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!

 

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!