The internet's hormone discourse has gotten loud. Cortisol is the new sugar. Adrenal fatigue, despite not being a recognized medical diagnosis, has its own supplement aisle. Seed cycling has gone mainstream. Cycle-syncing is being marketed as evidence-based, which it largely isn't. I'm a dietitian, not a reproductive endocrinologist, but I see enough women stressed about their hormones to know the wellness internet has done some real damage here. Let's sort the claims into wh

If you've read any nutrition writing in the last twenty years, you've been told, repeatedly, that the Mediterranean diet is the healthiest way to eat. Olive oil, fish, vegetables, legumes, modest wine, long lunches in the Italian countryside. The Mediterranean diet has real evidence behind it, that's not the issue. The issue is that an entire field has flattened the global landscape of nutritionally excellent food traditions into one Italian-Greek-Spanish ideal, while treatin

Americans spend more than $50 billion a year on dietary supplements. Most of it is wasted. Some of it is actively harmful. A small slice is genuinely useful — and the useful slice is rarely what's being marketed hardest. Here's an honest audit of the supplements I see in clients' cabinets most often. I'm naming names. I am not paid by any of these companies. Supplements with strong evidence (worth considering) Creatine monohydrate. The most-studied sports supplement in existe

Most nutrition advice is written for a person who doesn't exist. She has counter space. She has time on Sunday. She has a Whole Foods within a fifteen-minute walk and the energy to push a cart through it. If your life isn't shaped like that — if you work shifts, share a kitchen, travel for work, or feed a family on a tight budget — most nutrition advice has been failing you, and it's not your fault. Here's what actually works. How can shift workers eat healthy? If you work ni

Roughly 80% of nutrition content online is written for, and read by, women. Most of my own clients are women. But over the years, more and more of you have asked me what to tell your husband, your partner, your dad, your adult son. Men's Health Month is a good time to actually answer that — and to give the men reading something more useful than the supplement-stack content they're getting from YouTube. Here's what men over 40 actually need to eat. Does diet really affect test

Around Mother's Day every year, I get a particular kind of message. Not a question about meal prep or macros. Something more like: "I keep saying things to my daughter that my mother used to say to me, and I hate it." If you've been feeling that quiet horror — recognizing your mother's voice coming out of your own mouth at the dinner table — this post is for you. Here's how to interrupt the pattern, gently and without burying yourself in guilt about it. Where do food rules co

Mental Health Awareness Month is May, but I wrote this in April because I want to get out ahead of the wave of "foods that fight depression" content that floods the internet every spring. Food does affect your mood. The relationship is real. It's also smaller, more specific, and more nuanced than the headlines suggest. So can what you eat actually help with anxiety and depression? Here's the honest answer. What is the gut-brain axis? There is a real, two-way communication sys