인류의 건강과 행복

Healthy Cooking Substitutes

Instead of using oil in a recipe try using in equal parts apple sauce, mashed bananas, mashed potatoes, tomato sauce, or soft tofu. For sautéing instead of butter, non-stick spray, or oils; use double the amount of water with some garlic, cooking sherry, red wine, tomato juice, lemon juice, mushroom broth, vegetable broth. If it becomes dry or sticky just add more. Food will taste less greasy and will bring out a better taste.

Instead of using fattier meats like ground chuck, etc; try using beans, lentils, zucchini, portabella mushrooms, or eggplant, which is my favorite. For some different snack ideas or smaller meals try dried fruit, hummus, homemade salsa, left over chili over baked potatoes.

For healthy sweeteners use raw honey(not for children under three), unsulfured molasses, brown syrup, organic cane juice, maple syrup barley malt, malt syrup, date sugar. No man made sweeteners are recommended.

Becoming a savvy label reader

My best advice to give when grocery shopping is to stay on the perimeter of the grocery store. All the processed food is in the center of the grocery store because it will keep forever.

Most of your food should come without labels! Fruits and Vegetables!! When reading labels use common sense. If it has an ingredient that you don’t know what it is or cannot pronounce it, do you want to eat it? Buy items with a low number of ingredients. The more ingredients listed the higher the chance the item is not good for you and your family.

Sugar:
Companies will split up sugar into different names so it’s not the first ingredient in the product. High fructose corn syrup is a very popular sugar, dextrose, fructose, sucrose, sucralose, turbanado sugar, honey, sugar in the raw, molasses, brown sugar, and many more. Anything with a –ose at the end is a sugar. Healthier sweeteners are raw honey, molasses unsulfured, fructose unprocessed, evaporated cane juice, organic cane juice, pure maple syrup, malt sugar, brown rice syrup. Many companies will use refined versions of these.

Enriched flour:
Is highly processed chemically treated form of wheat with no nutrient value. Bleached enriched flour is a simple sugar that will increase glucose in the body triggering insulin production. Go for whole grains, oats, barley, etc. If you cannot actually see the grain in the product it isn’t a whole grain even if it says it on the box. If you cannot see it and they say it is in the product it is a synthetic product and unusable by the body.

Salt:
Refined table salt has an improper ratio of potassium to sodium. It also contains dextrose and silicone which we don’t need. Better choices are sea salt imported and non-iodinized kosher salt. You can get enough iodine in a variety of plants, especially sea veggies.

Artificial Sweeteners:
Aspartame (phenylalanine), Sucralose (Splenda), and others are linked to cancer and allergic reactions. It’s a chemical you don’t need in your body.

MSG:
Will sometimes be written out as monosodium glutamate, which the average consumer has no idea that it’s MSG. MSG leads to degenerative diseases, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and has been known to be the cause of headaches in some people.

Preservatives:
Vitamin A and C are safe. Lesophin is a safe emulsifier. TBHT, BHT and BHA are not safe, are known to cause cancer. Mono and triglycerides are unsafe emulsifiers not to mention increase bad cholesterol.

Soft drinks:
No nutrient value. Will demineralize bones causing osteoporosis and increase obesity.

Examples:

Fortified foods and why we should stay away from them:

Manufacturers want us to believe that fortified foods are better than non-fortified foods. Fortified foods are foods that have had extra vitamins, minerals and other nutrients added to them. Some would not normally be found in the food. It makes the food look more nutrient dense than it really is. Sometimes the food has been stripped of its original nutrients through processing, so the company will replace them with manmade nutrients. Resulting in a highly refined product. The uneducated public thinks these foods are superior.

Omega-3 or Calcium fortified are buzz words in the media. Companies are capitalizing on this. When a consumer sees a product with these nutrients in it they think they are trying to improve their health by buying the products. The problem is consuming a lot of these products actually is the equivalent of taking supplements. The best way to get these nutrients is in its natural food state in its perfect synergy. The body is not designed to process this stuff. Eat as close to nature as possible. Eat as few of these products as possible.

Companies make refined foods because it boosts profits not to increase nutrition. Think about Twinkies and their extraordinarily long shelf life. Will never mold or grow bugs. We do not want our food to last forever. From a financial stand point it may look better right now. The truth is we need fresh whole foods to improve our health and the health of our country.