Stanford Introduction to Food and Health

Free Introductory Food and Health Course on Coursera

Saw this free course on coursera taught by Stanford School of Medicine's Maya Adam, MD.

Also snippets with Michael Pollen, UC Berkeley Professor of Journalism, featured on Joe Rogan's podcasts.

Decent content so far for newbies to food and nutrition.

Here is the link: https://www.coursera.org/learn/food-and-health/home/info

Really Enjoying Coursera's: Stanford Introduction to Food and Health

https://www.coursera.org/learn/food-and-health/

It’s presented as a casual conversation between Maya Adam (Lecturer, Stanford School of Medicine) & Michael Pollan (Professor, UC Berkeley).

They do a great job of conveying the science based facts about Food, Nutrition & Health whilst staying focused on making the information easy to understand and applicable for the general population.

An example of this is Michael’s Advice:

• Eat Food
• Not Too Much
• Mostly Plants

Simple and memorable!

The course includes an overview of what went wrong with the industrialization of the food chain and what we can do to recover control over what we eat and our health. This is a good one for anyone looking to improve their food habits as a new year’s resolution for 2017!

"Stanford Introduction to Food and Health" at Coursera is a pretty popular course that covers most of your questions I think (www.coursera.org/learn/food-and-health).

If you are just geting started with nutrition and healthy eating, I HIGHLY recommend this course through CourseEra. It is free and gives you really great foundational informational that I found really helpful starting my health journey!

Stanford Introduction to Food and Health

Try Coursera or similar websites. I’m not sure exactly how close they are to real university courses but I doubt you can find a free one direct from a university. This one is an example

ps if you are interested in diet

take a quick corse it's free and take \~7h

https://www.coursera.org/learn/food-and-health

Then I'll suggest taking a Food and Nutrition course! I took a different one than this that I can't find offered any more, and really enjoyed it.

There's a free course on Coursera call " Stanford Introduction to Food and Health". It's a 4 week course with 5-10 minute videos. I think this would be a good introduction to learning about healthy food for you.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/food-and-health

I recommend some free courses from Coursera or Edx. Free high quality stuff from multiple scientists/professors.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/food-and-health

https://www.edx.org/course/subject/food-nutrition

You don't have to be perfect every day, average over a week is a better metric. If you're really worried about gaps, grab a good multivitamin. IMHO, Garden of Life makes the best product on the market, and it's about $1 a day.

If nutrition interests you, read a little more about it. You don't have to go into this panicking, just wander around the health section of your local bookstore and find something you can peruse. Watch out for diet books, what you want is more like reference material. When I worked at Sprout's in their vitamin & supplement department, they gave me a copy of Nutritional Healing. It's a pretty comprehensive intro to the subject. Read that, and you will know about as much as any GNC employee. Or take a free online class, like this one from Stanford via Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/learn/food-and-health?

TL;DR: nutrition is way too complicated to be summed up in one reddit comment. Diet is a core part of your life, and if you value health, wellbeing, and longevity, go to more comprehensive resources and get your boots dirty.

No problem. You can do all the training in the world, but if your nutrition is crap, you won't get too far.

I highly advise a balanced simple approach. There's no reason to try unsustainable fad diets, and don't "major in the minors". Like don't put so much attention on the small stuff that'll make a 0.01% difference.

Nutrition can be super complex if you make it. I'd recommend just reading over the basics. https://thefitness.wiki/ https://www.coursera.org/learn/food-and-health

You can also just Google "nutrition basics" and read the first few things that pop up. But to keep it simple, 4-5 meals a day, maybe some snacks if you're peckish. Eat like an adult should (i.e. not poptarts for breakfast, pizza for lunch, and nachos for dinner). Eat good 80% of the time. The other 20%, allow a treat. Eat that poptart pre run for some quick energy. Each meal aim for a good amount of protein, veggies and/or fruit, some small amount of fat (nuts, seeds, avocado, etc) if you're eating lean meat, and a palm sized amount of carbs. Obviously these are over generalizations, but they're a good starting point. Once you start learning more and seeing what works for you, you can modify your eating.

Have you tried Coursera? I enjoyed the Stanford course on nutrition, https://www.coursera.org/learn/food-and-health

She also has one specifically for child nutrition

https://www.coursera.org/learn/childnutrition

I have taken both and still like to go back and review now and then.

Meat eaters absolutely do not get all the benefits of plants, and there is not a single nutrient in meat that you cannot get from plant foods (while there are countless essential nutrients that you cannot get from meat). For one, as a meat eater you will be highly deficient in fiber and probably consume far too much saturated fats.

I encourage you to read or take a course on nutrition from any reputable university and learn that the more plant foods you eat, the healthier your diet will be.

Edit - whole plant foods, yes obviously sugar is not healthy.

Definitely speak to a nutritionist if you can as there is sometimes conflicting info out there and it can be tough to know which way to go.

Common advice for prediabetes does seem to be to get your carbs from low GI, high fibre foods. Typically that involves wholemeal, plant-based sources:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.diabetes.org.uk/guide-to-diabetes/enjoy-food/carbohydrates-and-diabetes/glycaemic-index-and-diabetes%3famp

There are also studies suggesting that a low GI diet doesn't necessarily work unless the diet is healthy overall:

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/low-gi-diet-may-not-help-lower-risk-of-diabetes-heart-disease/#:~:text=Experts%20have%20thought%20that%20diets,on%20a%20high-GI%20diet

So focusing on adding more variety and quantity of fruit and veg, while relying on low GI carbs as opposed to added sugars, is probably better than simply thinking of it in terms of replacing your carbs.

Also, more on general healthy eating but related to diabetes and high cholesterol, these two sources may be handy:

Stanford have a free Introduction to Food course with a basic overview of healthy eating and cooking (including some recipes).

https://www.coursera.org/learn/food-and-health

Canada's food guidelines recommend making half of your plate fruit and veg, with the other half split between protein and wholegrain carbs.

https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/

https://www.diabetescarecommunity.ca/diet-and-fitness-articles/diabetes-diet-articles/an-overview-of-the-new-canadas-food-guide/

Good luck, hope you find lots of delicious and wholesome new recipes to try!