The vanilla flower is a gorgeous orchid, shown with the dried seed pods used for pure, natural vanilla spice
This Enticing, Aromatic Spice Protects Your Health In Five Ways
Vanilla has an image problem. The run-of-the-mill perception is that vanilla is a plain and boring choice. Once you learn about this extraordinary spice, your appreciation may change. In fact, vanilla is a rare, expensive, and health-enhancing flavor.
Vanilla is produced from the seeds of a tropical climbing orchid that grows as a vine. Native to Mexico, vanilla was used by the Aztecs in the chocolate drink of their royalty. The bees and hummingbirds that pollinate this orchid (more…)
An inventive presentation can make your delicious fruit even more tempting
Easy Elegance for Picnics and Get-Togethers
If you are figuring out a fast, easy dish for any gathering, from a summer picnic to an elegant dinner party, fruit salad is your solution. Colorful fruit salad is gorgeous and tempting, bringing an orchard to your kitchen.
You don’t even need a recipe for fruit salad. You can make it on a moment’s notice, assuming you keep lots of fruit in your house. Hopefully you do this anyway, since fruit is a pillar of a healthy, whole foods, plant-based diet.
Fruit salad is the ultimate in uncooking. You can even let young children help assemble it. In fact, letting kids have fun in making meals with healthy foods is one of the best ways to get them launched on lifelong wise eating choices.
Here are some hints to making your fruit salad memorable and irresistible.
Enjoy your fruit salad outdoors on a picnic blanket in a green space, at the beach, or in a sunny nook in your house. Appreciate all that nature put into the fruit – the soil, sun, pollinators. Smile at nature’s greatest bounty.
Include a range of colors for visual appeal. The fruit salad will also be more interesting (more…)
A Healthy Foods Diet Doesn’t Stoke Industry Profits, Hence the Orthorexia Label
Vegetables. Fruits. Tasty beans. Satisfying baked potatoes and whole grains. Crunchy fresh nuts. Fragrant herbs and spices. Are you forming a picture of a delicious day of eating? Are you imagining vibrant health, a trim figure, and a sustainable garden or small family farm?
Wouldn't you think this is a healthy, delicious choice?
Well, according to certain “experts,” this kind of diet is downright sick. Believe it or not, there is increased media attention on a fake “eating disorder” called orthorexia. Sufferers of this “disorder” are accused of eating the most unprofitable foods – fresh from the soil, cooked at home, simple and naturally appealing. Such whole foods provide little opportunity for big business to make a buck on your ruining your health or big pharma to make a buck (or several billion of them) selling you the pills to fix the effects of the manufactured foods.
When I first read about this “disorder,” quite honestly I thought it was a joke. However, although not an official medical diagnosis, medical sources do discuss and debate orthorexia and (more…)
Stumped for what to give your friends and family that already seem to have everything? Or even if they genuinely need another sweater, maybe you have different tastes. What if giving health were as easy as giving a package with a nice bow?
The prestigious New England Journal of Medicine just published a study showing that, as a country, we are losing ground to obesity. People are smoking less, which is great. Yet the hastening of death from obesity more than wipes out the gain from reduced smoking.
On average, because of being over their ideal weight, people will live a full
You can give the gift of health to yourself and others!
year less! Of course, this is an average. Normal weight people will not lose any of their allotted years, but obese people will lose a lot more.
Would you give your family or friends cigarettes as a holiday gift? Of course not! So why would you give them food that will shorten their lifespan as much or more?
If you are giving food as a holiday gift, choose yummy whole foods. Think about a fruit basket, dried fruit in nice packages, fancy nuts, or gourmet dark chocolate.
If you are serving food over the holiday or bringing a dish to a potluck, there are thousands of whole food recipes your party will enjoy. Check out the newsletter archives at Dr. McDougall’s site or the fat free vegan site with fantastic plant-based recipes. Not only will you be boosting health for one meal, but you will be educating all those enjoying your cooking. Maybe you’ll even set them on a path to permanent weight loss. Let them grab back that year that obesity is robbing them of.
The gift of health is truly the best, and yes, you can give it. Your example of your own healthy choices paves the way, educating and motivating others all year long.
Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!
Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet, the smart person’s nutrition book built on sustainable food choices. Enjoy six kinds of whole foods for permanent, hunger-free weight loss and health.
It’s True – Something this Good Can Also Be Healthy
Okay, healthy in moderation only, but who wants to quibble. Let’s not dissect our chocolate. This incredible food, in its most unprocessed forms, contains over 350 biologically active compounds. As in all whole foods, the total effect is greater than the sum of the parts.
Theobromine, one of the best known chocolate constituents, is a mood enhancer and mild stimulant. Flavonoids are plant chemicals, strongly represented in chocolate, with numerous beneficial effects:
Anti-oxidant
Help balance inflammation
Protect the circulatory system and help prevent blood clots
None of these benefits have much to do with why I start my week with a large chunk of dark chocolate. On Mondays, the week seems endless. The weekend, already past, beckons strongly. A bit of pampering is irresistible. The health benefits are only a nice add-on.
So first thing Monday morning, I breakfast on whole grain cereal topped with fruit and two tablespoons of ground flaxseeds. This is my usual fast weekday breakfast. The Monday difference is using chocolate soy milk, not the usual vanilla, over the cereal.
About 9:30 or 10 am, it’s time for another dose – this time half a dark chocolate bar. My favorite way to relish this Monday chocolate is in small
Dark chocolate bar - don't settle for less
pieces, dipped into some soy yogurt stirred with nuts. I love everything about this hard dark chocolate: the aroma, the taste, the texture, how it makes me feel. I sniff my chocolate deeply before consuming. Anyone walking by might wonder what I was up to.
After finishing the chocolate, I still have a bit of soy yogurt and nuts to enjoy. Hot green tea is the last necessity of this weekly ritual. The rest of Monday just streams away, and soon the rest of the week as well.
Half of a 3.5 ounce chocolate bar is enough for the desired effect. My favorite is Equal Exchange Chocolates, mint flavor, which is both organic and fair trade. This delightful product is 67% cacao, which means that chocolate is the main ingredient.
Dark chocolate is REAL chocolate. The milk version, aside from the issues with dairy foods, dilutes the chocolate, making it almost flavorless compared to the real thing. Also, be aware that Dutch processed chocolate, in order to remove this food’s bitter edge, also strips many of the beneficial chocolate components.
Learn to love slightly bitter chocolate – you’ll get used to this flavor faster than you think. There’s no pay-off in tricking your body with common candy bars that have more milk, sugar, and chemicals than they do chocolate.
Dark chocolate is gourmet on a budget, feel-good without later mood crash, circulatory enhancer without prescription cost or side effects. Read the label to eliminate brands with milk or butter. Have fun trying all the others – new possibilities grace store shelves as more and more people discover dark chocolate as the best occasional junk food treat.
You actually will benefit from and enjoy dark chocolate most when you choose moderate amounts. Half a bar a week – any day you’d like – should be enough to reward yourself without gaining weight. Okay, maybe twice a week, but then treat yourself with other whole foods instead….
Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!
Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet, the smart person’s nutrition book built on sustainable food choices. Enjoy six kinds of whole foods for permanent, hunger-free weight loss and health.
Halloween Nostalgia – How You Can Have More Fun Than the Kids!
We adults may pretend Halloween is for the kids, but deep down there is nostalgia for the excitement of our own childhood on October 31. For me, the best part of Halloween was the anticipation. What costume would I wear? How about my friends? Would it be raining on that crucial night?
Healthy and fun Halloween
Most of all, my anticipation was all about what our neighbors were going to hand out as treats. How many houses could I go to? What goodies would layer our table when I dumped out the Halloween candy bag?
Actually eating the candy was anti-climatic. Much of our sweets collection ended up in the trash.
You can get that same anticipation now by leaving yourself open to chance, stepping out of the ordinary. The fun is in the process of change, seeking the new the same way a kid plans a cool costume for trick-or-treat.
Step into the world of whole foods, healthy eating, and permanent weight loss. Yes, you can still enjoy that sweet surprise of Halloween. Open your favorite plant-based cookbook to the dessert section, close your eyes and choose a recipe at random, cook and enjoy.
If you don’t have a suitable cookbook, online is just as good. Head over to the dessert section of Fat Free Vegan and let your mouse randomly choose the recipe that was meant for you. Halloween can get better every year if you make this your new tradition.
Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!
Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet, the smart person’s nutrition book built on sustainable food choices. Enjoy six kinds of whole foods for permanent, hunger-free weight loss and health.
