Cook? Between the job, the kids, and everyone’s social calendars, who has time to cook anymore?

I hear the same lament all the time from busy parents.

Who has time to worry about food?

I’ve often felt the same way myself. Sometimes I cringe when I think back to the food “products” I allowed my 2 older college grads to eat when they were growing up.  Back in the day, I didn’t fully understand how damaging fast food and junk food was to their growing bodies and brains.

Like most everyone else, I was lured by the convenience of not having to cook after a hard day of work, or by the ease of eating out while rushing between Scouts and dance class.  Somehow at the time, there didn’t seem to be a downside to consuming inexpensive food that I didn’t have to cook.

A couple of holistic nutrition degrees later, my family’s eating habits have changed drastically, and so have my priorities.  Could it be that off the chart increases in obesity, heart disease, diabetes and cancer are linked to our fascination with the quick and easy (but low quality, highly processed, nutrient-deficient) foods that most of us consume daily?

Without the proper building blocks to create strong bodies and immune systems, we find ourselves in a vicious cycle of weakness and illness that affects everything from our energy levels to our hormones. What we need instead is serious nutrition to break the cycle.

I now make my living helping people transition into healing diets, because I firmly believe that good health and most illnesses can be dramatically improved by adjusting the quality of our food.

I personally have worked on nutritional protocols with clients to improve an alphabet soup list of conditions ranging from ADD/ADHD and Autism through cancer, diabetes and obesity. When superior nutritional resources are restored with food selections and targeted nutritional supplementation, healing results can appear magical.

Very few doctors, with the notable exception of our amazing Dr. Sara, have had more than a few hours of nutritional coursework in their medical training. Most have positive intentions, but lack a working knowledge of the powerful support that nutrition can provide a healing body.

Food is not “one size fits all.” Each of us responds to food uniquely, and a food that is healthy and vitalizing for me may be inflammatory and toxic for you.

We all have individualized dietary needs, determined by our genetic predispositions and our unique environmental exposures. The important thing is to take the time to discover what your individualized nutritional requirements are, and establish the optimal foods (or supplements) to deliver them.

The good news is, our diets don’t have to be perfect; they just need to be better.

Any positive step in the right direction can be helpful. The more I studied nutrition, the more I began to realize that so much of the ground-breaking research that could help people make wiser health choices wasn’t making it mainstream.  So it occurred to me that one really cool way to spread the word, would be to create an app that sends subscribers one Health Tip every day by phone.

If you’ve been looking for a resource to support your efforts to skyrocket your health and vitality, check out http://www.HealingWithHolisticNutrition.com and download your free copy of the Health Tip of the Day app for iPhone and Android.  Serious Nutrition starts with baby steps.


Lisa Best, PhD

Lisa Best, MBA, Ph.D Holistic Nutrition is a Certified Clinical Nutritionist and CEO at Healing With Nutrition. She’s the creator of Health Tip of the Day smartphone app, which provides natural and easy health tips with a holistic flair, and Health Tips Weekly, a weekly inbox magazine. She provides nutritional phone consultations by appointment.

She’s the mother of 3 children; two Duke University grads and an eight year old. She home-schooled all three at various times. She believes that excellent nutrition is the key to longevity and wellness, and that it’s vital to analyze and adjust your diet when illness strikes.