Flax joy

Another thing to add to your list to purchase while at your local bulk/health food store!  Flax. 

I add flax to most of the things I make, especially any of the breads or smoothies that I make, it has very high nutritional value and can benefit your life, and may even help you get those nutrients you currently think you need to take supplements to get! 

What is Flax?

Flax comes from a beautiful flower and is grown in Canada (yay!).  It is awesome because we can grow it in our temperate climate, and the cold weather here actually favors this nutritious crop! It contains healthy good fats that tend to be lacking in the general public diet, and has a lot of the up and coming healthy parts that are often suggested to be part of a diet that keeps you healthy and well. 

Omega-3, Protein & Fibres

 Omega-3, for those who don't know, is getting a lot of press in the nutrition field.  It has been attributed to many health benefits including heart disease reduction, aiding in prevention of diabetes, and the use of it for arthritis to reduce inflammation.  Omega-3 are indeed fats, but what makes them different from other other fats that you may be seeing in your ice cream or dairy, if that these fats cannot be made in the body, making them essential, we get them only from the diets.  

Our bodies are great wonderful systems that has an amazing ability to create what it needs from the foods we eat.  When we consume protein, it comes in the form of long chains, our body breaks it own and remakes it into what we need, this is true, somewhat, for fats too.  The exception though, is the Omega-3 & 6 fatty acids.  We get lots of omega-6 fatty acids in our diet, and the ratio between the amount of omega-3 and omega-6 is important to maintain to get the benefits (Having too much omega-6, like may people do, can be problematic for health issues).  Eggs, poultry, and wheat products contain omega-6 and ironically, this can cause inflammation problems, this would mean joint issues and more!  Omega-3 increase has been suggested and I know from watching Dr. Oz he sugggests taking a supplement containing the omega-3, I do not do this, because you cna get wonderful benefits from Flax!  Ground flax allows your body to take in the most benefits, including the omega-3.  

Protein is a wonderful thing to keep you feeling full, and are needed for the body, especially perhaps if you consume minimal animal products like I do.  Although protein is not a main amazingness of flax, it is a nice additional quality to increase the nutritional punch of this Canadian crop!

Fibre!  I have yet to do a post about fibre, but stay tuned!  It is a non-digestible carbohydrate and keeps your digestion system happy by helping to remove build up in the intestine, increasing stool excretion, making it a must have in your diet!

What to do with it!

Add it to many things!  This includes smoothies, and salads, and adding it to your breads and cereals too.  This helps to make sure that foods you like are giving you more than just taste.  

Here are a couple Recipes!

Zucchini Sweet Potato Flax Bread (modified from Finding Joy In My Kitchen)

2 C wheat flour
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 C applesauce

1 eggs

1 Tbsp of stevia powder

1 Tbsp of flax mixed with 1 Tbsp of water
1 tsp. vanilla
1 C sweet potato puree
1 1/2 C shredded zucchini

3-5 Tbsp ground flax seeds

2-3 Tbsp of whole flax seeds and any other bread seeds, like sesame.

Combine dry ingredients in one bowl and make sure they are mixed well.

Next, mix the wet ingredients in a separate bowl and combine well.

All that is left to do is mix them together!  Mix until they are just combined, making sure you don’t over mix the batter.  Put it into a well-greased loaf pan.  Sprinkle extra seeds on top of the bread before putting it in the oven for 45-50 minutes (time may vary depending on the oven you use!)  It will be done when you can put in a wooden object like a toothpick and can remove it cleanly.

This bread turns out rather dark, more than I was expecting, but don’t get worried, it was still soft and fresh throughout the week.  I always make tomato and red pepper soup and this went so well with that! It was really tasty too when I toasted it and put some creamy butter on it.

Add flax to your smoothies!  Here is a super tasty interesting one I made up recently!

Chocolate fruit flax glory

Blend together:

Handful of Spinach

Handful of Kale

couple oranges

cup of berries, frozen

teaspoon of cacao

teaspoon of lemon juice

enough water to get it to your preferred consistency!

Blend this until you can blend no more!  Then, add in the flax, about a tablespoon, give yourself that extra nutritional kick to this already high fibre tasty morning treat! 

ENJOY YOUR FLAX PEOPLE!

 

to be gluten free or not to be gluten free

Apparently, eating “gluten-free” is not just for people with celiac disease anymore, going gluten-free is seeming to be a “fad” diet.  What does it mean to be gluten free and why it is being used as a diet trend? 

Basics.  Gluten is a naturally occurring protein found in things like wheat, barley and rye (yes, beer!).  This protein is not digested by the human race due to the complex amino acids found in the gluten strand that make it indigestible in the human gastrointestinal tract.  Unlike indigestible carbohydrates like fibres and select starches, gluten does not aid to keeping us healthy, and simple moves through the GI tract.  However, this is anything but true with regards to people who suffer from celiac disease.  Celiac disease is an autoimmune disease that is classified by an autoimmune response to gluten.  This causes the body to act like gluten is a terrible intruder and send out antibodies and the like to try and fight it off.  There is a variety of reasons one can develop celiac disease that are unimportant to this discussion. 

What makes this so bad you ask?  Unfortunately, one of the ways the response to gluten in the GI tract is by removing many of the cells lining the intestine which house important digestive enzymes.  This causes upset and very painful digestion.  It can also lead to flatulence and diarrhea due to the lack of absorption.  The only current way to manage celiac disease is by maintaining a strict gluten-free diet throughout life.  This is critical to help build up the intestine to allow for digestion and absorption to properly occur. 

People have been starting to go gluten free even when they do not suffer from celiac disease.  Going completely gluten free  is tough work, as many products on the market are not gluten free, namely our bread!  There are also hidden source of gluten too which can be found in spices, ketchup, and even ice cream!  For someone who requires gluten-free to maintain health, these hidden sources would be critical in maintaining normality, but for someone doing it for other potential benefits, these sources would not be identified perhaps and therefore they really don’t live a true gluten-free life. 

Why do people think that a gluten-free diet can benefit them?

Well, as I said, gluten is not digested by anyone, but it is in celiac patients that the body develops the auto immune response, no response development means no reaction, which is the case for the majority of us, myself included.  Many “clean eating” or “holistic” diet plans encourage healthy digestion, stating it is digestion that is the key to living healthy and having the body and feelings to keep us living great and feeling great.  Removing gluten could only further benefit our bodies, is suggested, because we don’t digest it anyways, and taking it completely from the diet could mean one less roadblock on the road to healthy guts. 

Why it could work..

Not eating gluten generally means that you are watching what you eat carefully, and unless you are buying gluten free versions of gulten containing products, perhaps you just cut them out of your diet completely.  This would mean less carbohydrates, which can help to achieve weight goals in many cases.  Maybe simply changing the focus of why one is no longer consuming breads (changing from “Carbs are bad” to “gluten is bad, bread has gluten”) one could achieve and maintain focus during weight loss challenges.  The other way it works is that if you stop consuming bread (for our discussion bread is the primary source of gluten in our diets) then you must be replacing the bread consumption with something else, hopefully, vegetables and fruits!  This substitution will result in massive changes including weight loss, healthy gut as well as an overall healthier being, and can certainly not be totally attributed to the reduction in gluten intake.

Potential problems..

Currently our breads are fortified with folate, a B vitamin that is essential to have in adequate amounts for women of childbearing age.  Breads that are gluten free are not generally fortified with folate, this reduction in folate can cause serious neural tube damage in babies because the neural tube is developed so early on, expecting mothers hardly know they are expecting before the neural tube has already started to develop. 

Being “gluten-free” for reasons other then requirement can seriously discount how serious and life altering celiac disease is.  It is unlikely that those who are eating gluten-free for ‘fun’ are avoiding all gluten free things, and the odd time they will have the hamburger bun from the fast food joint not caring about the gluten bun or burger.  This can be offensive to those who have little choice but to cut gluten out. 

Is this right for you?

 Some people have gluten intolerances and removing gluten is not required but helps massively to reduce discomfort.  If you think that removing gluten will assist in digestion absolutely go for it, but make yourself aware of the things that may be missing from your diet.  Healthy balanced lives are what we should strive for in order to feel good.  Let your body do the talking, if your body needs gluten then it does.  If you have no issues with gluten and love bread, continue to enjoy your gluten containing products!

I do not think that gluten free should be used as a mean to lose weight, especially because they way in which weight loss is achieved on a gluten free diet is through cutting of unhealthy gluten containing products and making more foods from scratch, allowing for more understanding of what goes into foods. 

Let me know what you think!  Are you a celiac sufferer? Do you go gluten free by choice? 

chocolate!

Mmmm so today is going to be a good topic,, something I enjoy very much and I think a lot of people can relate to this.  CHOCOLATE!  It is my favorite treat and my biggest weakness, everyone who knows m at all knows that I can always go for chocolate and although I like to think I have pretty good self control over most other food in my life where generally I will eat slowly and enjoy each bite I take, chocolate is the exception, I will eat it until my tummy hurts, so I have recently switched over to high quality dark chocolate which is more expensive (which is a deterrent to buying it) but I am admittedly a milk chocolate gal,  so the switch itself has slowed down my intake.  Before I get into that, this week has been a crazy feeling week for me. 

Ever since I got back from my reading week I have really changed my diet around a lot and I have been trying new foods to really start changing my diet to be the healthy person I make myself appear to be.  I am a recovering calorie counter, trying to get to a good feeling, instead of a goal weight.  I am not even very good at counting calories so it never really worked for me. 

I graduate next spring from my program here at university, currently I study biological science and I minor in nutrition and nutraceutical sciences.  When I graduate next year, I plan on taking classes online through the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition to become a Registered Holistic Nutritionist.  I am really excited about this and it has lead me to finding all new websites and blogs which I now follow leading me to live a better life, and inspiring me to be a nutritionist.  I so look forward to taking this program because my ultimate goal would to be a full time holistic nutritionist, until then, just school and on the side blogging!  I hope to start a real blog when I am registered and start consulting!

Back to the chocolate thing, lucky for me my boyfriend thinks dark chocolate is the best, I got him this lovely box for Valentine’s Day, which was only dark chocolate, and it was so yummy, it really opened my eyes to it.  So, I decided to post about why chocolate is healthy if incorporated properly into the diet. 

Chocolate if full of wonderful minerals which our body needs to have in order to have proper function including; copper, magnesium, calcium, iron, and potassium.  Copper is important for skins healthy collagen to form, and it is also linked for forming a healthy heart in the early stages of life.  Magnesium is very important as it is predicted that most people are deficient in it, fatigue leg cramps and headaches can be symptoms!  It is also thought to reduce risk for many diseases that are overwhelming our population, including type 2 diabetes.

Potassium is needed for proper nerve function as well as maintaining out blood pressure.   Iron and calcium are both very important, calcium for our bone health among other things, and iron for our blood cell formation. 

Chocolate also contains many antioxidants, which are critical is preventing cellular damage!  It is thought that an ounce of cark pure chocolate contains more antioxidants than blueberries and green tea!  These antioxidants are also capable of maintaining blood sugar levels, which is important, especially with people developing type 2 diabetes more and more often. 

How is it that chocolate has been related to such bad things? High in sugar and fat? Well it is true that chocolate is not good, all the time every day at every meal, but in moderation along with everything else in our lives, chocolate can have benefits.  I talk about the importance of a plant based diet because it is natural and healthy and we can get all of our nutrients, well cocoa is a plant, therefore chocolate would constitute as being part of a plant based diet.  This is something people forget about, but this does not mean that we can forget about moderation.  No one stops eating fruit due to high sugar content, but even those should be in moderation too.  Too much of anything is not good for you!

Anyways, adding a bit of cocoa to many of your meals instead of milk chocolate to make those cookies a little more nutritious.  Of course there are many recipes that I love, including the raw brownie, and this super woman smoothie!  (I must mention, the site that I got the super women smoothie from, I love! Check it out!). 

naturally beautiful

Eat foods that are beautiful in nature, they make you naturally beautiful.

Try to eat your foods as close as possible to how they were harvested.  You don't have to be a raw food-ist by any means, but having a raw soup now and then instead of one that has cooked for hours can mean that you are truly benefiting from the wonders of the food!

The best part about eating foods raw? less work!  my most used kitchen tool is by far my blender!  I make two smoothies a day, plus usually a dressing for a salad or a dip for my veggies!  It is great to enjoy foods in their natural state, fresh, beautiful, delicious!

Try this! 

 Red peppers, tomatoes, onion, lemon juice, celery, almond milk, garlic

 These foods are so beautiful!

Put them into the blender and blend away!

You will have a delicious wonderful raw red pepper and tomato soup, which is allowing you to fully benefit from the great properties these foods have!  After grilling or cooking bell peppers for just a few minutes they can lose 40% of a super good flavanoid luteolin.  Luteolin plays an important roll in fighting off free radicals which can cause damage to our cellular DNA.  Peppers contain a high amount of vitamin E despite its very low fat content, and also has 6 carotenoids which are also antioxidants linked to cancer prevention. Tomatoes are also a great health food, they have high amounts of lycopene which if you have a man to feed especially, give them this!  Lycopene is not a friend to prostate cancer, many studies have shown this! 

Our stinky but wonderful friend garlic is also present which I can't even go into all the health benefits of garlic here, but your health will thank you for consuming more garlic, even if the one your kissing doesn't.  Remember, it isn't to hard to just brush your teeth after giving your heart a hand with a garlic meal!

Eating foods which are in their natural form is ideal to get all the great benefits.  Of course there are foods which you do have to cook to get benefits such as sweet potato, keep things simple and let the food do the talking.  I admit, it does get boring to have a big salad everyday to enjoy your veggies raw, but consider making a dip or soup, or a smoothie (besides, often times blending your foods makes for super easy digestion!). 

Enjoy your raw foods! :)

This is one of my many new recipes this week! Stay Tuned!

ch- ch- ch- chia!

Chia!  Does that make you think of those pets you could grow as a child, well not today, not after this!  Chia is a seed that has amazing health benefits and can go into many every day foods helping you to be healthier!   Chia is from a plant that is native to Guatemala and Mexico, but this little seed has more than culture.  Chia hasn’t gained much popularity other than from the nutrition community and natural health people, which can often make people skeptical, but chia does have benefits you can’t ignore. 

According to thedailygreen.com,

Four tablespoons of chia seeds supply as much calcium as three cups of milk, as much magnesium as 10 stalks of broccoli, as much iron as one-half cup of red kidney beans, 30% more antioxidants than blueberries, 25% more dietary fiber than flaxseed and approximately the same amount of omega-3 as a 32-ounce fillet of salmon. Instead of a typical hot breakfast cereal, try a chia breakfast pudding for a more nutritious start to your day! Read More Here!

That is an incredible amount of nutrition in such tiny seeds.  It isn’t surprising that chia is so good for you, when chia is mixed with water it has a super neat quality that allows it to form into a gel.  For those who don’t know dietary fibre is important for maintaining our digestive tract, it helps to go through and clean out toxins and adds bulk to our stoll which is critical for healthy guts!  The gel we see when we add chia to water is what makes it so good at going through our digestive system.  After dropping off all of the great nutritients such as omega-3 for our heart and cholesterol levels, iron for our oxygen carrying enzymes like our blood cells hemoglobin, antioxidants to help fight free radicals, calcium for our bones, and magnesium for our nervous system and blood pressure, the fibre in these mighty seeds grabs onto the bad stuff in our digestive tract and moves it out of the body which can help our cardio vascular system as well as keep us full and regular!

Chia can be incorporated into many dishes, add some to your oatmeal, if your smoothie to give it an extra health kick, make breads with chia as well as dishes based around chia such as the recipes found at Chia Co!

Good luck adding chia to your diet! It’s a tiny seed that packs a huge punch!

Inspiration and Motivation for my New Choices

Have you ever wanted to be more healthy and just never been able to stick to it? Or get the feeling like you can make healthy choices but then find that you want the original version you usually enjoy because you try to hard to make things healthy?  That is exactly how I feel, I study nutrition and nutraceutical sciences which (despite) how it sounds doesn’t really teach me to much about nutritional eating, it is a lot more about how food can be used to help with prevention and how foods come to be, health claims and nutritional disorders that are caused by, treated by or can be prevented by foods, but I don’t really learn how to tell someone how to eat, I’m not a dietitian or anything like that!

It gets frustrating to constantly hear about how foods can help, and its all well and good to know that parts of the plants or foods that makes it healthy but if you don’t know what foods it comes from or how to use that food in your every day, it isn’t really that practical of information.  I think that it is important to make sure that you are getting as much of the nutrients that you can get from foods every day and maintain health through the foods you eat, and if that is not possible, then supplementation can or should be considered. 

I genuinely like healthy foods, I used to (for some reason) have an aversion to salad and now it is officially my best friend.  I constantly find myself in the state of mind where I think, yes, I will eat healthy when I live alone, or when I have more space, or when I don’t have to cook just for myself, but today, for some reason I realized that today is just as good as tomorrow, and probably better because it is now, even though I did finish my pizza from last night and a bag of M&Ms, I think I truly did start my healthy life, I feel like total garbage from eating those things, and now there are no longer around for me to eat tomorrow or at a later date.  My fridge is always full of healthy foods; I mostly eat fruits and vegetables, with oatmeal or whole grain cereal for breakfast.  I sometimes have a protein shake when I am low on protein or when I plan on participating in a fitness class, so I think that I am generally healthy but it is the little things, or the things which I think are little that are the biggest problem.  I tend to eat granola bars which are so high in sugar and so processed simply because they are quick and easy, and they taste different than the rest of the fruits, vegetables and yogurt that I eat.

My new things is going to be trying to make things from scratch and try to have all my foods something that I actually made, and go out of my way to purchase ingredients and make the foods knowing exactly what is in them, and trying to not cheat or lose weight or get a certain body, but feel awesome, and stay fit at the same time.  My boyfriend always tells me he thinks that I am sexy and hot and that my body is good looking and that he wouldn’t change a thing, but of course that is too hard for a girl to really believe, so I think he deserves for me to feel the way he sees me. 

I love to do Zumba classes, and I have made a mental promise to myself, and my boyfriend, that I am going to participate in four classes each week, because I ultimately plan on becoming an instructor and maintaining it as part of my life for the rest of my life! 

Why did I suddenly get inspired now?  I always want to try new things and eat better and be healthier but some how things get in the way, I don’t even have excuses because I could spend all day just sitting and looking out a window so I truly have no reason to not start.  I had a revelation (of sorts) this weekend, here is my story…

My boyfriend was over because we had our reading week and had to come back early so we could both work.  He was complaining about digestive problems and how he was just feeling overall crumby.  He loves to learn new things and could get totally distracted by simply clicking link after link on the internet learning new thing, I love that about him.  He always asks any question he has to me first, for a couple reasons I think, often they are science based and I am a biological science student and study nutrition so if it falls into that category, I tell him what I know and we go from there, and second we are best friends so he likes to hear my opinion as much as I think to hear his.  So, back to the story, he wanted to know what kinds of foods we could eat to feel a bit better, so after talking about fiber and stuff of that nature, he reminded me that he wanted to do a cleanse sometime, mostly for interests sake to see how it felt and if it did anything.  Lucky for him (or not) I had some saved on my computer from a previous curiosity about cleanses.  We tried it out and didn’t really follow so great (which means that cleanse wouldn’t really work) but found that we were horribly grumpy, sleepy and had no energy, so we finished our two day cleanse by ordering pizza and bingeing, and as yummy and happy I felt after that I still wasn’t feeling myself.  This is when I realized crazy fads don’t really work, and even though the cleanse we did wasn’t too intense, it would have been more effective to just eat healthy; you can’t change your life in two days. 

Part two goes something like this, I have this addiction to M&Ms and I had a bag in my room from a friend as a gift and I cannot resist eating them, and I told my boyfriend to not let me eat them, he agreed by when he was trying to stop me one time he made me feel bad about my self image, which was not his intention, he was simple doing as I asked, but this made me realize that he had such strength and I didn’t, so I am making a change.  I am going to not eat M&Ms and start actually making healthy choices and be healthier.  I am hoping this blog will help me stay on track and focused, at least for the next 6 weeks as I work super hard at school, and try to change my eating habits. 

Here are some of my goals:

• Make my own foods more often, including snacks
• Not to be afraid of eating real foods, instead of highly processed “diet” foods
• Try a new recipe each week
• Work with the recommendations of food intake
• Set goals for trying new kinds of foods
• Getting my fitness on 4 times a week
• Blog at least once a week with a new focus to talk about!

Wish me luck!

xoxo Amanda