FitSugar

Your Healthy Snack Ideas

FitSugar — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 02:30:00 -0700

After reading all your wonderful snack suggestions my afternoon snack has transformed into an inspired treat. There were so many great ideas, and I love reading that you all eat your fruits and veggies throughout the day.

Aside from the various energy bars and seasonal fruit that we all eat and love, here are some great snack ideas:

Edamame
Pepitas (pumpkin seeds)
Whole grain wheat thins with the Laughing Cow light garlic and herb cheese
Radishes or cucumbers with balsamic vinegar
2 Wasa Crackers with 2 tablespoons of Trader Joe's chipotle hummus spread on and topped with sliced grape tomatoes
100 calorie mini bag of popcorn
Non-fat or low fat yogurt (Greek yogurt is higher in protein) and fruit or cereal or both

If you are looking for a new take on the frozen banana treat, missyd has a great recipe. To check it out read more.

Cut a banana (short way) into two.

Insert popsicle stick in one of the ends of each.

Dip in yogurt (I like strawberry fat free).

Roll in wheat germ.

Freeze (I lie them in a cookie sheet, popsicle sticks facing up in the air. Also helps to drape some plastic wrap over so they don't get yucky freezer-burn taste).

Thanks for the recipe missyd! Now that sounds tasty to me. I might need to wait until the weather is a wee bit warmer to try it. Another reason to look forward to late Spring!

Speak Up: Favorite Healthy Snack

FitSugar — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:30:00 -0700

When my energy level takes a nose dive in the late afternoon, I reach for a snack. Lately, my power-through-the-rest-of-the-day snack is a mozzarella cheese stick, a handful of nuts, and a piece of fruit. Let me say this though, I am getting a little bored with it. So I am curious what you reach for to energize yourself in the midmorning or the long hours between lunch and dinner.

Share your healthy snack idea in the comments section below, because I need some inspiration.

Speak Up: What Are Your Favorite Healthy Summer Snacks?

FitSugar — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 11:00:00 -0700

I told you guys about my favorite cooling foods to beat the heat that also double as tasty healthy snacks during the hot months of summer. A lot of us have our standard healthy treat (red ants on a log anyone?) that we turn to when we're feeling like a healthy summer snack and I am wondering what yours is. Speak up and share your summer snack ideas in the comments section below. I can't wait to see all your ideas so I can add a few to my repertoire.

How Octomom Slimmed Down to 125 Pounds

FitSugar — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:00:37 -0700

Whatever your opinion of Nadya Suleman's decision to carry eight babies at once, most can agree that her quick slim-down is rather astonishing. When her octuplets were born nine months ago, Nadya weighed 270 pounds. In the latest issue of Us Weekly, she admitted she packed on the pounds by "eating everything in sight." Now this five-foot-seven single mom of 14 has lost 145 pounds and 39 inches off her waist and weighs 125 pounds.

How did she do it? To find out, read more.

With her previous pregnancies, the Octomom admitted she had no problems getting back to her pre-pregnancy size 1 or 2, thanks to her skinny genes. This last time around, simply delivering the eight babies in January helped Nadya lose 40 pounds instantly. Losing the rest of the weight, however, wasn't a walk in the park. This mama joined the local gym and sweats it out three times a week at midnight! Yep, after her children go to sleep, a nanny stays with them while she exercises late-night for 90 minutes. Since Nadya gets her cardio from chasing after the kids, her gym workouts are devoted to strength training. She does top-secret crunches (which she hopes to reveal in her own fitness video), tricep kickbacks, bicep curls, shoulder presses, and lunges. Her dumbbell of choice? A set of 12-pound weights. I don't know how she does it, but Nadya claims she gets by on only three hours of sleep a night. She can't possibly keep that up for too long.

A healthy diet also helped Suleman lose her baby weight. Her day is filled with five protein-based meals or snacks, including turkey, sushi, eggs, and lowfat cheese. She also includes whole grains such as oatmeal, and veggies by eating salads and stews. Her favorite snacks include Pinkberry frozen yogurt and cottage cheese with fruit.

Although Nadya needed help to get pregnant and deliver her babies, she boasts that she's slimmed down with diet and exercise alone, and didn't need any surgical help.

Try a "Tropical" Yam For Your Pre-Workout Snack

FitSugar — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:00:17 -0700

It could be the orange color just makes me happy, but yams are one of my favorite foods. They're one of Autumn's tasty delights.

This tuber is packed with potassium and magnesium - two important minerals you lose through sweating. Aside from replenishing electrolytes, yams are easy to digest making them a perfect pre-workout snack. High in complex carbs, yams fuel you up as well as prep you for a sweaty workout or a long run. Poke a small yam with a fork a couple of times, microwave it until soft, slice it open, and voila you have a snack. They're great post-workout too. Do you love yams? Have a recipe that features them? Please post it in the Healthy Recipe group and I will be sure to try it.

What I buy at my grocery store is labeled a yam - a jewel yam, garnet yam, or a tropical yam. It is in fact, biologically speaking a moist fleshed sweet potato. I was raised in the States and unfortunately, and incorrectly, here we refer to them as yams. I will watch my yam and my sweet potatoes from now on.

Flickr User Muffet

Health Benefits of Pears

FitSugar — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:00:13 -0700

Apples are in season in the Autumn, but pears are too. The soft, sweet, buttery flesh of the pear makes this Fall fruit one of my favorites. Plus there are so many varieties to choose from - Bartlett, Bosc, and Anjou - that they each seem like a different fruit. These juicy gems are pretty healthy for you, too.

Pears are high in fiber. One medium-sized pear contains six grams, so snacking on a pear can help you meet your daily requirement of 25 to 30 grams. They're a delicious way to keep you regular too, which can help prevent colon cancer. A diet high in fiber can also keep your cholesterol levels down, which is good news for your ticker. Getting your fill of fiber from fruit is also linked to a lower risk for breast cancer.
Pears contain a fair amount of vitamins A, C, K, B2, B3, and B6. For expecting or nursing moms, they also contain folate. Pears aren't too shabby in the mineral department either, containing calcium, magnesium, potassium, copper, and manganese. Vitamin C and copper are antioxidant nutrients, so eating pears is good for your immune system, and may help prevent cancer.
Pears also contain boron, which our bodies need in order to retain calcium, so this fruit can also be linked to osteoporosis prevention.

For the other health benefits, read more.

The hydroxycinnamic acid found in pears is also associated with preventing stomach and lung cancer.
It's a hypo-allergenic fruit. That means those with food sensitivities can usually eat pears with no adverse effects.
Eating three or more servings of fruits a day, such as pears, may also lower your risk of age-related macular degeneration (ARMD), the primary cause of vision loss in older adults.
Quercetin is another antioxidant found in the skin of pears. It helps prevent cancer and artery damage that can lead to heart problems. A recent study at Cornell University found it may also protect against Alzheimer’s disease. So don't peel your pears!

Tell me, what's your favorite type of pear?

Michael Pollan's Food Rules to Live By

FitSugar — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:00:47 -0700

I've had a crush on Michael Pollan for a while now, and though the specifics of his food manifesto may be hard for everyone to adopt, I think his basic rules are ones to live by: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (And processed food is not food.)

Whenever finishing a book or essay by Pollan, I always walk away with a new food rule myself. I was excited to see that in this year's annual New York Times Magazine food issue, Pollan turns the tables, asking what food rules we the readers live by.

There were thousands of submissions, and of those, Pollan picked the ones he felt made the most sense for a healthy life. What I found interesting was what he said about the ones he didn't use, "a banquet of food policies that even when they made little, if any, nutritional sense . . . nevertheless opened a window on our current thinking about food: the stories we tell ourselves, the games we play and the taboos we invoke to organize our eating lives."

I've been guilty of this myself - eating something "healthy" when it was nothing more than processed crap.

Learn a simple rule when you read more.

The reader-submitted rules are fun and wise, and the NYT's presentation make them a treat to read through. One of my favorites:

Avoid snack foods with the "OH" sound in their names: Doritos, Cheetos, Fritos, Tostitos, Hostess Ho Hos, Etc. -Donna David

In this piece, Pollan offers up another one of his own rules that I adopted years ago: pick butter over trans-fat-loaded margarine. Surely he and Julia Child can't be wrong.

What food rules do you live by?

Healthy Recipe: Sugar Snap Peas With Wasabi Dressing

FitSugar — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 04:30:00 -0700

I have a newfound love of sugar snap peas, especially since I have a local source for the stringless version (read: serious time-saver).

Great for snacking when raw, these peas taste even sweeter when they've been blanched, and once cooked they work well with all sorts of dressings. Tossing sugar snap peas in a wasabi dressing is my new replacement for an old favorite snack of mine: dried wasabi peas. Since the dried wasabi peas offer a big taste, but no real nutritional value, this fresh version is a healthy alternative.

To see my recipe, read more.

Sugar Snap Peas With Wasabi Dressing
Inspired by About: Japanese Food

Ingredients

Half pound of stringless sugar snap peas, washed and trimmed if need be
1/2 teaspoon low sodium soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon wasabi (Japanese horseradish) paste
1 1/2 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon sesame oil

Directions

Bring medium size pot of water to boil, and cook snap peas for one minute to blanch. Stop the cooking process by running bean under cold water.
Mix soy sauce and vinegar in a medium sized bowl. Add sugar and stir until it dissolves. Whisk in sesame oil and wasabi paste.
Add cooked and cooled snap peas into dressing bowl and mix well.
Serve immediately

Serves 2

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Back on Track: Cut Veggies For the Week

FitSugar — Sun, 31 May 2009 11:14:25 -0700

One way to ensure you get your five to seven servings of fruits and vegetables every day is to pack precut veggies as a healthy snack or accompaniment to your lunches at work. To save yourself some trouble, wash and chop a large quantity of vegetables on Sunday night, then store them in the fridge to dole out each day.

Though some vegetables, like cucumber, may not keep for a whole week, many other chopped vegetables will stay fresh for days. I like to mix carrot sticks with celery spears and sliced red bell pepper. You can also wash a few sugar snap peas and cherry tomatoes on Sunday night and store those too; they don't even need chopping! Just 15 or 20 minutes of work, and you've got portable salads for the week.

Do you pack fresh veggies for work? If so, what are your favorites?

Source

Healthy Recipe: Romesco Sauce

FitSugar — Wed, 13 May 2009 11:00:00 -0700

If you're looking for a healthy, tasty, vegetable laden sauce to accompany with fish, veggies, or poultry, search no further. Try this easy Spanish inspired romesco sauce featuring roasted red peppers pureed with nuts, olive oil, and spices.

This sauce contains a handful of nutritional super foods, eating for your heart has never been so tasty. Pouring romesco over roasted or grilled asparagus is my favorite way to enjoy this sauce. As a snack, I dip toasted bread in the sauce. To see the recipe read more.

Romesco Sauce
Inspired by About: Spanish Food

Ingredients

1/2 cup almond slivers
1/2 cup toasted hazelnuts
5 cloves of garlic
6 inch piece of stale bread baguette
2 large ripe tomatoes
4 large red bell peppers
1/4 to 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/8 to 1/4 cup red wine or sherry vinegar to taste
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/8 teaspoon or a pinch of cayenne pepper
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Directions

Roast peppers and garlic on rimmed baking sheet six inches from flame of broiler on high. Rotate peppers as they char, about 3 to 5 minutes. When garlic is browned remove from pan to cool, this will likely be when peppers are only half roasted. Peel garlic once it is cool to the touch.
When peppers are charred evenly on all four sides, place in paper bag, or an insulated lunch box lined with paper towels, for 10 to 20 minutes so peppers steam cook in their own heat. Drain on a plate for 10 minutes before using.
Place almonds and hazelnuts into food processor and process until finely ground.
Spray medium skillet with olive oil cooking spray, or use teaspoon of olive oil, and sauté quartered tomatoes for five minutes.
Add tomatoes and torn bread to nuts and process.
Add peppers, garlic, and spices to food processor and mix well.
While the food processor is running, slowly drizzle olive oil and then vinegar; add more of either as needed. Salt and pepper to taste.

This recipe makes about 3 to 4 cups of sauce. I wish I could tell you if it freezes well, but I end up using all of it in two to three days.

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