When I’m super stressed, I crave my favorite comfort food: homemade triple chocolate brownies with coconut flakes, served with a healthy dollop of almond butter and freshly-cracked vanilla sea salt.

To my kids, these brownies represent a, “We love you, mom!” special-baked-goodie-moment, but in my book they’re a, “time to pause and evaluate my stress levels” food.

Right now, a prevalent preoccupation health – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and, certainly, community health.

Like you, I rely on recommendations from researchers, doctors and health practitioners in my field to shape my safety habits and family guidelines. While handwashing and isolation are imperatives to reducing virus spread, some institutions claim that food has little or no effect on immunity. As a nutritionist, I deeply trust the healing potential of food and botanicals.

Fear abounds. An invisible organism spreads insidiously into the air we breathe, onto surfaces and faces we can’t help but touch, and within living hosts. It persists, this virus, shape-shifting. Once recognized, it morphs again to prey effectively on vulnerable populations.

Why is chocolate a beloved treat on a holiday that celebrates love? Chocolate not only elevates our mood and warms our heart, it is biochemically beneficial to both our cardiovascular wellbeing and our brain function via the symbiotic heart-brain axis. Inside our heart is a “heart brain”, a tiny center of neurons, neurotransmitters and proteins, just like in the head’s brain, and coordinated by the nervous system. Areas of the brain regulate the heart, and the heart is a key communicator to the brain. Chocolate seems to benefit both!

Just a few weeks past winter solstice, and we’re deeply entrenched in sick season. One simple way to combat viruses and infections is to eat foods containing certain nutrients that support immunity, especially the mineral zinc.

Zinc is a potent antioxidant, often misunderstood and under-consumed.

Holiday events, tree trimming, shopping for gifts, end-of-year work deadlines, carving out time to ski – during the busy holiday season, how do we find time to plan wholesome meals?

Leaving meal prep for the last minute and eating on the fly are a recipe for poor nutritional choices and overindulgence. It doesn’t take long for processed frozen meals, pizza delivery and leftovers to leave us feeling under-nourished.

Fall in the mountains offers a transcendence from outward living to turning within, and a somewhat ominous glimpse of the long winter ahead. Often underrated and quite misunderstood, squash is like the epitome of fall – its protective shell shelters its gifts from the elements; once cracked open, though, squash is adaptable and tender.

Everyday stressors from parenting, work, community volunteering and otherwise spreading ourselves thin, create an ideal platform for the body to exist in chronic stress. We know what we need to do – be in nature, meditate, eat whole foods, exercise, sleep 8 hours per night. Instead, we skimp on self-care in order to simply survive.

Then a traumatic event occurs and our stress levels spike.

The kitchen is my happy place, and I love cooking meals from scratch. I’m a darn good meal planner, so it’s unusual for me to be totally out of ingredients needed for school lunches, potlucks and Sunday brunches.  

Even with planning ahead, busy times and late notices pop up. I’ve found that a collection of go-to pantry and fridge-door foods helps to prepare quick, wholesome, healthy meals!

We’re just getting into our hottest summer days, ideal for swimming, camping and outside play. And yet the majority of Blaine County students are back in school, and parents are already asking how to support their kids’ immunity.

While food can be both healing and destructive, so can our body’s ability to respond.  Thankfully, nature gave humans the ability to maintain whole body balance. When we ingest food sprayed with chemicals our digestive and lymphatic systems, plus liver and kidneys, are equipped to process and excrete these harmful toxins. Every orchestrated physiologic system is brilliantly designed to maintain whole-body balance, or homeostasis.

The Wood River Valley is renowned for artful events and ultimate outdoor experiences. Our idyllic backdrop and high-class culture makes us a destination both for the elite and for adventurers seeking pristine wilderness.

However, as the nation’s ninth most expensive county in which to live, variants divide us: north and south valley, affluence and service strata, full time residents and part time holidaymakers, culture and ethnicity. We contribute time or money through local nonprofits, yet how else may we truly get to know our neighbors?

Idaho state legislators this year debated House Bill 122, introduced to legalize hemp production and sales in our state. Passing the bill would have put Idaho on par with 41 other states that have legalized hemp, and the 2018 Farm Bill, which deregulates hemp and legalizes it nationwide. However, the law didn’t pass, much to the dismay of Idaho farmers and industries selling sell – or wanting to sell – hemp-derived products, such as CBD oil.

For most of my life, just hearing the word liver made me cringe. I pictured a toxic exotic, inedible delicacy in a strange culture. I was a vegetarian, of course – and then vegan – for nearly half of my life so, liver certainly never appealed to me as a food. Fois gras? French pate? Non, merci.

But now that I understand the liver from a physiological perspective, I find this organ incredibly appealing!

With all this snow in our mountain town, it’s hard to believe spring break is around the corner. Many of us are planning a warm and sunny vacation, yet are we making plans to stay healthy? It’s incredibly common to get sick while on vacation! During preparations and travels, we sacrifice our immune systems, which sabotages our good time. How can we avoid vacation illness?

Did you know, in addition to ensuring happy couples, St. Valentine is also the patron saint of beekeeping, epilepsy, the plague, fainting and traveling?

Every February, we celebrate our love for family, friends and community (and dark chocolate) and express gratitude for our abundances and health. This year, why not also focus on self-love?

Recently a colleague asked me to share my top three tips for anyone who wishes to improve nutrition. Initially, I thought, “that depends.” Each person’s nutrition needs are unique.

But the more I think about it, several food enhancements absolutely drive my conversations about improving nutrient intake through customizable, flexible, and totally doable meals.

With the increase in environmental toxins in our food, air, soil and water, we are more susceptible than ever to the potential damage to our body. As we age, we are more likely to experience intercellular damage resulting in degenerative disease.