in the kitchen with bella

two articles about eating healthy

I’m not doing too bad. I frequently eat about seven of the foods on this list, though it’s been a long while since I made chard.

I always have a bag of frozen wild blueberries on hand. My favorite breakfast is oatmeal (cooked with milk instead of water to add extra protein and calcium) with blueberries and sometimes a sprinkling of almonds.

We haven’t had beets since last summer, but my favorite way to prepare them is in a dip with goat cheese and chives.

We actually eat turmeric quite often because turmeric is a primary spice in Indian cuisine and we eat lots of Indian food. And my Indian cookbooks give me three different yummy ways to prepare cabbage. The nice thing about cabbage is that it doesn’t need to be used right away. I can buy a head and let it sit for about a week while I use up the more fragile greens first. Or I can cook half a head and then use the other half a few days later in a different recipe.

The Best Way to Cook Vegetables

“There is a misperception that raw foods are always going to be better,” says Steven K. Clinton, a nutrition researcher and professor of internal medicine in the medical oncology division at Ohio State University. “For fruits and vegetables, a lot of times a little bit of cooking and a little bit of processing actually can be helpful.”

When I was teaching at Salem State I had one student who told me that she and her boyfriend were raw foodists. They try to eat no cooked food. According to those who practice raw foodism, it’s supposed to be a healthier way to live. But those raw foodists are not always maximizing the nutrients they get from their food.

Because nutrient content and taste can vary so widely depending on the cooking method and how a vegetable is prepared, the main lesson is to eat a variety of vegetables prepared in a variety of ways.

And did you know this? You’re much better off with a full-fat salad dressing and slices of avocado than with a fat free version. And it tastes better too.

What accompanies the vegetables can also be important. Studies at Ohio State measured blood levels of subjects who ate servings of salsa and salads. When the salsa or salad was served with fat-rich avocados or full-fat salad dressing, the diners absorbed as much as 4 times more lycopene, 7 times more lutein and 18 times the beta carotene than those who had their vegetables plain or with low-fat dressing.

I think many people get so paranoid about their fat intake that they forget that we do need fats to be healthy, especially mono-unsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. I had a roommate who loved avocados but avoided them “because they are so fatty”. Really, she’d have been better off adding them to a big leafy salad. Approximately 63% of the fat in avocados is monounsaturated, 20% is polyunsaturated and 17% is saturated. Avocados also have no cholesterol.

But even small doses of saturated fats can still be ok if they get you to eat more vegetables that you’d otherwise skip. My mom had the right idea when we were growing up: bring on the broccoli with hollandaise sauce! Broccoli was the one food we’d be sure to fight over, never any leftovers at our house as long as she served it with our favorite condiment. And hey if a little butter and sugar is what it takes to get those sweet potatoes down or a little glazing on carrots, isn’t it worth it? It’s still healthier than ice cream or cake.