Feb16

Tips for healthier baking, part 1

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Tips for healthier baking, part 1

Sure, we all love a good chocolate chip cookie or brownie now and again! And did you know that by making some very easy changes in the ingredients you use you can greatly increase the nutritional value in even these sweet treats? Everything from muffins, cakes, breads, pizza dough, cookies and brownies can become much healthier by following these simple tips:

Sugar – You never, never, never, never need the full amount of sugar called for in a recipe. Trust me. Typically, I use about 1/4 to 1/2 of the amount called for. The best way to start is to cut out a 1/4 cup in what you’re baking. More than likely, nobody, including your children, will notice the difference. Then, over time, continue to decrease the amount you use. You will be surprised at how your taste buds adjust and don’t need as much sweetness to be satisfied. Also, another easy change is to switch from highly processed white sugar to organic sugar or evaporated cane juice crystals. Both of these have a light tan color and can be substituted equally for white sugar. Other healthy sweeteners include raw honey (do your best to find RAW honey – it is so good for you because the nutrients and enzymes haven’t been destroyed in the heating process like typical honey) and pure maple syrup (NOT Aunt Jemima’s type syrup…PURE maple syrup). These are a little trickier to substitute into recipes because the amount of wet ingredients needs to be adjusted, so it’s best to look for recipes that already include them as a sweetener.

Flour/grains – One of the simplest & best things you can do for your health is to go to your pantry and toss out the bleached, enriched white flour (usually called ‘All Purpose Flour’). This highly processed, refined flour contains absolutely no natural nutrients (that’s why it is ‘enriched’ with vitamins – they try to add back in what was stripped & destroyed in the refining process. But it is ALWAYS best to get nutrients in their natural state. Plus, the synthetic nutrients are added in very unnatural proportions). Also, did you notice that it is bleached? Doesn’t that seem a bit over the top that they would bleach it, just to make it look nice and white? Oh, the havoc they wreak on our food. I still remember in the very first book I read about healthier eating (Super Baby Foods) where the author said, “the whiter the bread, the sooner you’re dead”. For good reason :)

Ok, so hopefully I’ve convinced you to think twice next time before you bake with this kind of flour, but what do you use in it’s place? Well, thankfully there are MANY fabulous alternatives that are actually quite simple to substitute:

- The simplest and most obvious would be 100% whole wheat flour. (Oh, and by the way, don’t be fooled if it says in the ingredient list of a product you’re looking at “wheat flour”. This is NOT the same as 100% whole grain wheat. Bleached, enriched flour technically is from ‘wheat’ so they can say this in the ingredient list). This flour contains all the parts of the grain and contains the natural nutrients. You can very easily substitute 100% whole wheat flour in any recipe that calls for all purpose flour. If you aren’t comfortable jumping right in and substituting it completely, try half all purpose flour and half 100% whole wheat. Over time, decrease the all purpose and use more 100% whole wheat. A word of caution – if you or someone in your family is sensitive to gluten (I will talk much more about the dangers of gluten in the future), this is NOT a very good choice. It has the highest gluten content of any of the flours I will mention.

- Spelt flour – This is actually the flour that I use almost exclusively. It is a very nutritious grain, has a lower gluten content and is also very easy to substitute. It can usually be found at natural grocery stores. I substitute it in every recipe that calls for all purpose flour in the exact amounts called for in the recipe. You will notice that this grain is a bit coarser than white or whole wheat flour, so in bread recipes I add a bit less water. Also, when making bread with it, I add in a little extra yeast because the gluten content is lower and doesn’t naturally rise as much.

- Oat flour and Brown Rice flour – These very nutritious flours can be substituted in small amounts. For example, if a recipe calls for 2 cups of all purpose flour, I will sometimes use 1 1/2 cups of spelt flour and 1/2 cup of either of these (or just 1/4 cup of the oat/brown rice flour and 1 3/4 cup spelt). They have a different nutritional profile than whole wheat or spelt, so it’s good to use a variety of grains. These DO NOT have gluten (though some oats can potentially be contaminated with gluten from other grains), so you cannot substitute them fully.

- Flax meal, oat bran, wheat germ, etc. – If you want to increase the nutritional value a ton in what you’re baking, add in one or more of these beauties. I typically substitute up to 1/2 cup of the flour called for with one or more of these. For example, if the recipe calls for 2 cups of all purpose flour, you could do 1 1/2 cup spelt or whole wheat flour, 1/4 cup of flax meal and 1/4 cup of oat bran. These are so versatile and substitute in very nicely. They will change the texture slightly of what you’re baking, but you won’t notice a huge difference in taste. If you have always baked with all purpose flour, start adding these things in slowly until your family gets accustomed to the taste.

Hopefully I’ve convinced you to make some simple changes in how you bake. Next time, I’ll talk a bit more about healthier alternatives for the dairy and oils/fats called for in your recipes. Take small steps and before you know it, they’ll add up to big changes!

Feb2

Teaching your children to eat healthier

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Teaching your children to eat healthier

Recently, someone posted on our Facebook page an article about a 17 year old girl who had lived on a diet of chicken nuggets her entire life. Here’s a portion of that article:

This week 17-year-old British factory worker Stacey Irvine was rushed to the hospital when she collapsed, struggling to breathe. During the exam, doctors were stunned to learn that Ms. Irvine had never in her life eaten fruit or vegetables; instead she had eaten almost nothing but fast-food chicken nuggets since she was two years old.

Her mother, Evonne Irvine, told reporters she had gone to great lengths to try to feed her daughter more nutritious food, at one point even trying to starve the girl, but it hadn’t worked. Stacey responded that, once she started eating nuggets, she “loved them so much they were all I would eat.”

Wow. My first reaction to this was, “this mother should be arrested for neglect”. Maybe you think that a bit harsh, but let’s think about this for a minute. What is the role of a parent but to teach their children to make wise choices, to provide for their children what is right, good and healthy and to provide discipline when needed to help the child to stay on the right path? If a parent withheld water from a thirsting child or withheld warm blankets and clothes on a frigid day all the while they had the ability to provide these things, isn’t that neglect? Why is it any different when a parent irresponsibly withholds nutritious, life giving foods from a child who knows no better than to eat chicken nuggets every day?

Here’s another example of a parent, in my opinion, neglecting the physical needs of their child…last year when my daughter was in Kindergarten I would help out in her classroom every other week and then sit with her as she ate lunch in the cafeteria. Every day I sat with her I left without an appetite because I was so saddened by the lack of nutritious food these children are given. However, one day it was even worse. I sat next to a boy who had brought his lunch from home and I could barely contain my alarm as he pulled out the items in his lunch: a little chunk of white bread from Jimmy John’s, 2 Fruit by the Foots (did you catch that – 2!), a chocolate chip Kudos granola bar and to drink, Sunny Delight. That was it. Not even an attempt at something healthy, like a cup of applesauce, a banana – nothing. The amount of sugar in his lunch was about what a child should have in a week!

I understand it is difficult to get children to eat healthy foods, I have three of them myself. I know it’s hard, but it can most certainly be done. Lest you think we deprive our children, we don’t. They definitely have their fair share of treats now and again, but we are very careful about what treats they eat, how many they eat and when they eat them. Here’s different tactics and principles we’ve used with our children:

- Don’t keep junk food in the house. Seems pretty simple, huh? It is. If you don’t have junk in your house, neither you nor your children are tempted to eat it. I used to work as an RN for a program called Wic (Women, Infants and Children) and part of our job was to help the parent choose healthy foods for their children. I can’t tell you how many times I overheard a parent telling our dietician, “all my child will eat is hotdogs, macaroni and cheese and chips”. My thought was, stop buying them and your child can’t eat them! Children will NOT starve themselves. They may go on a short hunger strike, but eventually they will eat. The first and easiest step in changing your child’s eating habits is to change yours – stop buying what you shouldn’t be eating.

- Stop asking your children what they want to eat. Offering them a choice between an apple or a banana for a snack is fine, but asking them what they want for lunch or dinner is just begging for trouble. YOU are the parent, you make those choices. What child when asked what they want to eat is going to say, “let’s have a salad, some whole grain bread and an apple”. Don’t we all wish! Children, by nature, will choose what is the worst thing for them! We very, very rarely ask our children what they want to eat. We choose a healthy meal and if they don’t want to eat it, they wait until the next meal. We DO NOT give them a snack before the next meal, they must wait.

- Stick to your guns. A few times a week, we will have some type of dessert after a meal (usually whole grain cookies, homemade granola bars, organic “oreos” or something like that), but under no circumstances does a child get that dessert if he/she has not eaten all of their meal (including, and most importantly, their vegetables). If a child is struggling to eat their veggies (which is rarely a problem anymore since we have been vegetable Nazis for so long!), we do remind them that they will not get to enjoy the dessert along with the rest of the family. Again, if your child does not want to eat the meal you have prepared, DO NOT allow them to have a snack before the next meal.

- “Bartering” with little kids. Right about when our kids have all turned one, they began to fight us on eating their veggies/fruit. Early on, we teach them that if they eat a bite of the fruit/veggie we are wanting them to eat, then they get a bite of what they are really wanting. For example, let’s say they have some green beans that we are wanted them to eat and they were also having an almond butter/jelly sandwich. If our daughter was fighting us on the green bean and was only wanting to eat the sandwich, we would hold up a piece of each and say, “if you want this (show them the sandwich) then you need to eat this first (show them the green bean)”. Of course they didn’t magically give in on the first attempt, this takes diligence and perseverance, but we have had huge success with this. It requires you to sit with them for their entire meal and continue to go back and forth until the particular food they are fighting you on is gone, but over time they will definitely learn if you stick with it and don’t give in.

- Fruit and vegetables for snacks. You will be amazed at what a kid will eat when he/she is truly hungry. If you stop buying fruit snacks, granola bars, toaster strudel, etc. and only have fresh fruits around the house at snack time, your children will learn to love them. While you’re preparing dinner in the evening, set out some carrot sticks, cucumber slices, broccoli, and/or green/red pepper slices and some dip and watch your kids eat them up. It takes time to re-train a child’s taste buds, but it will happen!

- Start early. About a year ago we learned about the benefits of drinking vegetable juices (NOT V8! I mean using a juicer to make fresh vegetable juice) and have been drinking it almost every day since then. Our older two children (6 1/2 and 4) are not as crazy about the juice as our youngest (he’s almost 2). Because Easton was less than 1 when we started juicing and he had never had any kind of juice before in his life, he thinks it’s the best thing ever and drinks it all in 2 seconds flat! The younger you start your children on healthy foods, the easier it will be on them (and you!).

- Don’t give into cultural, peer or family pressure. Believe me, this is a tough one! Most people we know think we’re pretty crazy. But, we know that what we’re choosing for our children is best. You will often need to stick up for what you’re doing and be ready to go against the grain.

Above all, remember that you are the parent – you make the choices about what your children eat, not them. God has entrusted us with this responsibility and with the task of teaching them the importance of healthy eating.

Now would be a good time to take the first step and throw out those Fruit by the Foots and Kudos Bars ;)

Jan24

If you have daughters, you NEED to read this.

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If you have daughters, you NEED to read this.

Chances are good that you have heard of the Gardasil vaccine which promises to protect teenage girls and women from HPVs (human papillomaviruses). However, odds are that you have NOT heard the devastating effects this series of vaccines is having on many, many women, including seizures, blindness, paralysis and death. Most mothers assume that they are doing the very best for their children by having them vaccinated. If something is so prevalent and encouraged in our society it must be good, right? Wrong. If you are a mother and have even considered having your daughter(s) receive the Gardasil vaccine, please take a few minutes to read the following article by Dr. Mercola. Your daughter’s very life may be at stake.

A must-read for mothers with girls…PLEASE CLICK HERE!!

One more thing, if you have never signed up for Dr. Mercola’s newsletters, I strongly recommend it. There is no other naturally-minded source I know of that is as comprehensive, trusted and relevant. His newsletter is sent out around 4 times a week, which is a lot, but if you make it a habit of just reading one article a week you will learn so much!

Jan7

Who are the negligent ones?

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Who are the negligent ones?

Unbelievable. We were recently notified that because our children are unvaccinated, we are no longer welcome to see our family doctor. Now granted, we rarely go, usually only for a school physical here and there. But it is slightly nerve wracking that if we truly need something, we have nowhere to go. (In all fairness, I don’t believe it was our particular doctor’s decision whether she continues to see us or not. We actually chose her because of her open mindedness & respect for parents who do their own research and make educated decisions for their children’s health. It seems the clinic she works for merged with another entity and that is their stance).

Needless to say, I was a bit frustrated by this decision. It immediately made me feel like I was being looked at as a negligent and irresponsible parent. Maybe you’re thinking the same thing about me…if you have never done much research on vaccinations, I can completely understand that opinion. I probably thought the same thing about parents like me 5 years ago! But that all changed when I decided to really look into the truth about vaccines.

It is a very sad reality when parents who decide to NOT allow the following things injected into their children are the ones judged, criticized, reprimanded and in some states, even put into jail:

- Heavy metals like mercury, aluminum & lead (clearly linked to symptoms associated with Parkinson’s, ALS and Alzheimer’s)
- Phenoxxyethanol (used to make Anti-freeze)
- Formaldehyde (also used to embalm dead bodies and as a commercial disinfectant. It is a known human carcinogen)
- Human diploid cells from aborted fetuses
- MSG (associated with ADHD and brain toxicity)
- Aspartame (an extremely dangerous food additive that causes many adverse reaction including seizures and death)

Between the probable dangers of the above ingredients and the havoc vaccines wreak on a child’s immune system, it seems that parents who consent to routine vaccinations & doctors that administer them should be the ones under scrutiny. I apologize if that seems harsh, but setting all emotion aside and just looking at the facts, wouldn’t you agree that it is pretty ludicrous what we are allowing into our children’s bodies? But won’t we all get Polio and Measles and die if we don’t vaccinate? Absolutely not. I challenge you to study the facts; don’t take your pediatrician’s word for it any longer. Take a look at my previous post on vaccines and check out some of the resources listed.

In my opinion, clinics and doctors who won’t open their doors (or their minds) to parents who have taken the time to study, learn the facts and make educated decisions are truly the negligent ones.

Jan1

Resolve to make true health your goal in 2012

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Resolve to make true health your goal in 2012

As I sat outside the gas station waiting for my husband and daughters to finish using the restroom, I found myself watching an older couple, probably in their early 50′s hobble out of their car and into the store. They both walked with a seemingly painful gait due to obesity and, more than likely, arthritis. As I watched with a feeling of sadness and empathy, I couldn’t help but think, ‘what are we doing to ourselves? We are slowly killing ourselves, all for the sake of food, which tastes pleasurable for a moment but robs us of our health and vitality.’ As I look around me, I see so much sickness and disease, obesity and fatigue, pain and emptiness. Not exactly the full life God holds out to His children.

With the dawning of a new year upon us, many will resolve to lose weight and “get healthier” – you might be one of them. I recently spent some time with a couple of women who were “on a diet”. Through the course of the evening, I watched as they ate candy after candy, fully acceptable on their diet plan because it was “sugar free”. Is that what “getting healthier” looks like? Growing up, our cupboards were full of “fat free” food. Is that what “healthy” is? Well, our diet pop, sugar free & fat free addicted culture doesn’t seem to be getting much thinner or healthier. Wouldn’t you agree?

Maybe, just maybe we need to take a step back and reevaluate what “healthy” looks like. True health comes from eating food in its natural state, full of rich, life-giving nutrients, not concocted in a lab, full of aspartame, chemical preservatives and artificial colors and flavors. True health comes from fresh vegetable juices, not high sugar, ‘from concentrate’ fruit juices. True health comes from colorful & flavorful fruits and vegetables, not highly processed, boxed foods full of High Fructose Corn Syrup and bleached, enriched flour. Now, I live in reality and once in awhile these not-so-healthy things somehow find their way into my mouth too, but to enjoy true health and vitality, these things need to be the absolute exception, not the rule.

As you ponder your New Year’s resolution, I hope you will resolve to take steps this year to pursue true health – not the quick fix kind of health that comes from fad diets and nutrition-less foods. But true health that comes from tough choices, more time spent in the kitchen and maybe some extra money designated to purchase higher quality food. However, if you’re anything like me and set your goals too high and try to change too many things at once, you will get overwhelmed and discouraged and give up pretty quickly. That’s why over the last 6 years of pursuing genuine health and making changes in my family’s diet and lifestyle, I have resolved to make changes slowly. I encourage you to choose one thing at a time this year to focus on, maybe one change per month. Here’s a list of ideas of changes that are relatively easy if done over time, but will make a big difference in your health:

1.) Switch breads, cereals and pastas from white, enriched flour to ‘whole grain’ or 100% whole wheat. Especially with pasta, you will barely notice a difference in taste.

2.) Replace a snack a day or a few a week with fresh fruits or vegetables and dip. It is amazing how satisfying a piece of fruit can be, so much more so than that processed granola bar or chips.

3.) Find substitutes for foods containing High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). This is an extremely damaging form of sugar (not at all in a natural state and is the greatest contributor to obesity/weight gain) and is found in absolutely everything these days, from Ketchup to Soda pop. Please, please work to eliminate this from your family’s diet.

4.) Move away from fruit juice and pop. We have been deceived into thinking that fruit juice is a healthy alternative to pop. It is anything but – most juice today is so full of sugar and has been so chemically processed that it looks nothing like the fruit it supposedly came from. The best beverage at mealtimes is water. Most of us are dehydrated and desperately in need of water.

5.) Decrease meat consumption. Animal products, especially beef and chicken, are very hard on our digestive systems. Our bodies were not made to consume the amount of meat products most Americans are eating these days. When our digestive systems have to work extremely hard to break down our food, it leaves our body vulnerable to illness and disease. Try to plan at least one vegetarian meal a week and then increase that number as your family grows accustom and as you find more vegetarian recipes you love.

6.) Stop drinking homogenized, pasteurized milk. I will go into much greater detail on this one in the future, but please take my word for it – cow’s milk is NOT the health food we’ve been led to believe it is. It is extremely mucus producing, leading to ear infections in children, sinus infections, acne and many other health problems. Plus, the calcium in it is not even in a form that our body can use so you’re much better off getting calcium from spinach or other green vegetables. Almond milk, rice milk or coconut milk are all outstanding substitutes for cow’s milk. (If you are lucky enough to have a source for goat’s milk or raw cow’s milk, by all means drink that instead!).

7.) Work at finding local sources for eggs, chicken and beef – of course ideally those that are pasture raised/free range, antibiotic and hormone free. Craigslist can be a good option for finding these things or ask around at your local farmer’s market. Post a comment on Facebook asking others if they know of a good source near you.

8.) Watch one or all of these excellent documentaries: Food Inc., Food Matters, or Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. If you weren’t challenged by anything I said, you certainly will be after watching one of these :)

In the months ahead, we will talk in much greater detail about these different topics. But for now, choose one that seems manageable to you and work at it slowly. Then when you feel like you’ve got a good grasp on the first one, choose another. Before you know it, your family will be making great strides towards healthier eating.

Best of luck to you and I’d love to hear what change you are wanting to make first!