After two decades treating heart disease, clogged arteries, and metabolic dysfunction, I began to notice a pattern. Many of my patients thought they were doing everything right — like exercising regularly and managing stress — yet they still ended up in my office with serious cardiovascular issues.

The common thread? Everyday food choices.

Some of the most harmful foods in the American diet don’t come with warning labels. Instead, they’re marketed as “heart smart,” “plant-based,” or “low-fat.” But behind the buzzwords are ingredients that fuel inflammation, spike blood sugar, and quietly damage your arteries over time.

As a cardiologist, there are nine American foods you couldn’t pay me to eat — not because I’m extreme, but because I’ve seen firsthand what they do to the human heart. 

They look harmless. They’re marketed with smiling cartoon mascots and sometimes even carry health claims. But most are essentially desserts in disguise. You might as well eat a glazed donut for breakfast!

That sugar spike doesn’t just leave you groggy by mid-morning. It triggers a surge in insulin, putting your metabolism into overdrive and, over time, wearing down your vascular system. I’ve seen patients develop insulin resistance, chronic fatigue, and cardiovascular complications — all linked to this morning ritual.

Eat this instead: Steel-cut oats with berries and cinnamon. Real fiber, antioxidants, and stable energy.

They’re portable and convenient, but this sandwich staple comes with a dark side. Deli meats are often preserved with nitrates and nitrites, which can convert into carcinogenic compounds inside the body.

These substances don’t just raise your cancer risk — they also elevate blood pressure and promote long-term arterial damage. If your “meat” has a shelf life longer than your dog, your arteries are paying the price.

Eat this instead: Roast your own turkey or chicken breast and slice it fresh.

These beverages deliver a double blow to your system: spiking blood sugar, overworking your adrenal glands, and flooding your body with inflammatory compounds.

And the “diet” versions? Often worse. Artificial sweeteners can disrupt your gut microbiome, which plays a huge role in both metabolism and heart health. Not only do they age you faster, but they can make you feel worse while doing it.

Eat this instead: Sparkling water with lemon or iced herbal tea.

Yes, they’re delicious. But deep-fried foods like corn dogs, funnel cake, and French fries are cooked in industrial seed oils that oxidize at high temperatures, forming potentially toxic byproducts.

Those byproducts embed in your artery walls, promote plaque buildup, and raise your risk of hypertension, stroke, and heart attacks. I tell patients to imagine each fried bite as sandpaper on your arteries. It’s not an exaggeration.

Eat this instead: Oven-baked options using olive or avocado oil.

When you strip a grain of its fiber, minerals, and nutrients, you’re left with a food that acts like sugar in the body. That includes white bread, crackers, and even many “multi-grain” imposters.

They break down quickly, spiking glucose, leading to crashes, fat storage, and insulin resistance. Over time, that means higher risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Eat this instead: 100% whole grain or sprouted grain bread.

Once marketed as a heart-healthy butter alternative, margarine turned out to be one of the biggest nutrition myths of the last century. Many versions still contain trans fats, which are chemically engineered to extend shelf life, but do real damage to your body.

Trans fats raise LDL (bad) cholesterol, lower HDL (good) cholesterol, and cause arterial stiffness. Even in small doses, they harm the endothelial lining of your blood vessels.

Eat this instead: Grass-fed butter or extra-virgin olive oil.

“Plant-based” doesn’t always mean heart-healthy. Many meat substitutes are ultra-processed, filled with sodium, inflammatory oils, and synthetic additives like methylcellulose and soy protein isolate.

Just because something doesn’t contain meat doesn’t mean it’s good for you. If it takes a chemistry degree to decode the label, it probably doesn’t belong in your body.

Eat this instead: Lentils, beans, or minimally processed tofu.

A single cup of canned soup can contain 80% to 100% of your daily sodium limit. Excess sodium raises blood pressure, strains the kidneys, and increases the risk of heart failure.

If you wouldn’t drink a glass of seawater, think twice before sipping that overly salty soup.

Eat this instead: Homemade soup with fresh vegetables, herbs, and sea salt to taste.

That morning splash of creamer is often a chemical cocktail: hydrogenated oils, artificial flavors, and added sugars. It may seem small, but day after day, it adds up — promoting inflammation and arterial plaque before you’ve even left the house.

Eat this instead: Unsweetened almond or oat milk with cinnamon or vanilla extract.

I’ll never touch any of these foods, but you don’t need to overhaul your entire diet overnight. Small swaps add up, and your bloodwork will prove it. And of course, consult with your healthcare provider before making any drastic changes.

Dr. Sanjay Bhojraj, MD, is a board-certified interventional cardiologist and certified functional medicine doctor. A pioneer at the intersection of precision cardiology and lifestyle medicine, he is the founder of Well12, a wellness program helping individuals reverse chronic disease through nutrition, breathwork, and genomic insights. Dr. Bhojraj is also a national educator for the Institute for Functional Medicine. Follow him on Instagram.

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Before he became a farmer, Joshua Morgenthau planned to pursue a career in art.

He graduated from Yale University with a degree in painting in 2006, but just two years later, he instead took on the task of reviving his family’s struggling Hudson Valley farm.

Morgenthau, now 41, is the owner and operator of Fishkill Farms, a 112-year-old apple farm in Hopewell Junction, New York.

Since he took charge of the farm 17 years ago, he’s transformed it into a popular fall destination for families across the Northeast.

Fishkill Farms was founded in 1913 by Joshua’s grandfather Henry Morgenthau, a lifelong agriculture enthusiast who served as the United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1934 to 1945.

Since then, the farm has remained in the family, with ownership passing to Joshua’s father Robert Morgenthau in the 1960s and then to Joshua after Robert’s death in 2019.

Morgenthau, who grew up in Manhattan, has fond memories of spending his childhood summers at Fishkill Farms. “I really fell in love with the place,” he recalls.

So when Fishkill’s longtime farm manager retired in 2008, Morgenthau stepped up to help his father decide the future of the farm.

It was a “make-or-break moment” for Fishkill, Morgenthau says: they could either try to save the farm, which was floundering financially, or they could sell the property, likely to developers.

With his father’s support, Morgenthau decided to take charge of the farm.

“I didn’t have any agricultural training, or think that this was what I necessarily was going to do,” he says, “but it was very important for me to see it continue as a farm.”

When Morgenthau took over running the farm in 2008, he saw a statistic that “really lit a fire under my behind,” he says: every three days, one farm in New York state was sold to developers.

“That tide is not one that reverses,” he says. “At the end of the day, I feel a sort of duty to preserve the land and keep going here.”

The learning curve for farming is “extremely steep,” Morgenthau says, and the margin of error is “very, very slim.”

With little practical experience in agriculture, Morgenthau threw himself into researching horticulture and eco-friendly farming practices. He’s passionate about sustainable farming, he says, and under his leadership, Fishkill Farms has eliminated the use of synthetic fertilizers and significantly reduced the use of synthetic herbicides since 2010.

Apples are still Fishkill Farms’ primary crop, and they currently cultivate over 80 different varieties. The farm also grows peaches, cherries, nectarines, pears, pumpkins, flowers and a variety of seasonal vegetables.

Morgenthau relies on a staff of around 20 full-time, year-round employees and over 100 seasonal workers to operate the farm.

“People have a sort of idyllic idea of farming as this romantic, simple pastime,” he says, but to succeed as a modern farmer, “you have to be part-biologist, part-CEO.”

Today, picking your own produce is a trendy fall pastime, but Fishkill Farms has offered the activity for decades.

As Morgenthau tells it, Fishkill Farms began allowing customers to pick their own fruit after a major hailstorm damaged their crop in the 1980s.

The farm couldn’t sell the blemished apples to supermarkets or wholesale chains, Morgenthau says, so in “an act of desperation,” his father and the farm manager invited neighbors to pick apples for a fee.

They ended up making more money than they did selling the produce wholesale, Morgenthau says, and “there was no going back after that.”

“This was an outlet that allowed us to cut out the middleman and to get customers and the local community coming to the farm,” he says.

According to Morgenthau, pick-your-own fruit is still Fishkill Farms’ primary attraction, with “peak season” occurring in September and October.

Of the farm’s approximately 100,000 yearly visitors, about 65% visit during those two months, Morgenthau says, and the farm brings in about 50% of its yearly revenue in that period.

“At least half of our traffic for the year is probably occurring on maybe 12 or 15 days of the year,” he says.

Visitors hail from all five boroughs of New York City, as well as New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

A classic pick-your-own apple package, available by reservation only, costs $48 for a weekday visit and $58 for weekends. Each classic package includes admission for up to 5 people and a half-bushel bag to fill with fruit.

During peak season, the farm provides a “full-day experience” for visitors, including live music, hayrides, a pumpkin patch, food trucks and a corn maze.

“We sort of switch what we’re doing from being farmers to running a bit of a carnival, or a festival,” Morgenthau says.

Visitors can also purchase fresh produce, baked goods and local cheeses from the farm store, or taste hard cider made from Fishkill’s own apples at the farm’s Treasury Cider bar.

Since taking over the farm, Morgenthau’s primary goal has been to diversify Fishkill’s revenue streams.

“Our gross revenue has grown to over $4 million in 2024, from only about $350,000 in 2008,” he says, “but expenses commonly run just as high.”

Relying on pick-your-own fruit for most of the farm’s income is “untenable,” as Morgenthau found out during a disastrous fall season in 2023.

That year, the farm’s pick-your-own fruit activities were “rained out” almost every weekend in September and October. Financially, “it was the worst season we’ve ever had,” Morgenthau says.

“I was very concerned that we weren’t going to be able to weather another season like that and stay in business,” he recalls.

The farm experienced better weather in 2024, but the experience underscored for Morgenthau the importance of exploring other sources of income.

“The goal has been how to shift our business away from one season to an all-season business. We’re moving in that direction, but it takes time,” he says.

The farm now offers strawberry and cherry picking in the summer, Morgenthau says, and he recently planted a grove of fir trees in hopes of expanding into cut-your-own Christmas trees in the next few years.

Even today, farming is a “hand to mouth” endeavor, Morgenthau says: it’s a “really tough business with razor-thin profits and tremendous risk.”

“You have to do it for the love, not the money,” he continues.

That love for the land is what Morgenthau hopes to share with visitors.

“Especially as our lives are moving more and more out of the physical world into the digital world, coming to a farm and picking produce is a really, really meaningful experience,” he says.

This story has been updated to more accurately reflect Fishkill Farms synthetic herbicide use.

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When you dream about being happier in the future, you’re probably imagining yourself being content with what you have. Maybe you picture a new house or a luxurious lifestyle. But what you’re really imagining is being satisfied with those things. You’re not just picturing wealth, you’re picturing contentment.

That’s the feeling we’re all chasing. But often, when reality doesn’t live up to expectations, it’s because the moment we get something new, we immediately start wanting whatever comes next.

While researching and writing my book, “The Art of Spending Money: Simple Choices for a Happier Life,” I gained some fascinating insights into why chasing more often leads to less happiness.

The French writer Marcel Proust once told the story of a young man who was obsessed with the lives of the rich and powerful. Proust then told the young man to spend his time focusing on the artist Jean Siméon Chardin.

Chardin painted scenes of everyday life — food, animals, nature. The point was to appreciate objects that he already had in front of him. To learn to appreciate the life he had rather than to dwell on the dream life he didn’t. “When you walk around a kitchen, you will say to yourself, this is interesting, this is grand, this is beautiful like a Chardin,” Proust wrote.

The lesson is to appreciate what’s in front of you rather than dwelling on what you don’t have. What a wonderful analogy for money, too.

The happiest people I know are the most content. Not necessarily the richest, the healthiest, the most beautiful, or the most successful. Just whoever gets to a point of saying, “I’m satisfied with what I have and who I am.”

Some of these people spend a lot of money and live incredibly materialistic lives. But I often think about my grandmother-in-law, who spent three decades in retirement with very little money, living off a meager Social Security check and nothing else. She was technically on the verge of poverty. But she was perfectly content in her small garden and reading books from the library.

She had little, but wanted even less. And she was one of the happiest people you could have ever met.

For most people, there’s a hierarchy of spending that goes something like this:

• If you don’t want something and don’t have it, you don’t think about it.
• If you want something and have it, you might feel OK.
• If you want something and don’t have it, you might feel motivated.
• If you want something and can’t have it, you drive yourself absolutely mad.

The sooner you can look around and say, “This is enough” (regardless of your income or lifestyle), the sooner you’ll realize you’ve been rich all along.

I’ve met half a dozen billionaires in my life — not a single one was as happy as my grandmother-in-law. It was easy to see why: Her low expectations gave her a sense of contentment, which in turn became an enormous source of psychological wealth that some of the richest people in the world lack.

Psychological wealth is such an important concept, and with money it comes from proper expectations.

The person who has everything but wants even more feels poorer than the person who has little but wants nothing else. How could it be any different?

That’s not a plea to live like a monk. You can have a huge house, an expensive car, take incredible vacations — and be content with all of it, appreciating it and desiring nothing more. That can be an amazing life.

The key is realizing that happiness is the state when nothing is missing, regardless of the lifestyle you’re living.

Morgan Housel is the author of the new book, ”The Art of Spending Money: Simple Choices for a Richer Life,” and the New York Times bestsellers ”The Psychology of Money″ and ”Same As Ever.” He is a two-time winner of the Best in Business Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, and winner of the New York Times Sidney Award. MarketWatch named him one of the 50 most influential people in markets. He’s a partner at The Collaborative Fund and is the host of The Morgan Housel Podcast.

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*This is an adapted excerpt from ”The Art of Spending Money: Simple Choices for a Richer Life,” by Morgan Housel, in agreement with Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Morgan Housel, 2025.

There are two skills every new business owner needs to develop, because doing so will make the biggest difference between success and failure, according to Shanaz Hemmati, a veteran of two multibillion-dollar startups.

One is perseverance, or the ability to power through the inevitable obstacles and setbacks that come with running a business, says Hemmati, co-founder of ZenBusiness, an artificial intelligence software startup that works to help first-time entrepreneurs navigate regulatory processes. 

“First, [it’s] understanding that it’s hard, it’s not easy” to build a successful business, she says. “It takes perseverance. It takes work. It takes constant learning.”

The second key skill every founder needs is the adaptability to change strategy when necessary, Hemmati says.

“Being able to, or being willing to, change if something is not working, [doing it] very quickly and trying different things,” says Hemmati. “I think that is a big difference between those who do succeed versus those who [do not].”

Launched in 2017, ZenBusiness was most recently valued at $1.7 billion in November 2021, the company said at the time. Hemmati and co-founder Ross Buhrdorf were previously executives at vacation rental marketplace HomeAway, which Expedia bought for $3.9 billion in 2015.

Multiple entrepreneurs cite perseverance as a crucial trait for success. Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s billionaire co-founder and CEO, has said that his ability to work through the “pain and suffering” of building a business was key to his and Nvidia’s success.

“Greatness is not intelligence. Greatness comes from character. And character isn’t formed out of smart people, it’s formed out of people who suffered,” Huang told students at his alma mater, Stanford University, in May 2024.

Perseverance and a related trait, resilience, are two of the biggest predictor for success, psychologists say. People who work to develop those skills are less likely to quit at the first sign of trouble and more likely to have the confidence to bounce back from a failure or setback, giving themselves a better shot a succeeding in the future.

When it comes to developing those skills, Hemmati’s advice is to never allow failure to discourage you. Instead, see it as an opportunity to learn something new: What went wrong? What can you do differently next time to succeed in the future?

“Don’t ever think of it as a failure,” she says. “My advice, always: Think about everything that you learn, especially with an entrepreneur. Because once you’re an entrepreneur, you’re an entrepreneur for your whole life … So think about all the learnings and apply it [next time].”

In a sense, Hemmati’s advice may seem contradictory: You need to stay the course during difficult stretches, and change your strategy when necessary. The real trick is learning when to lean into your perseverance and when to embrace your adaptability, she says.

Some startup founders are simply too stubborn, or afraid, to deviate from their initial strategy, even when the early returns suggest it’s not working out, says Hemmati.

“There is a huge difference between those who have a mindset of exactly how they want to do [something], versus those who are truly open and think through [their options],” she says. That difference in mindset can ultimately be the difference between success and failure, she adds.

Some other experts agree. The ability to take in constructive feedback and research, and then make necessary changes, is essential for any business to succeed, entrepreneur and author James Sherman told CNBC Make It in November 2023.

“Pivots are part and parcel of the entrepreneur’s journey,” said Sherman. “An entrepreneur just has to be nimble, has to be flexible, has to be grounded and accept things and have the attitude that will allow them to ultimately be successful.”

As an example, Hemmati points to the many businesses that had to shift strategies or entire business models to stay afloat during the Covid-19 pandemic closures that started in 2020. Every business can expect to have “up and down times [and] everybody understands that,” but successful leaders recognize “when something is truly not working and [then start] thinking through: ‘What all do I need to change?’” she says.

In those cases, time is usually of the essence, and you’ll probably need to figure out what will work before it’s too late, Hemmati adds. She advises against “thinking that the solution has to be perfect before you [try it].”

“If you’re thinking about it, probably there are other people that are thinking about it too,” says Hemmati. “So the sooner you can be out with your solution, the better off you’re going to be — and the faster you’re going to learn about what’s working and what’s not working.”

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Income brackets and the standard deduction will increase slightly for the 2026 tax year, the Internal Revenue Service announced Thursday.

Tax brackets will rise by about 4% for lower-income ranges and roughly 2% for higher earners, according to the IRS’s annual inflation adjustments.

While tax rates remain unchanged, higher income thresholds mean taxpayers can earn more before moving into a higher bracket when they file in 2027.

You can see the tax rates single filers will pay on their taxable income below. Note that these are marginal rates, meaning income is taxed at lower rates until it moves into a new bracket, where only the amount above that threshold is taxed more.

Here are the 2026 federal income tax brackets for married couples filing jointly, according to the IRS.

In addition to adjusting the tax brackets, the IRS raised the standard deduction — a fixed amount subtracted from your income before your tax rate is applied. 

Starting in 2026, the deduction increases from $15,750 to $16,100 for single filers. For married couple filing jointly, the standard deduction increases from $31,500 to $32,200.

Taxpayers can take the standard deduction or itemize — listing expenses such as mortgage interest or state and local taxes — but not both. Most taxpayers take the automatic standard deduction since the amount commonly exceeds what can be itemized.

The IRS also raised income thresholds for long-term capital gains taxes and made inflation adjustments to the estate and gift tax exemption and the earned income tax credit.

The IRS typically raises income thresholds each year to keep pace with inflation, usually by a few percentage points.

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