Ask Well: Eating Fat to Boost Vitamin D and Calcium-I have recently started to see a natural medicine doctor in order to get my body back in line. Now after going to her for almost 2 months I have really learned the impact vitamins, minerals, and herbs can have on the body. This article is short, but shows an interesting study on how vitamin D is absorbed better with fat. “At the end of the day, it was clear that dietary fat made a difference for vitamin D levels. The researchers found that the subjects in the fat groups had 32 percent greater absorption of the vitamin than those in the fat-free group.” Just a good reason to add some avocado to your morning toast in my opinion.

Prescribing Vegetables, Not Pills– I love this idea. It is essentially letting families get farmers market produce with credits like food stamps. It is not only helping to decrease BMI’s across families in the program, but is also helping the farmers as they are in turn selling more produce. A win-win strategy in my mind.  “Instead of drugs or admonishments to lose weight, which typically fall on deaf ears, doctors provide families in the FVRx program with a “prescription” to eat fruits and vegetables. The families also are given nutritional education, recipes and, most important of all, so-called Health Bucks that are redeemable for produce at a local farmers’ market — at twice the amount that the families could purchase with food stamps alone.”

Can You Ever Exercise Too Much? I for one ponder this question quite often as I have a tendency to push myself a little more then most people. It looks like the verdict is still out on this one. “There may well be an upper limit of exercise for a subset of exercise junkies. The problem is, research hasn’t identified that threshold, likely because it varies for each individual.”

Too much protein in middle age ‘as bad as smoking’– “Two new studies conclude that low protein intake may hold the key to a long and healthy life, at least until old age. They also emphasize the need to examine not only calories when deciding what constitutes a healthy diet, but also where those calories come from – such as whether protein is animal or plant-based.”

The Leftovers We Toss– All I can say is WOW, I had no idea how much we wasted with food. “According to the Environmental Protection Agency, food scraps make up 20 percent of our landfills, and each year Americans toss 35 million tons of uneaten groceries. That’s nearly enough to feed the population of California.’

Photo from Huff Post