Healthy Walnuts Good for Healthy Eating

Walnuts are good for healthy eating. These nuts are high in antioxidants. It is important to have antioxidants in your diet because it helps to buildup your immune system. The better your immune system, the healthier your body will be over all.

You can use walnuts to help fight off colds. Why? Because of all the antioxidants that are naturally in walnuts. This is great for your body and a natural way to stay healthy and strong without having to do anything particularly special in your healthy eating habits.

You can add walnuts to a green salad to give it texture and flavor. In fact for healthy eating, you should eat walnuts on your salad instead of eating high carbohydrate croûtons. Croûtons can put a lot of weight on you.

Enjoy the rich flavor and health benefits of healthy eating by eating at least one fourth a cup of walnuts each week in your meal plan.

A healthy vegetarian lunch

I’m not a vegetarian but I enjoy a variety of foods, including proteins that aren’t meat. Lately I’ve been craving fried tofu so I bought myself a package of extra firm tofu from Trader Joe’s. I’m too scared to try anything but extra firm, it just seems too squishy for me! This is also why, when I do cook with tofu, I cut very thin slices.

So, I started off with a non-stick skillet, where I added about a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil (also from Trader Joe’s). I cut some very thin slices of tofu and fried it up in the pan until nice and crispy. The olive oil gives it the perfect base to sprinkle on sea salt and pepper so that it will stick.

In the meantime, I had sweet potato fries baking in the toaster oven, on top of sprayed olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper. The fries were also from Trader Joe’s. When those were done, I paired it with reduced-sugar ketchup.

I toppoed off the meal with a nice salad and yummy italian dressing.

Oatmeal for health

Oatmeal is a product of ground oat groats. There has been increasing interest in oatmeal in recent years due to its beneficial health effects. Daily consumption of a bowl of oatmeal can lower blood cholesterol, due to its soluble fiber content. it may reduce the risk of heart disease, when combined with a low-fat diet. Oats are a good source of many nutrients including vitamin E, zinc, selenium, copper, iron, manganese and magnesium. Oats are also a good source of protein. The difference between insoluble and soluble fiber, besides the foods that they come from, is what they do in your body. Soluble fiber slows down the digestion of starch. This may be beneficial to diabetics because, when you slow down the digestion of starch, you avoid the sharp rises in your blood sugar level that usually occur following a meal.

The Healthy Cranberry

Cranberries are ranked as one of the top ten foods high in antioxidants according to the USDA. So the more you can get these tiny tart fruits into your diet, the better. Full of vitamins and known for fighting infections, cranberries are delicious as well as healthy.
Cranberries may not cure a urinary tract infection, but they can help prevent one. Cranberries contain properties that actually helps keep the bacteria that causes infections from sticking to the bladder wall. So the “bad bacteria” is essentially flushed out of your system. Even drinking one glass a day of cranberry juice has been found to help suppress the growth of ulcer-causing bacteria. And there is more good news about cranberries. According to the USDA, it looks as though cranberry phytochemicals are good for the heart. A study showed that people who drank one 8oz. glass of cranberry juice every day significantly reduced LDL, or “bad” cholesterol. And cranberry juice may also help increase the good cholesterol.

So why not get cranberries into as many recipes as possible? You can add them to yogurt, cereal and oatmeal. Bake them in cookies and cakes. Enjoy them in sauces, drinks and jellies. Even though it is a tiny fruit, the cranberry packs a mighty healthy punch!

Cucumber

The flesh of cucumbers is primarily composed of water but also contains ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and caffeic acid, both of which help soothe skin irritations and reduce swelling. Cucumbers hard skin is rich in fiber and contains a variety of beneficial minerals including silica, potassium and magnesium. It is high in potassium, magnesium and fiber. It helps blood pressure dropped to healthier levels. cucumber as a provider of a very healthy juice beneficial for its properties as an increases of the flow of urine and as a complement to the effects of celery and carrot juice for rheumatic conditions, while at the same time being a soothing skin lotion.

Looking For Healthy New Years Eve Party Snacks?

If you are hosting a New Years Eve party and are thinking about what snacks to have on hand, try a snack that is delicious and has some great health benefits. One such party food is a veggie platter with a tasty bean dip. The veggies and beans provide the important cancer fighting flavonols–an antioxidant that research has shown might help prevent colon polyps from returning in a more advanced state. In a study of 2,000 adults who had been treated for colon polyps — little benign tumors that have a chance of becoming cancerous, the people whose diets were highest in flavonols were 76 percent less likely to have a recurrent polyp in an advanced stage than those with the lowest intake. The best veggies to have on that platter? Those would be onions, celery, radishes, cucumbers, and peppers.

Easy Fruit Salad That is Delicious and Healthy

Get the New Year off to a healthy start by adding more fruit and veggies to your daily diet. This is a quick easy recipe for a salad that makes a perfect lunch or light dinner.

What you’ll need:

1 ripe papaya or mango
1 ripe banana
1/2 uji or Gala apple
1 ripe pear
1 tangerine
1/2 avocado
6 cups organic baby greens salad mix
1/2 lime

Chop or slice each fruit into different sizes so you have a variety of volumes and textures.
Then mix the fruit with the baby greens. Squeeze lime juice over the salad, and enjoy!

Favorite healthy foods

What are your favorite healthy foods? I have several that I like. One of my favorites is applesauce with a little cinnamon added. Every once in a while I will even heat it up. Or I will take an apple and chop it in half, removing the seeds. Then I sprinkle it with cinnamon sugar and microwave it until it is soft. Very tasty.
If I have baby carrots I will snack on them and dip them in salsa. The salsa is healthy because it is full of veggies. Or I will throw a scrubbed potato in the microwave and and cook it. Then I will add some low fat sour cream and a little margarine and treat myself to a baked potato.
I like eating cereal as a snack as well if I have it one hand. Or once in a while I make a big chef salad and load it up with good for you veggies and low fat low calorie dressing. Very tasty.

Here’s a yummy, healthy snack for you

You can have this snack in the morning, for breakfast, or you can have it as an evening snack. You could even pack it in your lunchbox to have during break time at work. If your kids have a “sofisticated” sort of taste, they would enjoy this too.

Start by taking a whole wheat (I like honey wheat) bagel and toasting it slightly. You want it just a little crispy on the outside and still soft on the inside. This counts as your whole grain.

Next you’ll get your dairy and some protein through your cheese. Go for the fancy cheeses like brie or chevre. Laughing cow is a “safe” taste if you are scared to try exotic cheeses. Spread this on your bagels.

Buy a jar of fruit preserves that are 100% fruit. You should never buy any that adds sugar. Spread this on top of the cheese.

That’s it! Next step? EAT! It is Sooo tasty!

Trail Mix

You can make your own trail mix. Sure, you can buy a prepackaged one at the store but there is a sense of health when you take the ingredients and create something to call your own. Here are some suggestions to put in your trail mix:

Pumpkin seeds
Pepita seeds
sunflower seeds
cashews
dried pineapple
raisins
crasins
cranberries
orange cranberries
dried blueberries
almonds
chocolate chips
peanut butter chips
white chocolate chips
macadamia nuts
dark chocolate chips
brazil nuts

and many more!

What can you do with it. Well, you can put it in smaller containers or baggies and grab one on the go or carry them around with you or in your car for when a hunger stike happens. You can also sprinkle some on your salad for a sweet and salty crunch that is also healthy. You can put them in your children’s lunch boxes or take them while shopping so they aren’t hungry.

Trail mix is also a fun way to get the family involved on creating healthy snacks and they will know what they are putting into their body.

You can also do a similar version with granola. The possibilities and varities are endless.

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