Purim is almost upon us, and with it comes so many wonderful ways of celebrating, with food a central focus of the many mitzvos of the day. All day, beautiful mishloach manos packages filled with food, some healthy and some not so healthy, are delivered from house to house. Often the highlight of the day is the huge Purim seuda, that festive meal complete with many courses. And the day itself is so busy, whether going to the megillah twice during the holiday, delivering mishloach manos, delivering tzedakah, or cooking for the seuda, that it’s very easy to go into a “mindless” mode, eating all day long without even realizing what, when, or how much is being consumed.

Mindfulness is a powerful way to bring balance into every aspect of how we eat. It cultivates both inner wisdom — awareness of how our body and mind are reacting — and outer wisdom — making wiser use of nutritional information to satisfy our needs and preferences.

To most people, memory loss means Alzheimer’s disease, but in reality that is only half the picture. A large percentage of cognitive decline in the elderly is due to vascular changes in the brain, as described by Prashanthi Vemuri, a Mayo Clinic researcher who studies cognitive decline.

As discussed in the Nutrition Action Healthletter, the distinctive characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease is the presence of amyloid, abnormal fragments of protein in the brain. These fragments collect in the brain and may trigger a chain of events that eventually leads to damaged nerve cells. Vascular dementia, on the other hand, is due to damage to blood vessels in the brain. On scans, it can show up as brain cells that have died from lack of oxygen after tiny blood vessels became blocked. In both cases, people are not aware of the amyloid accumulation or that the small blood vessels are damaged. By age 70, about 15% of people have vascular disease in the brain, and some people with memory loss have both amyloid and vascular damage.

Here is a common scenario we all have experienced: You are working on a long-term project. It’s due today, and you’ve been at your computer for hours trying to beat the deadline. You’ve been holding off on eating, waiting for the delicious taste of something you crave. Finally, you take the first bite; it tastes delicious, just as you imagined it would. You take the second bite: a little less intense than the first bite but still wonderful and definitely worth it. Suddenly you get caught up in the text you’ve created on the computer. You look down, and the