Nutritious choices made simple®
As a kid, I grew up carving pumpkins as a decoration for Halloween and having pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. A long time ago, my father told me that his relationship to pumpkins was quite different from mine. To my father, who grew up on a farm in Sicily, pumpkin was a squash to be eaten. My father said he would saute slices of pumpkin in olive oil; oil from the olives grown and pressed on his family’s farm. Sounds delicious, doesn’t it?
When human beings were truly hunters and gatherers during the Stone Age, nuts and berries were an important part of our diet. Think about how much easier we have it now since our hunting and gathering can take place at the local supermarket and farmers’ market. Take advantage of this ease and consider including these foods in your diet every day. Studies show that berries, nuts, colorful vegetables and fatty fish provide health benefits important to today’s lifestyle. Here are some ideas on how to enjoy these foods and why they are important to your health.
Salt, or the chemical term sodium chloride, has been so highly prized in our history that it has been used as currency and as a strategy to wage war. Salt rations that were given to Roman soldiers were known as salarium, an early term that became the word salary that we use today. Why did something as simple as salt come to have such power?
Everyone is being affected in some way by the current economy! What seems to be the almost daily rising price of gasoline has an impact on a budget. In order to keep the household budget balanced, when the costs of necessary items go up, we need to find ways we can spend less. Let me share with you some tips on how to control food costs. You can still eat healthy and balance the budget!
It seems as if we all love sugar! In my blog post “Carbohydrates: Not so simple…” from the Nutrition for Life series, I describe the role that sugar plays in our diets and how much our brains crave sugar. While our brains prefer sugar as an energy source, we are getting too much of it from foods and beverages that have “empty” calories because they are high in calories and low in nutrients.
The parent-child relationship is very important when it comes to providing for our children. We all want our children to be healthy. We know children who eat a variety of nutritious foods at meal and snack times will have the best chance to be healthy. The parent or caregiver is responsible for being the provider of nutritious meals and snacks at regular times in a place or space that is conducive to a pleasant and calm environment for eating.
Water is an essential nutrient with absolutely no calories, one that is required for our very existence. We can survive only minutes without air and only days without water. Of our total body weight, anywhere from 45% – 75% is made up of water, depending on the amount of body fat we have. Water not only makes up the largest component of our body; it is used continuously by every cell for the following necessary functions to:
We lose over 2 liters of water each day just by being alive through our breath, urine and bowel movements. Since our bodies cannot store water, we need to replace this water loss with water intake. It is recommended that adults consume 64 ounces (2 liters ~ 64 ounces) of water each day or eight 8 ounce glasses of water or other fluids…
Which do you think is better for you, butter or margarine?
Ever since studies came out demonstrating that trans fat is more harmful than saturated fat in terms of heart health, there has been a movement to reinstate butter over margarine as the healthier solid fat. Personally, I think it’s being used as an excuse to eat butter. I mean who doesn’t like butter? When my oldest daughter was preschool age and we went out to a restaurant, she would take a pat of butter and just eat it plain while we were waiting for our food to arrive. I can still see that satisfied look on her face.
Butter is made by mechanically processing (churning) cream or milk turning it into a solid (or saturated fat) at room temperature. Margarine is made by chemically processing oil turning it into a solid fat. This chemical process is known as hydrogenation and the partially hydrogenated oils found in shortening and hard margarines contain the types of trans fats that lower the “good” fats in our bloodstream, high density lipoproteins or HDL.
In terms of heart health, anything that lowers HDL is a no-no. We want to raise HDL levels in our bloodstream – since HDL carry cholesterol to be eliminated by the liver, thus lowering the risk of atherosclerosis or heart disease. Both dietary fats, saturated and trans, raise the “bad” fats in our bloodstream known as low density lipoprotein or LDL. It is obvious that we want to limit saturated and trans fats in our diet, so when we do use a solid fat, which is healthier, margarine or butter?