Healthy Nutritious Recipes

Top 5 Healthiest Foods

Lentils – ‘Health’ Magazine has listed lentils as one of the top 5 healthiest foods you can eat and with good reason. They have been shown to be a key ingredient in fighting heart disease. This is due to the high levels of fibre, magnesium and folate. A high fibre diet (over 20 grams a day) has been shown to reduce heart disease by up to 15% in a study published in ‘Archives of Internal Medicine’. Another food study taken over 25 years from countries such as Japan, Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Finland and the U.S. has shown that diets that were the richest in Legumes (lentils are in this classification) was associated with a whopping 82% reduction in risk. The magnesium and folate both play a strong role here too.

Magnesium has been shown to help veins and arteries relax which lessens resistance and improves the flow of blood, oxygen and nutrients throughout the body. Magnesium deficiency is not only associated with heart attack but immediately following a heart attack lack of sufficient magnesium promotes free radical  injury to the heart. Folate is important as it helps the body convert homocysteine (an amino acid which damages the artery walls and is considered a serious risk factor in heart disease)) into cysteine and methionine, which are both benign.

Further to helping protect against heart disease, lentils are also a very good food for stabilising the blood sugar levels whilst providing steady slow burning energy, which is excellent news for diabetics.

Lastly lentils are a very good source of iron, particularly for menstruating women, and unlike red meat are low in fat and calories.

The only one down side to lentils really is there poor public image! They are seen as a boring staple food for vegetarians. Take a look at my recipes for imaginative and unusual ways that lentils can be appreciated for their diverseness.

There is a reason that they are in the top 5 healthiest foods!

Are Processed Foods Pathogens?

There is little doubt that eating raw food is much more beneficial from a nutritional point of view. This is primarily due to the fact that the enzymes in food break down when cooked at high temperatures. Enzymes in food aid with the digestion, when these enzymes break down the body has to produce it’s own enzymes to help with the digestion. If the body has to produce all the enzymes necessary to digest your food it puts a lot of extra burden on your pancreas and other organs. Stressing your adrenals like this is also one of the major causes of diabetes. In a nutshell raw foods are packed with enzymes, which will help digest your food for you. This will take the pressure off your body to produce your own enzymes allowing your body to concentrate on other functions. Simple really!

There was a very interesting study conducted at the Institute of Clinical Chemistry in Lausanne in 1930. Under the direction of Dr. Paul Kouchakoff it was found that a person would produce white blood cells after eating meals. This is known as ‘digestive leukocytosis’ and is a normal response, however it is not known why the body would react as if there was something harmful such as infection or toxins entering the body. The surprising discovery was that the body did NOT react this way when eating raw foods. This study seemed to show that the body reacted as if it were being harmed when eating foods cooked to high temperatures, but not when eating raw foods. This must tell us something!

The Most amazing find though was that the same rule applies to ALL foods that have been processed, white blood cells are automatically produced, so again, not good. More reason to be cooking your own food rather than to rely on ready made foods.

The end result of the study showed that when foods are heated beyond  a specific temperature (temperatures vary individually to each food) the body will produce white blood cells, but not if they are kept below that temperature.

The best ways to eat cooked foods is lightly steamed, slow-cooked (in a slow-cooker is fine) or stewed. Cheap cuts of meat benefit being cooked at 100-110c long and slowly over night so this is perfect for a healthy Sunday lunch. Slow roasted vegetables especially nutrient rich root vegetables are perfect for this. Slow cookers are becoming all the rage as people are trying to juggle busy careers with ever escalating food costs and are a perfect answer to both these problems.

Not everyone likes salads, but equally you don’t have to cook everything that you eat!

The Best Medicinal Food Ever?

Beet roots have been in our diets for millennia. They have been discovered in tombs in Thebes and charred remains in Neolithic digs shows that they were roasted and eaten also.

As a food stuff they must rank as one of the highest in medicinal value. It is amazingly good at helping to combat heart disease, diabetes and also cancer.

It has been shown to lower high blood pressure and also to purify the blood. This is due to the large amounts of folate and soluble fibre.

These folates have been shown to help protect against Alzheimer’s and demantia too.

Containing virtually no fat and rich in phosphorous and pottasium, with an incredibly low G.I. (Glycaemic Index). This means it is converted into sugars very slowly, which helps stabalise the blood sugar, which is excellent news for diabetics.

But it is perhaps it’s anti-carcinogenic properties where beets come into their own. The purple pigment betacyanin (a flavenoid related to anthocyanin found in red foods) has been shown to increase the uptake of oxygen in the body by up to 400%. This can effectively starve the respiration of cancer cells. Tests with beetroot and cancer patients has shown that it is possible to halt and even regress tumours in patients.

The best benefits from beetroot come in it’s raw form.

So enjoy some of ‘natures candy’ as the ancient Greeks used to call it!!

After air and water, food is the one element we need to survive.

Obviously there is a direct link between what you put into your body and how long you live.

It never ceases to amaze me that people don’t seem to realise that this applies more to the quality of the food than anything else. If you eat better you live longer, it’s not rocket science.

The basic line is that if you eat better quality food, and I’m avoiding using the tag ‘healthy’ as the whole point of what I am trying to get across is that good food can be both. See the recipes on my page for proof!!

Simply eat a healthier lifestyle made up of more ‘whole’ foods. Whole foods are not something you buy from a wholefood store incidentally!! Simply unadulterated foods i.e. vegetables, fruits, fish , meat, cheese etc. anything that is unprocessed.

You don’t have to change overnight, just try cooking more and buying ready meals less.

The point is that by getting back in the kitchen you are going to live longer. So enjoy a guilt free drink knowing that you have counter balanced it with some healthy food. I am living proof of this………. but that, as they say is another story!

Get a bottle of wine, some friends over and get the pans out, and get cracking.