Posts Tagged ‘vegetables’

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100% Raw Food Diet – Is That the REAL Goal?

February 15th, 2011

Is the goal of improving your diet really to be 100% raw?

100% raw

For some people it is. For me, not so much.

I’m not a big fan of putting labels on things or striving to be a certain “%” raw. After all, how can you tell if you’re 85% raw?

If you’ve read Eating for Energy you’ll know that I espouse adding more raw plant-based foods into your diet. And I even give you 120 recipes and a 12-week meal plan to help you do just that.

But my intention isn’t to convert into a raw foodist. It’s up to if you want to be 100% raw.

As a nutritionist, not a fanatic, my first priority is to recommend what I think are the healthiest dietary options. For most of us, eating more fruits and vegetables falls into that category.

But there are also instances when just might be better off cooking your food. And this is where some people and other raw foodies might give me some grief. Believe me, I’ve received hate mail from others telling me that our diet should 80% fruit, others telling me that we need meat and dairy, and on and on.

That’s great. That’s what works for them.

I’m not here to convince you that you need to be 100% raw. I’m here to inspire and educate you as to what is healthy and what is less healthy.

Here are some examples of vegetables that you MAY consider cooking every now and then:

Broccoli

This cruciferous vegetable contains tons of cancer-fighting and health-giving properties. But, in its raw state, it also contains goitrogenic compounds which can depress your thyroid. These are lessened when broccoli is slightly cooked, steamed, boiled (ie. heated).

Spinach

Even I add raw baby spinach to my salads and smoothies but some research shows that raw spinach contains oxalic and phytic acids, natural compounds which can impair calcium and iron absorption, respectively.

Further studies out of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry have revealed that spinach (along with carrots, broccoli, asparagus, cabbage, and a few others) may provide greater amounts of antioxidants like beta-carotene and other carotenoids in its cooked vs. raw state.

Am I blowing the whistle on a 100% raw diet?

You might think I’m crazy for recommending non-raw foods, but the reality is that eating more plant-based foods should be the overall goal. Time and time again and study after study have shown that moving toward more of plant-based diet will improve ALL aspects of you health!

If it so happens that most of those fruits and veggies are raw, then that’s great.

Will some oxalic or phytic acid ruin your body’s ability to absorb important nutrients? Probably not to a significant degree.

So whether you choose to move closer to a 100% raw diet is up to you. I’m not here to judge.

The point I am trying to make in this post is that HEALTH, not fanaticism, should be our primary objective.

If you feel your body doesn’t respond well to ALL foods in their raw state, then don’t it force the issue. Many people have trouble getting all that fiber to co-operate with their system. If you want to enjoy a warm vegetable soup (instead of cold raw soup) during the cold winter months, then go right ahead and don’t feel bad about doing so!

At the end of the day, if you can enjoy a head of broccoli, even cooked, then in my books that’s far better than not eating it at all.

In sum…

Do I believe that most of your diet should be raw plant-based foods? YES.

Can you still cook some of your food? YES – if you like.

I’ll finish by leaving you with something very powerful to keep in mind…

You make the rules! You determine which dietary approach and which foods work best for your body. For me, Eating for Energy resonates with my constitution. And it does for millions of other people as well.

But if your body functions optimally with the occasional piece of meat or free-run eggs, then that’s great. Just make sure you’re getting tons of fruits and veggies on the side, and you’ll be fine!

eating for energy

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References:

Miglio, C. et al. (2008) Effects of Different Cooking Methods on Nutritional and Physicochemical Characteristics of Selected Vegetables. J. Agric. Food Chem., 2008, 56 (1), pp 139–147.

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==> What do you think about this topic? Is your goal to be 100% raw OR is it something else? Let me know in the comments.

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Posted in Food For Thought, Raw Foods

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Simple Way to Eat More Fruits and Veggies

December 28th, 2010

fruits and veggiesI don’t know if I’ve already shared this fruit and veggie trick yet but I just put together a video which shows you a simple way to eat more fruits and veggies (see video below).

The reason we should be eating more of these “plant foods” is that they are the key to longevity, radiant health, and an energetic body.

Other than essential minerals and nutrients, fruits and vegetables are packed with disease-fighting phytonutrients that will keep you heathy, no matter what life throws your way.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Americans are from their recommended dose of fruits and veggies revealing that the average fruit intake among persons aged >2 years remained the same from 1994–1996 to 1999–2002 (1.6 servings) and that average vegetable consumption declined from 3.4 to 3.2 servings during the same period.

No wonder the nation is so sick!

So how many servings of fruits and vegetables do you need each day?

8-10 seems to be the concensus.

And that’s really not that difficult if you’re making salads, smoothies, or juices on a daily basis.

But if you need more help, then the little trick I share in this video should help.

Enjoy

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Posted in General Nutrition

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3 Ways to Get Your 10 Servings a Day [how to get more fruits & vegetables]

June 7th, 2010

For years, you have heard about how you should be eating ten servings a day of fruits and vegetables in order to get the most out of your everyday diet.

But ten sounds like such a large number, especially when most of us only eat three meals a day. Where can we fit in those extra seven servings?

It is too much to snack that many times in a day, so many people simply dismiss the ten servings suggestion as a great idea – for someone else. Maybe professional athletes or fitness gurus can get to ten servings of raw foods a day, but not a normal person, right?

But what most people forget is that a serving is not a meal all by itself. A serving is simply one portion, which can be part of a meal along with many other portions. So eating ten servings of fruits and vegetables a day can be as simple as having three servings within each meal, with one small snack later on in the day.

For example, breakfast offers you plenty of opportunities to have more than one serving of fruit. You can have a banana for breakfast, along with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, and a handful of blueberries. Or, if you are really in a rush, you can combine all three servings into a fresh morning smoothie. Combining some fresh greens like spinach in a food processor along with pears, apples or kiwis will give you a great meal you can drink on the go, and provide you with a great selection of your daily requirements of fresh raw foods.

At lunch, you can easily create a delicious salad that will give you at least three servings of fruit and vegetables. Rather than settling for a simple green salad, mix it up depending on the seasons. In winter, some sliced carrots will help to keep you full and satisfied; in spring, enjoy the first batch of peapods; in summer, cool things down with a mix of citrus fruit segments; and in the fall, you can use squash or avocado to give your salads some seasonal weight.

Dinnertime will allow you to be just as creative, and still get in a ton of fruits and vegetables. If you want, you can use a veggie as the main course – a squash can be eaten right out of the peel, or you can slice it out into a raw pasta. If you prefer to have a different type of main course, you can still use fruits and vegetables both on and beside the main item.

For example, if you have cold-smoked salmon, you can use citrus to further “cook” the fish, or you can wrap the fillet in thin slices of butternut squash. Beside it on the plate, you can have a fresh vegetable medley that will give you an extra serving. And of course, for dessert, a bowl of mixed berries, or a raw seasonal fruit tart should be enough to give you all ten servings of fruits and vegetables in a single day, without feeling like you have forced it.

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What Foods Are Acidic?

April 30th, 2010

If you have decided to eat for energy, you may have begun to hear more and more about the pH levels of your food, and how they can affect your overall health. It has been said that a diet higher in acidic foods can result in an increase in stiffness of the joints and muscles, as well as an increase in headaches. If you are interested to know what your pH levels are, you can test your urine with pH papers, available at any pharmacy or drug store.

It is true that foods with a high acidity will be less beneficial to you than if you were to dine on a diet with a higher concentration of alkaline or non-acidic foods. And while you might think it would be relatively easy to determine which raw foods have a high acidity level and which do not, there are always a few trick foods that will make it very difficult to guess.

For instance, you might assume, based on the sour taste, that a lemon would certainly be highly acidic. The truth is, lemon juice is in the low end of the alkaline scale – it is not the most alkaline food to be sure, but it certainly is not acidic in your system.

A high energy diet, of course, cannot forgo all acidic foods when maintaining a raw diet, but it is a good idea to limit your intake of highly acidic foods as much as possible.

Raw foods can even have differing pH levels within the same food groupings. For example, high levels of acidity can be found in some nuts and legumes like walnuts, peanuts and lentils – which can certainly be a healthy part of a raw diet. Other nuts, like filberts and brazil nuts, are less acidic; and nuts like almonds are actually very high in alkalinity.

There are also some vegetables that are fairly high in acidity, including asparagus, green olives and artichokes. Again, these food items can be successfully incorporated into a healthy raw food diet for effective eating for energy, but care should be taken to include highly alkaline foods on the same plate, including most leafy greens, or other items like carrots, beets or cucumbers.

Surprisingly, most fruits are moderately to highly alkaline, with the notable exception of the very popular blueberry. This little fruit has an incredible number of benefits for the body when eaten raw, so it would be a mistake to remove it from your raw foods diet. But again, balance is what you are going for here, so for every heaping helping of blueberries you eat, make sure you include some alkaline fruits, like figs, raisins or prunes (highly alkaline), or peaches, bananas and avocado (moderately alkaline).

Avoiding acidic raw foods altogether is not practical or advisable for most people. These items often contain other benefits that you would be harder pressed to replace in a raw foods situation. But on the whole, you want your meals to be heavily favored towards an alkaline pH level, for optimal health and good eating.

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Posted in Food For Thought, General Nutrition, Raw Foods

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Why Eat a Raw Diet?

April 8th, 2010

“Why don’t you go raw?”

You might have had this asked of you at some point, if you have been talking to people about some of the new and innovative diet plans out there today. A raw diet plan has been gaining traction lately as far as popularity, and that has led some people to dismiss it as just another silly fad diet.

But hold your horses – this is not another quick weight loss miracle plan. If you take the time to really look, you will find that eating raw can offer you a lot of benefits. It is not always the easiest diet plan to follow, but the best things in life often require a little bit of hard work.

So, why go raw?

There are all sorts of benefits to consuming less cooked foods. For one, when you cook many of the foods we eat today, you leach away a lot of the benefits that your body could really use.

With vegetables, common cooking practices often include steaming or boiling, both of which pull out valuable nutrients and vitamins, leaving you with soggy, mushy carrots that are not nearly as useful or nutritious as they were before they hit the heat.

By cooking, you are also killing off the natural living enzymes in many foods – enzymes that can help with healthy digestion and processing of food within your body. Without those additional sources of enzymes, your body has to work hard to process, digest and pass foods, and often does a poorer job of it, meaning that what few nutrients are left in food are sometimes not fully absorbed by your body.

Another example of the killing power of cooking is milk products. These days, every milk product you can buy in the store – milk, cheese, and yogurt – has gone through a pasteurization process, killing off all of the bacteria in the milk. While this does protect you against the bad bacteria, it also destroys the good bacteria that can help your body.

Want proof?

Look at the new trend in yogurt – adding back in certain active bacterial cultures in order to benefit your overall health. Without pasteurization, those bacteria wouldn’t have to be added in – they would already be there.

So, how do you go raw? The best way to get into the groove with raw foods is to add them slowly, and little by little, remove the cooked items from your diet. Start off by substituting your side dishes at meals with raw items – cold raw soups, fresh salads or mixed vegetables instead of the usual hot items. Then, once your body begins to get used to these new sources of vitamins and nutrients, you can replace a meal a day with a raw alternative.

Breakfast is often the best place to start, as a smoothie for breakfast can really get your day going. Again, small steps are the best, and before you know it, you will be eating nothing but raw foods, and feeling great for it. And not only that, you will be able to sustain that sort of eating plan for the long term.

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Posted in Raw Foods

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