👋 Welcome to Healthy, Again. I'm Max, and this publication is all about taking your health back: real food, straight talk, and time-tested wisdom, for you and your family.
01 Haaland is powering his game on organ meat and raw milk
Norwegian soccer star Erling Haaland is eating like a Viking: about 6,000 calories a day of beef hearts and livers, eggs, raw honey, and raw milk, nearly all of it whole and local. His pitch is that heavily processed food drags down performance, so he sticks to real ingredients with short labels. The organ meats are genuinely nutrient-dense, loaded with iron, B12, and vitamin A. Norway may be out of the World Cup (England knocked them out in the quarters), but the diet? We're keeping that.
02 Arkansas just pulled soda and candy from food stamps
On July 1, Arkansas became the first state to stop letting SNAP food aid buy soda and candy, diet soda and low-juice drinks included. Nationwide, sweets and soft drinks are about 23% of SNAP spending, roughly $27 billion a year, so this redirects a lot of public money. Arkansas is the first to take effect, but a wave of other states are pursuing the same kind of waiver. For a program meant to fight hunger, steering it toward real food is a genuine win.
03 Coffee keeps showing up as a friend to your liver
A study of nearly 355,000 people tracked for 13 years found coffee drinkers had far less liver disease. One to two cups a day lined up with a 20% lower risk of cirrhosis (heavy scarring of the liver) and a 31% lower risk of dying from liver problems, and heavy drinkers did even better. Decaf worked about as well as regular, so it isn't only the caffeine. This is an anecdotal study about black coffee, but either way, I'm not skipping my morning brew.
✿ QUICK HITS — ON OUR RADAR
A longer exhale is a quick way to calm down. When you breathe out slower than you breathe in, your heart rate drops and your body settles in just a few breaths. So take a deep breath, it's science.
Night owls may store more of what they eat. A study of 287 women found evening types ate most of their food after 8 p.m. and carried more body fat and shakier blood sugar than early risers, even eating the same amount.
California became the first state to require chain restaurants to list major allergens on the menu (or a QR code with a printed backup), a real win for anyone navigating a food allergy.
✿ ONE GOOD THING
To end on a good note: a terminally ill man married his longtime love in his hospital room this month, turning his final wish into a small ceremony with family and nurses gathered around. He got to hear her say yes 😭