’s character declared in the 1976 film Network, “air you can’t breathe, water you can’t drink, and food you can’t eat.” I can’t tell you what to do about the economy, politics, war,…
Why Choose HEALTH When You Can Choose Dinner in a Bucket?
Walk into a fast food restaurant and look at the menu closely. Your head will spin at the sheer number of options available to wreck your health and accelerate your arrival at the Pearly Gates. They may call it convenient and even more criminally…food, but what they’re really doing is robbing you of your health…and…
Where Has All the Compassion Gone?
I wanted to talk about something that seriously bugs me. I have lived a plant-centric lifestyle for more than 25 years and people rarely knew it. I always told myself it was because I disliked labels, so ‘macrobiotic,’ ‘vegan…’whatever was off my list of things to call myself. But that’s not entirely true…actually not true…
Can We Cut Crime by Changing Cafeteria Menus?
I know; I know. It’s controversial. Some say crazy, but what if we could reduce crime and violence by simply changing cafeteria menus? A high school in Appleton, Wisconsin tried an experiment under the enlightened guidance of their principal, LuAnn Coenen. She wanted to see if she could positively affect the fighting, weapons-carrying and general…
Is Healthy Living the Privilege of a Few?
In these hard economic times, people are watching their dwindling money do less and less. We also continuously hear about living well, eating naturally and preventing disease. These three basic concepts of a healthy life have taken on the aura of out-of-reach luxury. Nothing could be further from the truth. While natural lifestyle enthusiast ‘A-listers’…
Why We Eat
Thirty-five years ago, I changed the way I eat in order to regain my health during a life-threatening illness. Obviously, it worked out well, as I am here and healthy these many years later. In the process of discovering my way back to health, I was introduced to Japanese philosopher, Georges Oshawa, considered to be…
The Impulses of Impulse Eating
We have all done it. We’re cleaning up after a party, holiday feast, or other celebration and you munch as you go. There’s one cookie left on the plate, and we eat it. We’re not hungry, but it’s there. Are you hungry? Nope, but we eat anyway. What’s up? Are we weak-willed losers, or is…
Foods Your Family Will Love
We have all had those days…or heard the stories. You are worried about your family’s health. You desperately want them to eat healthy food so you buy books, scour the internet for recipes, attend cooking classes. You create a colorful, creative, flavorful meal for them to enjoy and they turn up their noses. You scrape…
No Choice but to Be Fat?
‘Sometimes I have no choice but to eat heavy, greasy food…’ goes the opening line in a television ad for ‘Activia,’ the yogurt enriched with ‘bifidus regularis’ (an invented marketing name for Dannon’s exclusively used probiotic) to normalize digestion. A professional-looking woman runs through her day, grabbing a hot dog, cake at a party to…
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