Growing a vegetable garden is a great way to enjoy delicious, fresh, healthy produce that can nourish you and your family. But those same plants can also nourish insects that would like nothing better than to beat you to those flavors and nutrients. Instead of giving up or poisoning your crops with commercial insecticides, try these natural homemade sprays to keep the pests from stealing your harvest.

Vitamin A is crucial to life and health, and most of us can synthesize all we need from orange and yellow fruits and vegetables and leafy greens. Despite that, it’s often portrayed as a nutrient best sourced from animals or via a supplement. What does vitamin A do in the body? What are the best sources for it, how much do we really need, and what happens when we get too much or not enough?

Smoothies can be a convenient and delicious way to get our daily fruit and veggie allotment, but they can also fill us with harmful quantities of sugar and unhealthy additives if we’re not mindful of what’s in them. In this article, you’ll discover how to have the best of both worlds — delicious, chilled sweetness, as well as smoothie ideas and all the health benefits of a diet rich in whole plant foods.

If we played a word association game and I said “vegetable,” chances are your response wouldn’t be “artichoke.” That’s a pity because the beautiful globes are not only glamorous but delicious and very healthy as well. Once you get to know artichokes and discover how easy they are to prepare, you might just wonder how you ever got along without them.

Adopting and maintaining a plant-based diet is one of the most powerful things we can do for our health, the environment, and the animals who share our planet. But it’s not always easy. And there are plenty of societal forces encouraging us to keep eating the modern industrialized diet. To help you get started on, or stick with a plant-powered path, we’ve put together a list of potent plant-based diet books from trusted allies that can guide, support, and educate you on your journey.

In a world of expensive medical diagnostic tests, there’s a free and convenient way to gain insight into your digestive (and possibly overall) health — paying attention to the frequency, size, consistency, and color of your poop. If your poop wouldn’t currently win any “best in show” awards, certain diet and lifestyle changes could make a world of difference — and give you healthier and more pleasurable bowel movements.

For many people, hiking is one of the great joys of life. During a hike, you immerse yourself in the natural world and can boost both your physical health and your emotional well-being. But a lot of traditional hiking food undermines both reverence for nature — producing a lot of waste and contributing to environmental deterioration — and personal health. In this article, we’ll explore healthy, convenient, and delicious plant-based hiking food options.

Research has shown that a colorful diet is a great way to boost your health and vitality. But how can you be sure that you’re getting all the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients that your body needs to thrive? In this article, we’ll look at the whole spectrum of rainbow nutrition to show how adding color to your plate could add years to your life (and life to your years!). There’s also a shareable rainbow foods infographic that can help you choose a diversity of colorful fruits and vegetables.

Berries are berry delicious — and they also have stunning health benefits, from helping to prevent cancer to protecting your brain from dementia. Just make sure that you aren’t subverting their inherent goodness by drowning them in sugar and other unhealthy ingredients. In this article, we’ll look at how to love berries in ways that love you back.

For decades, some health influencers have waged what’s practically amounted to a PR campaign against soy products. Because soy contains phytoestrogens, which are structurally very similar to the estrogen produced by the human body, these influencers argue that soy is a dangerous food that can cause cancer and other diseases by upsetting our natural hormonal balance. Recent research, however, increasingly shows that phytoestrogens may actually be good for you. So what’s the truth about phytoestrogens? What foods, in addition to soy, contain them? And should you include or avoid them in a balanced, healthy diet?