Eat Smart

Choosing Healthy Fats

Good Fats, Bad Fats, and the Power of Omega-3s

For years, nutritionists and doctors have preached that a low-fat diet is the key to losing weight, managing cholesterol, and preventing health problems. But more than just the amount of fat, it’s the types of fat you eat that really matter. Bad fats increase cholesterol and your risk of certain diseases, while good fats protect your heart and support overall health. In fact, good fats—such as omega-3 fats—are essential to physical and emotional health.

Making sense of dietary fat

A walk down the grocery aisle will confirm our obsession with low-fat foods. We’re bombarded with supposedly guilt-free options: baked potato chips, fat-free ice cream, low-fat candies, cookies, and cakes. But while our low-fat options have exploded, so have obesity rates. Clearly, low-fat foods and diets haven’t delivered on their trim, healthy promises.
Despite what you may have been told, fat isn’t always the bad guy in the waistline wars. Bad fats, such as trans fats, are guilty of the unhealthy things all fats have been blamed for—weight gain, clogged arteries, and so forth. But good fats such as the monounsaturated fats, polyunsaturated fats, and omega-3s have the opposite effect. In fact, healthy fats play a huge role in helping you manage your moods, stay on top of your mental game, fight fatigue, and even control your weight.
The answer isn’t cutting out the fat—it’s learning to make healthy choices and to replace bad fats with good ones that promote health and well-being.

 Types of dietary fat: Good fats vs. bad fats

To understand good and bad fats, you need to know the names of the players and some information about them. There are four major types of fats:

• monounsaturated fats (good fats)
• polyunsaturated fats (good fats)
• trans fats (bad fats)
• saturated fats (questionable fats)

Monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats are known as the “good fats” because they are good for your heart, your cholesterol, and your overall health.
 

GOOD FATS
Monounsaturated fat	Polyunsaturated fat
Olive oil Canola oil Sunflower oil Peanut oil Sesame oil Avocados Olives Nuts (almonds, peanuts, macadamia nuts, hazelnuts, pecans, cashews) Peanut butter	Soybean oil Corn oil Safflower oil Walnuts Sunflower, sesame, and pumpkin seeds Flaxseed Fatty fish (salmon, tuna, mackerel, herring, trout, sardines) Soymilk Tofu

BAD FATS
Trans fat
Commercially-baked pastries, cookies, doughnuts, muffins, cakes, pizza dough Packaged snack foods (crackers, microwave popcorn, chips) Stick margarine Vegetable shortening Fried foods (French fries, fried chicken, chicken nuggets, breaded fish) Candy bars

Saturated fats are “questionable” fats because of the conflicting medical evidence about the effect of saturated fats on cholesterol and the risk for heart disease. Some saturated fats can have health benefits as well as potentially negative effects on cholesterol. For example, despite their high saturated fat content, whole-fat dairy products are a good source of calcium and protein, while (unhydrogenated) coconut oil may boost energy and endurance.

Here Are 8 Reason As To Why You Should Eat Grapes

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How To Make Low-Cal, Gluten-Free Blackberry-Almond Cobbler

 

This homey, rustic dessert just became even more delicious.
Easier than pie, the classic cobbler is a treat from the first bite to the final crumb. But finding one that’s both  delish and also low in calories is hard to come by. Until now.


Rich and wonderfully filling, the blackberry-almond cobbler by Chef Robert Landolphi is a tantalizing dessert with a crumbly sweet crust layered on top of fresh blackberries. Landolphi’s take features cornstarch, which he explains acts as a thickener when mixed into the fruit, preventing the filling from becoming too runny. Top it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt.
Best of all? You won’t feel too guilty enjoying this dish.
At only 276 calories, Landolphi’s blackberry-almond cobbler earned the Cooking Light stamp of approval, meaning it won’t break the scale.

Another delicious perk? This recipe features homemade almond meal flour, making it gluten-free.
“Making your own almond meal flour doesn’t take long,” says Landolphi, whose wife was diagnosed with celiac disease in 2000. “Simply place blanched, unsalted almonds in a food processor, and process until they’re a flour-like consistency. Pulse in one-second bursts, and check the flour consistency often. Blending too long can cause the almonds to release their natural oils and make the flour moist and clumpy.”
Simple and low in calories, this cobbler is so rich that you’ll happily share with loved ones…or enjoy it all by yourself.

Gluten-Free Blackberry-Almond Cobbler

Level: Easy

Prep Time: 8 minutes

Total Time: 48 minutes

Yield: Serves 8 (serving size 1/8 of cobbler with 1/4 cup ice cream)

Calories: 276

Ingredients: 

• 4 cups fresh blackberries
• 3 Tbsps. sugar
• 1 Tbsp. cornstarch
• 1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
• cooking spray
• 2.3 oz. brown rice flour (about 1/2 cup)
• 1.8 oz. almond meal flour (about 1/2 cup)
• 1/4 cup sugar (for topping)
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/8 tsp. salt
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 4 Tbsps. butter, melted and cooled
• 2 cups vanilla ice cream

Instructions: 

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
2. To prepare filling, combine first 4 ingredients in a large bowl, tossing to coat. Pour mixture into an 8-inch square glass or ceramic baking dish coated with cooking spray.
3. To prepare topping, weigh or lightly spoon flours into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flours, 1/4 cup sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl, stirring with a whisk. Add egg, stirring to combine. Add butter, stirring just until moist.
4. Drop batter by teaspoonfuls onto blackberry mixture. Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes or until topping is lightly browned. Cool 10 minutes. Serve with ice cream.

Healthy Living

Following a Raw Food Diet Plan

If you want to adopt the raw food diet plan, you will want to do so slowly. It is difficult to make the transition from a standard American diet of processed and cooked foods to a diet of raw whole foods. However, with a plan and a little guidance, you should be able to transition easily and somewhat painlessly.

The raw foods diet is a meal plan that constitutes of meals created from 75 percent or more raw foods. Follow these tips for a successful transition to the raw
food diet:


Make the transition gradually
Set goals for yourself. Start with eating half raw food, half cooked food. After a week of this, move to 55 percent raw, 45 percent cooked, then 60 percent raw and 40 percent cooked. Keep this schedule up until you are accustomed to a diet that is 75 percent or more from raw food, and less than 25 percent cooked foods. This will minimize side effects, such as bloating and flatulence, and give you time to get used to preparing raw food recipes instead of the recipes you've been accustomed to preparing.

Invest in a dehydrator
The definition of raw food, according to this diet plan, is any food that has not been heated to more than 116 degrees. This is because specific enzymes considered precious to adherents of the raw food diet plan are destroyed at temperatures higher than this. You will want to invest in a special dehydrator that heats the food to lower than 116 degrees Fahrenheit because this can be used to create jerky and dried fruits and vegetables, which can be a helpful menu item for those missing cooked foods.

 Bulk up on raw food recipes
Initially you may think you are going to subsist on plates of raw carrots and broccoli, but you'll soon find yourself craving actual meals. Peruse raw food diet menus online for ideas beyond celery sticks. If you make a meal plan ahead of time, you'll be less likely to succumb to cravings for comfort foods you used to prepare.

Super Spinach Green Juice Recipe

There are not many leafy greens that give you more alkalizing green juice with minimum bitter taste than spinach. If you really want to create a wonderfully green and chlorophyll rich juice, this spinach juice recipe will do wonders for your health. All spinach by itself is still a bit much for most people, if you don’t mix it with at least one more ingredient. I like to use cucumber as it is water dense and helps thin out the spinach juice a bit. If you can’t handle just the spinach and cucumber you can add a squeeze of lemon to add another dimension to the juice.

 The beauty of this juice is that it is low calorie, low sugar, high in nutrition and alkalizing. Ingredients: 4 to 5 large handfuls of Spinach 1 medium cucumber ½ lime (optional)


Directions:
Wash and prepare the ingredients as you typically would for your juicer. Add in the Spinach first followed by the cucumber to wash as much of the spinach juice through. Add a few slices of lime without the peel or squeeze the lime to the finished juice and stir.