Author: hajaf

EWG’s Dirty Dozen & Clean Fifteen Lists 2018 – mindbodygreen

Every year, the Environmental Working Group sifts through the fruit and veggie market to find out which types of conventionally grown produce contain the most—and least—chemical pesticides. The 2018 report found that nearly 70 percent of produce tested was contaminated with pesticide residues.
— Read on www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/ewg-dirty-dozen-and-clean-fifteen-lists-2018

Tangy cruciferous salad

I have been meaning to blog, but somehow typing takes me ages and coming home after 8pm, I have been pretty lazy. I have been making notes of my meals and will post them this weekend.

Today on my way home from work, I was craving pizza. I got home and looked into my fridge to figure out, what I could eat with the pizza to get some of my needed nutrients.

Pizza, once in a while I feel is fine, it’s high in saturated fat due to the cheese, but the tomato sauce has the antioxidant lycopene, which is great for your eyesight. The thin crust is healthier than the thick crust due to the refined flour.

I had a bag of Trader Jo cruciferous crunch collection in my fridge, I added almonds and cranberries and decided to make a dressing, so I experimented with Greek yogurt and I came up with a pretty delicious creamy dressing. The ingredients are all from the Mediterranean diet.

The cruciferous vegetables are unique in that they are rich sources of sulfur-containing compounds known as glucosinates. These exert a variety of biologically activities that maybe relevant to health promotion and disease.

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup Fage 2% Greek yogurt
  • 4 tablespoon olive oil
  • 2 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
  • 3 tablespoons honey
  • 4 tablespoons Dijon mustard
  • Sea salt and freshly cracked black
  • 1 teaspoon chopped garlic
  • 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
  • Salt and fresh black pepper

Method

Blend all ingredients till creamy and smooth, if too tart add a little more honey. Mix the dressing with the salad and store the rest. This dressing can be used as a vegetable dip too. The Greek yogurt is high in protein and calcium and the 2 percent fat in the yogurt add a creaminess.

My meal of pizza and salad was filling and satisfying.

Food Politics by Marion Nestle » FDA says public health matters, promises to consider nutrition issues

Food Politics by Marion Nestle » FDA says public health matters, promises to consider nutrition issues
— Read on www.foodpolitics.com/2018/04/fda-says-public-health-matters-promises-to-consider-nutrition-issues/

FDA to consider updating health claims food manufacturers can make

The FDA wants to make it easier for consumers to know whether the food they’re eating is good for them.
— Read on www.cnbc.com/2018/03/29/fda-to-consider-updating-health-claims-food-manufacturers-can-make.html

Hopefully we are moving in the right direction, towards education about the food we consume and transparency.

Blueberry flax muffins

My friend was visiting from Chicago, so I decided very last minute to bake something this morning. I looked into my fridge and I had a box of blueberries, so I decided to use those so I could get my baked good to have some amazing antioxidants, the deep blue purple color has all the flavonoids that help against diseases of the brain, such as Alzheimer’s. Flavanols are also found in dark chocolate, so my next muffin will be oats and dark chocolate.

Most recipes for cake or bread require all purpose flour. I only had whole wheat flour at home, so I decided to make a muffin. Whole wheat flour is dense, so to make the muffin lighter I substituted some of the flour with almond flour and to add some omega 3 fats, I added flax seed flour and grass fed butter. I used Greek Yogurt and egg for protein and I ended up with a pretty good muffin. I added lemon rind to add a more exotic flavor to the muffin. The muffins tasted much better than they looked😊

Ingredients

  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup Greek yogurt plain
  • 1 small box blueberries
  • 1 cup whole wheat flour
  • 1/2 cup almond flour
  • 1/4 cup flax seed flour
  • 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 1/3 cup butter melted
  • 1/2 tsp lemon zest

Method

Melt the butter and add the sugar and beat well. Then add egg, vanilla and yogurt. Mix till mixture is smooth.

In a separate bowl mix up the flours, baking powder and salt. Then add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. If the mixture is very dry add some milk. Do not over mix, the consistency of the mixture is very thick unlike a cake or bread. Fold in the blueberries gently. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes

Chilli lime popcorn

I have been looking for a low calorie snack to eat at work, I wanted something savory as I eat too many sweet foods. I decided to make popcorn, it was actually my friend Saba’s idea when I was shopping at Trader Jo in Scarsdale. I decided to jazz up my popcorn.

Popcorn can be a perfect snack for dieters. Even if you’re not trying to lose weight popcorn provides nutritional benefits. It provides you with a bit of healthy fiber and can provide far fewer calories than many other comparable snacks. A single three-cup serving of popcorn provides less than 100 calories, only one gram of fat, just over 18 grams of carbohydrate and 3.5 grams of dietary fiber. That means that each serving only provides 14.5 grams of net carbs.

I used 1 cup of popcorn  and added it to a large pan with 3 Tablespoon heated coconut oil. Once the popcorn was all popped, I added 3  teaspoons of Trader Jo lime chili seasoning. The result was delicious, it was spicy, salty and tangy. I packed it in a Ziploc bags and took it to work. It was satisfying.filling and delicious.

In Defense Of Food

In todays blog, I want to talk about a very interesting book, I just read. The title of the book is my blogs title. The author is Michael Pollan and I  feel a lot of my readers would benefit from some of his food rules.

Michael Pollan is a professor of journalism at UC Berkeley. In addition to teaching, he lectures widely on food, agriculture, health and the environment. He is not a Nutritionist or a scientist or a physician, but he has done a lot of research on the agriculture, food and health in this country and his books are all best sellers. I feel a lot of his advice mirror my own personal views about food and wellness.

His answer to the question of what should humans eat in order to be maximally healthy.  “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants”  Michael Pollan takes the stance that our  complex approach to food and food products is very likely causing us to get sicker than healthier. He draws a distinction between real food and food that is sold in the supermarkets as “edible food substances” Most of the foods sold in the grocery stores are changed from their original state, these foods are processed. The processing is done to make food last longer, make it cheaper and claims to give us more nutrients. The problem is when the food is changed, all the substances that are added are fake and should not be considered real food. The food industry changes foods according to the latest craze from low fat to low carb to high fiber etc. They add labels that claim to help against heart disease and  lower cholesterol. This is done  to entice us to buy more and more of these packaged foods.

He compares the American food culture to the French and claims that the French are not as obese because they snack less, spend more time eating and eat less as food is more expensive. Making food so cheap is one of the problems he claims, as people eat a lot more and the fake substances in the food don’t give us the feeling of fullness you should get when you eat the natural fats found in the food. Convenience foods cause us to eat on the run and sitting and eating our meals helps against over eating. Eating with others prevents mindless eating.

He feels that most of our diet should come from plants and that meat should be a side dish. The antibiotics given to the animals in this country is the problem not the meat. Animals that graze on grass instead of corn have more omega 3 fats and other important nutrients that they get from the grass they eat.

Cooking and growing your own plants is a huge theme in his book. The book is full of   great advice and information. One of his rules that I loved was “Don’t Get Your Fuel From The Same Place Your Car Does. Gas stations have become processed corn stations: ethanol outside for your car and high fructose corn syrup inside for you”

I highly recommend reading the book or watching his movie on Netflix.

 

4 Easy Ways to Cut Down Your Sugar Intake – The New York Times

Sugar sneaks into our diets in many, many ways. Here’s how to cut it out.
— Read on mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/smarter-living/4-easy-ways-to-cut-down-your-sugar-intake.html

Beets

I just started a new job last week, I am a Nutrition Educator at Harlem Children’s Zones Healthy Harlem program. The main mission of this program is to help kids from Harlem graduate from high school.

Obesity can decrease life expectancy due to the killer diseases, such as Heart disease, diabetes, cancer, hypertension, stroke and cancer. Diet can play a role in these diseases. Educating kids and their parents about Nutrition and health has been shown to help decrease the incidence of obesity.

The curriculum is based on encouraging plant foods and last week was Beets and turnips. I have always known beets to be a very healthy vegetable, but have never researched the nutrients. I also have never really cooked with beets. I have eaten beet salads at many restaurants and decided to try making one at home for dinner.

Beets are powerful in terms of their benefits against diseases. They have many antioxidants and are anti inflammatory. The deep red color comes from Betacyanin, this phytochemical helps against cancer. Beets also help the liver with detoxification. They are a great source of Fiber, Folate, Magnesium and Potassium. These Nutrients are missing in our diets due to all the processing of our foods. I myself am always figuring out how to increase those nutrients in my diet through food.

1 cup of beets has 3.8 grams of fiber, 442mg of potassium, 31.3 mg of magnesium and 148mcg of Folate. It also has 2.2 grams of protein.

Beets are high in natural sugars,  9.2mg in 1 cup. Natural sugars in fruits and vegetables are fine, but when you juice the plant, you are removing the fiber and its important to be aware of that, if you have a choice, try eating the fruit or vegetable whole.

I decided to make a salad with quinoa, so that I could get away not cooking any meat. Quinoa is a grain high in protein and fiber. I used the Trade Jo steamed beets.

Beet and Quinoa Salad

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup uncooked quinoa
  • 1/2 packet Trader Jo steamed baby beets
  • 1/2 bag shredded carrots
  • 2 tablespoon roasted pumpkin seeds
  • 3 cups mixed greens
  • 1/4 bunch chopped cilantro
  • 2 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon lime juice
  • 3 tablespoon olive oil
  • salt and black pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
  • 2 tablespoon honey (Manuka is great for you)

Method

Cook the quinoa according to the directions, then let it cool. Grate the beets with a grater. Mix the beets with the salad, quinoa, carrots and half the chopped cilantro. To make the dressing add the all the ingredients and the left over cilantro in an empty jar and shake very well. Pour the dressing on the salad and mix well. Sprinkle on the pumpkin seeds and mix again.

Amir does not like beets but because they were shredded, he did not even notice. Some recipes add chopped avocado and edamame.

 

Green beans with coconut and daal

My family  loves green beans and I usually always have some in my fridge, they love stir fried string beans and garlic with chilies. That is usually our favorite side with some sort of chicken.

Today I decided to make my favorite green bean recipe. Its quick and because it has lentils it has extra protein. For extra flavor and texture I add coconuts and green chilies.

Ingredients

  • 1 pound string green beans
  • 1/4 cup red masoor lentil
  • 1 green chili chopped
  • 1 teaspoon chili flakes
  • 1/2 teaspoon chopped garlic
  • 2tablespoon coconut oil
  • 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
  • 1/4 cup water
  • salt to taste

Method

Trim the green beans and chop them in half. Heat the oil and add the garlic, green chill, red chill flakes and salt. Saute the spices and then add the washed red lentils and saute for 5 minutes. Add the green beans and keep stirring, once the lentils start sticking add the water and keep  cooking

The green beans should be crunchy, add the chopped cilantro and cover the pot and let it steam for 5 more minutes.

I Served mine  with whole wheat chapattis.

1 cup of fresh green beans have 2 grams of protein and 3.7 grams of fiber. They have, 17.9 mg of vitamin C, 15.8 mcg of vitamin k.

Folate is  B vitamin that is needed for brain growth and it  is deficient in all processed foods.  Green beans have 40.7 micrograms.  They also have 40.9 mg of calcium, 230 mg of potassium and 1.1 mg of iron.

Checkout this website that has all the nutrition information and rates the fruits and vegetables according to a score.

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2341/2

Thank you

Before I get to my actual post, I want to thank everyone of you for your encouragement and kind words. I have to make a very special thank you to Ali and Lateef who put the idea of a blog in my head, and Saba and Shamaila who pushed me regardless of my constant obstacles with technology.

While I was on the bus coming home from work, I was figuring what to cook and I was getting excited. This is so not me!!! My family can vouch that I have never ever liked cooking. I have amazing cooks in my family, my aunt Shireen Anwar is the host of Masala TV and her recipes are delicious. In fact as my kids were growing I would make just a couple of dishes and repeat those over and over because they were easy. My sister who is a great cook and always has some delicious home cooked meal ready at home would tell me, I need to make more of a variety of foods.

I finally figured out, what changed my thinking and its not that I like cooking, I still think cooking is too much work if your making good food, but the food I want to blog about is easy, really healthy and made with ingredients that are nutritious. Secondly being in New York City and being an Empty Nester, I have no need to cook as every food I want can be be delivered by Seamless and since I have no kids there are no restrictions.

The problem is, I do not always  know what is in the food that I order and that if I want the benefits and healing effects of food then I have to make it myself. Since there is no need to cook, I have  more of a  desire to experiment with ingredients on my poor husband. We still love going out to eat.

The nutrients and the health benefits of the food are my main passion. I love Nutrition and how it affects our bodies and minds, good and bad and that is  the message, I really want to get across in my blog.

My next post, is the meal I did make today.