Friday, January 25, 2013

Ingredient Lists and tidbit or two

I watched an excellent documentary last night called "Hungry for Change." It made me excited about healthy eating again. Sometimes watching documentaries like that can be overwhelming, feeling like you have to reach the ideal diet all at once. But for me, they're almost always motivational as well.

Also, sometimes it's frustrating to get the end of a documentary and find out they're just trying to sell you a juicer. Nonetheless, I believe that this documentary contained a lot of truth. One of the things that this movie inspired me to do was to begin looking at the ingredients lists on my food items.

There are a few simple rules. First, the fewer ingredients on the list, the better the food is for you. Second, you want to be able to recognize all of the ingredients. If there is a big long list of scientific sounding ingredients, stay away!

I wanted to share a couple of our favorite healthy breakfast foods. The first, is a great alternative to regular yogurt. We always have on hand a great big tub of plain nonfat Greek yogurt. We also try to have a variety of berries in the freezer and some honey in the pantry. Defrost the berries, break them up a little, and mix in some Greek yogurt and honey. It's delicious, and you know exactly what's in it. Greek yogurt is said to be better than normal yogurt. (I won't pretend to know why... But I do know that it tastes a lot better!) And honey is supposed to be a very healthy sugar. Plus, you get to control how sweet you want it to be.

One last idea, is for when you need a quick snack. We toast up a little whole-wheat bread, spread on some peanut butter, and sprinkle on the raisins. Healthy, filling, and delicious!





Monday, January 21, 2013

Soup and Salad

So here's a tidbit of an idea that I'm trying right now for the first time: put down a layer of salad in your bowl before you serve up your soup, stir it in, and enjoy! This adds low- calorie, high nutrition bulk to your meal, helping you to eat less of the higher calorie soup. I think this is a brilliant idea, (I can say that because its not my own,) because if you have a salad on the side you feel the need to add dressing. If you have salad alone it can be dissatisfying. And let's be honest: more often than not we skip the salad and go straight for the more appetizing soup. Anyway... Just a thought!