National Nutrition Month - March 2006

Through National Nutrition Month® the American Dietetic Association promotes healthful eating by providing practical nutrition guidance and focusing attention on the importance of making informed food choices and developing sound physical activity habits.

If you'd like to help a friend or loved one make smarter food choices, consider sending a heart-healthy gift basket, men's health basket, women's health basket, children's health basket or other healthy food basket from Wellbaskets.com. These gift baskets feature delicious, healthy foods and helpful tools to make eating right easy, and they are beautifully inspiring as well!

Healthy, Unique St. Patrick's Day Gifts

For a unique, healthy St. Patrick's Day gift idea, visit Wellbaskets.com. They offer a "Top O' the Morning" gift basket featuring McCann's Original Steel-Cut Irish Oatmeal, dried fruits, tea, and other healthy breakfast items and a "Shamrock Delight" gift basket featuring a delicious selection of healthy items packaged in festive Irish green.

On a humorous note, there's also a Hangover Helper gift basket for those who drink a little too much on St. Patty's day.

National Cancer Prevention Month 2006

February is National Cancer Prevention Month--a great time to examine your lifestyle choices and make any necessary changes to help protect yourself against cancer. Two of the most important aspects to consider in reducing your cancer risk are your physical activity levels and your diet.

If you spend most of your day sitting at a desk and aren't involved in any physical activity, it is important to remember that being physically active helps you maintain a healthy weight and helps your body protect itself against cancer. Including some form of daily exercise can have a huge impact on your overall health. Also realize that exercise needn't be torturous to be effective. Simply adding a walk into your daily routine is an easy way to get into better shape and to reduce your risk of cancer.

Of equal importance in preventing cancer is the food you choose each day. Diet can have a major impact on overall health, and when your diet is high in fat and calories and scant on fruits and vegetables, you put yourself at risk for chronic ailments and serious illnesses. Choosing healthy foods, particularly vegetables and fruits, gives your body not only the nutrients it needs for good health, but a whole arsenal of compounds that help protect against the naturally-occuring cancer risks faced every day.

To help you or a loved one make these dietary changes, Wellbaskets.com has a great selection of gift baskets filled with healthy foods that can help ward off cancer. The baskets also include a food guide listing the most powerful anti-cancer foods.

National Cherry Month 2006

February is National Cherry Month. Cherries, aside from their delightful taste, are a powerful source of disease-fighting antioxidants and anti-cancer compounds. They can help ease pain and inflammation, and they can even help improve sleep patterns.

In light of the health benefits of cherries, Wellbaskets.com has some delicious products to help you include more of these red gems into your diet.

Cherry Mustard: Delicious on sandwiches, dipping pretzels, and snacks.

Cherry Syrup: A robust natural cherry flavor that's great on ice cream, pancakes, waffles, and more!

Sensible Foods Cherry Berry Dried Fruit Mix: Mix of Cherries, Strawberries, Blueberries, Apple and Nothing Else.

Organic Sour Cherry Fruit Nectar: Organic sour cherry puree blended wit organic apple juice. Great on its own or in smoothies.

Each of the cherry products can be purchased separately or as an ingredient in the healthy gift baskets. For more information, visit Wellbaskets.com to read about the many healing properties of cherries.

National Snack Food Month 2006

February is National Snack Food Month. This year, instead of celebrating with that salty, greasy bag of potato chips; those calorie-packed, nutrionless candy bars; or that package of trans-fat laden, sugar-loaded cookies; visit Wellbaskets.com for some healthy snack ideas that are as good-tasting as they are good for you.

Snackers tend to have habitual cravings for a particular "taste" such as salty or sweet, for a specific food such as chips or cookies, or for a certain "texture" such as crunchy or chewy. Denying these cravings can be quite daunting, and, at times, seemingly impossible.

With the idea that snacking doesn't have to be a dieting or health disaster, Wellbaskets.com offers some "substitutes" for some unhealthful old favorites. These healthier substitutions not only help satisfy your unique craving, but offer some nutritional benefit to your body at the same time. When you've got a win-win situation such as this one, go ahead and dig in!

For those snackers who perpetually reach for potato chips to satisfy a need for a salty crunch, try Robert's American Gourmet Soy Crisps. These flavor-packed treats will hit you with only 110 calories, 2 grams of fat (0 saturated), and 1 gram of sugar. While you're happily munching away, you can also feel good about the fact that you're providing your body with 7 grams of Soy protein, 2 grams of fiber, and a respectable amount of calcium and iron. When's the last time a potato chip did all that for you?

Something sweet and chewy's on your mind, and you're swirling in images of brownies and cookies, and HOLD ON A MINUTE! Before you go down that saturated-fat road, try a Larabar. These raw food bars contain only fruits and nuts--no sweeteners of any kind--yet they are naturally sweet and come in tempting flavors such as Cherry Pie, Chocolate Coconut Chew, Apple Pie, and Banana Cookie. The bars are a great source of fiber, protein, potassium, and a whole host of vitamins and minerals.

If you've got yourself a sweet tooth, you know that there are times when it simply will NOT be denied. Usually giving in to this little monster will cost you at least 500 calories and more grams of fat than you'd care to acknowledge. The folks who created LesserEvil Flavored Popcorn know a thing or two about the craving for something sugary, and they decided they'd help us all out with a satisfying snack that would leave us feeling a little less guilty. This deliciously sweet popcorn has only 120 calories, 2 g of fat, 180 mg of sodium, and 16 g of sugar.

If your particular craving wasn't addressed here, visit Wellbaskets.com to view their entire selection of healthful snacks. With choices ranging from dried fruits, nuts, and seeds to snack mixes, to dark chocolates, you're sure to find a healthier alternative to your unique snacking pitfall.

Happy Munching!

National Cardiac Rehabilitation Week 2006

Just in time for National Cardiac Rehabilitation Week (February 12-18, 2006), Wellbaskets.com has added to their product line Health Journey's Cardiac ICU & Rehab Guided Imagery CD by Belleruth Naparstek.

This two-part audio CD was created with noted cardiothoracic surgeon Mehmet Oz at Columbia Presbyterian. It was designed to accelerate healing, reduce pain and depression, and motivate exercise and healthy new habits--all while cultivating optimism and patience with the recovery process.

The CD retails for $19.98 and can be purchased online at www.wellbaskets.com

Certified Organic Gift Baskets

Wellbaskets.com has launched an entire line of organic gift baskets full of delicious, healthy, gourmet food items that have been third-party certified organic.

The organic baskets are appropriate for birthdays, holidays, and special occasions, and include baskets designed specifically for children, athletes, men, and women.

In keeping with the "food-as-medicine" philosophy of Wellbaskets.com, the organic basket line also contains gifts for heart and cancer patients, as well as gift baskets to help relieve pain and to aid in recovery from colds and flu.

The organic basket line, which was launched in late January of this year, will be expanding dramatically throughout 2006. The company anticipates introducing a new basket monthly, so check back frequently for the latest additions.

Sweet "Bouquet" Makes Heart-Healthy Valentine's Day Gift

The Awesome Almond "Bouquet" offered by Wellbaskets.com is a heart-healthy, sweet treat for your valentine that's a great alternative to candy.

This unique gift idea features all three flavors of Dr. Lankin's Awesome Almonds--Cocoa Java, Cinnamon Vanilla, and Orange Vanilla--cleverly arranged as a bouquet with silk roses. The flavored almonds, which were developed by a cardiologist, contain no cholesterol, preservatives, added oils, or salt.

Why almonds for heart health? Research shows that almonds provide significant heart-health benefits--they help lower LDL (bad) cholesterol, contain the super antioxidant vitamin E, and may help prevent coronary heart disease.

The bouquet retails for $19.99 and makes a great Valentine's Day gift for almond-lovers, heart patients, vegans (they're certified vegan), and those with gluten sensitivity (the almonds are gluten free).