Spring is here. Time to clean the house. And time to give the 'ol body a once-over too.

According to Chinese medicine, spring is the best time of the year to cleanse the body. So if you're feeling lethargic, sluggish, and just plain weighed down, consider these invigorating tips from Penelope Sach's book Detox: Regaining your health and vitality.

Think about this:

• Cut back on white flour products, sweets, and alcohol.
• Drink one glass of water every hour to flush out excess sugar in your system.
• Up your intake of herbal teas.
• Add natural detoxifying agents to your diet, such as cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, fish, and eggs.

One day, look for these enhanced food products to appear on supermarket shelves, because more and more, consumers are demanding that the food they buy offer health benefits beyond what has been traditionally offered, and scientists are discovering ways to make that happen. Recently, University of Maryland researchers created, and patented the process, of transforming wheat, corn and rice flours into antioxidant powerhouses in the newest offering of functional foods. They have also devised a means of developing a flour based on fruit seeds that were discarded in the making of fruit juice.

The researchers assure that the process of enhancing flours is environmentally friendly -- which is another concern of many consumers. We want to be eat for good health, but we also want to be good to the earth. Antioxidants are known to offer cancer prevention benefits and are naturally found in whole foods such as fruits, vegetables and berries. Using antioxidant-enriched flours will be one more way to incorporate antioxidants into our daily diet.

This finding, along with the news of mandarin orange juice liver cancer prevention benefit, will be presented during the four-day conference Functional Foods and Health, at the 232nd national meeting of the American Chemical Society.

UK newspapers are reporting a recall of chocolate and bagged snacks after it was found one of the ingredients contained potentially cancer-causing toxins. Three brands of products made with a rice flour were found to have aflatoxin B1 -- a naturally occurring  mold shown to cause cancer in animals -- at levels above the legal limit, according to the Food Standards Agency. Stated in the alert, the rice flour is thought to have originated in Pakistan and imported to the UK from Sweden. At this time, the products in question are Quaker Caribbean Chicken Seasons, Sainsbury's Chocolate and Toffee Crispie Bites and Smiths Bacon Fries. All companies that use rice flour in the manufacture of food product are being asked to voluntarily recall those products.