Archive for February, 2010

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Healthy Snacks

February 28th, 2010

In today’s hectic life style it probably feels like there is no time for healthy eating, or you simply can’t find recipes that are both healthy and quick to make. As a result it is tempting to reach for the quick and easy snacks such as potato chips or candy.

Do you ever run out of healthy recipes for snacks, or find them to time consuming?
Snacking is a major part of our lives, especially when it comes to kids. This article looks at why healthy snacks are important for all the family and will provide you with some straightforward and interesting recipes.

Foods with natural colours are on the whole good for you, like red apples, yellow bananas or orange carrots. Possibly the most important thing to remember is variety, a balanced diet will keep you healthy and fit as well as feeling good.

First of all I am going to give you some snacking tips.

Always make your snacks interesting
A rice cake is better than a packet of potato chips but is probably considered boring, so why not spread peanut butter and raisins on the top, or find some quick recipes for a salsa.

Prepare snacks in advance
When you have some time chop up carrots, celery sticks, cucumber portions and other vegetables, place them in a sealed container in the fridge so as soon as you feel like snacking you can reach for the healthier option

Keep snacks with you
To save yourself getting caught out needing a snack when you’re out keep snacks with you in your bag. Again the easiest and quickest are fruit and vegetables.

Swap food
When shopping always think of a healthier alternative to what you pick up. Instead of potato chips go for low fat crackers or rice cakes. If you want biscuits chose one that contains fruit alternatively make your own (see recipes to follow)

Buying pre packed or readymade food and snacks usually means it will be less healthy than making your own. I will now provide a few easy recipes to make that are both tasty and good for you

OAT BISCUITS

Melt in Microwave -
1 dessert spoon golden syrup
1 dessert spoon cold water
4oz margarine
Stir in 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
(It will become frothy)
Now add -
1 cup oats
1cup SR flour
3/4 cup sugar
Mix together dried and melted ingredients.
Roll into balls the size of a teaspoon.
Put onto a greased tray and squash balls.

Cook 125 degrees 10 – 15 minutes, until light golden brown.

QUICK SMOOTHY RECIPY

You will need
2 x bananas
1 tablespoon of honey
2 cups of milk
1 x tablespoon of yoghurt
Method
Peel the bananas, break them up into pieces and place them in a large bowl
Take a fork and mash the banana so that it changes from lumpy to soft squidgy and creamy.
Add the honey and yoghurt, mix well with a fork until it’s all creamy
Place the milk into the bowl and whisk the mixture with your fork until everything is mixed and pour into glasses.

MUSTARD AND LEMON CHICKEN

4 skinless chicken breasts halved
1.5 tablespoons of Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons of margarine
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
teaspoon of tarragon
Method
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place chicken in a shallow oven proof dish
In a saucepan, melt the margarine, add the mustard, lemon juice, and tarragon. Stir well and pour over chicken.
Bake in the oven for 30-45 minutes or until cooked

There are simply heaps of quick, easy, fun and surprisingly nutritious recipes for all the family to enjoy.

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Posted in recipes, Snacks

Healthy Diet Tip: About Fermented Food

February 20th, 2010

I am often asked questions about nutrition and diet for maximal fat burning, weight loss, fitness and muscle gain. More than half of these questions revolve around how to make a healthy diet even more tasty, nutritious and exciting.

Here’s a simple tip for adding a wide, wide world of new flavors, textures and aromas to your healthy diet: eat fermented foods!

Kimchi, sauerkraut, natto,black garlic, brewed soy sauce, fermented garlic, kefir, pickled Japanese plums – umeboshi – all the stinky foods are good for you!

Fermented foods are made by allow micro-organisms to breakdown the carbohydrates and protein in foods. Fermentation takes time and the results brim with healthy substances (fermentation is able to enrich food with protein, essential amino acids, essential fatty acids and vitamins) and fantastic active cultures, including the “pro-biotics” family of microbes.

For instance, in kimchi, sauerkraut and yoghurt, you get tons of the “live cultures” like lactobacilli and bifidobacteria.Traditional and MODERN medicine suggests a mindboggling list of health benefits from these microbies, including but not limited to – decreasing the presence of “bad” bacteria in the gut, immune support, adsorption and assimilation of nutrients (so you can build muscles!), prevention of bowel irritability and inflammation and reduction of lactose intolerance.

Not just that – fermented cabbage (like in kimchi and unpasteurized sauerkraut), has phytochemicals that can change estrogen metabolism in a way that could reduce cancer risk, phytochemicals with anti-inflammatory effects, are stuffed with super-power antioxidants and contain a high proportion of vitamins and minerals at a low amount of calories.

Fermentation is one of the few ways of processing food that actually adds nutritive value to food. So what should we do?

Jazz up your lean, healthy diet by adding some lip-puckering, tangy, natural fermented foods a couple of times a week. It will for wonders upping the “fun” factor of your meals!

HOWEVER – you’ve got the get the “real” fermented stuff (and the yoghurt you eat should be natural, no sugar added!). NOT the fake factory-made stuff that’s been salted, soaked with chemicals then packaged and shipped to your supermarket. Make an effort to buy the authentic stuff.

Here are a few tasty suggestions:

Make kimchi omelettes or toss some into your salad – beats practically every single salad dressing! Top your boiled eggs with traditionally fermented, no-additives soy sauce and pepper Have sauerkraut on the side with your chicken – very tasty!

I’ll end by telling you a scary ole story from my own childhood:

When I was a kid, my mom did the freakiest thing ever. She would gather durian pulp (if you don’t know what a durian is, you can look it up here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durian) , salt it down and pack it away into glass jars. When I had finally forgotten those jars even existed, she’d draw one out from the depths of the fridge. My mom would happily smear the salted, fermented, rather odorous yellow gunk over her dinner rice.

How did it taste? I don’t know – I didn’t dare to eat it! But I wish I had. Why? After all, I’ve learnt how good fermented foods are!

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Posted in Diet, Tips

Steps Towards Leading A Healthy Life

February 15th, 2010

It is correctly said that health is wealth. The realization that the quality of our life depends on the quality of our health is bringing about a lot of change in peoples lifestyles. To remain healthy, we need to take care of various aspects of our life. It is no rocket science that a healthy diet and moderate exercise are the two golden rules of remaining healthy; we get to listen to that from almost everyone. The catch, however is that what kind of diet and how much exercise is essential to maintain a perfect balance in our body.

The levels of stress in our life are on the rise with every passing day. It is this stress along with the lack of time that results in most of us ignoring our body and thus our health. We often indulge in fast foods instead of healthy meals because they are simple and convenient ways to fill ourselves up. The irony is that these fast foods are not as fast, when it comes to digestion. Also, they contain only empty calories that do our body no amount of good. In fact, over a long period of time, they only make us obese and unhealthy.

To free ourselves from such tricky situations, we should value the body we hold onto and adopt a healthy lifestyle, wherein we take care of what we feed our body. It is common myth that health foods can never taste good. There are a million healthy recipes, which can satiate your body needs and your taste buds all at the same time. All it takes is a little bit of imagination and a little more time, and you can dish out the most exotic healthy meals, which fill your body up with nutrients and make you feel energized as opposed to the fast foods, which end up making you feel lazy and lethargic.

For people, who are intending weight loss, these recipes prove to be a bane. There are a lot of websites that provide hundreds of free recipes for weight watchers, along with their calorie count. You can experiment with all the possible options and enjoy the process of cooking yourself and your loved ones a healthy yet delicious meal. This process will eventually turn into a habit and you will never have to worry about health issues again.

One very common health problem faced by most of us is acidity. We tend to intake a lot of acidic food in on a daily basis and these results in an acid alkaline imbalance in our bodies. When the amount of acid in our body increases, it has an adverse effect on our cells. This kind of damage to the most basic part of our body will obviously lead to major complications. In order to avoid such situations, it is best advised to drink alkaline water.

This water is structured in such a way that it helps to repair any kind of acid imbalance in our bodies. Apart from this, it also assists flushing out of acidic waste from our body and preventing further damage to our cells.

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Posted in Tips