Showing posts with label Nutrition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nutrition. Show all posts

May 14, 2015

High Protein Peanut Butter Chocolate Smoothie, No protein powder

This smoothie recipe has NO protein Powder.  Protein powders contain very high amounts of free glutamate (MSG) and they make a lot of people have headaches, sweats, fatigue and other symptoms.  Plus they are not a whole food and highly processed. Here is a recipe that contains 21 grams of protein and stays around 300 calories. It's not a decadent smoothie, but it is tasty and healthy for you if you need to watch calories, carbs and increase protein and fiber.

1/2 cup Milk, (cow milk has most protein)
1/2 banana
1 or 2 tablespoons cocoa
1 tablespoon natural peanut butter
2 cups frozen greens (kale, Spinach, Chard)
1 envelope unflavored gelatin or 1 tablespoon.
1 tablespoon chia seeds
4 packets stevia  (sweeten to taste)
1 cup water
1 cup ice cubes (optional if you like your smoothies frosty)

Put in a high powered blender and blend.

~300 Calories
13 g fat
8.9 g fiber
29 g carbs
21 g protein

Feb 17, 2011

A Practical Lesson of Evolutionary Nutrition:

Imagine a small, early history, hunting gathering village of people; our earliest known ancestors.  They gathered nuts, seeds, roots, berries, grasses, greens and herbs on a daily basis.  Often they had a small amount of game meat to eat.  They didn't salt their food, they didn't sweeten their food, they didn't add oil to their food.  They ate the food as it came out of the earth.  Raw, fresh and the truest sense of organic.  They worked hard gathering, walking and hunting their game, then cooking and making camp.  Now imagine centuries later, a small faming village.  They still gather what they can but they also cultivate their own vegetables and raise animals, like goats for milk and meat.  The goats eat their natural diet of grass and herbs.  They walk everywhere they go.  They are all strong and healthy, even the old.  When a villager is deficient or has a disease they increase a certain food, or add certain herbs to increase health and wellness.  No one craves sugar, or salty snacks.  They eat to live.  They eat moderately and mindfully of what will be available in the future.  This is how our bodies evolved and were meant to survive.
  Imagine many, many centuries later, people spend much of the day sitting.  They need food so they go to a grocery store where they can buy endless possibilities. The food is processed to the point where it's origins are uncertain.  They purchase nothing that is in the same form it grew in. Meat is from farms where the animals don't ever see the light of day, are sickly and given high doses of medication and they eat grain and feces of other animals.  Then they purchase milk from equally sick, medicated and undernourished animals.  They are fat but lack the proper nutrition to produce quality milk.   The isle of sweets is filled with the high calorie, nutrient deficient cakes, cookies and candies.  Each single serving containing an entire day or weeks worth of sugars to our early ancestors.  People trying to avoid the high calories go for the artificially sweetened products. These are products produced to allow people to eat endless amounts of sweet satiating, nutrient deficient delicacies.  With out even knowing where the food came from or what it contains the carts are filled to the brim with food that is high in calories, fats and chemicals and is practically void of any real nutrients that your body needs for energy on a cellular level.  An occasional few make it to the produce section where they buy genetically modified vegetables and fruits, that are twice the size they are meant to be and half as ripe.  They are laden with unnatural chemicals to increase shelf life and destroy diseases proliferated by under nourishing the soil and thereby causing disease in the plants.  They have absorbed the chemical pesticides or have a layer coating the outside that is not water soluble and cannot simply be washed away.  They go home and eat the sweets first and let the vegetables sit in the refrigerator until what little nutrition was contained in them  is destroyed.  They can't figure out why they don't have energy to make it through the day and they can't figure out why they are so overweight or suffer from headaches or chronic diseases.  It may not be obvious to all, but people were not meant to eat the modern day diet.  If you go to the source of our food it is clear that our animals and crops are just as vitamin and mineral deficient as  we are.  Our ancestors did not count calories.  They did not watch their carbohydrates or worry about how much protein they were getting.  They may not have been as lucky to have the sanitary and comfortable conditions we have now but they certainly had more energy to work harder and did not get the cancers and chronic conditions we face today.  If we are not feeding our cells with energy to repair and replicate we will feel very run down and unenergized.  Our cells are not looking for calories in and calories out.  They are looking for vitamins and minerals that are from plant sources, making it easy for our bodies to digest and use them.  Feed your body what it has cleverly evolved and been created to eat.  Not Wonder Bread...  Not Chips Ahoy...  Not Dunkin Donuts...  Not baked potato covered in sour cream, bacon bits and cheddar cheese...
-V

Oct 12, 2010

BEWARE: Hidden Sugar Everywhere

There are sugars hidden in plain sight in a majority of prepackaged foods.  Even those you wouldn't suspect, like whole wheat bread, or chips or pasta sauces.  You may be getting a lot more refined sugar in your diet than you would have ever imagined.  You don't have to eat a candy bar to get a large helping of sugar. Our bodies were not made to use the massive amounts of refined carbohydrate that this generation consumes.  This is largely the reason for the unusual type 2 diabetes (adult onset) in children and young adults.  
I watch in horror as other parents give their kids a "homemade" and "nutritious" lunch that is mostly sugar.  They think they are being such responsible parents when in reality they are just ignorant to what is really in that food.  It's not their fault entirely, they have been mislead by food companies. 
Big fast food restaurants claim to have better choices, but I see hidden sugar and fat, like in the huge packages of salad dressing, or the caramel dip for apple slices.  Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to your health and preventing disease.  Be aware of what you eat and what you are feeding your children and family.  Read labels and know what you are looking for.  Here are some of the basics in sugar-ology.


There are about 4.2 grams per teaspoon of sugar
There is one gram of carbohydrate in one gram of sugar
To maintain healthy blood glucose levels for the average person, you should not eat more than 30-45 grams of carbohydrates in a meal.


A popular fast food restaurant serves apples and milk on the side of a hamburger as a more healthy alternative to fries and soda.  The apples come with a caramel dip and the milk is chocolate.  The entire meal consists of 43 grams of sugar...  that is over 10 teaspoons of sugar and over 80 grams of carbohydrates.


Lets compare this to the diligent mom who sent a lunch to school-


Peanut butter and Jelly sandwich, juice box, chips and fruit roll up.  55 Grams of sugar.  That is over 12.6 teaspoons of sugar. That is over 2.6 times the amount of carbohydrate an adult should eat in one meal, 118 grams!


When we are children all of our organs work very well.  Our bodies have no problems tackling the high amounts of sugar we feed our kids. But as we age, we wear out our organs and our cells don't repair quite as fast.  The super high amounts of sugar we eat can break down our pancreas, which handles blood sugar levels. The body needs sugar but not huge surges of refined sugars.  We are creating a diabetic atmosphere in a person that does not have diabetes.  People with diabetes cannot create enough insulin for their body to handle all of the sugar they eat, their blood sugar can get very high and stay very high.  Having constantly high blood sugar causes heart disease, vision loss, nerve damage, kidney damage and more.

The best way to avoid a lot of sugar is to make your own meals, and stay away from prepackaged foods.  They are always loaded up with excess sugar.  Stay away from refined flours as well.  Refined flours may not taste like sugar but they might as well be since they are quickly converted to sugar in our bodies.  Also stay away from white rice, and other high carbohydrate foods, that are not also full of protein or fiber.   When carbohydrates and sugars are bound in natural form to the fiber in fruits and vegetables they take our body much longer to convert them to sugars.  This slow process keeps our bodies from receiving a huge surge of sugar in the blood.  Read labels and be aware of what you are feeding your children and putting in your own mouth!



Oh, and please DONT replace sugar with chemical sweeteners!  Replace them with fruit!

 Just for fun: Frightening ad by sugar companies, when artificial sugars first came on the market.  


-V    
      

High Protein Peanut Butter Chocolate Smoothie, No protein powder

This smoothie recipe has NO protein Powder.  Protein powders contain very high amounts of free glutamate (MSG) and they make a lot of people...