A Bounty of Health

A Bounty of Health
We're gonna live large this week!

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Guest Blogger: Nelia!


I was going to discuss nuts today, since it’s the Christmas season. I love nuts and I love that stores sell them in the shell (and also shelled): children (and adults) LOVE to crack nuts. I remember one of my daughter's preschool centers was cracking nuts, although each child could only crack 2 per day.


Today, I’m going to interview a “nut”: my daughter Nelia. I hope you enjoy a child’s perspective of whole foods, plant-based eating.

Q: What do you like about being vegan?

N: I’m not a vegan.

Q: What are you?

N: I’m not a carnivore, I’m not a vegan, I’m not a vegetarian.

Q: Do you eat animal products?

N: Yes. I do.

Q: Like what?

N: Meat, eggs, cheese, yogourt.

Q: Do you drink milk?

N: No, not animal milk. I drink Almond milk. Original.

Q: Did you like switching to Almond milk?

N: No, at first I didn’t. But I got used to it and, yeah.

Q: What fruit do you like?

N: Canteloupe, a lot. And, well, oranges, apples, raspberries, blueberries.

Q: What about veggies?

N: Carrots. Cauliflower, lettuce. That’s really all.

Q: What do you like about how eating plant food helps the environment?

N: Actually, it doesn’t really help the environment because you’re taking fresh air out of the planet. Cause when you…plants give you oxygen. If you see lettuce just anywhere or a plant and you pick it up and then they die for a flower.

Q: What about being green? Are you green?

N: Yes, I am very much. I like recycling and I once picked up trash in our neighborhood.

Q: Are you motivated to eat well so you can be healthy?

N: Kind of. If I have too much energy, then I’ll go crazy. If I have too much energy, then I’ll get hyper if I don’t let it out, because if I have a bunch of healthy stuff then it gives me energy in school and I’ll be sitting in school.

Q: So, is that why you still eat animal products?

N: Well, yeah. I still need my protein. I can’t live without bacon!

Q: What would you tell other people who are trying to eat healthy by eating more plant foods?

N: Well, I would tell them it’s okay to have some cheese or milk, because those don’t really make your stomach upset, and I would tell them that cut off the sugar a little bit.

Q: How do you cut off sugar?

N: Well, you can like, have ice cream once in a while and popsicles once in a while. You should get things with low sugar, like when I eat my popsicles they are real fruit juice. The flavoring and coloring [of popsicles in general] have sugar in it, and it’s not healthy for you. The real fruit juice has less sugar and it’s healthier for you.

Q: Have you given up candy?

N: Um, well, yeah, kind of. I still eat ice cream and popsicles, but that’s not really candy.

Q: What candy do you eat?

N: Only sometimes I have candy, and it’s usually like Reece’s or Snickers because they handed out Snickers in church once and [my teacher] Mrs. Jackson hands out Snickers and Reece’s.

Q: Thanks for sharing, Nelia.

N: You’re welcome.

Well, folks, that’s the real, hard truth in our household. She’s obviously half on board. Lourdes, her sister, declined an interviewed. She would have made me look like a much better WFPB mom! That’s the reality in our family: two of us are die-hard and two are, well, holding their own!

I hope you find some good, quality choices this Christmas and New Year’s, but, as Nelia said, it’s okay to still have some animal products and sugar…once in a while.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Green Smoothies

I didn't post last week. Sorry! I have been working on other projects, but, in the meantime, my enthusiasm has not waned for the smoothie. In fact, it has only increased. Breakfast is the perfect and probably best meal to put all of your efforts into. You probably reap the most rewards from this meal. Your body is just gearing back up into full swing from "rest" mode and you need calories -- and nutrients that count. I keep hearing experts talk about making breakfast that big meal, not dinner. The smoothie is the best way I've discovered so far to get those calories in, but I'm talking about valuable calories -- calories that pack a punch.

I've discovered a really great addition for the smoothie, which I heard about multiple times but never came across any in the stores around my area. I finally happened upon a "green" product for smoothies at Trader Joe's. Love them! They have their own brand, called "Trader Joe's Super Green Drink" powder, and there's two flavors. I chose berry. This honestly tastes like chalk when  mixed with Almond Milk (vanilla flavored Almond Milk, no less). I didn't care, though. I have been faithfully putting a schoop of green drink powder in my morning smoothie. Everything else that I put into the smoothie masks this unpleasant taste. The "pièce de résistance": it provides 8000 units of Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) per scoop. Now, the label says that if I were to eat 3.5 oz of cherries, I would get 670 ORAC units. Broccoli is 900 ORAC. I was impressed the moment I read the label. But what was this ORAC?  (This cool site lists lots of of ORAC foods values.

ORAC is basically a term that describes the power that antioxidents have. Remember I was putting a few handfuls of spinach or kale in my smoothie? Well, this by far replaces that!

Now, you may think I'm a hypocrite for endorsing a powder product. "Whole Food" appears in the title of the blog, so how can  I recommend this? Well, it's called reality I guess. I'm sure there's purists out there who are aghast at what I just said. However, I'm a realist. We take baby steps here that we hope will lead to lifelong lifestyle changes.
Another check in the "plus" column for green powder is that the entire canister was $20.00 for a month's worth of servings. I figured that cost less than buying spinach or kale (in the same quantities)  for the month. Never mind the care to keep the kale fresh, or to cook it, bag it, etc. This seems like a no brainer for busy moms, students, people who work, or people who are currently alive on this planet. (Once the spring and summer harvest hit, though, I'll have to go back to fresh greens.)
Think about it. If I could one day (insert evil laugh here) sneak this into my children's smoothies, I'll have hit the jackpot. Of course, the "green" color of the powder completely takes over the smoothie, unless I include berries, and the girls will spot the intruder within a nanosecond of me handing them the smoothie. That is, if I can even get Lourdes to eat a smoothie! She's still a work in progress in the smoothie department. I'm thinking about sitting them down and just talking to them about veggies and what this powder does. I'm already brainstorming ideas for how to present these powerhouse ORACs. I have to get creative. Pull out all the stops. Put my dignity and respect on  hold. Truly, I'm thinking this might go the same way that flaxseed did. They tasted a pinhead's amount of ground flaxseed; their highly sophisticated, highly trained tastebuds detected no offending flavors. I'm now allowed to sprinkle flaxseed, in small amounts -- not nearly the heaping 1 teaspoon that I use, on sandwiches and so forth.
If I start small, maybe they'll let me sprinkle some green powder in a smoothie or even on peanut butter. I can tell you that I feel great getting two servings of veggies (AND 6000 ORACs) along with 3 servings of fruit in my breakfast alone. Top that with flaxseed and I'm already ahead of the game on my omega 3s for the day. Almond milk provides healthy fats and peanut butter some good protein. I drink this around 7:30am and I'm honestly full until about 11:00am, when I usually have another snack.
I'll keep you posted on "the talk." For now, let me know what kind of smoothies you're trying at home. Are you  "green" yet?