Think for a moment of a food from your past- one that makes you feel great after you eat it, for no specific reason. Maybe it is macaroni and cheese, slow-simmered tomato sauce, ice cream cones or potato pancakes. Eating food like this (every now and then) can be incredibly healing, even though your rational brain might not consider it highly nutritious.

Food has the power to impact us on a level deeper than just our physical well-being. What we eat can reconnect us to precious memories, like childhood playtimes, first dates, holidays, our grandmother's cooking or our country of ancestry. Our bodies remember foods from the past on an emotional and cellular level. Eating this food connects us to our roots and has youthening and nurturing effects that go far beyond the food's biochemical make-up.

Acknowledging what different foods mean to us is an important part of cultivating a good relationship with food. This month when we celebrate lovers and relationships, it's important to notice that we each have a relationship with food-and that this relationship is often far from loving. Many of us restrict food, attempting to control our weight. We often abuse food, substituting it for emotional well-being. Others ignore food, swallowing it whole before we've even tasted it.

What would your life be like if you treated food and your body like you would treat your beloved? With gentleness, playfulness, communication, honesty, respect and love? The next time you eat your soul food, do so with awareness and without guilt, and enjoy all the healing and nourishment it brings you.

Beans, or legumes, including peas and lentils, are an excellent source of plant-based protein. Beans are found in most traditional cultures as a staple food, offering grounding and strengthening properties that enhance endurance. They offer a highly usable, highly absorbable source of calcium for the body. A very inexpensive source of high nutrition, beans can be rich, delicious and satisfying,

Lack of sexual energy is often due to overtaxed adrenal glands and kidneys. Beans are notorious for strengthening these organs (ever noticed the shape of a bean?) and can help restore vital energy as well as sexual energy.

Beans have a reputation for causing digestive distress, but this is usually because they have been undercooked or improperly prepared. To help reduce gas-forming properties, soak beans overnight prior to cooking, increase cooking time, add spices like bay leaf, oregano or cumin, or add kombu (a sea vegetable) when cooking.

Have you ever wondered why Soda comes with a smile? It's because it gets you high. Yes, in 2008, despite the absence of cocaine, soda junkies everywhere are unsuspectingly subjecting themselves to a "high".  By simply drinking what is known as a  staple beverage in the Standard American Diet (or SAD, as I prefer to call it) we are playing a deadly game of Russian Rulet with our health and exposing ourselves to diseases the more that we indulge in this commodity.

By Now, I am sure you are wondering what I am talking about.   What is the good old culprit responsible for these highs? It's none other than....Sugar!  But- this is not just any old sugar that we are talking about here.  It is the mother of all sugar- high fructose corn syrup!  I suppose the good folks at Coke figured, why not try something cheaper, and perhaps switch to a substance that was obviously not illegal. And so voila, after near 100 years of consumption, we have an alarming rate of childhood and adolescent onset diabetes, hypoglycemia, obesity, digestive disorders, skin conditions, osteoporosis, candida, cancer.  These conditions are all linked to access sugar consumption. If you are an avid soda drinker, your life depends on this.  Please read on.

Everyday, millions of Americans reach for a coke, some in hopes of curing that three o'clock lull one may experience after lunch when their energy levels feel zapped, while others have reported routinely drinking up to three liters per day!  More alarmingly, children drink these beverages in school and at home.  A child's body is no match for the sugar rush that soda produces.  This seemingly innocent little routine has taken most of the public by storm, sending people down the Diabetes-Hypoglycemia Highway at full speed.  The end result riding down the sugar highway is devastation in one's health, yet the beverage companies continue to receive advertising grants in the form of government funding toppling in the billions.  Meanwhile, health promoting advertisements, such as the FDA's Healthy Food Pyramids slogan for "5 A Day" (signifying that one should consume a combination of five fresh fruits and vegetables a day.) received little or no media attention.  No wonder the public is in the dark.  Everyone has been brainwashed by advertisements to eat a food we know is not healthy.

After the fiasco in the bathroom, you will surely be overjoyed to learn that this will all be followed by a caffeine crash in the next few hours. (An added bonus: Count on the caffeine crash to occur in as little as two hours or less if you're a smoker.) But, hey, have another Soda; it'll make you feel better.  And so another ride sugar on the sugar highway begins.