Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Six Tips To Make Your Holiday Meal Planning Easy

A few years ago, I hosted my first Thanksgiving dinner, which turned into a wild scramble in my tiny apartment kitchen while I cooked a meal for seven. On top of all that, my sister-in-law was coming, and her wheat allergy made things a little trickier. Hosting a big meal for guests with food allergies can be challenging, especially when everyone is depending on you to make a safe, delicious, mistake-free meal. While I was fortunate to know which allergies to look out for in my cooking, sometimes guests show up without notice. My list of tips below can help keep your holiday dinners running smoothly, even if there’s an unexpected guest at your table. In fact, sometimes surprises give you an opportunity to get creative in the kitchen! 1. Offer allergy-free alternatives. Instead of scrapping a dish altogether, offer an allergen-free alternative dish to ensure everyone can enjoy a little of everything. For my family, stuffing is the big hit, but I knew we would need an alternative for my wheat-free sister-in-law. We don’t stuff the turkey, so there wasn’t a risk of cross-contact with the turkey, but I still wanted everyone to enjoy this iconic side dish. My solution: cornbread stuffing in addition to classic wheat bread stuffing. Here are some other ideas for adjusting popular side dishes: swap out cow’s milk for coconut milk in mashed potatoes; leave the walnuts on the side for the sweet potato casserole; and make a crust-less apple crisp instead of apple pie. 2. Keep allergen-containing foods separate. In an ideal world, we would have the space of a commercial kitchen to cook our holiday meals. My tiny city apartment was far from ideal. This meant being extra vigilant about separating food ingredients. While one of my top concerns was keeping raw […]

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The Benefits of Mindful Eating: Video

Mindfulness is an ancient practice of being present. It can be defined as a “quality of consciousness that is characterized by continually attending to one’s moment-to-moment experiences, thoughts, and emotions with an open, non-judgmental approach.” Mindfulness has been used in a variety of therapeutic settings as it can improve the way we process emotions and help us reduces stress. In recent years, the concept of mindfulness has been applied to how we think about nourishing our body with food. Mindful eating is about listening to our physical sensations, like hunger, fullness and satisfaction cues and taking time to notice our thoughts and emotions while eating so we can have a more enjoyable and healthful eating experience. Mindful eating involves: There are many benefits to eating mindfully. Let’s review a few of them. Sometimes, our thoughts related to food aren’t very helpful. Negative thoughts about weight gain or eating unhealthy foods can create a fearful or anxious attitude when it comes to food. When we eat mindfully, we are practicing responding to our eating choices without guilt. Instead of condemning thoughts, we practice nonjudgmental language related to food. This nonjudgmental tone can increase self-compassion, which can improve our psychological well-being. Research shows that undereating or restricting certain foods can cause us to overeat them later. When we eat mindfully, we are taking time to notice what kinds of and how much food we need to feel full and satisfied. By frequently checking in with hunger, we don’t go too long without eating enough food. In this way, eating mindfully can help reduce overeating or binge eating as we become more aware of physical hunger and satisfaction cues and what foods will help us achieve optimal fullness. There are distractions all around us, and sometimes they can get in the way of […]

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Fridge and Freezer Safety Tips

July is National Ice Cream Month, and sure enough, July’s hot days often see many of us searching our freezers for frozen treats. As we all know, freezers also house many other foods and beverages that require very cold temperatures to prolong their freshness. But how often do we think about how to properly store our cold and frozen food safely? It’s easy to take our refrigerators and freezers (and the work they do) for granted, but familiarizing ourselves with some important fridge and freezer safety tips can help us better preserve the taste and integrity of our cold and frozen foods in addition to avoiding foodborne illness caused by microbes and preventing food waste due to spoilage. What’s the best temperature to maintain in a freezer? We should all periodically check the temperature of our refrigerators and freezers with a special appliance thermometer. Many modern appliance versions have a built-in thermometer that display internal temperatures and sound an alarm if a temperature begins to change. For a quick reference, you should keep your refrigerator at 40 °F or below and your freezer at 0 °F or below. Ensuring proper temperatures in your refrigerator and freezer helps support food safety as well as maintain taste, freshness, and the cooking reliability of your perishable foods and beverages. In addition, proper storage supported by correct temperatures in your refrigerator and freezer helps avoid food waste. Improperly stored food can spoil quickly and thus need to be discarded earlier than if it had been stored correctly. The refrigerator and freezer storage chart found in this tip sheet provided by the Food and Drug Administration includes safe storage times for many widely used foods. In addition, the FDA advises that all food should be examined for spoilage regardless of the dates on the packaging. […]

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The Players & Pathways To Packaging Sustainability Wins

After years of working in the food production space, it’s clear that food producers and consumers alike want to know more about how their actions can contribute to—or compromise—our roles as environmental stewards. For years, U.S. consumers have heard the mantra “Reduce, reuse, recycle,” and many of us, no matter where we live, do our best to decrease litter and reduce waste. While we are considering our individual environmental sustainability actions, many of us also recognize the importance of efforts being enhanced within the domestic food production industry to improve rates of recycling food packaging and reduce the amount of materials needed to produce new packaging. When thinking about enhancing packaging sustainability efforts, both consumers and industry have a role to play. The Path To Packaging Recycling Wins To better understand the packaging recycling pathways and how we can increase our “wins” in packaging sustainability, we must recognize the roles of three key players. First, there are the companies that manufacture materials needed to make packaging. Next there are companies that produce foods and beverages and utilize those materials to hold their products. Then there’s the consumers who buy packaged goods, and who may or may not recycle that packaging. While the companies that manufacture packaging materials and produce our foods and beverages hold a great deal of power in helping us achieve sustainability wins, consumers play a key role in closing the sustainability loop by recycling or choosing their purchases. Consumer Insights Are Key To Making The Right Plays Over the past decade, the annual IFIC Food and Health Survey has shown that taste, price, and healthfulness are the top characteristics consumers care about when making a food or beverage purchase. While environmental sustainability has historically been a lower-ranked purchase driver, the past several years have shown a shift […]

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Your Guide To Portion Size

Download: Serving Size Vs. Portion Size: What’s the Difference? Every five years since 1980 the U.S. Government publishes the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). A main emphasis of the DGA over the years has been advice on how much of certain food groups and nutrients to consume, encouraging Americans to eat more of those that we don’t eat enough of (e.g., calcium, dietary fiber and vitamin D) and less of those that we eat in excess (e.g., added sugars, saturated fat and sodium). Previous versions of the DGA have noted the importance of choosing more nutrient-dense foods, so that we are more likely to get all the nutrition we need within the calories it takes to maintain a healthy weight. The 2020—2025 DGA remind us that the benefits of healthy eating don’t appear overnight. Instead, they add up over time with every bite, having the potential to contribute to good health. Aside from key recommendations for specific nutrients and food groups, one of the main action-oriented principles that the 2020—2025 DGA offers to help build healthy eating patterns, is to pay attention to portion sizes. What is Portion Size? Portion size is a term that is often confused with serving size. Understanding the difference between the two is important. Serving sizes appear on the Nutrition Facts label, and that amount is used to calculate the nutrient information that is displayed. But serving sizes listed on food packaging are not a recommendation for how much to eat or drink. Serving sizes are required by law to be based, in part, on food consumption data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to derive the amount of a food or beverage that people typically consume in one sitting. In contrast, portion sizes are not established and regulated by the government […]

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Fewer Americans Describe Their Overall Health Positively As New Year’s Resolutions Take Shape

New Research Reveals Growing Concern About Wellbeing, Rising Adoption Of Popular Diets & Greater Belief In The Power Of GLP-1 Medications (Washington, D.C.) — The start of a new year is often when Americans pause to take stock of their overall health, diets, and daily habits, and many are finding their healthfulness lands somewhere between good intentions and lingering concern. According to the 2025 IFIC Food & Health Survey: A Focus On Wellbeing & Body Weight, Americans grade their personal diets a respectable B-, yet fewer than half now describe their overall health as excellent or very good—a signal that confidence in wellbeing is slipping as New Year’s resolutions take shape. “The start of the year is when people naturally evaluate their health and wellness choices and set new goals,” said Wendy Reinhardt Kapsak, MS, RDN, IFIC President & CEO. “As Americans reassess their health moving into 2026, our latest research reveals an audience that is motivated but not fully confident—experimenting with diets, redefining what healthy eating means, and exploring new tools like GLP-1s, all while navigating an increasingly crowded information and issues landscape.” Measuring Up: How Americans Rate Their Health & Wellbeing Since 2006, IFIC has tracked Americans’ self-reported health using a question modeled after the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. In 2013, more than 60% of Americans rated their health as excellent or very good. In 2025, that figure declined to 49%, continuing a downward trend in perceived health. At the same time, Americans continue to view their own diets more favorably than those of others. Nearly two-thirds (64%) grade their personal diet a B– or better, while only 24% give the same grade to the average American’s diet—though that gap has narrowed since 2013. The survey examined factors that affect health, including stress. Nearly two in […]

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2015 IFIC Food & Health Survey

The 2015 Food & Health Survey: Consumer Attitudes toward Food Safety, Nutrition & Health, marks the 10th anniversary of an ongoing investigation into the beliefs and behaviors of Americans. The survey, commissioned by the International Food Information Council Foundation, delves deeply into issues of health and diet, food components, sustainability, food production, and food safety. For ten years, the survey has uncovered important insights and trends. The 2015 survey continues that tradition, with a special focus on understanding the extent to which Americans value and prioritize their own health. The 2015 Food & Health Survey was conducted by Greenwald & Associates of Washington, D.C. The survey was conducted online from March 13 to March 26, 2015. It includes 1,007 Americans ages 18-80, and is weighted to represent the demographics of the United States. Suggested citation for the 2015 Food and Health Survey: International Food Information Council. 2015 Food & Health Survey. 8 May 2015.   

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2018 IFIC Food & Health Survey

The International Food Information Council (IFIC) Foundation’s 2018 Food and Health Survey marks the 13th time the IFIC Foundation has surveyed American consumers to understand their perceptions, beliefs and behaviors around food and food purchasing decisions. This year, the survey continues an examination of issues related to health and diet, food components, food production, and food safety. It also explores new topics, such as food insecurity, diets and eating patterns, and how consumers’ diets compare to dietary guidelines and expert recommendations. A supplement to this report, focused on Medicaid recipients and in partnership with the Root Cause Coalition was released in October, 2018 at the Root Cause Annual Summit. Suggested citation for the 2018 Food and Health Survey: International Food Information Council. 2018 Food & Health Survey. 18 May 2018.   

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