A beautiful bunch of greens caught my eye at the farmers market the other day: sweet potato leaves. I’d never heard of them before, and decided to give them a try.

I nipped the leaves off their stems, roughly julienned them (cut into half-inch-thick strips), sautéed them in olive oil flavored with garlic halves and added a very light sprinkle of coarsely ground salt. (They take about three times as long spinach leaves to melt down, but not as long as kale or collards.) The result: The most delicious greens I’d had in recent memory. Mild like spinach, but not as metallic, and meatier, with a consistency you can sink your teeth into. But a warning—they don’t last long in the fridge, so prepare them the day you buy them.

Sweet potato leaves aren’t all that popular here in the United States. That’s too bad, because research shows they are higher in protein and omega-3s than most greens. They’re teeming with disease-fighting phytonutrients as well, including quercetin, an antioxidant that may  fight not only cancer, but inflammation and obesity, too.
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Have you ever tried sweet potato leaves? If so, how did you prepare them? 

Name any common disease associated with aging — cancer, dementia, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, type 2 diabetes — and chronic inflammation will play a role.  Read more on AARP.com

If you're a steak and burger lover, this week's headlines might have seemed too good to be true: Keep eating red meat — no reason to cut back. That's the upshot of a series of articles published in the prestigious... read more on AARP.com

Weight loss is a serious problem for some people with neurologic disorders such as Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, and stroke, says Nikolaus McFarland, MD, PhD, FAAN, chief of the movement disorders division in the department of neurology at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville.
 
How to gain weight if you have a neurologic condition?  Read the article on Brain&Life.com.

Story by Janis Jibrin, MS, RD  Recipes by Jennifer Iserloh

Like intellectual stimulation or meditation, the right diet can make a dramatic difference in smarts and mood--today, and years down the road. Here’s how to fuel your way to clearer, happier thinking.

Read the full article on YogaJournal.com

Looking to switch over to an anti-inflammatory diet to help shield against heart disease, type 2 diabetes and other rampant chronic diseases? It doesn’t require hard-to-find or even particularly expensive ingredients like powders or supplements. Read more on Forbes.com

What food lessons did you learn from your parents?

One that really stuck with me came from my father: Food was meant to be enjoyed. In fact, years later, it propelled me to study nutrition and become a dietitian.

My father’s excitement over food was contagious. My brother and I were so caught up in it, it never occurred to us to ask for “children’s food.” Why would we when grown-up dishes—like okra stew and garlicky lemon chicken, both of which I still make today—were so delicious? My friends shared our enthusiasm, always angling for dinner invitations when they heard my father was cooking.

He simply understood food—and came by this love naturally, growing up in a small village in Syria where most food came from his backyard or from the nearby river.

For my father, quality trumped quantity. Sure he overate sometimes, but he never got too heavy. Most important to him was the sensuous element—the sheer joy of good food. As I remember it, we couldn’t pass by his garden without his plucking a leaf, rubbing it between his fingers, putting it under my nose and eagerly awaiting my reaction. “Ah, isn’t that beautiful?” he’d ask.

Yes it was beautiful, as are these other food lessons of my father’s that I want to share:

• “You can’t feast unless you fast.” What my father meant: Go into a meal feeling a little hungry.

• Use great ingredients. When your salad is made with in-season, juicy tomatoes, your fish is fresh and the fruit that ends the meal is sweet and ripe, the meal is a lot more satisfying.

• Be lavish with olive oil. He used olive oil to cook the best sunny-side-up eggs, for dipping bread (with a hefty dose of zaatar, a Middle Eastern spice mix), to sauté and marinade, and for his great broiled chicken sauce (equal parts olive oil and lemon juice, with a lot of crushed garlic.) As a result, meals weren’t exactly low-calorie, but they were so satisfying that you didn’t think about dessert afterwards.

• Avoid artificially flavored food, and real food becomes much more satisfying. I don’t think he ever articulated this, but I never saw my father indulge in junk food, other than a soda on rare occasions. Fruit was his favorite dessert, plus the occasional baklava. Now nutrition scientists know that foods pumped up with artificial flavors, sugar and sodium not only make you crave those (usually high calorie) foods, but also make it difficult to appreciate more natural flavors.
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What food lessons from your parents have you incorporated into your life?