You don’t need to eat a big slab of meat every day to meet your protein needs. In fact, loading up on animal-based protein, especially from factory-farmed sources, can do more harm than good.

Studies show that an excessive amount of red meat can lead to increased inflammation, accelerated aging, and increased risk of chronic disease. One major culprit? A sugar molecule called “Neu5Gc,” commonly found in red meat. Your body sees it as a foreign invader, triggering an immune response that can lead to long-term inflammation.

Of course, you should always consult with your doctor before making any drastic changes to your diet. But for many people, plant-based protein can be a powerful alternative that’s packed with benefits like fiber, healthy fats, and anti-inflammatory polyphenols.

Plus, research has continuously shown that non-meat protein sources can be better for your health, longevity, and brain function. Here are six high-protein foods I love and recommend all the time — your body and brain will thank you.

Lentils are my top choice when it comes to legumes. They’re one of the most protein-rich legumes, with fewer calories than most. They’re also higher in resistant starch and prebiotic fiber, which feed your gut microbiome.

Pro tip: Soak or pressure-cook lentils to reduce lectins, which can impact or slow down nutrient absorption. You can add lentils to soups, stews, or homemade veggie burgers.

Hemp seeds are one of the rare plant-based proteins that contain all nine essential amino acids, making them a complete protein.

They’re rich in omega-3s, magnesium, and gut-friendly fiber. Just be sure to choose organic, cold-pressed hemp protein with no added sugars.

Pro tip: Trader Joe’s sells organic hemp protein power, which I like adding to smoothies. You can find hemp hearts at Costco — perfect on salads or roasted vegetables.

Native to Brazil’s Cerrado region, Barù nuts pack more protein per serving than nearly any other nut. They’re also full of antioxidants and fiber, and have a satisfying, earthy crunch.

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Pro tip: You can usually find Barù nuts at grocery stores, but if you don’t, try looking online. I love snacking on a handful daily. They taste like a cross between peanuts and almonds.

This blue-green algae is one of the most protein-dense foods on the planet (by weight, it’s nearly 70% protein). It contains iron, B vitamins, and a powerful antioxidant called phycocyanin that helps support brain and immune function.

Pro tip: Try adding spirulina to your smoothies or juices. You can also substitute it with chlorella, another nutrient-rich algae, in powder or tablet form.

Flaxseeds don’t get enough love, but they’re a fantastic source of plant protein, omega-3s, and lignans, which have hormone-balancing benefits.

When flaxseeds are in their whole form, you cannot digest their beneficial compound, so always choose ground flaxseeds.

Pro tip: I like to keep a bag of organic whole flax in the refrigerator and grind it as needed to ensure freshness (just like you’d only grind coffee beans right before brewing). Add to smoothies, sprinkle on salads, or try my cinnamon flaxseed mug in a muffin recipe for a quick, healthy breakfast.

Sick of quinoa or couscous? Sorghum is a protein-rich ancient grain with a subtly sweet, nutty flavor. One cup has 21 grams of protein (more than twice that of quinoa), and three ounces of sorghum has more iron than a serving of steak!

Even better? It’s a great source of polyphenols and one of the few lectin-free grains.

Pro tip: Use sorghum flour for gluten-free baking, or look for it in pasta form for a high-protein, plant-forward meal.

Dr. Steven Gundry, MD, is a former cardiac surgeon, founder of GundryMD, and author of the bestselling books ”The Gut-Brain Paradox″ and ”The Plant Paradox.” For over two decades, his research has focused on the microbiome’s role in chronic disease and longevity. He received his degrees from Yale University and the Medical College of Georgia, and completed his surgical residency at the University of Michigan. Follow him on Instagram @drstevengundry.

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By some standards, Angela and Brian are fulfilling the American Dream. 

The 52-year-olds were high school sweethearts, have been married for 28 years, raised four children and will soon be empty nesters. They have a net worth of $1.57 million, including nearly $900,000 invested.

But Angela isn’t satisfied with their life. 

“I just worry that life is passing us by, and we can be doing and spending more on life,” she wrote in her application to appear on author and self-made millionaire Ramit Sethi’s “Money for Couples” podcast. The couple joined Sethi for a recent episode, seeking advice to work through differences in their feelings around money. Their last names were not used.

“We never eat out. Vacations are once a year. He always thinks we are poor. I need someone to tell him that we are OK money-wise,” Angela wrote.

Brian disagrees. “I think she feels that we’re at a comfortable place financially right now for our plan going forward,” he said on the podcast. “I don’t see that. I think we just need more. I wish I would’ve started [investing] much earlier.”

Here’s Sethi’s advice for them.

Brian and Angela earn $188,000 a year and have $294,000 in debt between their mortgage and car payments. Their fixed costs account for 72% of their monthly income.

Sethi generally recommends these costs not exceed 50% to 60% of your income, but Angela and Brian have been paying extra on their mortgage, so they have some wiggle room, he said.

However, Brian and Angela’s most frequent financial disagreements revolve around relatively small money decisions, like groceries and dining out. 

Angela does the shopping and financial management, so she has a good idea of what they can afford, the couple told Sethi. But Brian constantly nitpicks her purchases. Angela wants to go out to dinner or drinks more frequently, but Brian almost always says no.

“We’re living too little of a life, is the problem,” Angela said. Sethi agreed, and said the shrinking “didn’t happen all at once. It happened $2 at a time.” That’s the “hidden cost of decades of frugality,” he added.

It’s wise to live within your means, no matter your income. But Brian’s frugality, including his resistance to spend on things that will make his wife happier, seems to come at the expense of their relationship, Sethi said.

“First, you [budget] for a reason. Then, you do it out of habit. And sometimes, you start to believe you don’t deserve anything else,” Sethi said. “It goes beyond saving money on coffee. And sometimes in situations like this, you start to realize how narrow your life has become.”

While Angela would like to retire in the next five years, she fears Brian will feel like he needs to work “till he is 80,” she said.

Sethi walked the couple through retirement projections to show how their investments could change if they decide to put away more each month or retire later. But he warned that the financial logistics won’t matter so much if they can’t get on the same page about how they want to spend their time and money.

“The two of you have so many different options,” Sethi said. “But I don’t think any of it happens if you’re not actually connected, starting right now.”

In addition to showing them that they can afford the date nights and some of the immediate travel Angela would like to do, Sethi encouraged Brian to initiate planning nights out so he can get as excited about a date as Angela. And when Angela asks him to try a new restaurant or activity, “sometimes we just have to say yes and our feelings change later,” Sethi said.

Brian agreed he needs to “not give in, but compromise,” he said. “I think I need to be a better husband and compromise and rebuild the foundation of this relationship.”

Even if it’s small things like going out for coffee, planned activities together will help the couple start “getting those adventurous feelings back,” Sethi said.

They’re currently on track to have nearly $1.5 million in investments if they retire in five years and could see that value surpass $2 million if they wait 10 years. But either way, they are able to afford reasonable outings and activities, he told them.

“Whether it’s joining a group together or trying some new stuff, that brings you way closer,” Sethi said.

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If you ask Donna Morris, there’s one behavior that’s the ultimate red flag an employee won’t get far in the workplace: when someone is a “Debbie Downer.”

Morris, 57, has been executive vice president and chief people officer at Walmart since 2020, helping shape the employee experience of 2.1 million workers since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Prior to her current role, she spent 17 years at Adobe in a variety of leadership positions — and throughout her career, she’s learned a thing or two about red flags in the office.

“Nobody wants [to hire] a Debbie Downer,” Morris tells CNBC Make It, adding that this kind of person is “constantly negative. You know they’re going to show up [and] they’re going to bring the problem, never the solution. I like people who bring the problem and a suggestion for how they might resolve [it.]”

A “Debbie Downer” can also be someone who’s a naysayer, sharing negative opinions about others’ ideas and goals, or regularly being a hindrance to new projects and perspectives. This could make it difficult for them to make the connections needed to climb the corporate ladder, or for their bosses and managers to trust them with new projects.

If your co-worker has this character trait, they’re “only going to support you to a restricted limit,” Juliette Han, a Harvard-trained neuroscientist, told CNBC Make It in June 2023. “They need you to stay within a short leash, and might discourage you from meeting new people in the company or going after new projects if it doesn’t benefit them directly.”

That doesn’t mean you should practice toxic optimism, pretending everything is fine when your team is facing difficult circumstances, for example. It’s unnatural and unrealistic for someone to be happy all the time, Morris says. Similarly, a continuous negative spiral could be a signal that you’re in the wrong job or company, she adds. 

There are a couple attributes that separate the most highly successful employees to those who fall short, says Morris.

She thinks highly of workers who “deliver what you are expecting at the time that you’re expecting,” she says. “You’re better to deliver early than to deliver late, and you’re better to deliver more than less.”

“Another green flag is they’re open to opportunities, and they put their hand up to take on more,” she adds. “Or they bring a problem with the remedy or request help in a timely manner, as opposed to the house is on fire.”

You can show you have this kind of team player, self-starter attitude by offering help even when you’re not asked for it, like volunteering to mentor the new intern or pitching an idea that solves a problem your boss has been dealing with.

Demonstrating radical intellectual curiosity, like researching a new AI tool or a new software your competitors are using, then sharing your findings with your boss or manager, also goes a long way, according to Michael Ramlett, CEO of global data intelligence firm Morning Consult. 

And if you’re willing to help your colleagues along the way, acting as a mentor and sharing the things you’ve learned, that’s the icing on the cake, Morris says.

“People who you see are actually helping others [are a] total green flag.”

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Lucy Rout is not your typical entrepreneur.

The 30-year-old Londoner — known for going viral for skiing off an icy slope in a bikini and for consulting her Instagram followers on whether she should fly 10,000 miles for a fourth date with a man — has used her eclectic experiences to develop a new dating model that’s all about making meaningful connections.

Rout told CNBC her confidence had never been lower when using traditional dating apps.

After years of being ghosted, and what she describes as a “strange dopamine cycle of downloading, trying some dates, experiencing bad behavior, writing them off, and vowing to never do it ever again, and then starting the cycle again,” — Rout determined that people were hungry for in real life (IRL) connections. 

She came up with the idea of Haystack Dating in a bid to increase the chances of people building romantic connections.

“What we absolutely can do is increase the chances and put people in the right environments where they feel safe and included. Use a bit of tech, use their similar interests and bring them together, and just make it less of a needle in a haystack and more of a needle in a sewing box,” she told CNBC Make It in an interview. 

Rout doesn’t just expect her customers to show up at an event and attempt to strike up conversations at random. Instead, attendees fill in a form that inputs their data through an algorithm that matches them with a small group of people based on similar interests and personality traits.  

“I researched the parameters that lead to meaningful connections and tried to understand a lot more about the psychology of how people work — introvert versus extrovert, effort levels, career ambition. I spoke to hundreds of people about it and I came up with this current algorithm, which we’re always optimizing,” Rout said.  

Attendees commit to an activity such as cricket or touch rugby for an hour, and then spend the rest of the evening with the full group of guests.

So far, as many as 200 to 500 people have shown up to a single event, and 92% of customers show up alone, Rout said, with events in London costing around £30 ($39.85).

Rout has been documenting her entrepreneurial journey and her distaste for men’s poor behavior in the dating world on Instagram for years.

A cancer survivor, she created a pill case called Tabuu that secured investments on BBC’s Dragon’s Den in 2023. Before Haystack, she was working on Tabuu remotely in Colombia, while posting snippets of her life, reminding women to never chase a man “unless he is the ice-cream man.”

Three years of using dating apps severely deteriorated her confidence, Rout told CNBC. She’s not alone, with dating app users becoming increasingly disenchanted with online dating.  

Frequent use of dating apps can contribute to a decline in mental health and negatively impact a person’s body image, according to a study published in April. Increasing the number of available partners on dating apps lowered self-esteem, the study found. Across heterosexual and LGBTQ + connections, ghosting and online sexual violence were factors that contributed to psychological distress. 

These experiences are leading to a decline in dating app use, according to an OFCOM report from late 2024, which tracked how U.K. adults spent time online. From 2023 to 2024, Tinder lost nearly 600,000 users, Hinge saw 131,000 less visitors to its app, Bumble shed 368,000 users, and Grindr users were down 11,000.  

As millennials and Gen Z leave online dating behind, IRL events are making a comeback, and even dating apps are trying to tap into the hype. Hinge announced a $1 million fund in March, for social groups across New York, Los Angeles and London to put on events for young people to connect in person and build relationships.  

Bumble IRL was founded in 2022 with a range of exclusive in-person events centered around fitness, food, music and charity. 

“Yes, you can meet 5 Hinge dates in a week, or you can come to one pub once and meet a few hundreds. I think people do want to find love, and they’re just no longer willing to put themselves through the crap that comes with dating apps.

“That’s exactly where I got to. I got to dating burnout. And I just thought to myself, you know, I’m not going to do this anymore, I’m actually going to try and fix it for other people,” Rout said.

It was at an entrepreneurial networking event that Rout met her now-boyfriend in December 2023. In a turn of events that she documented on Instagram, she flew 10,000 miles as he was travelling to South-East Asia to meet him again for a fourth date.  While she was navigating her new relationship, Rout was developing Haystack to help others find love. 

With nearly 50,000 followers, it was Rout’s Instagram community that drove the initial sales for Haystack, with word-of-mouth reviews and recommendations helping spread the word. 

“Whilst I’d say initial sales definitely were driven by my Instagram community, you don’t go back if you’ve had a bad experience. I am not going into the numbers, but we have had a very high return user rate,” she said.

Haystack is set to launch in Leeds, and together with her team of six, Lucy is bringing her events to the rest of the U.K.

“In IRL events, there’s a hell of a lot more accountability, and people behave very differently in person than they do virtually. There is no way in hell that people in real life would have said to me some of the things they said on dating apps. People behave better. They’re kinder.” 

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Maddie Baker, 27, will be the first to admit she was an impulsive spender when she started teaching kindergarteners six years ago.

She bought coffee at least once a day, frequently shopped for new clothes and spent lavishly on vacations she says she “probably had no business going on.”

“Any day that I had a hard day at teaching, I would immediately go from my job to a store,” the now first-grade teacher tells CNBC Make It. “The way I was coping with hard days was by spending money.”

Baker isn’t alone. Almost half of American consumers say they make purchases to boost their mood, according to LendingTree survey data released in July. Emotional spending isn’t always bad, either. It can provide temporary comfort or a needed mood boost. However, it can also lead to financial strain.

Baker says her impulsive spending got so out of hand, she found herself in “horrible cycles” of living paycheck to paycheck to avoid going into credit card debt. Nationally, almost three-quarters of emotional shoppers admit they’ve spent more than they intended, and 44% say it’s negatively impacted their financial well-being, LendingTree found.

It took Baker three years to get her spending under control, she says. Today, she’s very intentional with how she spends her money and has even developed new hobbies from habits she’s built to save money.

“I remember just waking up every single day, and the stress of finances was just really getting me down,” says Baker, who was making around $50,000 a year at the time. “It became so stressful.”

Nearly Baker’s entire paycheck would go directly toward paying off her credit card. Because she was paid once a month, that often left her with little to live on — forcing her to rely on the card for new expenses and trapping her in a constant cycle of borrowing from herself.

She tried everything to earn extra cash. She tutored kids during her summer breaks, tried selling her clothes and donating her plasma, but none of it seemed to sustain her lifestyle, she says.

Baker got her spending under control three years into teaching through a tax refund that allowed her to pay off her credit card bill without using her paycheck. Now, she keeps enough in her checking account to pay her credit card bill every month without having to rely on an incoming paycheck.

“It took a total restart and being tired of the cycle I was in, in order to do something about it,” she says.

Young adults are particularly susceptible to overspending when they’re online or bombarded with bad news, Ylva Baeckström, a senior lecturer in finance at King’s Business School, said in 2024. Overwhelming feelings can lead to unhealthy spending habits as a way to cope or find relief, Baeckström said.

To avoid overspending, “one of the biggest things you can do is take a beat,” Keith Barron, a personal finance expert and former head of marketing at Jenius Bank, said in 2024.

Rather than heading straight to checkout when shopping online, try adding the item to a wish list and waiting a day or two. This brief delay can help you decide whether you genuinely want or need the item, Barron said.

Today, Baker is working toward building an emergency fund and saving for a house, and says she’s way more intentional about what she decides to spend money on.

On top of learning how to spend less impulsively, she says she’s found alternatives to save money and a side hustle creating videos on TikTok to bring in more income. Her silver lining: Many of the activities that started as a way to save have become hobbies as well.

She enjoys painting her own nails, making lattes at home and meal prepping to avoid eating out. On TikTok, she earns up to $2,000 a month from sharing videos about her life as a teacher.

“All of these things happened because I had the mindset of, ‘I need to save more money, and I need to spend less money,’” she says.

Want to stand out, grow your network, and get more job opportunities? Sign up for Smarter by CNBC Make It’s new online course, How to Build a Standout Personal Brand: Online, In Person, and At Work. Learn from three expert instructors how to showcase your skills, build a stellar reputation, and create a digital presence that AI can’t replicate. Sign up today with coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off the regular course price of $67 (plus tax). Offer valid July 22, 2025, through September 2, 2025.

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