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One of LeBron James's former Cavaliers teammates has some thoughts on the superstar's diet.

In a story on The Athletic published Thursday, Cleveland center Tristan Thompson was among the players who provided some insight into what James is like off the court.

"He has the worst f---ing diet ever," Thompson said. "Ask him what he eats for breakfast. He has like five french toasts, drowns it in syrup with strawberries and bananas. Then he has like a four-egg omelette and then he goes and just f---ing dunks on somebody. It doesnt make sense.

"He eats desserts with every meal. Hell come with his one-week diet, vegan crap, but he literally eats like it doesnt make sense. Hes really a specimen. He eats like s---. I remember one year I tried to eat like he ate and it just didnt work out. I started gaining weight and said, 'F--- this.' I mean it works for him. He loves sweets. He loves sweets. He eats desserts and French toast. Its crazy how his body just burns it."

The Athletic's Joe Vardon and Jason Lloyd also quoted players discussing James's competitive nature at card games and relayed a story from one of James's teachers at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School of the now Lakers star putting together a scrapbook project comparing living figures to Romeo and Juliet.

Brooklyn Nets forward Joe Harris told a story of James putting his rings on a table during a players' only meeting at the start of the 2014-15 season and passing them around, telling each person on the roster about their role and how they would help the team win a title.

The title would have to wait until the 201516 season, however.

Now with the Lakers, the 17-year veteran is averaging 25.0 points, 7.8 rebounds and an NBA-leading 10.8 assists per game for a Los Angeles team that is the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference. His eating habits don't appear to be any hinderance to the Akron native's success.

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Tristan Thompson on LeBron: 'He Eats Desserts With Every Meal ... He Eats Like S---' - Sports Illustrated

How is it that perfectly respectable public-health initiatives, such as vaccines and water fluoridation, give rise to suspicion and conspiracy theories, while an entire industry thats telling us out-and-out falsehoods in order to take our money gets a free pass?

Dietary supplements, people! Where is the outrage?

Every year, Americans spend something like $35 billion on vitamins, minerals, botanicals and various other substances that are touted as health-giving but mostly do nothing at all. Nothing at all!

Could the entire category really just be a rip-off? I turned to the National Institutes of Health. I spoke with Carol Haggans, a scientific and health communications consultant with the Office of Dietary Supplements, about vitamins and minerals, and to Craig Hopp, deputy director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, about botanical and other kinds of supplements.

My question was the same: Which dietary supplements actually have well-established benefits?

Its a short list, Hopp told me. Ginger for nausea, peppermint for upset stomach, melatonin for sleep disruption. And fish oil does seem to show some promise for cardiovascular disease, although some of the data is conflicting. He went on to list some of the supplements that havent shown benefits in trials: turmeric, St. Johns wort, ginkgo, echinacea.

On the vitamin and mineral side, Haggans pointed out a couple of wins. Folic acid reduces risk for fetal neural tube defects, and it is widely recommended for women who may become pregnant. Vitamin B12 in food is sometimes poorly absorbed, she told me, and supplements can help in people over 50 (and vegans, because B12 comes from animal products). Then theres a combination supplement that may slow the progression of macular degeneration. Its also possible a daily multivitamin may decrease some disease risk.

Beyond that, supplements can help fill in a nutrient gap if you dont get enough, say, magnesium in your diet, but we dont have a lot of compelling evidence that using supplements to do that improves health outcomes.

I also checked in with Andrea Wong, senior vice president for scientific and regulatory affairs for the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a supplement industry group. She mentioned some of the same benefits and added that the Food and Drug Administration allows a health claim on calcium, or a combination of calcium and vitamin D, for reducing risk of osteoporosis.

That covers the noncontroversial territory, where both industry and independent scientists agree that theres at least some evidence of benefits. If youve got a favorite niacin? garlic? you could try to make the case. (If you want to investigate your supplement of choice, a good place to start is with NIH fact sheets.) This column is obviously too short to adjudicate every single one, but Hopps assessment stands: Its a short list.

But how about the vast expanse of shelves of dietary supplements that arent among those listed? The ones that purport to give you energy, support your immune system, stimulate hair growth or enlarge your penis? Wong points out that the FDA does regulate those claims; the agency requires that they have substantiation and be truthful.

You can hop on over to the FDAs website and read about what exactly constitutes substantiation, and youll find its a low bar. I have yet to talk to a scientist who takes dietary supplement claims seriously, so I asked Wong to refer me to one somebody with no ties to industry who believed the health claims made on dietary supplements were meaningful.

Readers, she couldnt.

Think about that for a second. The dietary supplements industry group couldnt point me to a single independent scientist who comes down on their side of this. Wong made the case that I shouldnt dismiss research out of hand just because its done by industry. And I agree, although I always take the funding source into consideration. But if the body of evidence were compelling, at least some independent scientists would be persuaded. Theyre not. Theyre just not.

On top of that, some dietary supplements can be downright harmful. Theres no requirement that supplement companies establish safety before they market their products, but they are required to report serious adverse events, and the FDA monitors those. If things get bad, they step in.

Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, points to ephedra as the poster supplement for the harm the category can do. Its a substance that occurs naturally in some plants, and it was marketed as an appetite suppressant and energy booster. But then 155 people died, and the FDA took it off the market in 2003. But its the only dietary supplement that has been banned in the history of dietary supplements.

Lurie points out that even vitamins, which we think of as, at worst, benign, can increase disease risk: In trials, beta-carotene increased risk of lung cancer in smokers, and vitamin E increased risk of prostate cancer. According to Haggans, high doses of vitamin A can cause birth defects, and too much iron can even be fatal. With vitamins and minerals, she says, the main risk is getting too much.

Lurie is also concerned that we dont have a good way of knowing what damage supplements do. We have little safety information on the active ingredients, adulteration and contamination are real problems, and only serious adverse events are required to be reported to the FDA. Its more than reasonable to believe there may be dangerous products on the market; we just dont know what they are.

But take heart! The reassurance, such as it is, comes from the fact that the products are mostly ineffective, Lurie told me.

And thats the dietary supplement conundrum. Most of them do nothing, so you shouldnt take those. But the ones that actually do something are the ones that pose danger, so you shouldnt take those either. If something really can enlarge your penis, imagine the havoc it can wreak in your liver.

Thats the lay of the land. Supplements have very few benefits and some serious risks. So why do some three-quarters of Americans spend $35 billion on them every year?

I asked Alan Levinovitz, professor of religion at James Madison University and author of Natural: How Faith in Natures Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science (available in April). The first thing he pointed to was the pictures of fruits and leaves on the bottle, the emphasis on plant-based ingredients and the focus on naturalness. Think about the names medicines have, he said. Atorvastatin! Tramadol! They sound like alien space lords. Then look at supplements with names like Natures Way.

People feel comfortable with herbs and other botanicals, and they feel empowered by the idea that they make these choices for themselves. Youre like a sorcerer, said Levinovitz. Do I want to supercharge my brain or refresh my vitality? There couldnt be a more empowering place than the supplement aisle. The only problem, of course, is that none of its true.

Levinovitz sees ritual in supplement-taking; its a way to counterbalance the disempowerment of modern medicine. Its an unmet need, he told me, and he sees a parallel to prayer. How can we measure the value of those things? It makes no scientific sense, but what do we do about things that make no scientific sense but still matter to people?

Since people like supplements, and often think they do better with them than without them, Id be reluctant to issue an across-the-board no-supplements diktat even if I could. But I cant stop thinking about what people could do with that $35 billion. For starters, you could buy every man, woman and child a hefty (1/2 cup, dry) serving of lentils every single day. Not only would that be 24 grams of protein and 10 grams of fiber, it would be a whole days folate and hefty doses of thiamin, iron, phosphorous and zinc. Also soup. Take that, vitamin pill.

Alas, I dont think I can talk people into lentils any more than I can talk them out of dietary supplements. But maybe if someone could find a way to put them in a pill

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Most dietary supplements dont do anything. Why do we spend $35 billion a year on them? - Seattle Times

Ashley Tisdale. MediaPunch/Shutterstock

Looking good! Ashley Tisdales skin is blemish-free and practically flawless, which she believes is the result of a substantial change she made to her diet several years ago.

Skin never looked so good, the Carols Second Act star, 34, wrote in the caption of a short clip she shared via Instagram on Tuesday, February 18. In the brief video, the Ginger Snaps alum, who is sitting in a car, looks directly at the camera and zooms in on her face.

I would love to say its just the products I use but Ive been dairy free for 5 years and I swear it changed everything with my skin, Tisdale added. I barely break out.

The New Jersey native noted that while it can be difficult to cut something out of your diet (especially an entire food group), the results could be worth it. I know its hard to give up something but when you do, after awhile, you barely crave it and I feel healthier, she explained.

Many of the Young & Hungry alums followers agreed. No dairy is everything for skin, one wrote in the comments. Another added: My skin did a full 180 when I went dairy free!

Still, other social media users were less sure about the drastic shift. But what do you do about cheese? one wondered. Another noted she hasnt eaten dairy for several months, but has yet to see results.

The Still Into You songstress told Us Weekly in June 2016 that one of her dairy-free favorites is a flavorful smoothie, which she carries in a mason jar in her purse in case she needs a snack while shes on the go. Its almond milk, honey, peanut better, Vega chocolate protein powder and cinnamon, she explained at the time. I travel with it.

While Tisdale believes her eating regimen deserves the credit for her clear skin, she also has a detailed skincare routine, which she shared via a video on her YouTube channel in June 2017. Skincare is obviously No. 1 for me, she explained in the clip.

Aside from calling water the best thing for your skin, the star also swore by a few other skin enhancing staples. Her essentials included Cetaphil skin cleanser, an exfoliating cleanser from Kate Somerville and La Mer moisturizer.

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Ashley Tisdale Credits Her Clear Complexion to a Dairy-Free Diet: Skin Never Looked So Good - Us Weekly

Even at 35 years old, LeBron James continues to be one of the NBA's premier attractions. James puts up MVP-type numbers, but perhaps the superstar forward doesn't have the strictest diet.

In a recent interview with The Athletic, Cleveland Cavaliers center Tristan Thompson revealed that James doesn't actually hold back when it comes to what he likes to eat.

"He has the worst f---ing diet ever," Thompson told Joe Vardon and Jason Lloyd of The Athletic. "Ask him what he eats for breakfast. He has like five (pieces of) french toast, drowns it in syrup with strawberries and bananas. Then he has like a four-egg omelet and then he goes and just f---ing dunks on somebody. It doesn't make sense.

"He eats desserts with every meal. He'll come with his one-week diet, vegan crap, but he literally eats like it doesn't make sense. He's really a specimen. He eats like shit."

James does spend seven figures a year to help keep himself in the best shape possible and it sounds like he works out a great deal of the calories off. However, Thompson laid out that James eats quite a few sugary items throughout the day.

"I started gaining weight and said, 'F--- this,'" Thompson added. "I mean, it works for him. He loves sweets. He eats desserts and French toast. It's crazy how his body just burns it."

James and Thompson played four seasons together from 2014 to 2018 until James left the Cavaliers to sign with the Los Angeles Lakers. The two helped Cleveland win an NBA title in 2016 as the Cavaliers erased a 3-1 deficit against the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals.

Even in his 17th NBA season, James still manages to average 25.0 points, 10.8 assists, and 7.8 rebounds per game while shooting 34.5 percent from beyond the arc. The star forward currently is leading the Lakers a tremendous one-two punch with Anthony Davis and the team is currently in the top spot in the Western Conference with a 41-12 record.

Considering the amount of workouts that James likely has throughout the course of a day, it's not surprising that he can splurge a bit because he has the ability to burn a large amount of the calories off. However, it's hard to believe that James can so regularlyhave a cheat day and still be in tip-top shape.

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Cavaliers' Tristan Thompson says LeBron James has the worst diet ever and can't stop eating sweets - CBS Sports

This quick and easy paneer sabzi can be made in minutes.

Highlights

Indian cuisine is branded 'rich' and 'lavish' because our meals consist of a huge variety of dishes with complex recipes. Western population may ream it out for that reason as cooking a whole Indian meal is time consuming; but it's not true for all the dishes. There are many foods that take little time to be turned into an appetising meal. All those times when we don't want to slave it out over the gas, what is that one food that comes to your mind? Of course, it's paneer. Cottage cheese or paneer tops the favourites list of vegetarians. It is healthy, weight-loss friendly, rich in protein, and can be transformed into countless dishes.

So, when you want something quick on your plate, which is also healthy and imbues nutrition, thispaneer pyaaz dish is just perfect. This recipe video on NDTV Food's YouTube channel presents a simple way to make this delicious sabzi of paneer paired with caramelised onions and mild seasoning.

First, saute the onions through and through till they are fully caramelised and attain that deep brown colour. Then, add some spices that are commonly used in Indian cooking. Add paneer cubes and garnish with a bunch of coriander leaves, and you're done.

This quick paneer sabzi is ideal for your protein-rich, weight-loss diet when you want to have something light yet nutritious. Watch the recipe video and we are sure you'll nail this recipe and cook a delicious meal for yourself and your family.

(Also Read:Here's How You Can Make Restaurant-Style Chatpata Paneer At Home)

About Neha GroverLove for reading roused her writing instincts. Neha is guilty of having a deep-set fixation with anything caffeinated. When she is not pouring out her nest of thoughts onto the screen, you can see her reading while sipping on coffee.

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Protein-Rich Diet: Make This Quick Paneer Pyaz Sabzi When You Want To Take It Easy In The Kitchen - NDTV Food

WATCH: Do you need to change your diet? Watch the video below to find out if it's time for you to go on a health kick and re-think your diet.

One of the worst things about going on a diet is that you usually have to limit or remove your favourite foods from your diet, such as chocolate and wine. However, the latest diet craze promises results, all while youre able to enjoy a glass of red with a side of chocolate after a long, hard day at work.

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Its the latest dieting craze to excite health and fitness lovers everywhere, and youve probably heard it mentioned in relation to superstar songstress Adeles weight loss. The Sirtfood diet.

According to reports, Sirtfoods are foods that activates specific proteins in the body called sirtuins, which are believed to protect cells in the body from dying, regulate inflammation and the ageing process. Apparently, these proteins are also able to burn fat fast and boost your metabolism.

So, what are Sirtfoods? Things like green tea, dark chocolate, apples, citrus fruits, parsley, kale, blueberries, celery and red wine are all sirtfoods and allowed on the diet, which has a two-part method.

As you can probably tell, this diet is not for the feint of heart and definitely requires the help of a dietitian or nutritionist.

A nutritionist reveals the truth about 5 of the hottest diet trends

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This new diet allows you to drink wine and eat chocolate - Better Homes and Gardens

While many diets may work for you, the key is finding one you like and can stick to in the long run.

Here are 5 healthy diets that are scientifically proven to be effective.

The low-carb, whole-food diet is perfect for people who need to lose weight, optimize health, and lower their risk of disease.

Its flexible, allowing you to fine-tune your carb intake depending on your goals.

This diet is high in vegetables, meat, fish, eggs, fruits, nuts, and fats but low in starches, sugars, and processed foods.

The Mediterranean diet is an excellent diet that has been thoroughly studied. Its particularly effective for heart disease prevention.

It emphasizes foods that were commonly eaten around the Mediterranean region during the 20th century and earlier.

As such, it includes plenty of vegetables, fruits, fish, poultry, whole grains, legumes, dairy products, and extra virgin olive oil.

The paleo diet is a very popular diet that is effective for weight loss and general health improvement. Its currently the worlds most popular diet.

It centers on unprocessed foods believed to resemble those available to some of humanitys paleolithic ancestors.

The vegan diet has become increasingly popular in the past decade. Its linked to a number of health benefits, including weight loss, improved heart health, and better blood sugar control.

The diet is based exclusively on plant foods and eliminates all animal products.

The gluten-free diet is essential for people who are intolerant to gluten, a protein that is found in wheat, rye, and barley.

For optimal health, you should focus on whole foods that are naturally gluten-free. Gluten-free junk food is still junk food.

So many diets exist that it can feel overwhelming to simply find a single one to try.

However, its important to note that some eating patterns have more scientific backing than others. Whether youre looking to lose weight or simply boost your overall health, try to find diets that are supported by research.

The five examples listed above are a good place to start.

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5 Diets That Are Supported by Science

Paleodietary studies of the fossil record are impeded by a lack of reliable and unequivocal tracers, currently making it impossible to determine the exact timing of dietary changes or, often, even the species involved. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz and the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz have now tested a new method, the isotope analysis of zinc isotopes from the tooth enamel of fossil mammals. They found this method to be well suited to expand our knowledge about the diets of fossil humans and other Pleistocene mammals. The method proves especially useful when it comes to differentiating whether prehistoric mammals had mainly animal or plant based food on the menu.

Information on what our ancestors ate is based mainly on carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses of the structural protein collagen in bones and dentin. Nitrogen isotope analysis, in particular, helps scientists determine whether animal or plant food was consumed. Since collagen, like proteins in general, is not easily conservable, this method cannot be used to examine vertebrate fossils older than about 100,000 years. This timeframe is even often reduced to only a few thousand years in arid or humid tropical regions like Africa and Asia, which are considered key regions for human evolution and are therefore of particular interest to science. New methods such as zinc isotope analysis are now starting to open up new research perspectives.

The researchers analyzed the ratio of two different zinc isotopes in the dental enamel of fossil mammals that had only recently been discovered in a cave in Laos. These fossils date from the late Pleistocene, more precisely from around 13,500 to 38,400 years ago. In 2015, in the Tam Hay Marklot cave in northeastern Laos, scientists found fossils of various mammals, including water buffalos, rhinos, wild boars, deer, bears, orangutans and leopards. "The cave is located in a tropical region where organic materials such as collagen are generally poorly preserved. This makes it an ideal location for us to test whether we can determine the differences between herbivores and carnivores using zinc isotopes," says study leader Thomas Ttken, professor at the Johannes Gutenberg Universitys Institute of Geosciences.

Zinc is ingested with food and stored as an essential trace element in the bioapatite, the mineral phase of tooth enamel. Thus, zinc has a better chance of being retained over longer periods of time than the collagen-bound nitrogen. The relevant ratio is derived from the ratio of zinc 66 to zinc 64: "On the basis of this ratio we can tell which animals are herbivores, carnivores or omnivores. This means that among the fossils we analyze, we can identify and clearly distinguish between carnivores and herbivores, while omnivores are expected to be in between," says Nicolas Bourgon first author of the study from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and PhD student in Ttkens research group.

Lean meat contains more zinc-64 than plant food does. Carnivores, like the tiger, will have a smaller ratio of zinc-66 to zinc-64, as compared to herbivores, like the water buffalo. In order to exclude alteration from external sources on the samples, the fossils were also examined by the team of Klaus Peter Jochum at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. No changes were found when comparing the concentration and distribution of zinc and other trace elements of fossil tooth enamel with those of modern animals using laser ablation ICP mass spectrometry.

The zinc isotope method has now for the first time been successfully applied to fossils. "The zinc isotope ratios in fossil enamel from the Tam Hay Marklot cave suggest an excellent long-term conservation potential in enamel, even under tropical conditions," summarize the authors. Zinc isotopes could thus serve as a new tool to study the diet of fossil humans and other mammals. This would open a door to the study of prehistoric and geological periods well over 100,000 years ago. In the future, the next goals are to apply this method to reconstruct human dietary behaviours. The researchers also want to find out how far back in time back in time they can go, by applying their new method to fossils of extinct mammals and dinosaurs that are millions of years old.

ReferenceNicolas Bourgon et al. Zinc isotopes in Late Pleistocene fossil teeth from a Southeast Asian cave setting preserve paleodietary information. PNAS, 17 February 2020, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1911744117.

This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

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Real "Paleo Diet" Laced With Informative Heavy Metal - Technology Networks

Three decades ago, when David Oien and three other organic farmers from central Montana began planting lentils, it was a rebellious act. Oiens farm was surrounded by thousands of acres of wheat, the popular crop that blankets large swaths of arable land in the Northern Plains, and no one in the area was planting anything else.

The farmers, who formed Timeless Seeds, Inc. to grow alternative crops and find new markets, helped popularize pulsesi.e., lentils, peas, and chickpeas (also known as garbanzo beans)in their region and beyond. They started off with just a few hundred acres and a handful of volunteers, but today, Timeless is a million-dollar business that works with more than 40 organic producers and grows food for major retailers and restaurants. The company was featured in the 2016 book The Lentil Underground, which follows the farmers work and describes Oien and his colleagues as renegades and pioneers.

Many other farmers, both conventional and organic, have since followed their lead by growing pulses. And the Northern Plains, which saw virtually no lentils, peas, or chickpeas a generation ago, has become the leading pulse-growing region in the U.S. Yet despite this initial growth, pulses were for years perceived as niche crops, unfamiliar to many Americans and relegated to the plates of vegans, vegetarians, hippies, and immigrants. Most were quickly exported out of the country.

Thats now changing as concerns over human health and climate change are bringing these crops to the forefront in American grocery stores, kitchens, and restaurants, leading to growing domestic demand and enticing more farmers to grow them.

For those invested in regenerative agriculturepractices that rebuild soil and sequester carbonpulses are becoming a coveted tool. Simultaneously, these crops are now key ingredients in plant-centric dietsboth in their natural state and in a growing number of packaged, processed products.

The growth has been phenomenal, said Jeff Rumney, vice president of marketing with the USA Dry Pea & Lentil Council. Weve seen a huge run-up in product innovation and U.S. product launches with pulse ingredients.

Though they are one of the oldest crops on earth, in many cultures lentils and other pulses have long been considered a poor mans food. During the Great Depression, many Americans relied heavily on lentils for nutrition, tarnishing their image for years to come.

David Oien holds packaged lentils. (Photo courtesy of David Oien)

In my fathers generation, everything was meat and potatoes, there was no domestic demand for pulses, said Rumney.

In the U.S., pulse crops got their start in the Palouse, an agricultural area that encompasses parts of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. There, they were first cultivated by Seventh Day Adventists, avid vegans and vegetarians, and market infrastructure for the crops didnt exist. In addition, a lack of federal government subsidies for pulses kept most farmers growing wheat and other commodities.

We knew pulses are important to the soil, we knew we could grow them, but nobody was eating them, Oien said, adding that Timeless Seeds had to figure out how to process, package, and find markets. [For] the first 25 years, we had to pretty much beg farmers to give these crops a try.

In parts of the Great Plains, where water is sparse and crops are mostly grown under dryland conditions, meaning they arent irrigated, farmers had for generations grown winter wheat for 10 months, followed by a 14-month period without a crop called summer fallow. During summer fallow, land is left barren to recapture soil moisture through rainfall, thus improving the following years wheat crop. More recently, some growers have also adapted no-till practices hand in hand with the use of copious herbicides.

But for many, said Oien, growing just one crop has proved increasingly untenable. Without a diversity of roots in the soil, farmers have had to use more and more synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. Their soil has lost organic matter. Droughts have decimated their crops. Theyve lost millions every year to a pest called the wheat stem softfly. And plummeting commodity prices have led many farming operations to the brink of bankruptcy.

In the early 2000s, word began to spread that pulses could successfully be grown in the Northern Plains and that their export markets were booming, and some farmers in the area began to see these crops as tickets out of the commodity monocrop trap. Local land grant universities, such as University of Idaho and Montana State, began to support the role pulse crops could play in expanding economic opportunities when planted in rotation with wheat.

Lentil farm photo CC-licensed by IslandVita.

In places like eastern Montana and North Dakota, its become really difficult for two generations to live on the farm, said Rumney. By growing another crop on that fallow ground, farmers doubled their income. This transformation has allowed their sons and daughters to stay on the farm.

In 1999, U.S. farmers harvested approximately half a million acres of pulse crops, and the vast majority of those were planted in the Pacific Northwest. Since then, pulses have seen steady growth. By 2014, the crop had topped a million acres and by 2018, it hit 2.2 million acres.

Today, Montana leads in pulse production, followed by North Dakota. In Montana, total lentil, dry pea, and chickpea acreage has almost tripled over the past decade, going from zero to over a million acres. And in North Dakota, its at about 650,000 acres.

And as lentils, peas, and chickpeas have turned mainstream, large agribusinesses such as Sabra and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) have also jumped in to begin buying pulse crops from large farms. Just a few years ago, most of those companies crops were sent overseas; 80 percent of peas, 80 percent of lentils, and the vast majority of chickpeas were exported to India, Middle Eastern countries, and China, Rumney said. But in recent years, changing consumer trends have led to the development of the U.S. market. Today, only about 60 percent of lentils and peas are exported. And thanks to the exploding popularity of hummus, just 50 percent of chickpeas get sent out of the U.S.

Much of the growth has been in conventional pulses, but organic oneswhich command 3 to 5 times the price of their conventional counterpartshave also seen a steady increase, Oien said. Large agribusinesses are jumping in to grow organically, he added, but since most of those pulses are exported, small organic farmers can still count on premiums and incentives, he said.

And while conventionally grown pulse crops often end up as ingredients in processed foods such as snacks and meat substitutes, most of the organic pulses grown by Timeless farmers are destined for Trader Joes, Whole Foods, and other natural food stores, or gourmet restaurants.

Pulses and rice for sale (Photo CC-licensed by Anthony on Flickr)

Our customers realize the impact organic pulses can have, Oien said. They are happy to pay more because theyre buying more than lentils. Theyre buying family farms, healthy soil, and a lower carbon footprint.

When the United Nations declared 2016 the International Year of Pulses, it also added to these foods visibility, Oien said. People started to realize their nutritional value and their environmental benefits. And that has brought pulse crops to the radar screens of farmers, chefs, food editors, and people shopping in grocery stores.

A major factor in pulses new visibility has been the growing popularity of the so-called plant-forward diet (also known as mostly plant-based or flexitarian). Already, over one-third of Americans identify wanting to follow such a diet, according to a OnePoll study.

Pulses are perfect for those looking to reduce their meat intake, because theyre high in protein, dietary fiber, and several vitamins and minerals. In addition, theyre gluten-free, arent genetically modified, and are not considered major allergens like soy or wheat.

Scientists around the world have recently advocated for drastically cutting meat consumption. Major research published in Nature and The Lancet over the last year advocates for a mostly plant-based diet to meet the challenge of feeding a growing world population, protect the environment, and boost human health benefits.

Right now, you have an animal-centric set of choices when you walk into a restaurant or other food place away from home, said Sophie Egan, the program director of Menus of Change, an ambitious project from The Culinary Institute of America and Harvard School of Public Health that aims to change how Americans eat. The vision is that the options would enable you to eat a flexitarian type of diet and that the plant-based dishes are cooked in a way that can stand head to head with animal-based ones when it comes to taste.

Menus of Change encourages chefs to adopt the Protein Flip, a concept that advocates moving away from feeding plant proteins and grains to animals, and instead feeding those plant proteins and whole grains directly to diners. The idea is to make pulses the meals center, using culinary traditions from around the world, and using only small servings of humanely raised, grass fed meat for blending, as a condiment, or as side dishes. Adoption of similar programs have been gaining ground across the foodservice industry, Egan said.

A related project, the Menus of Change University Research Collaborative, uses campus dining halls as incubators and innovators for a diet based mostly on plants. The collaborative, a working group that consists of 57 institutions and 236 members, including dining directors and executive chefs, academic faculty, scholars, and student fellows, focuses on evidence-based research, education, and innovation.

Universities and their students are at the front line of adoption for the industry as a whole, she said. Campus dining can implement innovative plant-based meals and then export those solutions to shift Americas culinary practices, Egan said, because college students are in their identity formation around food choices, and many college programs are independently run so they can implement changes more nimbly, while food chains have to shift the big ship.

The USA Dry Pea & Lentil Council has worked hard to promote the plant-centric diet, Rumney said, noting that its now popular in North America, but also all over the developed world. In the U.S., Rumney said, value added pulse products such as plant-based burgers, pasta, baby food, protein bars, and protein coffee are gaining market share. Theres even rising demand for pulse protein in pet foods. The organization is also working with the federal government to introduce pulses into the school lunch program, both in their whole form and as pasta, and to get them recognized as a vegetable, he said.

Of particular note is the explosion of pea protein, Rumney said, which is now second to soy as an ingredient in packaged/processed protein alternatives. Pea protein, derived from yellow peas, is a key ingredient in products ranging from meat substitutes such as Beyond Meats Beyond Burger to energy bars, plant milk, and dairy-free ice cream. According to data the USA Dry Pea & Lentil Council shared, the market research firm Mintel found that over 1,800 global products that use pea protein as an ingredient launched in 2019. Plant-based meat has fueled a good part of this growth. The North America pea protein market for meat substitutes is projected to surpass $21 million by 2026, according to a new research report by Global Market Insights, Inc.

And major food companies, ranging from Cargill to Kelloggs, are now investing in pea protein production and/or products. According to McKinsey, interest in pea protein grew at a compound annual growth rate of 30 percent from 2004 to 2019. The company concluded that pea protein and cultured meat show the most promise [of the existing alternative proteins] for market growth over the coming five to 10 years.

The success of pea-based meat substitutes is a start, said Egan, the Menus of Change director, but meat analogues are only a small part of the solution. While plant-based meat may be environmentally better, she said, its nutritional value isnt better than that of a meat patty. Minimally processed whole foods, especially pulses in their intact form, have a much more significant role to play, Egan said, but there hasnt been much capital going into their marketing.

Egan says chefs will play a prime role in creating cachet and excitement about the whole foods-based approach, which has the potential to boost nutrition for humans around the world. Increasingly, more chefs are choosing to emphasize plant ingredients. There is tremendous business opportunity here to offer these new protein options, Egan said.

In addition to helping overhaul American diets, pulses also have the potential to play a major role on organic and regenerative farms. As legumes, they can draw nitrogen from the atmosphere and dont require much, if any, synthetic fertilizer, said Meagan Schipanski, associate professor of agroecology at Colorado State University. They are great to grow in a rotation with other crops because they leave some nitrogen behind in the soil. This is especially true if theyre planted as forage for grazing animals or cover crops, but also if theyre harvested as cash crops.

John Wicks in his lentil field. (Photo courtesy of John Wicks)

And their nitrogen is less susceptible to being washed away when it rains than the nitrogen supplied by synthetic fertilizers. Pulses increase good microbes and soil organic matter, she said, and because of their nitrogen-fixing abilities, they can also help convert soil into a carbon sink and, in some cases, decrease wind erosion.

Peas, lentils, and chickpeas can also make land more productive and water-efficient when replacing fallow periods. Theyre especially suited to dryland farming because theyre shallow-rooted crops, so they dont use a lot of moisture. And when pulses are planted in rotation with wheat or other cereals, they can disrupt the disease, insect, and weed cycles, leading to higher yields and a reduced need for chemical inputs, particularly herbicides.

Most importantly, Schipanski said, pulses can provide additional income to farmers long dependent on a single crop. While farmers in the Central Plains have been slower than in other regions to add pulse crops to their rotations, there is growing interest and awareness among producers of the success stories (with pulses) in Montana and other places, Schipanski said. With commodity prices so low, more producers are looking for alternative crops or at integrating grazed cover crops into their system to spread their risk and diversify.

Schipanskis research shows that grazing cover crops in dryland farming systems can improve soil health and boost profitability. Farmers get paid to graze the cattle and enough cover crop residue remains in the fields to reap soil benefits, Schipanski said.

Even for conventional farmers, adding pulses into their rotation can begin a shift toward other, more sustainable practices, said Liz Carlisle, author of the Lentil Underground and assistant professor in the Environmental Studies Program at University of California, Santa Barbara.

The learning thats happening for farmers whove been working with just one commodity and relying on the industrial model of production is tremendous, Carlisle said. They realize that the plants themselves can be a self-supporting ecosystem and they, the farmers, are just working as stewards or facilitators of that ecosystem.

After adding pulses to their rotations, these farmers, often start thinking about further reducing their inputs, adding perennial crops, or integrating animals into their operation. Planting pulses leads them to ask questions about how they can make their farming systems more ecological, she said.

One challenge pulse crops have faced in recent years is a decrease in export markets due to politics and trade wars. After the U.S. withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement in 2017, India imposed sizable tariffs on pulses. And when the U.S. imposed tariffs on China, that country retaliated, imposing its own tariffs on pulse crops (and other goods). As a result, prices for conventional lentils, chickpeas and peas crashed and acres planted decreased.

Farmers who wish to add pulses to their rotation should also consider that infrastructure is still limited in some areas, said Schipanski, the Colorado State professor. After a processing facility was built in Nebraska, the state saw a 300 percent increase in acreage of field peas in the area around the facility, she said. A huge piece of the puzzle is establishing the infrastructure and markets to support these emerging crops, said Schipanski.

As infrastructure develops, pulses should play a bigger role in U.S. agriculture, said Oien of Timeless Seeds, though for now their consumption remains a blip when compared with meat consumption. Annual consumption of meat in the U.S. is about 220 pounds per person per year, while the average consumption of lentils is 8 to 10 ounces per capita. When Timeless launched, lentil consumption was at about 2 ounces per year, he said.

Theres a big opportunity for building up the domestic market, said Oien. Regenerative farming depends on what people put on their plates every lunch and dinner. If they eat pulses, there will be a market and farmers will grow them.

Read the rest here:
Plant-Based Diets and Regenerative Ag Have Sparked a Pea and Lentil Renaissance - Civil Eats

Diabetes is one of the largest, most expensive problems facing America's veterans, and the US government is staking its hopes for a solution on an unconventional treatment: the popular keto diet.

The Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA) has launched a partnership with a digital therapeutics startup Virta Health to treat diabetic veterans using the low-carb, high-fat keto diet, at no cost to the vets or the VA.

The partnership, first announced in May 2019, has enrolled 400 veterans into Virta's program, which includes personalized nutrition plans and online access to health coaches and physicians.

So far, the results have been promising, according to the company's data. A pilot program with the VA found that half of the participating veterans achieved blood sugar levels below the threshold for diabetes after three months on Virta's program. And the treatment successfully reduced medications, including insulin, by 53% across the entire group.

But some experts have raised concerns that there may be unforeseen health consequences following this kind of treatment, and that the VA's buy-in will lend legitimacy to what is still an experimental treatment.

Prior to working with the VA, Virta had been studying keto as a treatment for diabetes for over two years.

Diabetes is an inability to balance blood sugar.Reducing carbs manages the problem at the source by preventing blood sugar from rising in the first place, according to Dr. Mark Cucuzzella, a professor at West Virginia University School of Medicine, a US Air Force Reservist, and a marathon runner who has published several studies on keto and diabetes.

Hollis Johnson/INSIDER "The most impactful thing on your blood glucose is the amount of carbs in your diet. The low-carb diet is effective because it lowers the insulin load," Cucuzzella, whois not affiliated with Virta, told Insider in an interview. "Insulin is the master switch."

Medications like insulin can mitigate diabetes symptoms by managing blood sugar levels. But keto can help patients reduce medications, said Dr. Sarah Hallberg, medical director for Virta.

Eating carbohydrates causes blood sugar to rise, but eating fats does not. It means diabetic patients can get their daily calories without needing to use insulin to balance out spiking blood sugar levels.

"Standard treatment puts people on a one-way street of progression for diabetes, with temporary pharmaceutical treatment that will have to be added on to," Hallberg told Insider. "We're able to give people another lane going the other way by bringing blood sugar into non-diabetic range while reducing and eliminating medication."

That doesn't mean keto can cure diabetes.

Virta refers to its treatment as a "reversal" of diabetes. In layman's terms, this means the disease is in remission. The treatment only works as long as the low-carb diet is maintained. As soon as carbs are re-introduced, the same problems with blood sugar and insulin emerge.

A keto diet is any eating plan that pushes the body into a state of ketosis when it begins producing substances called ketones, explained Dr. Ethan Weiss, a cardiologist and founder of a ketone-detecting device. (Weiss previously served as a medical advisor for Virta.)

"Keto" typically refers to eating plans in which a majority of daily calories come from fat, along with some protein and minimal carbs.People with diabetes could cut their carb intake to as low as 30 grams a day and still be healthy.

But the key to medical keto is going beyond counting macronutrients. Instead, it's important to focus onwhole-food sources of fats, cutting carbs without completely eliminating nutrient-rich foods like veggies.

Vietnam war veterans among other guests listen to U.S. President Barack Obama at the Memorial Day observance at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, U.S., May 30, 2016. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

It's not clear what long-term health effects the keto diet might have.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group of medical experts who advocate a plant-based diet, sent a letter to VA officials asking them to reconsider the partnership, and keto treatment, based on evidence that a high-fat, low-carb diet could potentially increase risks of diabetes, particularly diets high in saturated fat.

Skeptics have also noted that most of the data showing keto can treat diabetes is based on studies led and funded by Virta itself. There is barely any hard data on keto's health effects beyond two years on the diet.

Hallberg acknowledged the lack of long-term evidence, but said the same problem has plagued nearly every other type of therapeutic diet (with the exception of the Mediterranean diet).

"There's needs to be a hard outcome, long-term trial looking at a variety of eating patterns, no question," she said.

But in the meantime, diabetes continues to be diagnosed in record numbers, particularly among military veterans.

"Do we have 10-20 years to wait for that?We're in the midst of an unprecedented diabetes and obesity epidemic," she said. "We have to do something now."

Read more:

Nutrition experts react to the keto diet's new ranking as one of the worst diets of 2020

There's a Mediterranean version of the keto diet that restricts red meat and trades butter for olive oil

The keto diet makes mice better at fighting the flu another clue about how the high-fat, low-carb plan changes the body

More:
Keto diet is being used by government to treat veterans' diabetes - Insider - INSIDER

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