Google’s John Mueller answered a question about what determines website E-A-T scores. They asked whether links played a role or if it was content based score.
John Mueller answered in a way that debunked the idea of E-A-T scores or that it is a technical or SEO factor.
What’s Up With E-A-T
E-A-T is an abbreviation for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. They are qualities that Google’s third party Quality Raters are tasked to look for when evaluating websites ranked with new algorithms that are being tested.
E-A-T is an ideal that Google has for sites that are ranked, particularly in search results for sensitive topics like health and finance.
Because Google’s Quality Raters Guide tasks the quality raters to check for E-A-T and Google also recommends that publishers use the guide to evaluate their own websites, many in the search and publishing community understandably want to know more about E-A-T in order to improve their rankings.
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Some in the search community believe there is some kind of scoring involved for E-A-T.
The person asking the question was trying to find out what SEO or technical factors might be involved with obtaining a high E-A-T score.
The person wants to know what determines E-A-T for a website:
“What’s up with E-A-T?
Is that determined by quality backlinks or more on the subject and thoroughness of the pages?”
John Mueller Explains E-A-T
John Mueller begins his answer with background information about what E-A-T is and how Google uses it.
“So E-A-T is an abbreviation for Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness. It’s something that comes from our quality rater guidelines.”
Quality Raters Guidelines Do Not Offer Algorithm Insights
Mueller next debunks the idea that the Quality Raters Guidelines (QRG) contain insights into Google’s algorithms and explicitly says that the QRG is not a handbook to Google’s algorithm.
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He makes it very clear that it’s not filled with insights to the algorithm and that in the context of rating websites, the Quality Raters Guidelines asks the quality raters to pay attention to expertise, authoritativeness and authority for search queries in specific topics.
Mueller continues:
“The quality rater guidelines are not kind of like a handbook to Google’s algorithms, but rather it’s something that we give folks who are reviewing changes that we make in our algorithm.
And especially, E-A-T is specific to certain kinds of sites and certain kinds of content.”
Mueller next makes it clear and without ambiguity that Google does not have E-A-T scores.
He underlines the point that E-A-T is something the quality raters look at but that there’s no SEO related factor involved.
John Mueller:
“So… from that point of view it’s not something where I would say Google has an E-A-T score and it’s based on five links plus this plus that.
It’s more something that, our algorithms over time …we try to improve them, our quality raters try to review our algorithms and they do look at these things.
So there might be some overlap here but it’s not that there’s a technical factor that’s involved which would kind of take specific elements and use them as an SEO factor.
But it is definitely something I would look into, especially if you’re running sites that map into the broad area where Google has mentioned E-A-T in the quality rater guidelines.”
E-A-T is a Guide and Not a Ranking Factor
Google encourages publishers to use the Quality Raters Guidelines as an inspiration for how to critique their own sites.
John Mueller’s comments about E-A-T align with that encouragement, especially for those whose content is on sensitive topics.
The QRG was developed to provide an objective way to rank search results of new algorithms that are under evaluation.
Google explains what the QRG is for:
“We work with external Search Quality Raters to measure the quality of search results on an ongoing basis. Raters assess how well a website gives people who click on it what they are looking for, and evaluate the quality of results based on the expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness of the content. These ratings do not directly impact ranking, but they do help us benchmark the quality of our results.
To ensure a consistent approach, we publish Search Quality Rater Guidelines to give these Raters guidance and examples for appropriate ratings.”
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Somewhere along the line, some SEOs came to believe in a non-existent E-A-T score based on a document whose sole purpose was to ensure that third party quality raters used “a consistent approach” for evaluating web pages.
Finding it difficult to fall asleep and stay asleep? You're not alone. According to the Sleep Foundation, conservative estimates find that between 10% and 30% of adults suffer from chronic insomnia, though there are some studies that show this number to be closer to 50% to 60%. No matter if chronic insomnia is impacting 10% or 60% of the adult population, if you're one of the people suffering, it could be because of the food you're choosing to snack on late at night.
We consulted with Lisa Moskovitz, RD, CEO of the NY Nutrition Group, and member of our medical expert board to find out exactly which food is the worst to be eating before you hit the hay—and it turns out it's a popular late-night favorite.
It's likely not the first time you've heard to stay away from eating chocolate before bedtime. While Moskovitz makes it clear that no one food is "bad" and that all foods are welcome in your diet, it's important to note that chocolate does have a significant amount of caffeine along with sugar in it compared to other foods and can leave you feeling awake throughout the night.
According to the Department of Agriculture, milk and dark chocolate can have anywhere from 9 to 12 milligrams of caffeine per ounce. Moskovitz explains that caffeine can stimulate the brain, making it ultimately more difficult to fall asleep. So, it would definitely be a wise move to skip the chocolate bar after dinner, especially when nearing bedtime.
Dark chocolate still contains some powerful antioxidants that can actually boost your body's health, so if you choose to have chocolate, it is better to have it during the day so as not to disrupt your sleep.
Moskovitz also notes to watch out for high protein foods and rich or fatty foods before bed as well. High protein foods "take longer to digest and that can disrupt the quality of sleep", says Moskovitz, while rich or fatty foods "are harder to break down and can also increase acid reflux or indigestion".
This means that these foods can have a direct impact on your ability to get a good night's rest. So, it's definitely worth it to steer clear of these foods close to bedtime, as you could significantly improve your sleep quality.
There are few things human beings get more unsolicited advice on than how to take care of their kids. But suggestions about what, when, and how much they should eat generally take the cake. So, it’s completely understandable if as a parent or caretaker, you feel doubly anxious about nutrition and wellness.
Recent research suggests that nutritional mindsets like “intuitive eating” and “mindful eating” can lead people to eat a more varied, healthy balance of foods overall, while feeling less anxiety about food and body image. Intuitive eating, which in some respects is the opposite of dieting, focuses on learning to read and respect your body’s hunger cues, which many of us have learned to ignore thanks to pressure to diet and lose weight, according to experts. Intuitive eating also means trying to remove any moral associations with eating certain types of food—in other words, nothing is inherently off limits on account of being “bad” for you.
Amee Severson, a Registered Dietician in Bellingham, Washington and co-author of the forthcoming book “How to Raise an Intuitive Eater,” says childhood is the perfect time to cement a person’s healthy relationship with food. “The vast majority of people are born as intuitive eaters,” she says. “We just have it cultured out of us.”
As a young child, she points out, you probably had pretty simple thoughts about food—I’m hungry, so I should eat or I’m thirsty, so I should drink. The problem is that many parents unintentionally invalidate those instincts.
“I can’t tell you how many clients have told me that their parents said to them, ‘oh no, you’re not hungry, you’re just bored,’” Severson says. “While I firmly believe the vast majority of caregivers really do just want the best for their kids—that they’re just trying to protect them from health problems, or from bullying—this shapes an adversarial relationship with the body.”
When an implicitly trusted caregiver tells a child that they shouldn’t eat when they’re hungry, shouldn’t trust their own hunger cues, or that certain foods are “bad,” Severson says, it’s easy for that self-doubt to become part of a kid’s core beliefs. Still, there are plenty of ways to help your children retain a natural awareness of what their bodies need. Here are some things to keep in mind if you’re looking to encourage your child to have a more neutral relationship with food.
Challenge your own beliefs about food
Because it’s so easy for caregivers to pass on their own disordered eating patterns, an important first step in setting healthy standards for your child’s eating is to examine your own relationship with food.
“I don’t necessarily feel safe around food or like I can trust myself, and that’s much more common than we realize,” says Virginia Sole-Smith, a journalist who’s spent years investigating diet and nutrition and author of “The Eating Instinct.” “We live in a culture that’s constantly telling us not to trust our bodies.”
She encourages caregivers to think back on their own childhood experiences with eating. “That food that your parents always wanted you to eat and you always hated, do you like it today? Most often the answer is no, because you fought over it and it felt like torture, which didn’t result in you liking vegetables more,” she says.
“The second you try to force something, [children] won’t want it,” agrees Elyse Resch, a registered dietitian and food therapist who co-authored the first book on intuitive eating in 1995. “That’s just the way healthy egos develop.”
In other words: Even if you strongly believe that eating more vegetables and fewer processed foods is what’s best for your child’s health, you should consider that demonizing chips and sweets will probably backfire. “The research shows quite clearly that using high-pressure tactics around food is very strongly linked with both eating disorder risk and weight gain risk,” Sole-Smith says.
“I don’t think most parents mean to do this, but they make their love feel conditional,” Severson says. “They make kids feel they’ll be more loved or cared for if they’re smaller.”
Severson urges caregivers to examine the way they talk about bodies—not just their child’s bodies, but their own bodies, as well as other people’s. Of course, your problems around food and body image likely won’t disappear overnight. Sole-Smith says you can make a difference for your children and yourself by working to vocalize negative thoughts less often. “There’s a lot we can do just by making an effort not to shame bodies, including our own, or foods, and taking the negativity out of your life,” she says.
Stop demonizing food and start trusting kids to eat
When adults learn intuitive eating after years of restriction, Severson says, they often express a fear that they’ll do nothing but binge on so-called “bad” foods, like baked goods and fried carbs. “People think we’re saying to eat cake every day,” she says. “But you’d get sick of that cake so fast.”
It’s understandable for parents who have always been taught to avoid such foods might envision tykes gorging themselves on candy and never touching vegetables again if given the chance. Resch does note that parents who’ve restricted their kids from eating certain things may initially see them gravitate toward those forbidden treats once rules are lifted. “But parents who restrict should know that kids are going to friends’ houses and eating everything in sight,” she says. Once their formerly-limited favorites are accessible to them, she adds, they’ll get used to the lack of scarcity and lose their obsession with the stuff.
“Eventually you will start craving foods that will make you feel physically good as well as emotionally good,” Resch says. “The fear of future deprivation can cause people to just go after what they’re not supposed to have in a big way.”
Sole-Smith cites her own kids as an example of finding this balance: They love eating sandwiches from Subway, she says, so she gives them takeout from the chain for dinner around once a week. “Other nights we have home cooked meals from scratch,” she says, “but they love Subway, so it’s important that they get it often enough not to fixate on it.”
Severson notes that the reverse is also true: Overemphasizing “healthy” foods can make kids want to avoid them. “It’s important to try to have neutral reactions to food,” she says. “We’re taught to be really excited about our kids eating broccoli, but kids will do anything they can to piss you off, so you don’t want to moralize food in that way, either.”
“The best thing you can do is to make foods emotionally equivalent, with no foods forbidden,” Resch says. She fondly recalls one patient whose child was tasked with bringing a favorite food to school and chose not chips or candy, but Bok Choy. While intuitive eating won’t turn every kid into a champion for greens, it’s a heartening reminder that most children won’t want to live on cake forever just because it’s not off limits.
Provide a variety of foods
Nutrition experts emphasize the importance of making sure kids know that their hunger cues and needs will be respected, and that food will be available to them when they’re hungry.
“This doesn’t mean serving donuts at every meal and never putting a vegetable on the table,” Sole-Smith says. But it does mean providing children with things that you know they want to eat—even if they’re going through a picky phase and that means offering mac and cheese as an option every night. “Serve a variety of foods, including ones you know kids will be interested in eating, and don’t give them a hard time if sometimes they don’t eat the broccoli or don’t eat the chicken,” Sole-Smith says.
Intuitive eating doesn’t mean letting the tots set the whole menu every night, Severson says. Instead, the key is letting them have a say in what actually goes into their mouths. “The important thing is that they get an opinion, and that we give them access to all types of food, and that they ultimately get to decide what they eat.” In her experience as both a parent and a dietitian, she says, people naturally crave fruit and vegetables, as the nutrients and fiber in them make the body run smoothly and feel good. Kids are no exception.
Encourage eating autonomy
Resch notes that fostering a child’s natural instincts around food is easiest if you start as early as possible—when you first introduce solids.
“It’s such a critical time, from six months old to a year, and it’s where some of the problems begin,” she says. “Parents feel all this pressure to get kids to eat all this pureed food, or else they won’t be healthy.”
But Resch urges caregivers to resist the call to shovel spoonfuls of veggie goop into babies’ mouths. As widely accepted as that practice is, she says, it’s where many children first learn that food is something they should take cues from other people on—that being healthy means eating things they don’t enjoy on the schedule of whoever is controlling the spoon.
During the first year of life, babies get the majority of what they need nutritionally from milk, she says, which makes it a perfect time to present them with solid food as something they can explore and discover on their own terms. She suggests cutting baby-safe pieces of a variety of options—whatever the older members of the family are eating, if possible—and simply making it available by putting it in a bowl or scattering it on a highchair tray.
“They’ll sit in their highchair watching their family eat and enjoy food, and have the opportunity to touch, play, gum things that interest them, taste new things, spit things out,” she says. “It’s such a critical time, and they’ll retain that instinct that they can honor their own wisdom and desire.”
Family mealtimes continue to be an important opportunity for encouraging a healthy relationship with food as kids get older, Sole-Smith says. Kids should feel confident that they’ll get to eat foods they like, and caregivers should also take the opportunity to introduce new or challenging foods without pressuring little ones to partake. Severson notes that if she served broccoli, salmon, and mashed potatoes, her daughter might refuse to eat a single bite—she doesn’t particularly care for the first two, and hates the third. But if Severson added rice to the table, she knows, her daughter would happily eat a plate full of it.
“She might not eat the veggies or fish that night,” Severson says, “But she’d be exposed to them, which is also important.” And she wouldn’t associate those foods with a miserable night of going to bed hungry or being forced to eat something she really dislikes.
Sole-Smith reminds caregivers to focus on the long term goal of raising kids who trust their bodies, and not to fret when individual meals aren’t perfect. “Food is a life skill, and a long-term skill, it’s not something you have to master by first grade,” she says.
Look at health holistically
For people who have spent their whole lives equating “good” foods and lower body weights with health, it can be scary to encourage kids to eat the things they like. It doesn’t help that many pediatricians—who Resch notes are not generally educated in nutrition or psychology—encourage weight loss if kids fall on the wrong side of the extremely flawed BMI body fat measurement. Many of her clients with eating disorders can point to an incident in a doctor’s office where they were shamed for gaining weight or told to avoid certain foods as one of the main triggers of their experiences restricting or purging.
Sole-Smith encourages caregivers to take a more holistic view of health.
“Parents have been told to define health really narrowly, and if your definition of health is how many veggies a kid eats, everything I’m saying is very unhelpful,” she says with a laugh. “But health is much broader—it’s about mental health, sleep, energy, how kids feel about themselves.”
Severson recalls someone asking one of her colleagues what parents should do if a kid tries to eat five cookies in one sitting.
“He said, ‘why don’t you ask them how they are?’ And I think about that a lot,” she says. “Parents don’t get a lot of encouragement to make sure their kids are happy and satisfied.”
(Bloomberg) -- The world’s electric grids are creaking under the pressure of volatile fossil-fuel prices and the imperative of weaning the world off polluting energy sources. A solution may be at hand, thanks to an innovative battery that’s a cheaper alternative to lithium-ion technology.
SB Energy Corp., a Japanese renewable-energy firm that’s an arm of SoftBank Group Corp., is making a record purchase of the batteries manufactured by ESS Inc. The Oregon company says it has new technology that can store renewable energy for longer and help overcome some of the reliability problems that have caused blackouts in California and record-high energy prices in Europe.
The units, which rely on something called “iron-flow chemistry,” will be used in utility-scale solar projects dotted across the U.S., allowing those power plants to provide electricity for hours after the sun sets. SB Energy will buy enough batteries over the next five years to power 50,000 American homes for a day.
“Long-duration energy storage, like this iron-flow battery, are key to adding more renewables to the grid,” said Venkat Viswanathan, a battery expert and associate professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.
ESS was founded in 2011 by Craig Evans, now president, and Julia Song, the chief technology officer. They recognized that while lithium-ion batteries will play a key role in electrification of transport, longer duration grid-scale energy storage needed a different battery. That’s because while the price of lithium-ion batteries has declined 90% over the last decade, their ingredients, which sometimes include expensive metals such as cobalt and nickel, limit how low the price can fall.
The deal for 2 gigawatt-hours of batteries is worth at least $300 million, according to ESS. Rich Hossfeld, chief executive officer of SB Energy, said the genius of the units lies in their simplicity.
“The battery is made of iron salt and water,” said Hossfeld. “Unlike lithium-ion batteries, iron flow batteries are really cheap to manufacture.”
Every battery has four components: two electrodes between which charged particles shuffle as the battery is charged and discharged, electrolyte that allows the particles to flow smoothly and a separator that prevents the two electrodes from forming a short circuit.
Flow batteries, however, look nothing like the battery inside smartphones or electric cars. That’s because the electrolyte needs to be physically moved using pumps as the battery charges or discharges. That makes these batteries large, with ESS’s main product sold inside a shipping container.
What they take up in space, they can make up in cost. Lithium-ion batteries for grid-scale storage can cost as much as $350 per kilowatt-hour. But ESS says its battery could cost $200 per kWh or less by 2025.
Crucially, adding storage capacity to cover longer interruptions at a solar or wind plant may not require purchasing an entirely new battery. Flow batteries require only extra electrolyte, which in ESS’s case can cost as little as $20 per kilowatt hour.
“This is a big, big deal,” said Eric Toone, science lead at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which has invested in ESS. “We’ve been talking about flow batteries forever and ever and now it’s actually happening.”
The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration built a flow battery as early as 1980. Because these batteries used water, they presented a much safer option for space applications than lithium-ion batteries developed around that time, which were infamous for catching on fire. Hossfeld says he’s been able to get permits for ESS batteries, even in wildfire-prone California, that wouldn’t have been given to lithium-ion versions.
Still, there was a problem with iron flow batteries. During charging, the battery can produce a small amount of hydrogen, which is a symptom of reactions that, left unchecked, shorten the battery’s life. ESS’s main innovation, said Song, was a way of keeping any hydrogen produced within the system and thus hugely extending its life.
“As soon as you close the loop on hydrogen, you suddenly turn a lab prototype into a commercially viable battery option,” said Viswanathan. ESS’s iron-flow battery can endure more than 20 years of daily use without losing much performance, said Hossfeld.
At the company’s factory near Portland, yellow robots cover plastic sheets with chemicals and glue them together to form the battery cores. Inside the shipping containers, vats full of electrolyte feed into each electrode through pumps — allowing the battery to do its job of absorbing renewable power when the sun shines and releasing it when it gets dark.
It’s a promising first step. ESS’s battery is a cheap solution that can currently provide about 12 hours of storage, but utilities will eventually need batteries that can last much longer as more renewables are added to the grid. Earlier this month, for example, the lack of storage contributed to a record spike in power prices across the U.K. when wind speeds remained low for weeks. Startups such as Form Energy Inc. are also using iron, an abundant and cheap material, to build newer forms of batteries that could beat ESS on price.
So far, ESS has commercially deployed 8 megawatt-hours of iron flow batteries. Last week, after a six-month evaluation, Spanish utility Enel Green Power SpA signed a single deal for ESS to build an equivalent amount. SB Energy’s Hossfeld, who also sits on ESS’s board, said the company would likely buy still more battery capacity from ESS in the next five years.
Even as its order books fill up, ESS faces a challenging road ahead. Bringing new batteries to market is notoriously difficult and the sector is littered with failed startups. Crucially, lithium-ion technology got a head start and customers are more familiar with its pros and cons. ESS will have to prove that its batteries can meet the rigorous demands of power plant operators.
The new order should help ESS as it looks to go public within weeks through a special-purpose acquisition company at a valuation of $1.07 billion. The listing will net the company $465 million, which it plans to use to scale up its operations.
Google’s concept of “E-A-T” (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) has become a hot topic in the SEO community in recent years, as well as a source of many myths and misconceptions.
One of the most prominent questions and mysteries surrounding E-A-T is whether and the extent to which it is a direct ranking factor in Google’s algorithms.
However, Google has been consistent about the role E-A-T plays in both its algorithms and how it is used by search quality raters, stating that “Google’s algorithms identify signals about pages that correlate with trustworthiness and authoritativeness,” as opposed to E-A-T itself being a quantifiable, measurable metric used in Google’s algorithms.
To solidify this point, Google recently provided an update on this question, indicating that E-A-T is not in and of itself a ranking factor but rather a framework that encompasses the many signals Google uses to evaluate and rank great content.
“Assessing your own content in terms of E-A-T criteria may help align it conceptually with the different signals that our automated systems use to rank content.”
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Google’s communications about E-A-T leave a lot of room for interpretation and debate, which tends to result in one common question among many SEO professionals:
If E-A-T is so important, how can I optimize my content to improve its perceived E-A-T?
While Google’s official answers to questions related to E-A-T leave many SEO professionals uncertain on what next steps to take, there is one reliable, underutilized method we can use to improve not only E-A-T, but also overall organic performance: leveragingstructured data(Schema.org) to its fullest capacity.
How Structured Data Can Help With E-A-T
Proper use of structured data can help with E-A-T for a number of reasons.
For one, structured data helps establish and solidify the relationship between entities, particularly among the various places they are mentioned online.
In Google’s own words, providing this markup “helps” them by “providing explicit clues about the meaning of a page” that Google then uses to “understand the content of the page, as well as to gather information about the web and the world in general.”
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Using structured data to establish these relationships can streamline Google’s ability to assess the E-A-T of a given page, website, or entity because it can help:
Reduce ambiguity among entities.
Create new connections Google wouldn’t have otherwise made in its Knowledge Graph.
Provide additional information about an entity that Google might not have obtained without the structured data.
According to Knowledge Graph and Google patent expert Bill Slawski:
“Structured data adds a level of preciseness that a search engine needs, and might not grasp, because it doesn’t have the common sense of a human.”
Without confidence about what entities are included on a page, it can be challenging at best for search engines to accurately assess the expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness of those entities.
Structured data also helps to disambiguate entities with the same name, which is undoubtedly important when evaluating E-A-T.
Slawski provided a couple of interesting examples of how this might work:
“When you have a person who is the subject of a page, and they share a name with someone, you can use a SameAs property and point to a page about them on a knowledge base such as Wikipedia to make it clear that when you refer to someone like Michael Jackson, you mean the king of pop, and not the former Director of Homeland Security – they are very different people.
Businesses sometimes have names that they might share with others, such as the band Boston, which shares a name with a city.”
Structured data essentially serves as a way of spoon-feeding Google crucial information about the topics on your site, as well as the individuals who contribute to it.
This is a crucial first step in Google then being able to accurately assess the trustworthiness and credibility of your site and the creators of its content.
Implementing Structured Data for E-A-T
There are a few different methods of implementing structured data: JSON-LD (which is preferred by Google), Microdata, and RDFa.
Google has also recently added documentation on adding structured data dynamically using JavaScript and Google Tag Manager.
For WordPress websites, the popular SEO plugin Yoast has many built-in Schema capabilities and has been actively expanding on new Schema types and features in recent months.
For the purpose of improving E-A-T, the method of implementing structured data is less important than the types of Schema marked up on the website.
Improving E-A-T requires giving search engines as much information about the credibility, reputation, and trustworthiness of the authors and experts who contribute content to your website and who make up your company.
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E-A-T also encompasses your brand’s reputation and the experience users have both on your website and when using your products or services.
These aspects are particularly important to mark up with Schema whenever possible.
It is also crucial to properly structure your Schema so that search engines can understand the various properties of a given entity and the relationship between them and other entities.
Alexis Sanders offers a fantastic explanation of the benefits of nesting Schema and how to do it correctly in this article about JSON-LD.
For example, the Schema shown below comes from my personal website’s homepage and demonstrates how nesting looks when done properly.
(This was done by setting my site settings to a “Person” using the Yoast plugin, and filling in all relevant fields on my profile.)
Get an understanding of the main entities on the page, as well as their relationships to one another.
Nesting also eliminates the common issue of having multiple redundant or conflicting Schema types on the same page (often due to having multiple plugins injecting Schema simultaneously).
On a product page, for example, it’s important to clearly describe and differentiate the relationships between the Organization which publishes the website, and the Organization which manufactures the product.
By placing those correctly in a nested structure, you can clearly describe the difference in their roles – rather than just saying that both of them are “on the page.”
Which Schema Types to Use to Improve E-A-T
There are a variety of Schema types and properties that are crucial to have present on your website to send the right signals to search engines about your organizations’ E-A-T.
Below are five examples of some of the highest-priority opportunities to use Schema to signal good E-A-T, but there are many more where this came from.
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1. Person Schema
Google’s first mention of E-A-T in its Quality Rater Guidelines starts by asking raters to consider “the expertise” as well as “the authoritativeness of the creator of the main content.”
This information can be communicated to search engines through the use of Person Schema.
This Schema type includes dozens of options for properties to be listed to provide more context about the person, many of which strongly support E-A-T, including (but not limited to):
affiliation
alumniOf
award
brand
hasCredential
hasOccupation
honorificPrefix
honorificSuffix
jobTitle
sameAs
Consider including Person Schema with the above properties at least once where your founder, content creators, and/or expert contributors are listed on your site.
(Assuming this information is also displayed on the page – which is a prerequisite for structured data compliance.)
An author biography page is a good candidate for featuring this Schema type.
Another way to enhance your use of Person Schema is to use it to disambiguate that individual’s name from other identical names in Google’s Knowledge Graph.
If that individual is listed in the Knowledge Graph (which you can verify using this handy tool), consider linking to their Knowledge Graph URL using the sameAs property.
This effort can give Google the extra bit of confidence it needs to ensure the right individual’s Knowledge Panel is displayed for queries that are specific to them.
Even though Google announced that it has deprecated sameAs markup for social profiles, you can still use sameAs for other purposes, such as linking to:
The individual’s Knowledge Graph URL.
Their Wikipedia page, a freebase or Crunchbase profile.
Other reputable sources where the individual is mentioned online.
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Furthermore, it’s worth remembering that there are more search engines that use Schema than just Google, so listing social profiles using sameAs is probably still a good approach.
2. Organization
Organization Schema is undoubtedly one of the best Schema types to support E-A-T efforts.
This Schema type offers a variety of properties that can provide additional context about your company or brand, for example:
address
duns
founder
foundingDate
hasCredential
knowsAbout
memberOf
parentOrganization
Many companies implement Organization Schema without leveraging these fields or the many other properties available using this Schema type.
Consider incorporating all of this information into your most relevant page about your organization (generally an “About Us” or “Contact Us” page) and marking up the page accordingly.
3. Author (Schema property)
Author is a Schema property that can be used for any Schema type that falls under the CreativeWork or Review classification, such as Article or NewsArticle.
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This property should be used as markup for the author’s byline on a piece of content.
The expected types for the Author property are either a Person or Organization, so if your site publishes content on behalf of the company, it’s important to list the author as an Organization and not a Person.
4. reviewedBy (Schema property)
The property reviewedBy is a great opportunity to showcase your website’s good E-A-T.
If you use expert reviewers on your content, such as medical or legal reviewers, consider displaying their name on the page as the individual who has reviewed your content for accuracy.
Then, you can leverage the reviewedBy property to list that person (or organization)’s name.
This is a great approach to use if your authors may be lacking E-A-T or a strong online presence, but your reviewers are the true experts with a known online presence.
For WordPress to websites using Yoast, a reviewedBy feature is currently being considered for their roadmap, which will allow you to indicate the individual who has reviewed your content by selecting among your authors in WordPress.
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5. Citations (Schema property)
Using the citation Schema property, you can list the other publications, articles, or creative works your content cites or links to.
This is a great way to show search engines that you are referencing authoritative, trustworthy sources to support your work, which is a great strategy for E-A-T.
Furthermore, listing citations in Schema markup can help position your brand in relation to the other brands you associate with, which can potentially provide Google with qualitative information about your trustworthiness.
Use Structured Data to Support E-A-T Initiatives
The Schema.org library is continually being expanded.
And while structured data itself is not a direct ranking factor, Google consistently recommends adopting its usage and using as much of it as possible to help its search engine make sense of your site.
Presumably, by helping Google better understand your content and the entities included on your site through structured data, this will also streamline and improve their efforts to assess your website’s quality and E-A-T.
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Pay attention to the ever-evolving Schema.org library and take advantage of the many Schema types and properties listed there as a guide for how your content should be structured.
Image Credits
Featured image: Paulo Bobita
Screenshot taken by author
In Alberta, beets are always in season, but markets are particularly well-stocked with them in the fall.
They're more versatile than we tend to give them credit for. If you get into the habit of roasting them (wrap in foil and place directly on the oven rack for about an hour, or boil them on the stovetop, or cook them in the slow cooker with about an inch of water, on low for about 4 hours) you can store them in the fridge, still wrapped in foil (put them in a bowl to prevent drips) and easily peel them with your fingers to slice or grate into salads, muffins, risotto and all kinds of other dishes.
If you're a fan, here are a few ways you can eat your beet — that you may not have thought of.
Red Velvet Beet Snacking Cake
If you use paler natural cocoa, you'll get a stronger pink colour. Darker Dutch-processed cocoa isn't as acidic, and tends to mask the pink of the beets, which will also tone down as it bakes.
Regardless, it's a delicious snacking cake, with or without the cream cheese frosting.
Cake ingredients:
½ cup sugar
½ cup packed brown sugar
½ cup canola or other vegetable oil
1 large egg
1¼ cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup cocoa
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
½ cup buttermilk or thin plain yogurt
1 large beet, peeled and coarsely grated (about 1 cup)
Cream cheese frosting:
½ cup (4 oz) cream cheese
¼ cup butter, softened
1½–2 cups icing sugar
1-2 tbsp milk or cream
1 tsp vanilla
Preheat the oven to 350 F.
In a large bowl, stir together the sugars, oil and egg. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt.
Stir half into the sugar-oil mixture, then stir in the buttermilk or yogurt, then the rest of the dry ingredients, along with the beets.
Pour into a greased or parchment-lined 9x9-inch pan and bake for 30 minutes, or until the top is springy to the touch. Cool completely in the pan on a wire rack.
To make the frosting, beat the cream cheese and butter until lump-free. Beat in the icing sugar and 1 tbsp cream or milk along with the vanilla; beat until creamy, adding a bit more cream or milk or icing sugar to achieve a spreadable consistency. Spread over the cake once it has completely cooled.
Serves: About 9.
Beetniks, unbaked. (Julie Van Rosendaal)
Beetniks or Beetnik Pizza
Beetniks are a Ukrainian dish of yeasted dough wrapped in beet leaves and doused in a creamy dill sauce. The combination also makes a great pizza — stretch out your pizza dough, spread it with the sauce, top with beet greens and some crumbled goat cheese (and some grated mozzarella, if you like) and bake however you would normally bake your pizza.
Beetniks are delicious doused in a creamy dill sauce. (Julie Van Rosendaal)
Bread, bun or pizza dough
Beet greens
Creamy dill sauce — the measurements are approximate and can be easily doubled.
Ingredients:
¼ cup butter
½ small onion or shallot, finely chopped
salt
1-2 tbsp flour (optional — if using half and half or milk)
2 cups heavy (whipping) cream, half and half or milk
a big handful of dill, chopped
Pull pieces of bread dough about the size of a golf ball, and roll them so they're about the size of your thumb.
Blanch the beet greens in boiling water (or cook them for a minute in the microwave with about an inch of water (just enough to make them more pliable) and wrap a leaf around each piece of dough.
Place in a baking dish that will accommodate as many as you'd like to make. Cover with a tea towel and proof on the countertop for half an hour or so.
When you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 F. Bake the beatniks for about 20 minutes, or until golden.
Meanwhile, make the sauce: heat the butter in a skillet until foamy; add the onion, sprinkle with salt and cook for 3-4 minutes, until soft.
If you're using lighter cream or milk, sprinkle with flour and stir to coat. Add the cream (or milk) and stir until it bubbles and thickens, or if you're using heavy cream, until it reduces. Stir in as much chopped dill as you like. If it gets too thick, add more cream, milk or even a splash of water.
Pour the dill sauce over the beetniks. Serves as many as you like.
Beet risotto. Crumble in the goat cheese for that extra flavour. (Julie Van Rosendaal)
Beet Risotto
You can use roasted beets in risotto, or grate them in raw. As they cook, they'll turn from brilliant purple to a more muted purply-red.
And though soft goat cheese is a classic pairing, beets pair well with virtually any kind of cheese, so you can rummage through your fridge for whatever needs using. And if your beets come with greens attached, chop and sauté them (stems too!) with the onion at the beginning, or thinly slice and stir in at the end, just to wilt them.
Ingredients:
a drizzle of canola or olive oil
2-4 tbsp butter
½ small onion or 1 shallot, finely chopped
¾ cup short-grain rice (such as Arborio)
a splash of wine (optional)
4 cups low-sodium chicken or vegetable stock (or salted water)
1 medium beet, grated
½ cup crumbled goat cheese or grated Parmesan
In a large saucepan or Dutch oven, heat a drizzle of oil and a couple tablespoons of butter over medium-high heat.
When the butter gets foamy, add the onion and cook for a few minutes, sprinkling with salt, until soft but not browned. If you're adding beet greens, chop and cook them (and the stems) along with the onion (or keep the leaves to stir in at the end). Add the rice and stir it around for a minute or two, until coated with oil and butter. If you like, add a splash of wine and cook for a minute, until it evaporates.
Add about a half cup of the stock and cook, stirring often, until your spoon starts leaving a trail through the bottom of the pan. Continue adding the stock about half a cup at a time, stirring frequently, until the rice is just tender, which should take about 20 minutes. Stir in another tablespoon or two of butter, taste, and add salt if needed. Crumble in the goat cheese and stir just to partially melt into the risotto.
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Could you eat your pet guinea pig? In recent years, that deceptively simple question has become a classic example in cultural anthropology classes of the subjective nature of our attitudes to food.
Think about it. On one side of the Great Guinea Pig Divide stand Andean indigenous cultures, who have long treated the furry mammal as nutritious fare, best served grilled. On the other side are European and US cultures, where the animal is considered a beloved pet to cuddled by kids, not put on a roasting spit.
While western children would doubtless react with horror to the idea of eating these little creatures, to indigenous cultures in Ecuador and Peru it seems equally strange to cherish them as pets. In other words, how we treat guinea pigs is one of many small ways in which we define our sense of “exotic”.
As any anthropology class will also teach you, labelling others as “exotic” or “weird”, because of food or anything else, also makes it easier to demonise them. Look, for example, at how in the western media the outbreak of Covid-19 in Wuhan was often presented alongside scandalised stories of China’s wet food markets.
Anthropologist Paul Farmer noted a similar demonisation of “exotic” foods during the Ebola epidemic of 2014 in west Africa, when westerners exaggerated the role played by the consumption of “bushmeat” on the spread. “The Ebola-era obsession with bushmeat is neatly enough reflected in commentary about Wuhan’s wet markets, where (one imagines) caged civets pace, eels and strange fish squirm and flop and pangolins shed scales like golden tears,” he wrote in April 2020.
However, there is another side to this. Culture can often be more malleable and fluid than we realise, particularly in a globalised age. Gideon Lasco, an anthropologist from the Philippines, has been studying the issue of how and why Andean cultures eat guinea pigs. His research, recently presented on the social science website Sapiens, starts by noting that this food is a social divider not just between Andean cultures and the west, but inside countries such as Peru.
Indigenous Andean cultures have eaten guinea pigs, known as cuy, for centuries. But in recent decades, urban Peruvians, particularly those of mestizos descent (ie with mixed European and Andean heritage), have stopped, knowing westerners viewed the practice negatively.
More recently, however, notes Lasco, two striking trends have emerged. First, some western tourists have started to view sampling guinea pig dishes as fashionable, linking it to “bizarre foods bragging rights”. While globalisation has already brought numerous different ethnic dishes from around the world into western supermarkets, chopped guinea pig is not yet on sale in Walmart or Sainsbury’s, hence its value as an “experience”.
Second, some educated Peruvians have also become more interested in defining and championing what makes them unique in a globalised world by creating a new form of cuy haute cuisine in Lima. “As eating ‘local’ becomes more fashionable around the world, wealthier elites have been rediscovering time-honored indigenous foods and beverages,” Lasco writes.
“Culinary gentrification” — to use a phrase coined by Raúl Matta, a Peruvian anthropologist — has a dark side. Most notably, rising demand for cuy meat is turning a cottage industry of cuy farming (which mostly entailed families keeping guinea pigs at home) into an agribusiness (where they are often kept in unpleasant conditions). The Peruvian anthropologist María Elena García says she was horrified to see “female guinea pigs are continuously impregnated until they are slaughtered”.
But this shift also has a more positive side by creating a new source of income and protein for some farmers. And now there is another unexpected twist caused by globalisation: development groups are trying to import these ideas to Africa.
As Brigitte Maas, an associate professor at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, recently told The Conversation platform, countries such as Benin, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon already have local traditions of eating guinea pigs (or similar rodents), but in an informal, homegrown and sometimes furtive manner.
However, Maas says pilot projects have now started to see if guinea-pig farming could be a viable agribusiness to boost nutrition in these parts of Africa. “It’s important that the whole value chain is developed,” she adds, lauding the creation of “stakeholder platforms which [connect guinea pig] producers, traders and restaurateurs”.
Those furry creatures, in other words, are no longer just a sign of global differences but of cultural malleability. That may not make western kids feel any better about the idea of their pets being grilled. But the issue should be used to help them (and adults) to recognise how subjective our assumptions are, and that these need not be set in stone, or cages.
Around 10%-20% of adolescents globally suffer from a mental health condition, such as anxiety or depression, according to the World Health Organization. It’s also been shown that half of all mental health conditions start by age 14. Given how important and formative adolescence is in a person’s life, finding ways of protecting or improving mental wellbeing in children and young people is extremely important.
We already know how valuable good nutrition and diet are for physical health – which is why experts recommend we aim for five servings of fruits and vegetables a day (“five-a-day”). More recently research has also started to suggest that nutrition could influence mental health. While more research is still needed in this area, our recent study found found that eating a more nutritious diet, rich in fruit and vegetables, and having healthier breakfasts and lunch habits were associated with better mental wellbeing in children.
To conduct our study, we used data from the Norfolk Children and Young People Health and Wellbeing Survey. This collected data on mental wellbeing and different things that impact it – such as socioeconomic status and age – from children at over 50 schools in Norfolk. This allowed us to investigate the importance of fruit and vegetable consumption and meal choices (such as what students ate for breakfast or lunch) with mental wellbeing in this age group.
Our analyses looked at 1,253 primary school pupils aged 8-11 years and 7,570 secondary school pupils aged 12-18 years. Using different questionnaires for the two groups, we assessed their mental wellbeing by asking them them to score how often they had the feelings described in statements such as “I’ve been feeling good about myself” or “I’ve been feeling loved”. The scores for each statement were added together to give a total score. The higher this total score is, the greater a child’s mental wellbeing.
We also asked students questions on their age, gender, health, living situation and adverse experiences (such as being bullied, or experiencing arguing or violence at home) alongside questions about what kinds of foods they typically ate. This was important so that instead of investigating nutrition and wellbeing on their own, we were able to take into account other factors that can impact a person’s wellbeing score. By doing this, we were able to show that the link between a healthier diet and better mental wellbeing still existed even after taking all these other factors into account.
Nutritious meals
In the secondary school group, higher fruit and vegetable consumption was associated with higher mental wellbeing scores – around 8% higher for those who ate five servings daily compared to those who ate none.
We also found that the wellbeing score varied depending on what type of breakfast or lunch participants ate. Compared to secondary school children who ate a conventional breakfast (such as cereal, toast or a cooked breakfast, like eggs), those who didn’t eat any breakfast had an almost 6% lower mental wellbeing score. Those who consumed only an energy drink for breakfast had an almost 7% lower wellbeing score.
Scores were similarly low for those who didn’t eat lunch compared to those who did. These associations were also similar in primary school children.
Our research also revealed that, on average, in a class of 30 secondary school children, four would have nothing to eat or drink before school, and three had nothing to eat or drink for lunch. We also found that only 25% of secondary school children ate five or more fruits and vegetables a day – and one in ten ate none.
These statistics would be concerning even without the link we have found with mental health, as poor nutrition is likely to impact on school performance as well as growth and development. While more primary school children ate breakfast and lunch, there was similarly poor fruit and vegetable intake.
To put our findings into perspective, having no breakfast or lunch was associated with a similarly detrimental effect on mental wellbeing as children witnessing regular arguing or violence at home. But as our study was observational, it’s difficult for us to prove the cause of poor mental wellbeing until trials are done to explore these links, fully understand why they exist, and really be certain whether better nutrition will improve mental wellbeing in children.
Our findings show that good quality nutrition needs to be available to all children and young people to improve mental wellbeing and help them reach their full potential. To do this, we could encourage more funding for breakfast clubs, make sure that all children eligible for free school meals use them, and that these meals contain at least two portions of fruits or vegetables. To achieve this, these approaches need to be supported by school policies and public health strategies.
NEWS RELEASE
LIVING GREEN BARRIE
*************************
This year, many of us have looked to our own backyard for opportunities to get outside, to be active, and to reduce screen time. You may have been part of the over 50 per cent of Canadians who started a vegetable garden during the pandemic, looking for some peace of mind or maybe the satisfaction of nurturing a tiny seed or seedling into something that will grow to feed your body and soul.
Including more vegetables in our diet can lower blood pressure, fight disease and slow the aging process, but can eating more vegetables also help reset the clock on climate change for our planet? Here are a few things that can happen when you replace animal products like meat and dairy, by adding more vegetables:
Get Less Gassy
Raising livestock is a large contributor to greenhouse gases and accounts for approximately 14.5 per cent of total global greenhouse gas emissions. Most of the emissions from raising livestock come from the work required to feed and process animals for food. Almost as much is produced from the animals’ waste and digestive process, particularly from beef and dairy cattle.
Researchers are looking at ways to make livestock production less gassy and more sustainable through genetics and dietary supplements, like seaweed, but while this approach is thought to hold promise, there are still hurdles to this solution being widely adopted.
Save the Trees
Clearing of large areas of forest to create or expand pastures for livestock not only reduces the planet’s ability to take in CO2, but can contribute carbon into the atmosphere and increase warming when the carbon that is trapped in the soil is released as a result of soil disturbance and erosion from the loss of vegetation cover and increased grazing pressure.
A forest can reduce storm water run-off and trap greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Even your backyard and boulevard trees do their part. A mature tree absorbs carbon dioxide at a rate of 48 pounds per year. In one year, an acre of forest can absorb twice the CO2 produced by the average car’s annual mileage.
According to the 2019 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, “Dietary changes, featuring plant-based foods and sustainable animal-sourced food, could free up several million square kilometres of land by 2050 and potentially cut 0.7 to 8.0 gigatonnes a year of carbon dioxide equivalent”.
The report also noted, “Reducing deforestation and forest degradation could result in a reduction of 0.4-5.8 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent." A gigatonne is one billion metric tonnes. One gigatonne is roughly 200 million elephants; enough elephants to stretch from the Earth to the moon. That’s a lot of elephants!
Trap Carbon by Growing Your Own Vegetables and Nurturing Your Soil
Growing your own vegetables in a “climate friendly” garden can trap carbon in the plants and soils and provide a hyper-local source of veggies without traveling on a truck to get to your table. A climate friendly garden minimizes the disturbance to soils through no-till or no-dig practices and enriches the soil by utilizing compost instead of chemical inputs.
Save money
Meat is one of the most expensive things at the grocery store. Taking it off your list could save you some money on your grocery bill if you replace it with vegetables and plant-based proteins like beans, and legumes that can act as substitutes for meat. The amount you save will depend on whether you are prepared to include these less expensive options in your meals or if you rely more on the pre-packaged vegetarian and vegan alternatives.
Our choices can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit human-induced global warming. We have all been told to eat our vegetables, they’re good for us. It turns out, it’s also good for our planet.
Eating oily fish provides a host of health wins. But is it a good idea to eat salmon every day?
After all, salmon is an awesome source of omega-3 fatty acids. But how much is too much? Is a salmon-heavy diet helpful for weight loss? Does it provide protein? All the questions.
Well, don’t despair. We’ll dish the deets on our fishy friend.
OK, so you’ve been eating salmon every day and now you’re wondering if you’re overdoing it. What’s going to happen if you get too much of this good thing?
Take a deep breath and relax. Even though you don’t need to eat salmon *every* day, making it a regular feature in meals won’t hurt you. In fact, salmon is an excellent source of many nutrients, including:
And it *can* provide a bunch of vitamin D, but this varies depending on whether the salmon is wild or farmed — according to the limited research, wild salmon has the edge on vitamin D content.
There’s more stuff in salmon that helps you than harms you.
Let’s take a look at how much salmon you can nosh on!
How much should you eat every day?
There’s no official recommendation on how much salmon you should eat per day, so you’ll have to go with your soon-to-be-fish-filled gut. If you want to eat it every day, take a look at the weekly recommendation and think about how you could spread it out.
Do you want to go with bigger amounts but eat less frequent servings? Or eat a smattering of salmon every day?
If you’re determined to go with daily salmon consumption, think about it. Small slices of salmon on toast? Sushi? Sashimi? There’s more than one way to get salmon into your diet on a daily basis. Get creative with it.
How much should you eat every week?
The FDA recommends that you eat at least 8 ounces of seafood per week. And again, why not get inventive with it?
After all, you can either divide that up into daily portions or treat yourself to a grilled salmon steak or hearty chunks in a salad. You can make up your own rules!
What are you putting into your body when you chow down on salmon?
It depends on what type of salmon you’re eating. Different types of salmon have different nutritional values. We used the most common type of salmon to appear on U.S. plates (farmed Atlantic salmon) for reference. You can expect to get the nutrients below from 3 ounces of salmon.
For the percentage of your Daily Value (DV), we’ve given the figures for males and females aged 19 to 30 years, but your intake requirement for some nutrients varies depending on your age, pregnancy status, and health needs.
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans are our basis for these values, so feel free to check out the guidelines for your own nutritional situation.
That’s some pretty useful stuff, right?
Different types of salmon: Farmed vs. wild-caught
You’ll generally see two types of salmon in your local supermarket: wild-caught and farmed.
You might notice that farmed salmon is usually a bit bigger and plumper-looking, while wild salmon tends to be smaller and more expensive. So the farmed salmon has to be the better choice, right? Plus, it’s been bred in captivity, so *surely* that’s a more ethical choice than plucking a wild fish from its natural life?
But wait — something seems a little fishy here.
Fish farmers keep salmon in little cages in the sea, and the fish eat an artificial diet that makes them bigger. This means that once they reach your plate, they’re higher in omega-6 fatty acids and lower in omega-3s than wild salmon, although either type of salmon is a nutritious choice.
Wild-caught salmon might cost more, but it may also be higher in certain nutrients. It’s also important to remember that the health risks associated with farmed salmon are still super small — if wild salmon is beyond your budget, it’s better to eat farmed salmon than to cut it out of your diet completely.
Try to buy responsibly sourced salmon too. It’s better for the fish and for you. (More on that later!)
Not quite sold on the idea of regularly eating salmon? Well, prepare to change your mind: These benefits will get even the most ardent fish-hater thinking twice.
(Still, remember that salmon is not a miracle food in isolation — it should be part of a balanced diet that covers all your nutritional bases.)
1. You can eat it as part of a Mediterranean diet
Want to know why people praise the Mediterranean diet so much? It’s because this diet is low in red meat and saturated fat and potentially supports human health (including by helping you reduce your risk of heart disease and diabetes).
Salmon can stand in for red meat while boosting your intake of other nutrients.
2. It’s a solid source of protein
We all love protein, right? And no, it’s not just for gym rats — a protein-rich diet can support bone strength, healthy aging, and other awesome things that we generally care about.
And salmon is up to its gills in protein! Research suggests that adults under 65 should eat 0.8 grams of protein for every kilogram of body weight every day. That comes to 55 to 57 grams for males and 47 to 48 grams for females.
A 3.5-ounce serving of salmon provides 22 to 25 grams of protein. Sweet!
3. It might help you lose weight
Wanna know what else protein-rich foods are great for? Shedding those unwanted pounds!
A 2014 research review noted that high protein foods like salmon make you feel full after you eat them. This might mean you’ll eat fewer calories overall, which could contribute to weight loss.
As you can see, a 3-ounce serving of salmon can provide a hearty chunk of your daily requirement for vitamins B12, B6, and D, and a not-insignificant helping of thiamine, riboflavin, and potassium.
So what’s the catch?
You might have heard that salmon contains mercury — and that’s completely true. But salmon is pretty low on the list of fish containing the most mercury.
You’re not really at any risk of mercury poisoning by simply eating fish. The health benefits of salmon far outweigh the minimal risk of harm from its limited mercury content.
Stick to the 8-ounces-a-week guideline and you’ll be able to keep up your salmon intake without worrying about harmful side effects.
Not keen on salmon or just fancy something different? Here are some alternatives.
You might be tempted to go for another oily fish as a cheaper alternative to salmon, and you can’t go wrong with mackerel.
You’ll be getting that dose of omega-3 acids and vitamin D (though less than in salmon). But be warned — it’s best to avoid king mackerel, which contains more mercury than other types of tuna and isn’t *quite* as safe to eat regularly.
You’re sold on salmon. Hurrah!
But how can you incorporate it into your diet? If you’re not too worried about sticking to the guideline amounts (although they are guidelines for a reason) and you just want that tasty salmon in you, here are seven ways to get your mouth watering:
Honey garlic salmon. As Mediterranean diet as it comes! Adding sweetness to your salmon creates a great contrast of flavors.
Baked salmon in foil. Want to try out foil cooking, sealing in all the flavor and healthy oils? This is the perfect recipe for giving it a go (and enjoying the results).
Rosemary-roasted salmon. If you can look at this recipe without immediately wanting to try it, you’re doing better than us. Light, flavorful, and healthy to boot.
Tuscan salmon. Live la dolce vita with a taste of Tuscany. This creamy dish will have you flashing back to that week you spent in Florence — and it still manages to be a nutritious choice!
Teriyaki salmon. How about a taste of Asia instead? This is perfect with rice for a simple yet tasty meal.
Lemon garlic salmon. Another fantastic Mediterreanean-inspired choice. Close your eyes and you’ll almost be able to smell the sea breeze from the Bay of Naples. Healthy *and* tasty!
The FDA recommends eating 8 ounces of salmon per week. So you *can* eat it every day but in smaller servings. If you’re pregnant, the FDA recommends eating 8 to 12 ounces of seafood per week from sources that have lower mercury levels — including salmon!
Although you might have heard that salmon contains mercury, the potential health benefits of eating this delish fish far outweigh the risks.
As long as you stick to the guidelines where possible, regular salmon consumption will give you a boost in omega-3 fatty acids — a vital nutrient that your body doesn’t produce naturally — plus other health bonuses.
Salmon also contains a bunch of vitamins and minerals and is tasty and versatile. You can stick to the daily guidelines and eat a small amount each day while still making things interesting. Sushi, anyone?
Salmon has a low enough mercury level that you’re very unlikely to encounter any risk to your health if you eat it. Get yourself some ethically sourced salmon, tickle your taste buds with some classy dishes, and reap those health rewards.
