Make mealtime more fun with this all-star quick and easy dip. Use as a accompaniment to grilled or cold roasted meat, poultry (especially wings), fish, egg and roasted or fried Vegetable dishes.
Carbs | 8.2 g per serving
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Red meat has taken a lot of hits over the years. Once the obvious cornerstone to a nutritious diet, red meat finds itself stuck in an uphill battle for relevancy. This is largely due to the system from which most Americans by their meat. The factory farm system is riddled with safety issues, both to the animals and the workers. Animals are exposed to massive amounts of antibiotics. Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation” and the documentary, “Food Inc.” are damning illustrations of a food industry that feeds the public burgers contaminated with poop and cows with large visible holes, surgically implanted holes. There is a way to eat beef humanely and reap the benefits of a forgotten superfood, and that’s through the consumption of grass-fed beef.
According to an article in The Nutrition Journal aside from being significant source of the macro-nutrient protein, “red meat, regardless of feeding regimen, is nutrient dense and regarded as an important source of essential amino acids, vitamins A, B6, B12, D, E, and minerals, including iron, zinc and selenium.” This means even factory farmed meat has its benefits. If you’re worried about contaminants, Dallas and Melissa Hartwig, authors of It Starts With Food, recommend sticking to leaner cuts of meat, as poisons collect in the fattier portions.
Nothing against Jamie Lee Curtis, but sometimes we’re not in the mood for yogurt — or we don’t have a spoon. These alternative foods will also keep your system on track.
The Crunchy, Salty Probiotic You Can Eat With Your Fingers
For a dairy-free digestive aid, try pickles, suggests Beth McDonald, MS, RDN, CSSD, an integrative and sports nutritionist at theContinuum Center for Health and Healing, an integrative health program affiliated with Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. Like yogurt, they’re loaded with the kinds of probiotics that displace bad bacteria in the gut, so they, too, can help ease bloating, gas, diarrhea, constipation and other digestive issues. They’re an especially good choice for vegetarians and vegans (who may also want to try other fermented foods like sauerkraut and kimchi, as well as miso soup and tempeh).
Ginger already has a strong reputation for being able to reduce nausea and vomiting, and it also appears to relax the digestive tract, says McDonald, allowing food to pass through comfortably without getting caught up. For full potency, McDonald suggests a tea made from an inch of raw ginger root boiled in 10 ounces of water for 30 minutes (try it with honey). You could also try ginger candies — opt for the soft, chewable kinds, as sucking in extra air around hard candy can cause gas.
The Hot Beverage That Will Soothe Your Insides
Chamomile has been used for centuries in Europe to relieve gastrointestinal complaints. This herb is believed to aid in sleep, and, McDonald says, it may also have a sedating effect on the digestive tract, leading to reduced symptoms of reflux, abdominal pain and cramping as well as nausea and vomiting. It’s best consumed as a tea, she says. (Keep in mind that chamomile is part of the ragweed family, so those with allergies should talk to a doctor before brewing a pot.)
The Yogurt Cousin You Can Drink Straight Out Of The Bottle
Okay, we’re fudging a bit here, because whilekefir isn’t technically yogurt, it’s awfully close — which means it has the same optimal mix of probiotics (live “good” bacteria that maintain balance in the gut) and prebiotics (nondigestible carbs that act as food for the probiotics). The technical difference: While yogurt is created from milk by adding certain lactic acid bacteria, kefir is made by combining milk with a complex mixture of yeasts as well as lactobacillus bacteria. The difference that will matter to you: Kefir is usually found in liquid form, so it’s like a ready-made smoothie that you can drink on the go (no utensils necessary).
A cup of green tea is a good way to start your day.
“It’s the healthiest thing I can think of to drink,” says Christopher Ochner, PhD. He is a research scientist in nutrition at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “Green tea is beyond a super food.”
In the past 20 years, thousands of studies have shown green tea’s benefits.
Healthy cells
Why is green tea so good for you? “It’s all about the catechin content,” says Beth Reardon, RD, a Boston nutritionist. Catechins are antioxidants that fight and may even prevent cell damage. Green tea is not processed much before it is poured in your cup, so it is rich in catechins.
Healthy heart
Green tea has been shown to improve blood flow and lower cholesterol. A 2013 review of many studies found green tea helped prevent a range of heart-related issues, from high blood pressure to congestive heart failure.
Brain health
What’s good for the heart is usually good for the brain, and your brain needs healthy blood vessels, too. In one Swiss study, MRIs revealed that people who drank green tea had greater activity in the working-memory area of their brains. Green tea has also been shown to help block the formation of plaques that are linked to Alzheimer’s disease.
Luckily for, um, all of us, sweet treats aren’t completely off limits for the health-minded. And no, we’re not talking fruit salad.
Brownies, cookies, cakes, puddings — these can all be made a little bit lighter with some sneaky baking swaps. Check out some of the most surprising below, then let us know in the comments if you’ve ever tried any of these!
That buttery consistency makes for a perfect replacement for — you guessed it — butter! Try swapping out half of the butter in your recipe for avocado. One fruit should give you about three quarters of a cup, according to POPSUGAR Fitness. Doing so swaps some of the saturated fat in butter for the heart-healthy and satiatingpoly- and monounsaturated fats of avocados, with a hearty dose of vitamins and antioxidants to boot. Try it in cookies, breads and muffins.
You can drastically cut back on calories and fat by swapping in applesauce for oil or butter in cakes and muffins. You can typically do so in a 1:1 ratio, meaning if your recipe calls for a half-cup of butter, a half-cup of applesauce will do just fine. Because the texture will change significantly, it may be best to only replace about 75 percent of the oil or butter, Kitchen Daily reported. The sweetness in applesauce can also be a smart replacement for added sugar, like in this tasty cookie recipe.
Here’s a fascinating little snippy bit of a story which suggests another use for your favorite probiotic drink. Apparently researchers from the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland have been looking at the way that Lactobacillus casei which is commonly found in the human mouth and gut and it should be added is one of the most common ingredient used in many probiotic drinks is affecting the way that cancer tumors grow.
According to their research L. casei as it’s often known could actually inhibit tumor growth. If this is found to be true it obviously opens up a huge range of possibilities of how these bacteria that are generally safe to humans can be used to treat tumors from the inside.
So far the researchers have grown the bacteria in small beads immersed in a growing solution and their understanding today is that the bacteria produced certain molecules that appeared to be toxic to cancer tumors. Wanting to test this further still, researchers then injected this encapsulated bacteria into the tumors of mice that had cancer and apparently the bacteria significantly inhibited the growth of the tumors within the mice.
Obviously if this research tends out to be of further merit then it holds great promise. Of course one of the best ways of diminishing your chances to develop cancer is to follow a low carb way of living. This has the advantage of diminishing the amount of sugar and other carbohydrates that you eat which are the food that cancers thrive on which like a good probiotic is food for thought.