Health & Safety

The cheese questions we field the most mainly pertain to the lifespan of cheese: How long does cheese last? How do I know when a cheese has gone bad?What’s good versus bad mold?Armed with some of our helpful tutorials on how to store cheese best, you may never have to confront the issue of unwanted mold again. But if you do, there’s a new verb to learn: To face.It’s simple. If cheese has mold on it, you can be rid of it in one of two ways.

It's all about making some smart, kid-friendly swaps.

I have a few techniques I follow to try to tempt my child when he is too sick, tired, cranky, or in pain to eat most of our usual favorites.

While both diets may seem similar, there's one thing that sets them apart.

But please, don't be a lunch zombie.

Happy 2018! Now is the time when magazines and websites start talking about New Year’s resolutions. We don’t necessarily believe in them (so many set you up to fail!), but we do believe in making every year better than the one before it. And so we present you with Feel Good Habits. Every day this week, we’ll be running tips to help you with a new promise you might have made yourself. A banana here and a few pieces of arugula there do not make for the most nutritious days.

You come home from work and pull dinner out of the freezer. Is it safe to defrost it on the counter while you walk the dog or catch up with your family? In most cases, probably not. Here’s what to do instead…Although freezing food puts pathogens (disease-causing bacteria or other microorganisms) in suspended animation, it does not kill them. As soon as the food starts to become warmer at temperatures above 40°F, bacteria can begin to multiply.

This time of year, hearts are abundant in every way, shape, and form. There are the classic heart-shaped candies, of course, but also cookies, cupcakes, and pizzas. Even breakfast gets in on the action with heart-shaped eggs and bacon! (See all the heart-shaped things here.) But it’s rare we actually stop to think about our real heart — and I’m not talking about in the emotional sense.

Parents, we’re guessing you’ve all been there. You’ve finished feeding your kids, and now it’s time to make yourself something to eat. But those leftover bits and pieces from your child’s plate are just easier to eat, and somehow that becomes dinner. Dan Pashman, of WNYC’s The Sporkful, is ready to fess up to snacking on his kids leftovers from dinner, and he’s come up with a hierarchy of what’s okay to eat.

It’s easy to enjoy eating winter squash — these versatile vegetables taste good roasted, stuffed, pureed, or even baked into desserts like pies and muffins. Prepping these stubborn, hard vegetables is not enjoyable though, and I’m sure we’ve all struggled with peeling and cutting them.

The old joke about someone being ‘vegetarian except for bacon’ is a bit stale but nonetheless, it harbors some truth. Bacon is one of the most missed foods when people give up eating meat and often the first one back (the “gateway meat”). Still, most vegetarians I know have found many inventive ways to add bacon’s delicious qualities into their food without using actual bacon itself.

Do you ever cook squid at home? To be honest, it’s usually a dinner-out dish for me, and one that most often takes the form of crispy fried calamari. But this method for oven-roasted squid from Chez Panisse chef David TanisThis comes from Tanis’s most recent cookbook, Heart of the Artichoke. He describes tossing the sliced squid in olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then roasting them at 450°F for about fifteen minutes. Could it get any easier than that?

We wish we’d discovered this one back during Vegan Week! The Italians might call this topping “poor man’s parmesan,” but toasting bread crumbs in olive oil until they’re golden and crispy sounds pretty rich to us. Who knows? We might ditch the parmesan altogether.We’re not sure that poor man’s parmesan was ever intended to actually simulate cheese or convince your taste buds that it actually is cheese.

I’ve tried and failed at meal planning more times than I can remember — not for a lack of understanding its benefits, or for making the effort, or wanting to succeed. When it comes down to it, I never had a plan that was right or sustainable for me and my family. After signing up for an Ironman, I knew that this had to change immediately. Between work, life, and training, I knew if my husband and I wanted to avoid hangry meltdowns and nonstop takeout, meal planning had to happen.

When it comes to common problems that can be addressed with homemade and herbal remedies for mama and baby, we couldn’t forget about this one: the fearsome diaper rash. Baby bums call for special care, and this salve uses wholesome ingredients for a gentle result. Imagine the adult version of diaper rash. Imagine how uncomfortable you might be if you had to walk around with a rash in your nether regions, and didn’t have the cognitive ability to understand what was going on.

After the heavy eating of the holidays, you’re probably ready to focus on wholesome, healthy foods that provide the nutrients you need. This well-designed infographic from S.B. Lattin Design makes it easy to identify the foods that are good sources of the 13 essential vitamins — no pills or supplements required.

Have you recently felt the presence of ghosts, seen giant insects attacking your car or found yourself rolling on the floor without explanation? No? Clearly you haven’t been consuming enough of the five foods Bon Appetit says can cause hallucinations — although there is a good chance you had one of them this morning.Hot chilies, nutmeg, moldy rye bread, sea bream and our old friend coffee are five foods with a history of causing hallucinations.

You might have heard the scientific buzz surrounding the connection between a healthy gut and overall health, with studies showing that a person’s microbiome — the collective name for all the microbes that inhabit an individual’s body — can have an impact on conditions like obesity, diabetes and asthma, and may even have a profound effect on our mental well-being. So how do you cultivate a healthy and happy microbiome? It starts with vegetables.

Here is an incomplete list of foods that you probably try to eat in moderation (to varying degrees of success): doughnuts, Hersheys Kisses, celery sticks, and tofu, probably. French fries are not one of those foods. You can’t simply order a side of fries, eat one or two, and feel satisfied; to do so would take an act of willpower beyond your wildest dreams.

Just remember what you learned in kindergarten: Never judge a book by its cover.

In January we explored Whole30, the 30-day reset and refocus on whole foods. Whole30 isn’t a diet or a judgment of foods as “good and bad.” It’s actually a short-term reset that has helped many of our readers cook more and figure out the foods that make them feel their best. Here’s a final takeaway from Ariel, one of our editors, who went through the whole program — and cooked a lot more.

At some point or another, everyone has experienced the classic symptoms of a food coma. You know what I’m talking about. It’s that overwhelming feeling of fullness after a buffet binge or too many servings of mashed potatoes at a family dinner. We laymen call it a food coma, but medical professionals have a name for the phenomenon: postprandial somnolence. Medical experts agree that eating too much food results in a change in your body’s circulation.

Throughout January and February, six Kitchn editors tried out the Whole30 program for the first time. In case you’re not familiar, Whole30 is a program where you cut out added sugar, grains, alcohol, legumes, dairy, carrageenan, MSG, and sulfites for 30 days. The program is supposed to help you reset and refocus on food and figure out what makes you feel good.

Ask a tea aficionado how tea should be prepared and you can bet a microwave will not be involved. But ask a food scientist from University of Newcastle in Australia and they’ll make a compelling case for using a microwave. Research shows preparing tea in a microwave might actually make it healthier for you.

Remember that age-old piece of nutritional advice that salty foods make you thirsty? It’s wrong. Scientists have long believed that eating more salt results in urinating more, which causes one to drink more to refuel. But no long-term study has ever looked into the matter to verify the seemingly logical assumption. Now an international team of scientists found evidence suggesting the contrary: Those who ate more salt retained more water, were less thirsty, and were hungrier.

Sparkling water is often considered to be a healthy (and delicious) alternative to sodas and high-sugar drinks, but a new study has made some troubling findings about how healthy sparkling water really is. Spoiler alert: It might not be as good for you as you may think. New research from Birzeit University in Palestine, published in the peer-reviewed journal Obesity Research and Clinical Practice, suggests that carbonated beverages make you feel hungrier. How?

It’s not quite an allergy to fruits and veggies, but it’s also not “not an allergy.” If you’ve bitten into a fruit or veggie and felt a tingling sensation in your throat or your lips immediately getting ever-so-slightly swollen, know that it’s not in your head. It’s a seasonal allergic reaction to fruits and vegetables called “oral allergy syndrome.

Ever wonder the best way to prepare mushrooms without sacrificing their nutritional content? A few scientists from the Mushroom Technological Research Center in La Rioja, Spain did and they have the answer for how to best prepare the fungus. Mushrooms can be prepared in a variety of different ways, but some cooking techniques can make them lose their health appeal (they are rich in fiber, vitamins, and protein).

My favorite local bar recently added a Unicorn Frosé to its cocktail menu, possibly as some kind of trap to catch its regulars. Because I’m one of them, I asked one of the bartenders if it had spirulina in it. She had to ask two of the other bartenders, and the consensus was no, but they weren’t sure, because they didn’t know what spirulina was. They’re not alone.

You’ve likely heard the word “adaptogen” thrown around lately. But despite all the chatter you may still be wondering, adapt-o-what? So, let me break it down for you: Adaptogens are a group of plants that, put simply, help us adapt to stress. All of these plants deal with stress in their own plant lives: They respond to environmental pollutants, withstand extreme weather, and even fight off predators.

I am not typically prone to impulse buys, like not at all — unless I’m in Whole Foods. For some reason, that store’s displays have a way of convincing me that yes, I should be making turmeric tea and yeah, I probably do need to sprinkle powdered collagen on everything I eat, and, wait, why don’t I have a fridge filled with alkaline water?

If you want a good night’s rest, you know to avoid the big three: caffeine, sugar, and booze. That means no late-night cup of coffee, decadent dessert, or nightcap. And, while hotels may leave a square of chocolate on the pillow, eating it before bed will also interfere with your sleep (chocolate, especially dark chocolate, is full of caffeine). But what about more unlikely foods that may disrupt your rest?

Remember a few years ago, when your Paleo-eating, Crossfit-obsessed friends invited you over for cauliflower crust pizza? And as you forced a smile through one damp, flavorless mouthful after another, you thought this will never catch on. Um, yeah, it seems to have actually caught on. Trader Joe’s and Costco both sell their own cauli-crusts, California Pizza Kitchen has made it a permanent menu addition, and even my fave local pizza joint offers it as a semi-regular special.

One of the easiest ways to eat a healthful diet is to consume more fruits and vegetables. That sounds fine on the surface, but how do you actually do it? Making salads for lunch every day is an easy way to start, but that can get boring fast. Luckily, there are lots of tricks to squeezing a few more wholesome fruits and vegetables into breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and even incorporating them into snacks and desserts. Let me show you how.

As a vegetarian, I eat beans — and lots of them. At least once a week, and usually far more often, I’ll find myself at the sink rinsing off canned kidney beans in a colander to rid them of the liquid glop from the can, or standing over a pot of dried chickpeas, giving it an occasional stir.

My three-year-old rescue dog, Goblin, will do anything for a morsel of food, which is why I always keep a stash of dog treats on hand. But the cost of high-quality treats without corn and other fillers can start to add up, which is why I’ve bookmarked EatingWell’s budget-friendly (and healthy) list of fruits and vegetables dogs can safely snack on — and there are quite a few for cats, too!

Q: have two cartons of rice milk, one of which I opened a month ago. The other I just bought, and there appears to be tiny flecks in it that dissolve when touched. Amazingly, they taste identical. The older one may be a little less sweet. I’ll discard the older one. I’m not sure what to do with the one I just opened? Its expiration date is July 2014. How can you tell if Classic Plain “Organic” Rice Dream Rice Milk has gone bad or spoiled or is unsafe to drink?

Q: My husband and I absolutely love MorningStar Farms Hot & Spicy Sausage Patties. What we are not so in love with is the long list of unpronounceable ingredients that grace the side of the package. Is there a less processed, meat-free (eggs and dairy are okay) recipe for a copycat version? Sent by AJ Editor: Readers, can you recommend any vegetarian sausage recipes that replicate the taste of the MorningStar Farms Hot & Spicy Patties?

What: To Your Health Sprouted Flour Co. Read the series → Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four Love really good popcorn, but don’t want to take the time to make it the old-fashioned way? Use sprouted corn kernels in place of conventional popping corn, and you can achieve popcorn perfection with the convenience of your microwave. Here’s how to do it. The keys to great popcorn are the multiple mini-explosions created when heat turns the moisture in each kernel into steam.

For 30 days this month we’re exploring Whole30, the 30-day reset and refocus on whole foods. Whole30 isn’t a diet or a judgment of foods as “good and bad.” It’s actually a short-term reset that has helped many of our readers cook more and figure out the foods that make them feel their best. Read more about our coverage here. All week long I’ve been sharing tidbits of my month-long adventure into Whole30.

Working from home means that theoretically I could make all my meals from scratch whenever hunger strikes, but the reality is that I often stare at my computer for super-long stretches of time until I realize I haven’t eaten in hours and need to scarf something down, usually hunched over at the counter, before my next meeting. It’s super glamorous!

If you’re following a Paleo diet or doing a Whole30, chances are I don’t have to sell you on this dietary approach that prioritizes eating and cooking whole, unprocessed, nutrient-dense foods like veggies, fruits, grass-fed and pastured meats and eggs, and wild-caught seafood. Because you feel pretty awesome, right? There’s one downside, though, and you’ve probably experienced it too: lunch is kind of a pain.

A few years ago, I didn’t know what meal planning was. I thought it was something for people who had kids to feed, a budget to manage, and no interest in the triumph of a spontaneous dinner. But like any good assumption, I missed the nuance and gravity of what the practice of planning your dinners all at one could do for you — and certainly who it was for.

Truth be told, when it comes to meal planning, I’ve long taken the old-school pen-and-paper approach. In part because I’m a list maker at heart who loves a good notebook and colored pens, and also because I believed it to be the simplest approach. But turns out I might have really been missing something along the way. Until now I’ve been resistant to move to a meal planning app (of which there are so many!), for no other reason than I’m a creature of habit.

Confusion over food labeling has been estimated to account for about 20% of consumer food waste.

You want to get away. You want to eat some of the best food of your life, on the road, in a car with the windows rolled down. You want to feel free. Unfortunately, when you have to eat gluten-free, travel is rarely that spontaneous. You never know if you’re going to find much you can eat in a gas station off the highway (Fritos are gluten-free). Walk into a diner in the middle of the country and you might be met with confused stares when you ask to see a gluten-free menu.

When you’re traveling, most things are out of your control — the weather, equipment malfunctions, your fellow seatmates, delays, the price of (questionable) food options, the amount of healthy food options — but a couple years ago (during my first and only non-cheating stint of Whole30), I figured out a way to take charge of some of those elements. My life hack? I never travel without a specially packed container of hard-boiled eggs. Here’s how it works.

When I made plans to spend a week in Cuba, my gluten- and dairy-free diet was really the last thing on my mind. I was more worried about how many sundresses to pack, whether I would remember my newly learned salsa steps, and if immigration would stamp my passport (they didn’t). I’m pretty sure my travel companion, a vegan, didn’t think too much about what she would eat either.

When you’re on the road with the family, the last thing you want is a car filled with hungry kids. The familiar cajoles of road trip games and playful conversation can quickly turn sour if the children in the backseat go unfed. But what are you going to feed them? If you packed enough snacks to keep the kids satisfied, it’s no big deal. When they start squirming or asking for a bite, you can just pass them whatever you have on hand.

Mollie Katzen is on a personal mission to get as many people cooking at home as possible. “Chefs and restaurateurs are going to be mad at me if I succeed, but I really feel anyone can become a home cook.” As she is the author of 12 cookbooks, with over six million books in print, we believe that Mollie has a thing or two to say on what it takes to be a great and happy home cook.

So you made yourself two-dozen homemade granola bars over the weekend. Congratulations! That means no more mid-afternoon raids of the office vending machine. The only thing is … now you have to eat the same snack for the next 24 days. Or, what if you found a few healthy-snacking friends and organized a snack swap at work instead?

There are a few things that I can guarantee (with absolute certainty) will happen in the early days of this new year. I will not be able to successfully write 2019 on the first try — until at least April. I will continue to tell everyone I know that “I am going to get a gym membership when the crowds die down.” I am going to resolve to eat better and save that money. To help me get a jump-start on that third one (for real this time!

Over the past three-and-a-half years, I have completed seven rounds of the Whole30 program. The Whole30 was created by Melissa and Dallas Hartwig, and it has exploded in popularity recently. Most of us would be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t done Whole30 or hasn’t thought about doing Whole30. The program has plenty of supporters boasting life-changing results, and I can say that I am one of the people who has experienced these tremendous results.

The only reason you think of certain foods as “breakfast foods” is because that’s how they’ve been marketed to you, explains Amanda Mull in The Atlantic today.

Adding all of these to my meal plan ASAP!

With the USDA ground beef recall fresh on our minds, we are brushing up on our own food handling practices. Do you know how long you can leave that potato salad on your buffet ? What temperature meat should be before it is safely cooked and done? If you’re not so sure, no worries: we’ve been doing a Food Safety 101 course this week to keep you and your guests happy and healthy. We already talked a little bit about how long you can leave cooked food unrefrigerated.

Most of the time, it’s fine to simply wash our thermometers with soapy water and call it a day. But when we’ve been using them to take the temperature of meat, we want them clean. And we mean really clean. Who knows what microscopic nasties are hanging around after all that poking and prodding? And since it can’t go in the dishwasher with everything else, how can we be sure we’re getting our thermometers clean? Start off by washing the stem in soapy water.

If you’re participating in the Kitchn Cure, you probably tossed a fair amount of outdated, spoiled, and just not useful food this week. Every time we clean out the fridge, we’re filled with agita at all the food we waste. Cooking for two people with busy schedules means that plans change unexpectedly, and that head of lettuce you bought two weeks ago is just not going to wait.

When you cook soup, stock, or any other dish that you’re planning to portion and store, do you immediately place it in the fridge or freezer? If you answer “yes,” you may be increasing your risk of contracting a food-borne illness. The food danger zone is from 140° F (60° C) to 40° F (4° C.

Freezing summer produce is a great – and simple – way to put away fresh food for the months ahead. One drawback is the susceptibility of many foods to freezer burn. Read on…Freezing foods puts a temporary hold on many biological processes, including decay and enzyme activity. However, when foods are frozen for extended periods of time or are frozen improperly, freezer burn can begin to develop on the food’s surface.

Of all the things we love about fall, one thing we’re not so crazy about is the beginning of cold and flu season. Some of us have already been suffering through an early bug.We’re nearly useless in the kitchen when we’re not feeling well, but keeping a few heat-and-serve items in our pantry keeps us from constantly reaching for the takeout soup menus.

A few too many encounters with gristle, and even the most avid omnivore might be tempted to turn vegetarian. It’s chewy, rubbery, flavorless, and altogether unpleasant, but what exactly is gristle? Read on…Your average cut of raw meat is made up of four components: muscle tissue, fat, collagen, and elastin. The muscle tissue is what we actually end up eating. The fat melts as the meat is cooked, giving this muscle tissue flavor and texture.

If greens were meat, winter kale would be the hangar steak. It’s not like spinach (the filet, if we’re sticking to our analogy), which takes mere seconds to melt down quickly in a pan. No, some tough, curly leaves of kale need a little tenderizing, a little time. And that’s why we like to boil ours…There’s been some chatter around the food blogs lately, after Molly at Orangette wrote about her love of boiled kale served with a fried egg.

Nonstick cooking sprays like Pam and Mazola are convenient to use and boast fat-free cooking. But these products have also always seemed to us like one of those strange slightly-mystical products akin to Bac-Os bacon bits or pre-grated Parmesan cheese in a can. Just what the heck is nonstick cooking spray?!From what we can tell, most nonstick cooking sprays are simply an oil (usually canola) thinned out with water.

Clabber, noun: soured milkBack before there was baking powder to use as a quick leavener in baking, there was clabber. This was something that every farm wife or person with access to fresh milk could make, no additional ingredients necessary!To make clabbered milk, the fresh, raw milk was simply left out at room temperature. Bacteria in the milk would start converting the lactose (sugars) into an acid, causing the milk to thicken and sour while also keeping it from actually spoiling.

Joy loves her ramen noodles, but she’s looking for a way to make this cheap and yummy dish healthier. She writes:Despite knowing how bad it is for me, I still love instant ramen. It’s cheap, delicious, and convenient for those times I don’t really want to bother with cooking. Recently I’ve been adding julienned carrots, napa cabbage, and a whole egg in attempts to make it more “nutritious”.

Just in time to round out Eating Light month, and just in time for the Super Bowl, too, here’s a question from Lindsey on chips and salsa:I love eating chips and salsa, although chips aren’t really all that good for me. I was wondering if you had any ideas for a chip substitute that would be great for eating with salsa?Lindsey, well, if you love chips, we first off would suggest just eating them in moderation and not substituting anything! A handful here and there won’t hurt.

A well-marbled steak is a truly beautiful thing, and there’s a reason why we’re willing to pay top dollar to get it! What exactly is marbling and why is it so desirable? Well, we’ll tell you…Marbling simply refers to the fat found within a cut of meat and between the muscle fibers themselves. A high-quality steak will have a lot of marbling, while a lean cut will have very little or no visible marbling.

One of our favorite things to bring to outdoor get-togethers (or give as a hostess gift) is a whole watermelon. Not only does it alleviate the stress of prep work, but it’s easy to pack and go in a jiffy, especially when it’s being toted around in a sling. Although it looks like something the stork would bring (babies, watermelon, same difference right?), this easy sling means no slipping, dropping or rolling around can occur!

Q: I see recipes that include the nutritional information (e.g. calories, fat, protein, carbs, etc.) and I’m wondering how the Average Joe can calculate this information for home recipes. Is there user-friendly software lurking somewhere? Do you have to join a secret nutrition society? Anything freely available? Thanks for your tips!! — Sent by LorettaEditor: Loretta, there are quite a few websites that will give you nutritional data for recipes.

We received a nasty shock early last week when all our refrigerated food suddenly and mysteriously started spoiling! The culprit ended up being a busted cooling fan, but we learned a lot about fridges, freezers, and proper running temperatures in the process. Do you know what temperature your fridge and freezer should be running?Refrigerators should maintain a consistent temperature between 33° and 41°.

Unless you do a lot of gluten-free baking, you might not have come across xanthan gum — at least not in a recipe. Flip over a jar of salad dressing or a carton of ice cream to read the ingredients, and you’ll likely find xanthan gum listed there, too!So, is this a safe ingredient for a gluten-free diet — or an industrial additive to be avoided?Xanthan gum is produced from a certain strain of bacteria (Xanthomonas campestris, according to Wikipedia) reacting with carbohydrates.