Summer is the perfect time to master the art of smoothie making. Not only because smoothies are super refreshing and easy to drink on the go, but they’re incredibly adaptable too. It’s easy to create exciting new flavor combinations using ingredients you have right on hand.
Smoothies are also the perfect recovery fuel after a long workout, especially in the summer, when it’s easy to overheat. One of my very favorite combinations right now is this Wild Blueberry post-exercise recovery drink. I call it my natural Gatorade.
If you’ve been exercising for over an hour in the summer heat, you should think about replacing not only fluids, but also sodium, magnesium, and potassium, the main electrolytes that are lost with prolonged or heavy sweating. In this delicious and refreshing smoothie, you get a powerhouse of post-workout benefits including hydration, muscle recovery, and antioxidant protection.
Let’s break it down, shall we?
Watermelon and coconut water help with rehydration and supply a steady stream of electrolytes and natural salts.
Wild Blueberries provide amazing post workout antioxidant protection. This is important because a not-so-good side effect of exercise is an increase in free radical production. Free radicals are molecules created by the breakdown of oxygen during metabolism. The process is natural and happens simply by breathing, but too many circulating in your body can damage cells and cause premature aging. Antioxidants are important because their main job is to counteract the damage created by free radicals.
Wild Blueberries get their powerful antioxidant protection from anthocyanins, the flavonoids found in their gorgeous blue pigment. These flavonoids have the ability to neutralize free radicals and help prevent cell damage. Antioxidants also protect against inflammation, thought to be a leading factor in brain aging, Alzheimer’s disease and other degenerative diseases. (If you were thinking of using regular, cultivated blueberries in your smoothie, think again. One serving of frozen Wild Blueberries provides twice the antioxidant capacity of larger, cultivated blueberries.)
And finally, as if all of these amazing properties weren’t enough, I added frozen cherries to the mix. Frozen cherries are great for muscle recovery, helping to reduce exercise-related muscle damage, inflammation, and oxidative stress. They help delay the onset of muscle soreness seen after exercise, as well as reduce muscle soreness seen in other conditions, like arthritis, fibromyalgia, and osteoarthritis.
After one sip of this delicious and nutritious smoothie, it won’t be hard to bid farewell to sugar-laden sports drinks, juices, and soda.
My Wild Blueberry recovery drink is the perfect healthy reward after a long, sweaty workout!
Kelly Roenicke, one of our “Wild Your Smoothie” Recipe contest winners, started writing her allergy-friendly recipe blog, The Pretty Bee: Allergy Friendly Eats, when her family was confronted with living and eating with multiple allergies. She told us her first son, now eight, was sensitive to gluten when he was young and had trouble with dairy and eggs. Today, he has outgrown some of his sensitivities and can eat eggs. Her younger son, aged four, is allergic to tree nuts and sesame seeds.
Kelly says she creates “family-tested,” delicious and nutritional allergy-friendly recipes that have a lot of flavor variety. “That’s important to me because when I started removing certain foods from my family’s diet I felt limited and preparing meals became more challenging. I really didn’t know where to turn, so I love that families can use my blog as a resource.”
When Kelly creates recipes, she keeps in mind the families out there who have multiple food allergies. Most of her recipes are free of the top 8 allergens – peanuts, tree nuts, milk, eggs, wheat, soy, fish and shellfish – plus sesame seeds because of her son’s allergy. “When they come to my blog, they tell me they are excited to find recipes that are delicious and easy to make with simple ingredients they can find in their local grocery store and safe for their family to enjoy.”
Here at Wild Blueberry headquarters we love smoothies and want to know what makes others just as passionate about them. So, we asked Kelly and here is what she said: “Smoothies have been a part of my diet for a long time – really since my first son was born because they were a convenient way to get the nutrition I needed especially while I was breastfeeding.” Now that her children are a little older, she says, “I love smoothies because they are easy and nutritious and a great way to start my family’s day. We typically drink smoothies for breakfast but we’ll have them as snacks, too. I drink them regularly and my older son really likes them. I love how they taste and that I can add different fruits and seeds like chia or hemp seeds which are allergy-friendly to add nutrition.”
We also wanted to know why Kelly considers frozen Wild Blueberries a great smoothie ingredient. “I’ve been a frozen Wild Blueberry fan for a while. I first bought them because they just sounded good. I was really surprised when I tasted them because the blueberry flavor is much stronger. Sometimes other frozen berries can be tart, but frozen Wild Blueberries add a nice sweetness to our smoothies. I also like frozen Wild Blueberries because I know I’m adding a lot of fiber to our smoothies and because of their great deep blue color I know they are rich in antioxidants. They really are a great source of nutrition for me and my boys. If I’m making a quick smoothie, I typically mix frozen Wild Blueberries, frozen pineapple and frozen mango. I love to use a mix of frozen fruits for my smoothies, especially in the winter I rely on frozen fruit because it’s more convenient.”
Kelly concluded our conversation by saying she was thrilled and honored that her smoothie was chosen. She also wanted to share some advice for anyone who hasn’t tried frozen Wild Blueberries. She said, “If you’re browsing the frozen food aisle – to pick up some frozen Wild Blueberries because they are worth seeking out because they are so delicious. You’ll be surprised by the strong blueberry flavor. This little fruit is great to add to any recipe but especially smoothies.”
Kelly told us she doesn’t enter a lot of recipe contests but when she heard the featured ingredient was frozen fresh Wild Blueberries she had to “throw my hat in the ring.” She said, “It was fun to create something with an ingredient that l love and use regularly.”
When she started thinking about the recipe to create for the contest, she decided she wanted to make an allergy-friendly smoothie that would be “a treat for the eyes and the taste buds.” A few months ago, she had made a smoothie with frozen Wild Blueberries and coconut milk and the result was a yummy smoothie with a light lavender color. She took it to the next level and ramped up the color fun in her smoothie by adding a pink bottom layer using blended frozen bananas and raspberries. To get the clearly delineated layers, Kelly says its important to make sure the raspberry layer is very thick and to work quickly to blend the Wild Blueberry layer and then pour it slowly into the glass in order to prevent it from blending with the first layer. To add nutrition – more healthy fats and proteins – to her smoothie recipe, Kelly topped it all off with hemp hearts. Not only is this smoothie delicious and fun but also it is naturally free of the top 8 allergens because of the ingredients she selected – frozen fruit, coconut milk and hemp seeds.
About Kelly:
Kelly Roenicke is a home cook and mom to two little boys with multiple food allergies and intolerances. In the past few years she has had to adapt the way that she cooks and bakes. She is passionate about allergy friendly cooking and baking, and believes that it can be fun and delicious, not bland and boring. Her blog is The Pretty Bee: Allergy Friendly Eats.
Kelly blogs to share allergy-friendly recipes with other families who might be struggling with food sensitivities. Her goal is to provide delicious and easy recipes that will help families with food sensitivities or allergies enjoy cooking and eating again.
Eating fruits and vegetables – widely across the color spectrum – can yield tremendous benefits when it comes to our health and disease prevention efforts. But there are some advantages to eating deeply colored, antioxidant-rich fruits and veggies that may not be on our radar. You can consider these five unexpected benefits just a healthy bonus for eating well. They might even provide a little extra motivation to get your servings.
1. Benefits for Runners
Runner’s World recently reported on a couple of outlandish food benefits especially for runners. One is eating blueberries. (The other is, surprisingly, beer.) A study from Appalachian State University showed that runners who ate a cup of blueberries every day had less inflammation and oxidative damage before and after their run. It’s no surprise – these antioxidant leaders are known to have a major impact on cellular inflammation. The powerful anthocyanins in the berries actually protected them from the after-effects of challenging workouts and helped recovery. If you are in training, eating a cup of anthocyanin-rich berries will help boost your performance and get you in shape for that marathon – or your next workout.
2. Help Quitting Smoking
New studies show there are major benefits associated with eating many types of fruits and veggies if you are trying to quit smoking. The reason is not just limited to replacing a bad habit with a healthy one. First, fruits and vegetables don’t trigger a desire for nicotine, and unlike some foods like meat and alcohol, they don’t enhance its flavor – they actually make it taste worse. Another reason that fruits and veggies can serve as a secret weapon for those trying to quit might be the satiety fruits and vegetables provide. It can help lessen the desire to smoke, and high fiber choices can contribute to that effect. (Fruits and veggies that are high antioxidants also provide protection against lung cancer and respiratory ailments, which can benefit smokers and former smokers.)
3. Prevent Depression
A diet rich in fruits and vegetables can help reduce the risk of depression. Substantially so, according to the Mayo Clinic. Fruits and veggies that are deep in color and fiber-rich provide the most intense benefit. Also, B vitamins are a major weapon against depression because they help balance mood and even treat depression in those experiencing it (Vitamin B6 is found in many foods including bananas and spinach). Vitamin C (oranges, berries, leafy greens) has also been shown to enhance mood and stave off depression. Further studies have linked depression and wild blueberries. In 2010, a study conducted by a team led by Dr. Robert Krikorian, Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Cincinnati, confirmed that a diet supplemented with wild blueberries improved memory function and mood in older adults and could decrease depression in the elderly.
4. Change Your Friends…and the World
Eating a diet high in fruits and vegetables can be contagious. We mimic the habits of those we hang around with, which is why recent studies have indicated that obesity is contagious and our social circles affect our weight. Studies indicate that if you start eating better your friends will start eating better, not to mention the affect it will have on your family. If your diet is being sabotaged by your friends’ or co-workers’ bad habits, see what being a positive influence can do to those around you. If you are an influencer, your passion for fruits and veggies could actually start a badly-needed revolution of better health around the nation.
5. More Mojo
It may not be the first reason you change your eating habits, but it could be a reason to continue. Improving your love life can actually be a side effect of eating more fruits and vegetables. According to Slim Calm Sexy Diet author Keri Glassman, indulging in certain fruits like peaches, for example, can increase male hormone production and regulate thyroid function that helps increase libido for both men and women. Fruits and vegetables have the benefit of not just being good for us but boosting our energy and controlling our weight, which translates into feeling more amorous. And, foods high in nutrients, folic acid, potassium, and antioxidants translate into increased energy – and you can channel that in whatever way you’d like.
Learn what specific nutrients contribute to good health at Fruit and Veggies More Matters. You’ll also find out which fruits and vegetables provide the best sources of the nutrients you need.
By many accounts, the American diet is in crisis. Our plates and portions are oversized, and our fat, sugar, and salt intake is stratospheric. Only a few of us, it seems, are getting the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables – as low as 11% according to some studies.
But the more we know about the benefits of fruits and vegetables, the more inspired we are to change our habits. Fruits and veggies hold the nutritive power to lower cancer risk and decrease our chances of getting diabetes. They contribute to a healthy heart and brain and help us maintain our weight. Eating fruits and vegetables has a positive effect on almost every organ in the body by helping to preserve their function, prevent disease, and allow us to live longer, better quality lives.
Many of us are making efforts to get our recommended servings. These efforts can leave us wondering: is that salad at dinner really providing the nutrients we need? Does the tomato sauce in a pasta dinner mean we’ve logged a serving? Is it better to grab a bowl of wild blueberries or a carrot? That orange or that potato? The more we improve our eating habits, the more we want to know how important our fruit and veggie choices are, and if eating any serving is better than none at all.
He and She weigh in on the question, and provide their evidence.
Q: Does it matter what fruits and vegetables we eat as long as we eat them?
He: No. Getting the recommended number of servings of fruits and vegetables will provide important health benefits no matter what those fruits and vegetables are. Here’s why:
Reason #1. It is recommended we eat a wide variety of fruit and veggies that span the color spectrum. The more fruits and vegetables, the lower the risk of developing heart disease, some cancers, and lower there risk of diabetes and weight related illnesses, end of story. The USDA Food Plate specifies no types of fruits and vegetables. Even the Mediterranean diet, for instance, touted for its dietary excellence, emphasizes not specific kinds of fruits or vegetables, but that more are eaten, and eaten with with lots of olive oil, nuts and plenty of fish.
Reason #2. When we fill up on fruits and vegetables, they take the place of less healthy foods. For most Americans, eliminating high calorie foods, sugary snacks, fast foods, and processed foods in favor nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables is the key to better health. Whenever we are making the choice to eat any fruit or vegetable, we are eating a whole, natural food, not a processed one, and that means better health and more powerful disease prevention, period.
Reason #3. In the future, a simple saliva test will determine our susceptibility to certain diseases, and it will be affordable and accessible to everyone. We’ll understand then how certain hereditary risk factors can be counteracted by specific food choices. However, today, most of us simply don’t know which nutrients will promote a desirable gene reaction. Until we know more about our genetic makeup, we can’t be sure of how to target the best fruit and veggie Rx for our personal health, and getting our servings and eating widely across the color spectrum is the best advice.
Reason #4. Focusing on good foods, bad foods, and better foods is simply counterproductive. Any and all foods can be part of a healthy diet. They key to good nutrition is balance and moderation, with a focus on portion control. What’s more, there are virtually no unhealthy fruits or vegetables. As long as they are not processed, fried, or interfere with medications, allergies or other conditions, all are good for you. Enjoy!
She: Yes. Making smart nutritional choices about which fruits and vegetables you eat is vital to good health.Here’s why:
Reason #1. Some foods are just better than others when it comes to disease prevention, and if you are eating for good health, why not eat the best? For instance, targeting high-antioxidant, deeply colored foods will help with prevention as we age more effectively than less colorful, lower antioxidant fruits and vegetables. Eating nutrient dense, high antioxidant foods like wild blueberries has been found to combat free radicals and prevent diseases aging, some types of cancer, and heart disease. This fruit has also been found to improve cognitive function. If you have disease prevention in mind, says EmpowHer, and you’re reaching for an apple or orange for breakfast, you may want to reach for blueberries or strawberries instead.
Reason #2. As He pointed out, we must eat variety, and the best fruit and veggie choices are those that span the color spectrum, including rich greens, deep blues, bright oranges and reds. Making a conscious decision to “eat across the rainbow” is important for food in general, and especially fruits and vegetables. And while we may agree on that, the fact is, focusing on broad fruit and vegetable servings without digging deeper into nutritional quality can lead to deficits and less effective disease prevention. Not making an effort to eat specific types of fruits and vegetables that provide the highest nutritional value can lead to eating only those we love or are used to, or those that stretch the budget more effectively. That can often mean missing out on valuable nutrients, antioxidants, phytochemicals, and vitamins that are crucial to our health. That tomato sauce has valuable lycopene, but that’s just a piece of the puzzle. Those potatoes are potassium-rich and full of vitamins, but their value can be negated by portion size and preparation.
Reason #3. One reason to choose your fruits and veggies carefully is that high Glycemic Index foods should be eaten in moderation (or paired with other things that have a low GI.) The Glycemic Index ranks foods according to its effect on blood glucose levels, and some fruits and vegetables may score higher on the GI scale. For optimum health, especially for those people with diabetes and weight concerns, we must understand glycemic measurements, obtain a list of foods and their Glycemic Index scores, and eat accordingly.
Reason #4. For some dried fruit, fruit juices, or fruits with additives, the nutritional benefits are outweighed by high calorie or sugar content. The truth is, not all fruits and vegetables are created equal, and weighing your food choices carefully – even when it comes to fruits and vegetables – makes good, healthy sense.
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Did You Know? Antioxidants combat inflammation in the body which prevents diseases like cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s, and provide major anti-aging and disease preventing benefits.Wild blueberries top the list of health promoting properties over most other fruits. Read the latest news about how blueberries, especially wild blueberries, protect the body.
Are you filling up on the healthiest foods? See what superfoods will change your life.
You know a small nutritional change – something as simple as eating an extra serving or two of fruits and vegetables every day – can add up to major shifts in health, weight, and disease prevention. If you’ve been working on those tweaks, additions, and replacements every day in an effort to move more and more toward a better food plate, then good for you. In fact, “What’s on MyPlate?” Day is just for you.
It’s All on Your Plate
Little changes are no small thing. Paying attention to the principles of a superior plate can be ground-breaking for us as individuals and as a culture. That’s why this Thursday, March 8, Wild About Health is joining its community members in celebrating “What’s on MyPlate?” day. The celebration is intended to hang a little crepe in recognition of our healthy eating behaviors and to help spread the word about our successes.
You know MyPlate as the new food pyramid – or plate – that helps consumers fill their plates with the right foods and focus on smaller portions. By using the colorful plate as a guideline for every meal, MyPlate gives us a visual cue that helps us modify our eating behaviors for the better.
Enjoy a Little More, Eat a Little Less
So what’s behind “What’s on MyPlate?” day? It is intended to put the focus on enjoying our food – but enjoying less of it. After all, we are tied to our plates for our sustenance and nutrition, so enjoying the food on them is essential. Enjoying our plate can include eating mindfully, or paying more attention to the foods we love, as well as to the hunger cues that tell us when we’re full. It can also mean keeping those special treats we love in our life, but thinking of them as special rather than regular indulgences.
As part of enjoying your food in a better way, you might be choosing to increase your intake of fruits like antioxidant-rich wild blueberries, for instance, or eating more leafy greens. You might be trading in your soda for water or another lower-calorie beverage. You might be keeping track of your eating by using tools like Supertracker, a food database and diet and exercise tracker to help keep you going down the right road. If you are making any of these small changes, or you aspire to, you’re ready to celebrate. (Reconcile your changes for the better with this nutritional tip sheet.)
How to Celebrate “What’s On MyPlate Day?”
If you haven’t climbed on the MyPlate bandwagon, now is the time to start. Proponents of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans suggest the following: First, on Thursday, start paying special attention to your food – consider “What’s on MyPlate?” during each meal that day.
Second, celebrate your shifts to a better plate by sharing them. Telling your story means you’re part of the swell of good nutritional karma. It reinforces your efforts to be healthy and encourages others to do the same. Here’s how to start sharing: Blog about it. Got a platform? Tell your story, and share photos of your successes. Let your readers know how important it is to you to pay attention to your plate every day. Tell them how MyPlate guidelines have helped you construct your meals, and share your own tips and insights.
Tweet about it. Use the hash-tag #MyPlateYourPlate to tell your tweeps how you are enjoying food and eating less, and ask them just what’s up with their plate.
Share your plates. Put the MyPlate movement into action by taking photos of healthful plates worth sharing, and use the hash-tag #MyPlate to post them at USDA’s Flickr Photo Group.
Make a video. Get together with your community and show the world how important a great plate is. Communities on the Move Video Challenge invites organizations that work with children to create short videos that highlight their efforts to reverse the trend of childhood obesity.
Tell us. Share your stories with Wild About Health. We want to know how you’ve changed your plate in an effort to maintain your health, enjoy your food more, and eat less. We’ll share photos of your plates, and news of your successes and challenges to help further the discussion of good health, nutrition, and disease prevention.
Health and nutrition can be confusing. We are bombarded with marketing messages, inundated with confusing food labels, and assailed with scientific research and multi-syllabic names for compounds and nutrients.
The Wild About Health Made Simple Series explains health and nutrition as simply as possible. The easier it is to understand, the easier it is to have a longer, healthier life.
Nutrition: Good vs. Bad
Q: Are you eating well?
We’re told by our doctors, by our leaders, and by countless talking heads to eat well and maintain our health; we’re urged to “get healthy” in order to maintain our weight, our heart, our brain, and our longevity. It sounds simple, and in some ways, it is. But how do we accomplish it?
Here, we dump the science and the complex guidelines and strategies, and break down good nutrition in simple terms so you can start today moving the needle toward healthy.
Eating Well: 5 Simple Steps
1. Fruits & Vegetables, Every Day
A healthy diet emphasizes fruits and vegetables. Need a visual? Use the MyPlate guidelines. The new “plate” version of the old pyramid presents the general guideline of how much of each food group we should be eating.
You can eat seasonal food, organic food, or local food – if it’s available and affordable, then that’s great. You can eat across the rainbow and make an effort to get important phytochemicals that provide some fruits’ deep color. But the most important principle is this: fill you plate to half with fruits and vegetables every time you eat.
2. Know the Basics
Keeping nutrition simple means knowing about a few hot button healthy eating issues. Good nutrition emphasizes dietary fiber and cuts salt, saturated and trans fats, and added sugar. Unless you are dealing with specific dietary needs, as a general rule, you can maintain a healthier diet by doing the following:
Reducing sodium
Getting more fiber
Drinking more water
Reducing saturated fat
3. Shrink Your Portions
In order to maintain a healthy diet, many Americans must cut calories. Our health is often associated with our weight. Being overweight contributes to diabetes and heart disease and can shorten our life, and it’s as simple as that.
According to the Lempert Report, portion size is linked to plate size. (Surprisingly, it is also linked to plate color!) If you love numbers, counting calories might help. (Realizing that a bowl or chips and french onion dip will take up at least half your day’s calories helps their importance sink in.) But the easiest thing you can do is shrink your meal. Get a smaller plate, cut portions in half to eat later, or get rid of family-style eating. Whatever you do, aim to get the most nutrition you can from the calories you eat, and eat only the calories you need.
4. Cook For Yourself
Why cook for yourself? It’s simple: You’ll know what’s in your food. You’ll eat more whole, unprocessed ingredients. You’ll be better able to control your sodium, sugar, and fat. It’s more economical. It’s tastier. And, cooking your own meals is almost always lighter. Start cooking: it’s one of the best things you can do for your health.
Is your goal to eat better? Get these four simple principles under you belt. You can start understanding the benefits or pterostilebene and the best superfoods for optimum disease prevention later – it will come naturally. For now, start simple, and change the way you eat and how much. Then, if someone asks if you have a healthy diet, the answer will be simple: Yes.
More on the Web
What is a healthy diet? Get a simple definition at Choosemyplate.gov.
Give your diet some digital help. This article has 5 Apps for Eating Better that will help you find fruits and veggies, locate local, seasonal foods, and give you a fun way to track of your servings.
Break it down.Fruits & Veggies More Matters takes the confusion out of healthy eating and provides nuts and bolts advice about calories, food groups, and what you should know.
The popular “4-hour Body” originator Tim Ferriss says that setting one day aside to totally indulge when you are dieting is the key to staying motivated and maintaining your metabolism. Is a “cheat day” necessary to achieve a healthy weight? Or does planning for a Saturday splurge just mean we’re cheating ourselves?
While some evidence suggests this metabolic boost does help spur on weight loss, the idea is dogged by a few good-health disconnects. The need for a cheat day automatically implies a regimen of food restriction. Dieting, characterized by short-term, sometimes tortuous limitations of food – and often nutrition – is no fix for bad eating habits. The road to long-term weight maintenance and disease prevention involves embracing consistent habits that incorporate new, better ways of eating every day.
Ways to Keep Your Cheat
Are you are born cheater? When it comes to eating healthy, some people are just meant to break the rules. If walking the line of healthy eating sounds like a stone cold bore, here are a few ways to get your cheat on, in a good way.
The Good Cheat. When you cheat, indulge in foods that you love and are good for you. Love the sweet extravagance of strawberry pie? Always had a soft spot for sauces, dips and melty things? Don’t deny your desire to indulge. Healthy eating is a rainbow of opportunities to love real food again. Start cooking, choose foods you love, eschew processed salt-sugar-fat non-foods and find recipes that capitalize on nutrition while still keeping the delish. The Lite Cheat. Incorporate the cheat by regularly eating things you love as one part of an overall healthy diet. One of the myths of healthy eating is that it’s bland, boring, and repetitive. That’s just old school thinking. Sure, a constant diet of carrot sticks can set you up to fail. Instead, use fruit and veggie servings to your benefit. How? We talk about delicious, nutritious food here all the time. Join us, buy a good cookbook, and learn about how to capitalize on foods that have a potent nutrition-to-calorie ratio, and start cheating your way to health, weight maintenance, and disease prevention.
The Unnecessary Cheat. Change your taste for processed foods and eliminate the need to cheat. Our desire for fat, sugar, and salt only increases the more we subject our bodies and our minds to it. David Kessler, in his book The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, explains that foods created with a magical recipe of high fat, high salt, and high sugar alters the brain’s chemistry in ways that compel us to overeat. They override our body’s signals that tell us we’re full, and they trigger cravings. Administered in intermittent doses, this combination can have a powerful affect on the brain that can mimic addiction. But you can break the chain. Stop the regular intake of this dangerous combination and you’ll lose the taste for it, Kessler says. Given a little time, you can start craving the nutrition your body really needs instead.
The Bigger is Better Cheat.Often, cheats are cheats not because of what we eat, but how much. There’s nothing more indulgent than simply putting away a whole lot of food. But here’s something we tend to forget: while 1/2 cup of rice is 300 calories, a 1/2 cup of spinach is only 15 calories. That’s why a diet can make us feel like we aren’t getting enough food and energy. If you are switching from a poor diet marked by processed, fatty foods to a diet of nutrient-rich foods, you aren’t – and you need to eat more. So, give yourself license to chew: eat as many of the good, healthy foods on your list as you want. Bulk up on frozen fruit and wild blueberries, shovel on the greens, go crazy with beans, and heap on the lean proteins.
Cheat-worthy Recipes
Remember your ace in the hole is always a food that is full of high-powered health and disease prevention and is also terrifically tasty. Wild blueberries are an ideal case in point. You can pretend you’re cheating when you eat them, but in fact, wild blueberries are a complexly delicious, nutritious, antioxidant-rich, low-calorie stand-in for a favorite forbidden food.
Need more?Epicurious plays “splurge day” recipes against “every day” recipes that include healthy comfort foods that you can incorporate into your healthy eating plan, including Mac and Cheese and Pizza. And, WebMD has Turkey Tamale Pie that is hearty and veggie-heavy.
Thanksgiving…the ultimate cheat. From creamy onion tart to coconut butternut soup, New York Times Well blog says forgo the bird and indulge in wonderful flavors of veggies.
If a whole new way of life based on tasty veggies and fruits, bright colors, and prevention and recovery from disease sounds like something you’d like to embrace in the new year, getting to know Meg Wolff is a perfect start.
Wolff is a local author who will be appearing at Portland, Maine’s Longfellow Books on Thursday, January 20th, discussing her latest book, A Life In Balance: Delicious, Plant-Based Recipes for Optimal Health. She is a cancer survivor and devotes her time to promoting healthy foods and recipes that contribute to wellness and disease prevention. A blogplanted the seed for A Life in Balance, a vegetarian cookbook which includes a wealth of recipes from the author and other well-known authors and chefs that present macrobiotic and vegan cooking in delicious and accessible ways.
Plants That Change Your Life
Wolff’s recipes range from black bean and cornbread casserole to pasta dishes, but plants are at the heart of this Maine resident’s guidelines for eating toward health and healing. She feels strongly that a diet based on whole plant foods – that means eating primarily whole grains, beans & vegetables, no processed foods & sugar – is the path to healthy living, and credits her largely macrobiotic lifestyle to better health following two grave cancer diagnoses. Part of her message is that diet can dramatically increase your quality of life, especially for those with a life-threatening disease, and plants, rich as they are in healing compounds that fight cancer, are the conduit.
They also make for delicious, colorful dishes that are hard even for confirmed carnivores to resist. Of course, we love Wolff’s passion for wild blueberries; blues grace the cover of her new book, and she is an advocate of using them in delicious ways, including in fruit salads, cakes, and vinaigrettes. You can read about her anticancer breakfast at the Huffington Post. It features a breakfast staple – oatmeal – and it’s no surprise she suggests topping it with Maine wild blueberries (or sunflower seeds for protein).
Get a Taste of the Plant-Based Life
If you have a casual interest in going plant-based, you can start with Wolff’s blog – its spectrum of foods and science-based information about health will reel you in. You can also get your plant-based diet fix from her website if you’re interested in dipping your toe in the plant-based life: start with Squash & Carrot Ginger Soup, Gingered Chickpeas, and some painless principles for making polenta and sautéed veggies. All are so delicious and robust with hue, you’ll consider your new year’s resolution for a rainbow-colored plate all but achieved.
Meet Meg Wolff at Longfellow Books in Portland on January 20th.
Dieting and healthy eating can be a mine field of magical thinking. It seems that if we really have a desire to make a poor eating choice, we can rely on the trickery of our mind to allow us to do so guilt-free. A recent study from Northwestern University brought to light some new information about how our mind can tell us what we want to hear about what we eat.
In the study, weight-conscious people perceived that adding a healthy option to an indulgent meal lessened the total calorie count. For example, a celery stick paired with a cheeseburger was perceived as having a lower calorie count than the cheeseburger alone. They also underestimated caloric intake after viewing more caloric foods: after viewing a cheesecake, for example, participants estimated a cheeseburger as having fewer calories than they did if they had just viewed a salad.
The author of the study believes these results aren’t just an isolated mind-meld, but indicative of the country’s larger obesity epidemic. Misleading food imagery can backfire in many unhealthy ways, and believing that eating healthy foods along with unhealthy ones decreases calorie count can dangerously interfere with meeting weight loss goals. According to the Lempert Report, which reports on trends in consumer marketing, these sorts of misperceptions can be used for good or for evil. Food marketers can rely on this kind of research to sell us more fattening food, or, alternatively, to help us make better, more balanced decisions while shopping.
How to win the battle of wits when it comes to eating? Step one: be active in your own intellectual machinations. To get a “head” start, we’re providing are a few of the most common games to be aware of that go on north of our neck and succeed in psyching out the smartest among us — and some that can help us fight back.
Eating Trickery, Courtesy of…Your Brain.
* Portion size. All-you-can-eat buffets are hip to this mind trick: providing slightly shrunken plates means less food is required to look like a lot. Big plates mean big portions. If you’re programmed to see a bounty of food as the only bona fide meal (aren’t we all), think about down-sizing your crockery to eliminate the white space, and increase the size of the one that holds your greens instead.
* Hidden ingredients. Having salad? Great! Dousing it with fatty dressings and adding globs of tuna salad? Not so great. A tablespoon of mayo adds 100 calories, and a cubic inch of feta adds 45. Fit Sugar has their top 10 list of hidden calories that can turn blissful ignorance into mind-game central.
* Snacks. Grabbing half of your kid’s pop tart while he’s going out the door? Mindlessly noshing on chips while you answer email? More of a mind-numbness than mind game, calories can find their way in your mouth unconsciously. Since duct tape across your mouth is unfashionable, writing down everything you eat can help – it makes you conscious of your eating, and gives you pause before the nosh. If you do snack, you at least have a record of what’s going in the pie hole so you don’t have to live in mystery.
* Drinks. You think you’re not eating because you’re not chewing. But that sprinkle-festooned holiday coffee comes in at 700-calories. Not a morning person? Maybe it’s cocktail hour that’s playing games with your diet. Health Castle lets the light shine in on drink calories that can have you thinking that you’re on track with your food when actually you’re getting derailed by your glass.
* Denial. Eating too much salt? Not following fruit and veggie guidelines? Look to that famed Egyptian river. Americans have been accused of being in denial when it comes to taking control of their poor eating habits. All the government regulations in the world won’t help us snap out of diet denial unless we nix the food coma and start thinking about what we put in our mouth as being as potent as the medicine we take.
Eating Mind Games That Can Help You Turn the Mental Table
* The kitchen is closed. If after hours snacks get you, set a rule that says the kitchen is closed after 8 PM, and anything crunchy, bagged, salty or sweet is on lockdown.
* Hypnotize yourself. When it’s dark out, telling yourself you’re *yawn* just too tired to eat can work, as can that powerful mind game of figuring that you can indulge in the morning if you stand firm tonight.
* Wait thirty minutes. A popular mind game for preventing eating when you may not be hungry, the half-hour wait can get you through a hard-hitting craving. Knowing that if it’s a serious hunger pang, you can let yourself indulge is part of the incentive.
* Brush your teeth. No one wants to ruin a freshly flossed mouth. Feeling like snacking? Brush instead, and tell your dentist your great smile is just genetics.
* Drink water. You’ve heard it before – a desire for food may just be thirst. A glass will fill you up temporarily, but it’s not just mental gymnastics – winter is an ideal time to increase your hydration and beat dryness, so give yourself 8 ounces of H2O for mind and body before you indulge.
* Photo of you in skinny jeans. The photo-on-the-fridge is a mind game classic because it taps into your motivation. Does it work? Some swear by it. Part affirmation and part reminder, the skinny photo, wallet card, or picture of your kids (even a photo of you at your worst that you don’t want to return to) can provide the mental poke that snaps you back to reality and reminds you of why you’re eating healthy in the first place.
* A positive attitude. Eating well is not a prison sentence. It’s an opportunity to try new foods, eat real, wholesome ingredients, and feel strong and healthy. A positive attitude is a win-win situation that can turn mental manipulation from demoralizing to empowering.
Watch the Lempert Report’s video which includes details about the food imagery study.
It really doesn’t matter whether you are focused on heart health, cancer prevention, weight loss, or just maintaining good health. You can’t ignore the benefits of the Mediterranean Diet. Just when we think the research-backed rationale for going Mediterranean is old news, something puts it back on the radar. It’s just a fact of healthy life: making the eating habits of many of the 16 countries that border the Mediterranean Sea the basis of your nutritional goals is a smart move.
The Benefits
It helps prevent diabetes. Recently, a large study published by the renown British Medical Journal showed that healthy people who followed a Mediterranean diet had a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
It contributes to weight loss. Another recent study published in The New England Journal of Medicine showed that a restricted-calorie Mediterranean diet could be even more effective for weight loss than a low-fat diet.
It’s never too late. Late adoption of the Mediterranean lifestyle can increase longevity and reduce the risk of chronic disease for the elderly as well as other segments of the population.
It offers huge heart health benefits. The diet provides thousands of micronutrients, antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals, including the essential elements that go to work on preventing heart disease.
It’s more than a two-fer. The diet has also been found to help protect against cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, and the risk of Parkinson’s, among other conditions.
It can increase your lifespan. On the Greek island of Crete, Cretans live longer than any other populations in the world. In studies of those closer to home, longevity was a byproduct for those on the diet in addition to disease prevention.
The X Factor
There are mounting health benefits to going Mediterranean, but there’s also something mysterious about this diet. There’s an X factor involved in the diets of those living overseas that we can’t seem to replicate by simply eating olive oil, or consuming lots of fruits and veggies. Making those efforts is a great start, of course, but it doesn’t mean automatic health.
For example, The New England Journal of Medicine has shown that it may not be the olive oil itself, but the interaction or synergy between all the foods that leads to the health benefits. When foods interact, they can provide benefits that are more than the sum of their parts, and that could be part of the Mediterranean mystique.
Also, eating in Mediterranean countries seems to be synonymous with leisurely dining, taking pleasure in the experience of eating, and savoring meals – another factor that defies quantifying. The residents of these countries generally enjoy food; it is at the center of conviviality. Ever had a meal with a table full of French diners? Prepare to stay a while, sample many dishes, and when you do finally leave the table, don’t be surprised if there is food left behind on the plates.
Finally, another baffling feature of this diet is that “diet” is really a misnomer. There is no real Mediterranean diet, after all – the diet itself is a dietary pattern that includes eating less animal protein, eating few saturated fats, having lots of fruits and vegetables, and integrating the keystones listed below.
Clearly, those who live in proximity to this famed sea are not just eating the right foods, they are also living a different lifestyle than many Americans. Is it that they are less sedentary? Probably. Is it that they have a different relationship with food? Perhaps. The point is, we cannot seem to fully replicate the phenomenon of the magical region of the Mediterranean in other geographical areas.
Nevertheless, following the keystones of this diet has a clear health benefit.
The Keystones
Monounsaturated fats. The most popular MS is olive oil (which does double duty by replacing butter), but other unsung heroes of monounsaturated fats are avocado, fish, and canola oils. They are anti-inflammatory, fight disease at the cellular level, and have been shown to reduce LDL cholesterol and oxidative stress. But be warned: no two-handed pouring a la the TV chefs. Passion for EVOO does not mean losing the measuring spoon.
Using herbs and spices instead of salt to flavor foods.
Limiting red meat. Mediterranean dieters max out on red meat at just a few times a month. Fish and poultry makes an appearance at least twice a week, but even these proteins are eaten in moderation in favor of things like veggies, grains and legumes.
Drinking red wine. Much has been made of the red wine element of this diet as well as red wine’s benefit for the heart, but wine consumption may be part of the X factor. It is generally done in moderation – 5 ounces a day for women and no more than 10 ounces for men – as part of enjoying a meal and may be part of the synergy that is a feature of Mediterranean meals.
Fruits and vegetables. Plants are the cornerstone of this diet. Consider that Greeks eat an average of nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day. If you are not Greek (or you are Greek but live in, say, Altoona) shoot for at least 10 – and yes, they can be small.
Nuts. While nuts are high in calories (and restraint is difficult), in moderation they provide good fats, protein, fiber, antioxidants, and are fantastic for heart health. They are not, incidentally, honey-roasted, dry roasted, salted or covered in chocolate or sugar. Natural peanut butter and tahini are great options, too.
Replacing refined flour products with whole grain bread, cereal, and pasta.
Minimally processed, fresh, and preferably local foods. A hallmark of the Mediterranean lifestyle is by sticking by these three tenants. Sure, calorie for calorie and nutrient for nutrient, setting off to the Farmer’s Market can seem trivial, but it contributes to a lifestyle that values real food and its origins, and the rest will follow.
Get Smart
The jury is in on the benefits of Mediterranean. It’s true that no one can replicate the diet’s inscrutable power when it comes to good health and longevity, but experts and nutritionists agree, you can’t win if you don’t play.
Here’s some fun ways to get in the game from WebMD:
