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Can Comfort Food Be Healthy?


Comfort food is usually home made and carries some emotional significance with it. During times of stress or illness people often turn to “comfort foods” to feel better. Most everyone has a favorite comfort food and comfort foods are not necessarily one’s favorite food. Ask yourself…what is my favorite food? Then ask “At the end of a long day, when I’m tired and stressed or sick in bed, what food would I like a loved one (mom) to fix for me?

Comfort foods are often fattening or unhealthy…macaroni and cheese, chocolate cake, fried chicken, chocolate pudding. Foods that are high in carbohydrates and sugar are often connected to childhood and make you feel homey and good. And different cultures have different comfort foods. Rarely is yogurt or a handful of almonds a comfort food in any culture. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*

Colorado’s Solution To Childhood Obesity: The Renegade Lunch Lady

Cecelia and I just finished watching the movie Food Inc. It is a movie worth watching.

I was upset seeing the abuse of our food chain by big food corporations. There is little respect for America’s food safety.

America’s obesity epidemic is caused, in part, by the food industry’s ability to produce cheap food. Fifty years ago, when I was at Columbia College, the solution to America’s impending food shortage was debated. The predication was the nation was going to face a food shortage in the next 50 years. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Repairing the Healthcare System*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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