Watching your weight? If “calories-in, calories-out” is your mantra, try changing up your food routine and start repeating the real secret to maintaining a healthy weight: Eat more.
Truth is, you gotta snack in order to feel full.
According to Skinny Cook Allison Fishman, “Eat more!” is the best advice you can get when it comes to weight loss. Why? Because we’re usually packing on pounds not because our breakfast is too big, but because we overeat after 5:00.
If you’re snacking on anything that fits effectively into your mouth when the clock strikes the dinner hour, it’s probably because you didn’t get an adequate amount of calories during the day.
Fishman recommends adding a do-not-miss mid-afternoon snack to your day – 200 calories or so – and if you need it, one mid-morning as well. The key is eliminating blood sugar crashes, providing yourself with consistent energy, and not inhaling food after five out of pure starvation.
Eating small portions throughout the day also helps increase metabolism, keeps the brain out of the late-day fog, and helps us avoid temptation for things we would ordinarily shun (think donuts in the snack room) if we were properly fed.
So start a brand new weight loss mantra: Never go hungry. You may see the pounds start to fall off. Plus, you won’t be distracted by that annoying rumbling sound anymore.
6 Tips for Vigorous Snacking for the Skinny-to-be:
1. Get a serving. Maybe it’s a fruit or veggie serving, maybe it’s a healthy fish serving. Either way, snacking is a ready-made way to fill the gaps in your nutrition. Fishman keeps crisp bread with smoked salmon and herbs around for a mini gourmet snack that replaces a bulky bagel – under and buck and 45 calories.
2. Eat brain food. If you’re having a snack, choose one that’s good for your brain. Berries, for example, improve blood flow and keep small blood vessels working efficiently, allowing for better brain health and performance. Studies show that rats that eat blueberries get through their mazes quicker and have a higher level of regenerating cells in their brains – just what we need to combat mid-day human slumps.
3. Pack your own. Buying those 100 calorie snacks that come in mini packages is a sure way to hike up your food bill. Forget the packages: make you own by cutting fresh veggies, bringing yogurt or packaging your own leftovers in your own moderate size bag, box or wrap. Keeping full throughout the day requires some planning ahead, so do the 3-step snack shuffle – shop, prepare, and package – every day.
4. Combine it. Combining foods that work well together can make your snack life more interesting and more satisfying. Carrots and hummus or apples and a cheese wedge or teaspoon of peanut butter can keep you from chewing bare celery all day and feeling deprived as a result. Having herbs at the ready (dill, basil, cilantro), using citrus (a squeeze of lemon or lime on salads, fruits and proteins), and sprinkling coarse salt on your homemade snacks can rev up your taste buds and turn boring into gourmet.
5. Get creative. Step away from the bird seed, and get yourself an eating well handbook to enrich your meal planning ideas and jazz up your snacking. In You Can Trust a Skinny Cook, Allison Fishman offers up yummy Parmesan Twists for 97 calories per serving, and fabulous Stuffed Mushrooms for 107. Check out her “Something to Munch” section for tons of easy recipes that turn deprivation into a thing of the past.
6. Check your portions. It’s an equation that works: eating during the day means cutting portions at the end of the day. And whether it’s a mid-day snack or dinner blow out, you may not have to eat as much as you currently are. Gimmicks like smaller plates, putting you main course on your salad plate (and your salad on your entrée plate) or immediately cutting your meal in half and saving it for tomorrow’s lunch can provide the crutch you need to understand what your stomach really needs…and what it doesn’t so much. Life, like lunch, is long…you can always eat later.
The thought pops into your head before you even stop chewing – this is a nutritional travesty. We know eating healthy food and loading up on colorful fruits and veggies is the path to feeling good and preventing disease, but navigating this nutritional war zone without tripping a mine occasionally isn’t realistic. Before you succumb to poor eating habits and start thinking of yourself a hopeless nutritional wreck, consider that some guilt may be unnecessary.
Not every indulgence has to be bad. If you’ve had a bad food day, letting go of the guilt may be warranted. Here are five healthy sins for which you can be forgiven.
1. I ate pizza for breakfast.
It happens. After an evening enjoying a pie, there’s usually some left over, which means in the morning you’re faced with that odd piece. It’s cold, it’s covered in congealed cheese, and it’s delicious. But pizza for breakfast doesn’t necessarily destroy your good health habits.
First, if you made it yourself you’re better off. You’ll be more in control of the salt and fat content. Second, tomatoes are high in nutrition. Best if made with fresh tomatoes, sauce has powerful lycopene which is known primarily for its cancer defense. Finally, filling up on non-traditional items for breakfast isn’t all bad. While calling Dominoes at 9 AM isn’t recommended, a single slice can provide protein and vegetables and the energy to get you to lunch—in fact, it’s better for you than many common breakfast options like giant muffins, “breakfast” pastries, or greasy drive-thru breakfast favorites that send you into a slump by mid-morning.
2. I had dessert.
It may be that you are celebrating. After all, April 28th is National Blueberry Pie Day. Is it a national holiday? You bet. Should it be? Who knows? Regardless, you don’t have to feel guilt for being pie-triotic. Pie can be a nutritional boon. Blueberries, particularly wild, are high in nutritional and antioxidant content, and even in a crust it counts as a serving. Jack Kerouac journeyed across the country and relied on diner pie for meals—it was cheap, delicious and provided the perfect compact nutrient delivery system. Try this nutritionally friendly Wild Blueberry Pie and hit the road.
If it was chocolate you indulged in, you can also be forgiven, especially if it was dark chocolate. While there is no official cutoff that defines “dark”, European rules specify a minimum of 35% cocoa solids, and cocoa percentages can go as high as 86% and even 99% depending on your tolerance. The good news is that it contains healthy flavonoids – just like those found in fruits and vegetables. Small portions of dark chocolate are credited with improved blood vessel flow and improved blood pressure. Moderation, of course, is the key to gaining the advantages and not suffering from the extra calories or replacing other healthy foods.
If neither pie nor chocolate is the source of your dessert guilt, you may be the victim of refined sugar, processed additives, and consequential blood sugar spikes. Take heart. Whole Food Resources offers some “remedies” for overindulgence in everything from sugar to fat to alcohol. They recommend reversing the negative effects of a sweet-fest by drinking ginger tea with soy sauce, or eating cured pickles.
3. I ate (guacamole, potatoes, eggs, wine).
Some foods that are considered bad for us are really food that is getting a bad rap. If these foods were part of a diet indulgence, you can start feeling better about yourself immediately upon understanding their potent nutritional benefits—or, you can start integrating them into your diet and leaving the guilt at the kitchen door.
Avocados. Guacamole lovers already know that while avocados are considered to be high in fat, they should be lauded as a strong dietary complement. They actually contain monsaturated fat that is good for your heart and compounds that could prevent cancer. This nut in veggie clothing is high in antioxidants, and it may help the body absorb the nutrients from other foods (like the lycopene in the tomato salsa that may have accompanied them.) Make guacamole yourself to get all the benefits and leave the additives behind.
Eggs. We go to a lot of trouble to avoid eggs and their evil yellow centers in an effort to lower cholesterol. In fact, eggs, yolks included, are a low-calorie, nutritionally-dense food that contains high quality protein, antioxidants and vital nutrients such as folate, B12 and choline. Those strictly watching cholesterol are smart to eliminate yolks, but most of us could do a lot worse than indulging in eggs on occasion, either as part of an omelet or a quiche or in a dish all on their own.
Potatoes. Perceived as a dietary killjoy, potatoes are actually a wonderful round package of nutrients – especially with the skin on, which contains 60 different types of phytochemicals and vitamins. Potatoes are also known to be high in potassium. They get no points for adding color to your plate, so they are often dismissed when it comes to nutrition, but it’s the frying and the butter that really does the damage. Russets in particular have huge nutritional benefits and high antioxidant content says this dailymail.com article on surprise superfoods. Even the calories are moderate, provided you hold the dollop of sour cream.
Red wine. It’s no secret that red wine has received the super-nutrient nod, thanks to reports that say moderate coiffing can protect against heart disease. Drinking up to two glasses of red wine a day has also been thought to improve brain power. Resveratrol, its powerful ingredient, has been discovered to be a dietary hero and that’s a much relied-upon fact in circulation any given night at a wine bar or dinner party. Increased consumption, however, does not mean increased benefit. Read more about Where We are with Red Wine Research.
4. I ate fast food.
It could be the most unforgivable food sin. Fast in synonymous with high calorie, high fat, and sky-high salt content. In fact, the typical fast food meal supplies about 1,150 calories – an entire day’s worth of calories for someone watching their intake, with most of the calories coming from fat. Even if you skip the burger, fast food chicken and fish is breaded and fried, and most fast-food meals lack complex carbohydrates and fiber. It can be a tough nutritional truth to swallow, especially after the dust settles and the eating is done.
But you can be redeemed from a fast food slip up.
According to nutritional experts, the damage to your health can be undone. Over the long run, we can reverseheart disease risk by following either a low-fat vegetarian regimen or a Mediterranean diet that’s rich in healthy fats, whole grains, and vegetables. According to Prevention.com, “As long as it took for you to get to an unhealthy state, that’s about how long it takes to become disease free.” In fact, reversing nutritional damage, particularly that which comes with age, has tremendous interest to researchers.
The late Dr. James Joseph, co-author of The Color Code, has reported that a diet of blueberries may improve motor skills and reverse the short-term memory loss that comes with aging such as Alzheimer’s. Dr. Barbara Shukitt-Hale, a USDA Staff Scientist in the Laboratory of Neuroscience, USDA-ARS, Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, has done research that has had a significant impact on the world of nutrition and anti-aging by studying the effects of a diet supplemented with berries and finding that they could reverse functional age-related deficits in motor and cognitive behavior. It may be we can begin turning back the clock on poor health as soon as we come out of our fast food coma.
5. I just plain ate a lot – all day.
We all have days where we start eating, and we keep eating, regardless of the time of day, the nutritional content or the caloric intake. Must we go to the back of the nutritional line and start from scratch to meet our goals for good health and disease prevention? Or, can we recover from a high intake day?
We can.
If it is the extra weight from a day of indulgence that concerns you most, consider this: recent studies indicate that for some of us, the more we eat, the more we burn by unconsciously moving incrementally more, fidgeting, or taking the stairs and bustling about more doing everyday activities. Our bodies simply respond to the added caloric intake naturally.
Unfortunately, this is not the case for everyone. Some of us, alas, do not have this calorie-balancing metabolism. If you are one of these people, there are other reasons not to worry. Taking in a lot of calories can mean more energy for workouts, and it can often lead us to feel less hungry the following day to compensate. And, as many “cheat” diet enthusiasts will tell you, if a day or two of nutrition and diet denial keeps you on track in the long term, that’s the most important thing.
If it isn’t caloric value but nutrition you’ve eschewed, there are still reasons not to despair. Your health is a result of what you do over time, and our bodies respond immediately to resuming good health and nutritional habits. Eating poorly or overeating one day a week gives you a solid 86% rate on good eating habits. And, as we mentioned above, healthy food is such a powerful nutritional tool that it can reverse health woes associated with aging and poor health. So return to your colorful nutritional plates full of fruits and veggies with a clear conscience. You’ll be back in good health in the time it takes you to ask for seconds.
How Bad Are Your Health Vices? Check yourself at Prevention.com.
Lately, the American public has been looking at itself in the mirror. What we see before us is someone overweight or more likely obese; someone with unhealthy eating habits that include large portions, high fat, high sodium, and highly processed food; and someone who either has or will have a litany of preventable diseases. We aren’t just unhealthy, we are sick and costing the country a bundle in health care costs.
Last year, the USDA changed dietary guidelines for Americans. The new guidelines recommend focusing on a plant-based diet, limiting sugars and solid fats, and reducing sodium. Perhaps most importantly, while fruit and veggie serving recommendations themselves didn’t change, the USDA’s conclusion was that we consume too few of them.
This latest message is worth sending, but it had to make its way to consumers. It has had those in the food and nutrition industry asking: how can we increase the public consumption of fruits and vegetables? How can we cut portions and eliminate salt?
To further complicate matters, the challenge may not be solely in the message being heard. For instance, according to a study by Supermarket Guru, 42% of us try to follow the dietary guidelines. As they point out, “try” is no doubt the operative word. Even members of the public who got the message, know the message, and could recite the message like a beat cop reciting his Mirandas, may not know what to do with this information.
The result is a second, equally important question: how do we bridge the gap between what we aspire to do when it comes to healthy eating, and actually doing it? The issue has prompted us to look at a few of the pieces of the nutritional puzzle that work together (and apart) to influence the American consumer.
Suppliers: Heroes & Anti-heroes
Some brands profit from obfuscating their unhealthful ingredients and some proffer outright consumer deception. At the same time, some suppliers use positive messages to penetrate the market. Produce for Better Health Foundation along with the Fruits & Veggies More Matters, recently named their 15 Supplier Role Models and Supplier Champions for 2010. They are food suppliers that were recognized for their positive efforts toward the public health initiative that includes eating more fruits and veggies and less salt and fat. Suppliers like the Wild Blueberry Association, Welch’s, the Pear Bureau Northwest, and even McDonald’s were lauded for being positive role models when it comes helping get consumers the message and make it easier for them to eat healthy.
While these suppliers are mini gladiators in the amphitheater of changing America’s costly health and nutrition habits, we know that information can be both good and bad. One part of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign is working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to continue efforts to understand the best way for consumers to get useful point-of-purchase nutrition information. Today, the value of prominent displays, clear labeling, and messages that connect clearly with the consumer are red hot topics that have stakeholders battling it out in the stadium.
Supermarkets: Passive Profiteer or Potential Partner?
Supermarkets can help us eat better, but as we all know, they can also sabotage our efforts. Our stores hold a lot of power, and they may also be holding a lot of untapped potential to connect with their shoppers. And yet, so much of the time we spend shopping for healthy food is still spent avoiding traps.
For example, we know products at eye level aren’t necessarily good for us – they are just those being given preferred placement. We know that the basics like eggs and milk are in the back, forcing shoppers to walk a gauntlet of temptation. We even know that new stores have adopted indirect aisle-planning strategies that serve to sabotage our efforts to shop for “perimeter” foods like produce and other whole foods.
Must the supermarkets we frequent to feed our families be our nutritional nemesis? In the same Supermarket Guru poll, almost half of consumers said they weren’t sure whether their supermarket made it easy to meet dietary guidelines. The resulting report wielded these challenges: Does your supermarket have a dietitian in the store? Does it offer substitution suggestions such as trying frozen yogurt over ice cream? Does it provide options for meeting guidelines that meet our requirements for good taste?
In short, are our supermarkets passive profiteers or nutritional partners? It seems clear that opportunities exist for stores to take a stronger role in health and wellness – if they are willing.
Messaging: Plain Talk for a New Century
When supermarkets and suppliers fail, we rely on the information around us to make our own good decisions. But messages about health haven’t always been effective. Studies indicate that consumers find it difficult to count calories as a way to keep their nutrition and servings in check; they do not connect with the old pyramid-style guidelines for eating; they fail to understand cryptic nutritional labels and ambiguous health claims on food packaging.
Fortunately, these messages and how they are communicated have begun to change for the better. New guidelines have become increasingly consumer-friendly. Rather than lots of numbers that include grams and calories and fractions, messages are getting straight to the heart of the matter by promoting things like simply eat less, filling plates with color, or changing lifestyle habits like cooking at home and eating fewer processed food.
In one example of the new and improved communication of the health and nutrition message, Fruit & Veggies More Matters conjured up the Half Your Plate concept. In an effort to make serving sizes easy to understand, they urge us to simply fill half our plates with fruits and veggies – that’s it. Even National Nutrition Month 2011, which is being recognized during the month of March, focuses on eating right with color – a message that’s easy to implement by merely looking down at your plate. Armed with these goals, we can make smarter decisions about what we buy at the store, despite all the possible pitfalls.
Programs: Nutrition from the Top Down & the Bottom Up
Improving health and wellness can sometimes be effective if it comes to us from the top down. Recently, the United States Agriculture Secretary announced that the USDA will fund the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, an effort from the USDA to help children change their eating habits and start new consumer habits. The previously mentioned Let’s Move! program launched by First Lady Michelle Obama aims to solve the problem of obesity within a single generation. Healthy People 2020 was created to establish national health objectives and give communities the tools they need to achieve them. These are just a few examples of top-down programs working to take on a true crisis in health and nutrition.
Smaller-scale programs and bottom-up initiatives in schools, communities and businesses are also making it easier to make choices that help us and our families live better by virtue of being part of them. Many of them exist because someone dared to imagine that those just being born today could grow up in a very different, healthier world.
How did YOU get the message of health?
What message of health and nutrition resonated with you?
Was your mom your messenger? Your doctor? A great book or an inspiring TV personality? Whether it was calorie counting or colorful food, let us know what nutritional messages connected with you – leave us a comment!
It’s the stuff of late-night commercials: What if we could max out on nutrition without maxing out on food? With food prices on the rise and fruit and vegetable serving requirements firmly set in stone, extracting the most nutrition and disease prevention from our food purchases is just good sense. The key is to make the nutrients we are already eating go the extra mile. Is it possible to put the stretch on nutritional value?
It’s no dietary miracle, but we found a few legitimate ways to get more super in our superfoods and squeeze more health from our healthy eating. So go ahead –max out, don’t pig out. Here’s how:
1. Go ahead — cook it a little.
While we tend to think of raw foods as the most nutritious, it’s not always the case. Carrots and tomatoes seem to be the exception: gently cooking them actually allows more nutrients to be released, turning golden veggies nutritional gold. While a sliced tomato can appear to make the perfect nutritional plate, cooking tomatoes, as with sauces, is actually better: it breaks down the cell walls making those beneficial vitamins and phytochemicals more easily available for absorption by the body, and it increases the level of lycopene — an antioxidant thought to help prevent certain types of cancer, heart disease, and vision loss.
Boil your carrots? Simmer your tomatoes? Crush your garlic? You can find these and some other under-the-radar tips to Boost Your Veggie Power to get the best nutritional bang from famously healthy foods.
2. Chop it up.
While keeping food intact before you prepare it is the best advice (resist the urge to pre-slice or chop for convenience), chopping at the time of preparation can help maximize the absorption of carotenoid nutrients, like those found in carrots. Research indicates that chopping or grating breaks down the plant material: the smaller the particle size, the better the absorption of beta-carotene. That goes for squash, kale, and sweet potatoes too, all great beta-carotene delivery systems.
3. Get the Skin(ny).
Even the grape-peeling diva Mae West would balk at a request to peel a wild blueberry. Just as well, since their skins are a must-eat: their high skin-to-pulp ratio is what makes them an antioxidant powerhouse! But when it comes to fruit, some skins are quick to be removed for easy snacking; veggies like eggplant, cucumbers, radish – even potatoes – are often stripped for cooking. In most cases, resist the urge to peel – the skins hold the nutrients, especially when they are dark in color.
In fact, some nutritional information suggests that even the seemingly non-edible skins of fruits like bananas or kiwi can help combat cancer—and that dumping the stalk and the core of foods means missing out on prevention properties that could be better in our bodies. Here’s the scoop on how to eat the nutrient-dense skins of some unlikely foods.
Of course, anticipating eating the skins of fruits and veggies is another good reason to choose organic produce. But be sure to wash fresh fruits and vegetables carefully before cooking and eating either way.
4. Use your fresh, or make use of frozen.
It’s a fact of life: time is the enemy. Produce that is sitting in your refrigerator is being drained of its nutrients. What’s more, food that sits on trucks during transport and then on grocery store shelves are no less susceptible to this nutritional leakage. The solution? Buy produce as fresh as possible and consume it soon afterward. But if going fresh is just frustrating, there’s another alternative for preserving nutritional value: IQF freezing of fruits and veggies preserve all the nutrients of fresh until the moment you want to use them, with no waste. And, they are frozen at their peak, which means no sitting on trucks or shelves – it gives your the best nutrition for your buck and the ultimate convenience.
Did you also know that serving foods promptly is the best way to get the most nutrition? The longer they stand, the more nutrients are lost.
5. Find your superfood’s sidekick.
Ready for an anti-anti-fat tip you can get behind? Research suggest that adding a little fat to your tomatoes helps absorption of nutrition. To get the most out of a tomato and boost your lycopene intake, you need only drizzle it with a little olive oil, or add an avocado. It might be nice to know you can forget the low-fat dressing – it’s the fat you need to enhance your plate!
The power of combining food doesn’t stop at the tomato. Certain food pairings provide more nutritional benefits and fight disease. The idea is to find the food combinations that create synergy and maximize nutrition benefit. These ideas from CBS.com present some dynamic duos that up the nutritional content. Tasty suggestions include spinach salad with mandarin oranges and fresh squeezed lemon dressing (an iron-vitamin C combo), and red wine sangria with mango and kiwi (it’s a combination of resveratrol and vitamin E).
You can find out more about synergistic foods for optimum health from our previous post, Food Synergy: Nature’s Meal Plan where we give you the background on these nutritional allies.
6. Avoid cooking culprits.
It comes as no surprise that frying food is a way of negating nutritional value. Deep frying causes continuous oxidation of oil, and that is a source of free radicals, those black hat agents that wreak havoc on healthy cells. Protective antioxidants, whether in the food or the oil, are depleted during the process of oxidation, so the benefit is lost, even for vegetables.
The best cooking method to preserve nutrients? Steaming, of course. It preserves both flavor and nutrients. Stir-frying, microwaving, broiling and high-temperature roasting are also good options, with boiling being a nutrient obliterator. (The microwave is sometimes blamed for taking the nutrients out of food, but it may be the water they are cooked in – no evidence yet suggests it’s the microwave itself.)
Eager to max out on health? While integrating these health-enhancing ideas can help put the super in your superfoods, our best advice is not to worry how you’re eating your fruits and veggies, as long as they end up on your plate.
Have a love-hate relationship with your local grocery store?
You’re not alone. Shopping is the ultimate onerous errand when it comes to time consumption, and it’s riddled with temptations that sabotage our diet and budget. It’s nothing for most of us to hop online (we’re probably there anyway) to buy, connect, work and be entertained – yet we’re still in an analog world when it comes to grocery shopping.
You may have found yourself with a scrap-paper list and a squeaky grocery cart wheel and thought, Why don’t I get my groceries online?
Ditching the Cart
Some of us do. While online grocery stores such as the well-known home grocery shopping and delivery site Peapod took off in urban areas several years ago (and remains in business), the model proved impractical for less populated regions. But if you think online grocery shopping and delivery is so “year 2000”, consider this: according to MyWebGrocer, online grocery orders actually increased 24% during the week leading up to Thanksgiving this year. Convenience may be the draw, especially during the holidays, but some small studies even suggest shopping for groceries online can have health benefits.
Ami DeRienzo would agree. This past summer, she started MaineGroceryDelivery.com here in Maine in response to a need she identified in her delivery regions, which include Westbook, South Portland, Old Orchard Beach and surrounding areas. She views her business model as a natural outgrowth of a major trend toward online shopping – one not limited by age group or locale, and one that could help us all turn into smarter, healthier, more efficient shoppers.
“Oftentimes we eat unhealthily due to improper meal planning, or from grabbing that box of Twinkies on display at the grocery store because it catches our eye,” said DeRienzo. “With online shopping, customers take the time to think about what they will need and shop accordingly, allowing them to plan healthy meals for their week.” DeRienzo worked in management for a grocery store for approximately 18 years prior to opening her business, and she estimates that approximately 25% of the purchases made in a traditional grocery store are “impulse buys”. Eliminating these budget- and diet-devastating impulse buys – encouraged by stores stocking staples near the back and creating a maze of occasional racks – is one the biggest advantages of online grocery shopping and delivery.
But as MyWebGrocer points out, the grocer-consumer relationship is based on trust. Our retailer is a vital component in the quest for good health and nutrition. Can the consumer warm up to their online retailer the same way?
Just the Right Grapefruit
“Though one might think that ordering groceries online would be an impersonal experience, online shopping with MaineGroceryDelivery.com is actually a more personal experience than one would typically find in a grocery store,” said DeRienzo. As a small, independently owned company, her business is based exclusively upon developing relationships with customers. She says she knows them all, and equates her deliveries with the role that used to be played by the milk man, who in decades past would value-add his dairy drop with a cheerful morning greeting. “We provide that same type of personal experience and service,” she said.
Even though shopping at MaineGroceryDelivery.com occurs online, owner Ami DeRienzo knows all of her customers personally. She equates the service her company provides to the role of the now obsolete milk man.
Contrary to limiting product selection, often online grocery stores offer an enhanced selection, since they have access to products across different retailers and sources. These days, price shopping from store to store can be the best way to maximize a household food budget, but it’s simply unrealistic.
“The average consumer does not shop multiple locations on a weekly basis in order to capitalize on the best deals,” said DeRienzo, “but we do.” Her customers receive a regular weekly flyer that includes sale items from various stores in the area and additional sales available exclusively on the MaineGroceryDelivery.com site. By offering Maine products along with nationwide brands together, shoppers have a one-stop shopping experience that might not be possible from brick and mortar stores.
DeRienzo also said the majority of her customers seek local and organic foods in addition to standard household items, and she offers products from local food producers, including lobster from Cozy Harbor Seafood, meats from nearby Wolfe’s Neck Farm, and a section devoted specifically to organic products.
In fact, online shopping might have the advantage when it comes to opportunities to have fresh and local food. For MaineGroceryDelivery.com, delivering orders to customers in the summer months typically includes shopping for fresh produce at local farms. If eyeing the best veggie and feeling the fruit first hand is a must for you, DeRienzo capitulates. She said she’ll go the extra mile to provide quality just as a shopper might do in person. Shopping daily for fresh products that meet their standards of quality for her customers means scouring multiple locations, if that’s what it takes. “At times this has led to a two hour quest to find the right grapefruit,” she said.
Daily Servings – At Your Door
In some ways a conduit to a healthy bounty of fresh food, online grocery shopping and delivery can be a digital extension of the co-op model, depending on your location. When fruits and veggies are delivered directly to your door, you’ve seriously upped the ante on healthy eating. Spud, for instance, delivers organic food to the door to its clients in Canada. Door to Door Organics delivers fresh organic produce and groceries throughout Colorado, Kansas City, Michigan, and the Chicago area, changing selection weekly, based on the farms. Digitally merging the healthy eating movement with family grocery staples could prove invaluable in breathing needed new life into meal plans for American consumers, and saving the time it takes to do it.
The bottom line is we can trace our sustenance, our holiday cheer, our nutrition, and our disease prevention back to our grocery store. So any shopping experience that meets our needs is the best shopping experience. Every consumer’s goal is to be a smarter, more efficient shopper, and here, online grocery shopping shines.
10 Reasons to Shop for Groceries Online
1. It’s a personalized experience.
Online shoppers can revisit recurring orders, create multiple lists, and easily access deals and promotions that fit personal buying habits. You might even get the best grapefruit in the area, just as if you shopped for it yourself.
2. It can help you save.
While there are shipping charges or delivery charges to consider (MaineGroceryDelivery.com charges $10), in some cases, savings can cover convenience costs. Online grocery sites incentivize shoppers with site sales and “deals of the day” in addition to local store promotions. Weekly sales from MaineGroceryDelivery.com combine the best of what the two major local grocery chains offer individually. And, no impulse buys mean you can stick to your budget and your meal planning.
3. Selection, selection, selection.
Because online shopping sites offer brands across stores and producers, it means one-stop shopping but with the variety of multiple stores. For the best variety and options, find retail sites that offer local producers and organics are available side-by-side with popular brands. (You’ll be supporting local businesses.)
4. It’s healthy.
Eliminating impulse buying may be online grocery shopping’s biggest advantages. It can also help eliminate the desire to buy fattening foods because it means less browsing, and it can give you regular access to fresh produce.
5. You can shop when you want.
You can buy anytime online—day or night. And, logging on at holiday crunch time means no leaving work early to beat the rush. Sites like NetGrocer.com, for instance, an online grocery site that delivers via FedEx, is integrated with today’s social marketing – if you’re on Facebook or Twitter, shopping is just a click away.
6. You’ll beat the crowds.
At holiday time, it can be a challenge just to get from one end of the aisle to the other. Ordering online means no scuffles over the last pound of unsalted butter. It eliminates travel time and winter weather woes, and bulk buying doesn’t mean dragging large packages of toilet paper all around the store.
7. It’s great for vacationers.
The first day of vacation is always spent at the store. Having groceries arrive ahead means more time to enjoy the trip. That’s particularly desirable in Maine, when summer vacationers flock to rental homes with empty refrigerators.
8. It provides help for the housebound.
Says DeRienzo: “I have a customer who lives in Massachusetts who shops for groceries online for her mom in Biddeford.” For those experiencing illness, or for the elderly who find it hard to get out of the house, the service can be a lifeline – especially in the winter.
9. You’ll conquer the “list”.
Forget the scraps of paper – your list is now online. If you think of something during the day, add it, and create access for all family members.
10. It means relief for Mom.
DeRienzo says her customers with children have told her they enjoy some residual benefits from her service. “In order to occupy the kids while shopping they easily spend an extra $10 -$20 on ‘stuff’ to keep the kids entertained,” she says.
If you aren’t including soup in your meal planning, you could be missing out on one of the most comforting, healthy, versatile foods to ever grace your placemat. Soup will have your heart: its hidden gastronomic advantages can warm your insides and pique your taste buds like no other dish can.
To help you see the upside of udon and the benefit of bouillon, we’ve got the top five soup secrets that will have you yearning for whatever’s du jour – as well as a few hazards it will behoove you to dodge in your quest for the podge.
1. Stone Soup Works
The stone soup fable tells the tale of the glorious soup created seemingly by magic from just water and a stone. While hungry villagers willingly contributed carrots, potatoes, and herbs to help make the soup even better, before they knew it, a lovely meal had been created.
Feeling like all you have is a stone when it comes to mealtime? Soup is the answer. Soup is budget friendly, and its scalability can almost seem like magic. And, now that you know how to cook, you’ve done the job of stocking the basics. Use chicken, beef, or vegetable stock as your stone. Then, make like a hungry village and see what transpires.
2. Soup is Truly the Best of Both Worlds
Soup is the perfect culinary conundrum. It can be thrifty and decadent, healthy and indulgent. It loves a quick serve and a slow simmer. It’s sweet and it’s sour; it can be sipped from a cup or eaten with a fork. It’s light, but because it’s mostly liquid, it’s also filling, making it a hearty meal for even the hungriest person. It also fulfills the requirements for comfort food, especially when it’s piping hot and the air is cold.
Plus, soup is perfect for gatherings. It caters easily to vegetarians, it’s easy to make beforehand, and it serves endless amounts. Did we mention it’s a single pot meal? And it allows you to focus on some fun sides that can sometimes get short shrift.
3. Soup Packs a Serious Nutritional Punch
Soup is a perfect way to get intense nutrition into your diet. Full servings of vegetables are perfect for soup – try tubers, greens, or popular winter vegetables such as parsnips, carrots, rutabagas and cabbage, which are all full of vitamins and minerals. You can easily get your fiber from beans or brown rice, and because it’s rich in beneficial lycopene, Classic Tomato Soup is doubly satisfying. Also, proteins go further in soups—use less to cut down on your meat intake, or try leaner cuts.
4. It Features Veggies AND Fruits
Veggies are a natural for soups, of course, but soup can showcase fruit with equal aplomb. It offers some wonderfully appealing ways to get your fruit servings. Chilled Melon Champagne Soup sound appetizing? Perhaps a Maine Wild Blueberry Soup, with its simple blend of blueberries, Pinot Noir, and honey will satisfy your desire for the soup-perb.
5. It’s a Creative’s Dream
If you are making soup, it’s time for your inner Jackson Pollock to shine. Whether your preference is for yin or for yang, you can’t go wrong—soup allows for mid-course taste corrections and is a virtual canvas of favorite herbs and spices. A sprinkle of cilantro? A dust of Parmesan? A plop of cream fraîche? Soup is a garnisher’s delight. Soup welcomes a myriad of protein substitutions, a multitude of herbs, veggies and food combinations such as roasted butternut squash with sage, broccolini and spinach, crab and mushroom and garbanzos and low-fat sour cream.
And of course, there’s always chicken and noodle, the most reliable soup combination of all. It’s healing, delicious, and never outshined.
…Caveat Souptor (Slurper Beware)
Soup, as satisfying as it is, can hide some shadowy secrets within its broth if you aren’t paying attention. Here’s how not to let your luscious liquid leak into health’s danger zone:
Beware of dairy. When you move into bisque, chowder and other creamy soup territory, cream can kill your calorie count. Consider the benefits of choosing milk over cream and lower fat dairies over whole milk. WebMD breaks it down here.
Rein in the carbs.
Who can resist a Crown Pilot cracker with their chowder or a few Saltines with their tomato soup? Make sure your crunching is done in moderation. Carbs help make soup more satisfying and that’s fine—but don’t get up from the table and realize you just had bread and butter for dinner, washed down with a dribble of consommé.
Ease up on salt & butter.
High sodium soups can sabotage your health. Making soup yourself is the best way to avoid the high sodium in packaged and canned soups. Look for low sodium stocks – salt to taste on the table and let those veggies, herbs and spices shine through instead. Also, be careful not to overindulge in butter. Sauté veggies in olive oil if sautéing is required, and remember that butter additions requested by recipes can usually be eliminated.
With just a soupçon of imagination you’ll be getting more mileage out of your healthy foods and filling your tank with nature’s least chewable delights. Ladle on!
Be honest. Does your kitchen need a pare down? It’s easy to accumulate too much these days: too much health information, too much “healthy” food, and just too much stuff. (Do you really need an egg to be scrambled inside the shell?) If you have cartons of low fat this and lite that sitting around on your shelves and you still don’t seem to be able to fill that nutritional void, it may be that you need less, not more.
Instead, try a simpler view of nutrition: focus on how just a few things can keep you healthy — simple whole foods, simple preparations, and simple principles of nutrition that you know intuitively make sense on your plate and in your body. WebMD has isolated their own super six that stand out particularly for women, and we think they are worth repeating. Here’s our simplified version of their list of foods, along with their most significant benefits, that provide super nutrition and don’t require elaborate supplements, eating schemes, or strange kitchen instruments.
While it’s important to point out that these foods don’t provide everything you need, the nutritional protection is wide ranging, and it’s a great start toward paring down the complicated messages of good health that we are exposed to.
So start thinking of your kitchen as a desert island where you can only bring a few of the most important nutritional foods. These foods ought to be on that list. We’ve also provided a Keep it Simple tip that will help you stay on track without complicating your new super-simple life.
1. Low-fat yogurt
Low fat yogurt offers protection from digestive problems, and evidence suggests it could decrease breast cancer risk. It covers you for servings of low fat dairy and is high in necessary calcium.
Keep it Simple Tip: Forget those with added fruit. You’ll just be adding sugar and convince yourself that, as WebMD nutritionist points out, “those two blueberries in the bottom constitute a serving.”
2. Fatty fish
Fatty fish such like salmon provide omega-3 fatty acids that are a dietary must and help protect against major health threats such as stroke, heart disease –even arthritis and joint pain.
Keep it Simple Tip: Only DHA or EPA forms of omega-3 can be directly used by the body. The simplest thing to do is go with the fish source and not those found in mayonnaise.
3. Beans
Beans are great source of protein and fiber, and lentils may protect against some cancers and heart disease.
Keep it Simple Tip: Beans get a bad rap for being boring and pedestrian, but their diversity is no snore: if you think refried with cheese when you think bean, instead think red clover, kudzu, mung beans, alfalfa sprouts, black cohosh, or chickpeas.
4. Tomatoes
Tomatoes have lycopene, and lycopene is a powerful antioxidant. It can also help fight heart disease and protect against UV damage, naturally.
Keep it Simple Tip: Having sauce? Making pizza? Try tomatoes and olive oil and get the wonderful taste of the season. If you are addicted to jars with happy chefs on the label, let them go for your own stripped-down concoction.
5. Vitamin D
Ok, it’s not a food. But you can get it easily through fortified low fat milk, fortified orange juice, or fish, such as salmon and tuna. It facilitates the absorption of calcium and reduces risks of diseases that women are particularly prone to, such as osteoporosis.
Keep it Simple Tip: The simplest Vitamin D supplement? The sun. How’s that for simple? You can actually absorb this vitamin through any exposed skin on any cloudless day. Shrouding ourselves in SPF may have been the prescription for health in years gone by, but in moderation, sun provides an excellent source of your D.
6. Berries
You know we love ’em: wild blueberries have major cancer fighting antioxidants. There’s simply no reason not to be getting this powerful protection for your cells, heart, and skin every day.
Keep It Simple Tip: Lug that enormous frozen resealable package of wild blueberries through the checkout and into your freezer. Now, lavish your breakfasts, salads, entrees and desserts with them every chance you get. It’s the most convenient, simplest way to get your daily servings.
When it comes to kids, what’s not to love about technology?
Wait, that was a rhetorical question.
Sure, there’s the hours of inactivity, the distractions of texting, the exposure to negative content…but there’s also the powerful way it exposes kids to positive messages in fun, innovative ways.
That’s the thinking behind the initiative from the First Lady and the USDA. They are inspiring developers to make games and apps that are truly useful (and truly cool) when it comes to health, and kids are getting the benefit.
Apps for Healthy Kids is part of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign. The goal of Let’s Move! is to make a dent in the startling obesity rates of today’s kids – rates that have tripled in the past 30 years and are threatening the latest generation’s health and longevity. The Apps for Healthy Kids competition hits kids where they live – smack dab in the world of phone apps and computer games. By creating apps and tools, developers and aspiring developers from all around the country are delivering the major concepts of health in a way that’s tech- fabulous.
It’s been called a “web-based intervention” – inspiring behavioral change through interactive content and social media. Submissions must incorporate certain concepts that will further this entertaining education, including things like increasing fruit and vegetable consumption, making food group education fun, and understanding calories. Through these colorful, whiz-bang, superfast tools and games, the message of health is expected to reach the ears of those who need to hear it.
Lots of people with a penchant for creating interactive tools (and a passion for health and nutrition) have gotten their game on. It’s worth it: there’s a $10,000 prize in it for the grand prize winners in both the Tools and Apps categories, and other cash prizes for honorable mentions and most popular, and some specifically for students. Judges are experts in the software and gaming fields, and winners get a trip to the White House as well!
The submission deadline has passed, but voting is in full swing until August 14th, so even if your app isn’t in the running, voting for your favorite is just as much fun. Simply browse through the robust selection of submissions, and cast your vote while the competition is hot.
Here are some apps and tools in competition that we think sound particularly downloadable:
“Habit Changer”
This tool makes you aware of your daily habits and guides you through change. It gives you experiences – your choice of email, web, or text – that lead you through the skills you need to solve the issues you face (like changing eating habits or incorporating good food and activity).
“Chef Solus”
This talking food label game brings the food label to life for kids. Kids scroll over different parts of the food label while Chef Solus talks (along with written text) to teach them how each part of the food label helps them make healthier choices.
“Smash Your Food™”
A realistic and surprising guessing game that lets children see and hear foods like a milkshake, or a burger, explode – while learning how much sugar, salt and oil their favorite foods are hiding.
“Work It Off!”
This mobile application for Android phones teaches children the correlation between the calories they eat and the calories they burn. The user verbally speaks a food name into the phone and is given options to “work it off”.
“Lunch Line”
This game mimics a real-life school lunch-line with a fast pace, categorized layout, and dozens of food choices, empowering children to increase their nutritional savvy as they play. Kids ultimately learn to choose foods quickly and intelligently and apply their knowledge to their daily life.
“Revolting Vegetables”
In this veggies-attack-themed game, episode 1 features The Uneatables: The villianous mobster, Al Capoche, has caused the farmers’ vegetables to come to life. Now Capoche and his vegetable mob threaten to overrun the whole town.
“Balanced Meal”
In this app, kids enter information like age and gender, and then drag food around to put it on the scale and then see if you have the right amount of calories for the day, creating a great way to visualize a “balanced” meal.
Go ahead – embrace technology for health’s sake! Check out the apps, view the video, vote and show support at Apps for Healthy Kids.
The latest sci-fi thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio has been loved and lauded over the past few weeks for turning viewers’ minds into balloon animals – dreams, realities, altered states…which way is up in this cerebral action pic for summer? Director Christopher Nolan is known for his mind-bending fun in movies like Memento and The Dark Knight and this time, his Escher-like directorial hand has lead to box office bullion, with multilayered theatrics brought to life by the screen-popping stars of Inception.
While it’s all in good fun, Nolan’s otherwordly world also seems positioned to serve as a teachable moment for many aspects of modern life, where walking the line sometimes means treading a pretty blurry one. For instance, you thought you were living a healthy life. You’ve always felt like you were an active, vigorous individual. It’s been years since you ate an entire Duncan Hines cake as a midnight snack. But what are all those packaged food containers in the recycle bin? What’s this mid-morning energy slump? What’s all this talk from the doctor about HDLs? Whether you are living in a full-blown dream or just a slight state of denial, maintaining good health can mean constantly re-calibrating what health and wellness really means.
Thanks to Christopher Nolan, we’ve isolated three concepts à la Inception that might serve to help us turn off the madness, tune in to reality, and drop back into health and wellness – in other words, to wake up from the dream and get real.
“Inception”
In the film, “inception” is a twist on the more common “extracting” or stealing ideas from the heads of unsuspecting targets in an effort to extract valuable information. In inception, extraction’s inverse, dreams are used to secretly implant an idea in a target’s mind. “Dream architects” take control and build a “dream landscape” that makes the dreamer take actions consistent with their dreams in their real life.
The scenario may be all too familiar when it comes to our health and wellness. It’s almost as if our minds have been infiltrated to think that fat, sugar, and salt is good (it certainly tastes good). That’s the architects at work, creating ideal taste combinations that make us desire more of these foods, scientifically created to provide our mouths and brains with a peak experience. Shaking off the idea that these tastes are not “real” – that is, that they are actually food evils created in a lab that allow us to lose our taste for good, whole, healthy foods – can be difficult. When we’re caught in the dream and exposed to these foods on menus, at fast food restaurants, on TV, at school lunches or vending machines and in supermarket shelves, well, we start to think of it as just the way life is.
But keep in mind that those entities responsible for placing these ideas in our heads are no different then those that Robert Fischer is subject to. Their agendas have nothing to do with our personal health and wellness. It might be time to reset our idea of reality.
“Hostile Dreams”
In Inception, we learn that the human projections in a person’s dream act more or less like white blood cells. If the dreamer becomes aware that a foreign entity has entered the subconscious, then the projections will become increasingly hostile.
So is it with health. Letting nutrition go by the wayside in favor of embracing false ideas planted by agents of sugar, fat and salt, and foods that fill us in the moment but are empty of nutritional content, can have dire effects in the long term. Poor nutrition can increase the risk of developing serious diseases later on in life. A poor diet increases risk of conditions such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and obesity. It also increases the chances of getting cancer and other diseases of aging.
Wonder why these health issues are affecting more Americans than ever, and obesity is considered an epidemic? It’s almost as if we are all living in a shared lucid dream, surrounded by the effects of poor health and unable to see through its dire consequences because they are everywhere. It’s similar to the classic fish tale: An older fish swims by two younger fish, and asks, “How’s the water, boys?” After a while, one of the young fish asks the other, “What the heck is water?” As the famed writer pointed out “This is water.”
Our water is the poor nutritional options that surround us and the waning health it perpetrates. Our seemingly benign but unhealthy choices will grow hostile over time. But realizing that lifestyle modifications and a nutritional diet can greatly lower risks of developing diseases and lead to a longer life is the beginning of waking up from this unhealthy dream.
The “Individualized Object”
Inception begins when Dominic Cobb is found washed up on a beach carrying a spinning top. The top is his individualized object—the personal totem that tells him if he is in a dream state or in reality. If the spinning top slows, it means it’s subject to the laws of gravity and therefore exists in the real world. If it spins and spins, we’re in a dream.
What’s your teetotum? What tells you whether you are in a wellness reality or in an unhealthy fugue state? Maybe it’s an uncomfortable feeling associated with tightening clothes. Maybe it’s a logy feeling after a meal. Maybe your sleep is disrupted. They are your personal teetotums, telling you your nutrition has gotten off track. Give your top a spin, and see if it’s subject to the laws of overeating, lack of exercise and poor nutritional choices, or if it’s consistent with the healthy life you want to be living.
Waking Up from the Wellness Dream
It’s OK to experience the occasional limbo. Catching yourself between worlds is part of understanding where you really should be in your ongoing health and wellness routine. Just be careful – if you think you might be trapped between what you want from healthy living and what you’ve been convinced you want, just don’t build a life around it. You’ll waste a lot more than two hours, and before you know it, well…fade to black.
National Salad Week may not seem like your standard Hallmark holiday, but when you consider that April 16th is National Eggs Benedict Day, and on August 8th we celebrate Sneak Some Zucchini on Your Neighbor’s Porch Night, Salad Week doesn’t seem all that out of the ordinary.
Besides, health and nutrition enthusiasts are embracing this week as more important than ever when it comes to giving the long-suffering salad its due, considering national obesity rates and nutritional concerns. This time of the season is ideal to reinforce principles of health such as eating from the rainbow and getting the daily requirements of fruits and veggies – all things the salad accomplishes as well as or better than any other dish.
While finding just the right card to commemorate Salad Week might be tricky, there are plenty of other ways to celebrate.
Turn Over a New Leaf
You know it’s true: even the traditional Wedge Salad is better with Romaine. But even if you haven’t eaten iceberg lettuce since the seventies, you might still be experiencing salad torpor. It’s easy to get stuck thinking one-dimensionally about salad, repeating the same lettuce-and-cut-veggies routine.
Here are some ways to get past salad inertia and make greens the colorful star of the meal, not just a forgettable necessity.
1. Easy on the lettuce. Don’t misunderstand – greens, especially dark greens, are great for you. But if you’re stuck in a rut where your salads are lettuce-laden barrels obscuring the occasional cherry tomato, try upending the equation. Designate lettuce as bed-only (or eliminate it completely). Then pile high with basil and sliced tomatoes, a stack of wedged cukes, a cascade of beets…whatever deserves to be center stage.
2. Make salad the substrate. Having sliced chicken or braised salmon? Place it on your salad for a beautiful one dish dinner that’s vibrant, fresh and crunchy. Plus, salads take excellent advantage of leftovers. Had steak last night? Tonight you’re perfectly poised to have Tarragon Steak Salad. Crave carbs? Include some thin-cut sautéed potatoes on your salad for a healthy twist on a (let’s face it) less healthy food.
3. Fruit. If fruit is getting short shrift on your veggie-heavy salads, you’re missing out on a delicious flavor profile. Wild blueberries (see below), cranberries, mandarin oranges, strawberries, raspberries, peaches, watermelon, grapes…they all add color and zing and nip salad apathy in bud.
4. Greens only. If you often skip the salad because all you have is greens, go for it – tossing mixed greens with vinaigrette is easy and good for you, and mixed greens by themselves are delightful, no chopping and slicing necessary. If your greens are a one-man show, buy fresh mixes or mix in your own frisee, baby spinach, beet greens or arugula. Simply salt and pepper to taste.
5. Don’t hold the nuts. Nuts are made for salads. They add substance, texture, taste, and good fat. Be ready with pecan halves, almonds, and walnuts. The same principle applies to sunflower seeds, cumin and fennel.
6. Use herbs. Bored by salad unless you get a forkful of goat cheese or a giant crouton? This could indicate an herb deficiency in your salad plate. Fresh herbs such as basil, oregano, thyme, parsley and cilantro can turn on taste buds and spice up greens and veggies. You can also infuse your olive oil and vinegar with fresh herbs, such as tarragon, dill, oregano, thyme and basil to turn up salad flavor. Gourmet Sleuth has a neat herb chart that will tell you what goes well with what, like sliced cucumbers, for instance. (Answer: Dill)
Worth a Toss: Salads to Celebrate
The height of the summer is a perfect time to observe National Salad Week because it means a meal that doesn’t require slaving over a hot stove. When the heat is on, salad-as-the-meal is the solution. If Strawberry, Watercress and Cashew Salad sounds good, or Whiskey & Wheat Berry seems worth trying, you can find these and some other distinctive salads at NowPublic.com. It shares 15 great salads that don’t heat up the kitchen.
The New York Times has 10 Simple Salad Ideas that are fresh for the summer season and help you capitalize on its most plentiful bounty. These cool customers include green beans, couscous, honey, strawberries, parmesan and mozzarella.
If you just can’t get enough of salads, Eating Well has the definitive recipe and salad tips collection, along with ways to dress them.
Welcome Blueberry News…In Time for Salad Week
As we think outside of the lettuce during Salad Week, it’s worth noting that a recent report from the USDA indicates that one cup of blueberries has all the age and disease fighting compounds you need in one day. We’ve known that the health benefits of blueberries, especially wild, are enormous, and blues offer unsurpassed nutritional content when compared to most other fruits and vegetables. They are rich in Vitamins A and C, and provide a superior punch of anti-aging and disease fighting antioxidants.
Why is this especially tasty news during Salad Week? Because wild blueberries are the colorful highlight of many health-conscious creative salads that delight diners, add pizazz to plates, and provide big nutritional benefits. So, befitting the week, here are some salads featuring wild blueberries that are worth celebrating. While these dishes don’t all have a full cup per serving, most offer a respectable start on your daily intake.
With all of these vibrant recipes, why not make Salad Week every week?
Eating small portions throughout the day also helps increase metabolism, keeps the brain out of the late-day fog, and helps us avoid temptation for things we would ordinarily shun (think donuts in the snack room) if we were properly fed.
