Monday, October 31, 2011

Getting The Most Nutritional Value From Fruits And Vegetables

You’re eating lots of fruits and vegetables every day, but are you sure you’re getting the most nutritional value from them, and what can you do to improve how many nutrients you are getting. To understand we need to take a deeper look at the trip that fruits and vegetables make to get to your table.

Many different factors can affect the nutritional value of fruits and vegetables before they reach your table. The two most important are time and traveling conditions. The shorter the time frame that the fruit is packed until it reaches your table the better. If you are lucky enough to have a home garden try to pick your vegetables early in the morning for peak flavor and nutritional value. The next best choice is to use a local market stand. Generally the foods they are selling were picked within a few hours of being set out for sale. If there are no local markets in your area like most people you’ll be forced to shop at a supermarket.

Before any produce reaches your local supermarket it must first be picked, and packaged. If the food is coming to you from the same state or neighboring state chances are it was picked within 48 hours of reaching the stores shelves. If you’re produce is making it way from California to New York chances are it was picked 7 to 10 days ago. Why do you need to be concerned about when something was harvested? When any produce is picked off of the vine it is at its nutritional peak value. It starts to lose that value as time passes, the more time that passes, and the more value it loses.

The second biggest contributor is handling. If care is taken no to bruise or damage the exterior skin produce will last longer. Additionally storing a produce at the proper temperature will also help slow down the loss of nutrients. Here’s where it gets a little tricky, some fruits like temperatures as high as 60 degrees, and other prefer temperatures in the mid 30’s. So the longer your food is in transit, and the more care that it shown to handling it properly the more packed with nutrients it is likely to be when it hits the shelves of your local supermarket.

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Saturday, October 15, 2011

Just a Bite: Encouraging Kids To Try New Foods

Eating a variety of healthy foods is the best way for your child to get needed nutrients. But how do you encourage kids-notorious for being picky eaters-to explore the wide world of food? According to the health and parenting experts at KidsHealth, the answer is pleasant persistence.

It turns out that once is not enough when it comes to kids and trying new foods. It may take up to 15 tries before children warm up to new tastes, research shows. So if your child turns up his nose at green beans or broccoli, don't assume he will never like those good-for-you green veggies.

Consider starting a new rule at your family table: Everyone takes at least a bite of what's being served, even if they tried it before and didn't like it. This exposes kids to new tastes again and again, increasing the odds that they'll eventually accept some of them. It also makes trying new foods just part of the normal routine. The KidsHealth experts offer these tips for implementing this one-bite strategy:

• Put a small portion of the new food on your child's plate. Or, if your child's old enough, allow her to self-serve.

• When serving a new food, be sure to also include a familiar food on that night's menu. Too much new stuff can be off-putting, especially to a hungry child.

• Keep the mood light and upbeat. Don't make the one bite seem like a punishment.

• Talk about the new food you're serving, where it comes from, other recipes it's in, or even how to spell the food. (For instance, you might tell a toddler that zucchini starts with "Z.")

• Be a sport by following the one-bite rule yourself.

Visiting restaurants, farmers' markets and specialty markets can also expose kids to different foods. Use those outings to let your child choose a new food to try. Reading books about food and paging through cookbooks is another way to encourage experimentation. If a recipe looks good to your child, consider making it together. That new dish could become a favorite. But for now, start with just one bite.

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Saturday, October 8, 2011

High Mercury Content in Fish

We all know that adding fish to our diets can help increase our body's ability to repair itself, as well as its ability to burn body fat and keep our energy up, but it’s important to choose fish that’s also going to improve your health as opposed to silently poisoning you…

Being exposed to too much mercury can cause memory loss, tremors, neurological difficulties, advanced aging, decreased immune functions, and death.

But how is all this mercury getting into our body?

Well here’s the top 4 places that contribute to the levels of mercury in our body (not in any specific order):

Vaccines (past and present)
Dental fillings
The environment
And Fish

We’re going to focus on fish right now because that’s the prime source of mercury in our diets. When coal is burned, inorganic mercury is released into the air and eventually ends up in our lakes, rivers and oceans. There, bacteria mixes with it and transforms it into methylmercury which is easily absorbed by fish (especially large or fatty fish), and is also easily absorbed by us when we eat those fish.

The good new is that our most recent studies indicate that the human body naturally rids itself of mercury over time – assuming we stop ingesting it long enough for our body to do what it was made to do, and to help the process here’s a list of fish that naturally have a low, medium and high level of mercury:

High mercury: Mercury levels differ from one species of fish to the next. This is due to factors such as type of fish, size, location, habitat, diet and age. Fish that are predatory (eat other fish) are large and at the top of the food chain, and so tend to contain more mercury. Fish that contain higher levels of mercury include:

Shark
Ray
Swordfish
Barramundi
Gemfish
Orange roughy
Ling
Canned or fresh tuna
Mackerel
Grouper
Tilefish
Chilean sea bass

Moderate mercury: Alaskan halibut, black cod, blue (Gulf Coast) crab, dungeness crab, Eastern oysters, mahimahi, blue mussels, pollack.
Low mercury: Anchovies, Arctic char, crawfish, Pacific flounder, herring, king crab, sanddabs, scallops, Pacific sole; tilapia, wild Alaska and Pacific salmon; farmed catfish, clams, striped bass, and sturgeon.

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