Flavor

10 Ways To Conquer Your Cravings for Sugar, Salt, and Fats.

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 According to a recent article in the New York Times, “Food Corporations Turn to Chefs in a Quest for Healthy Flavor,” Big Food companies like PepsiCo, Kellogg’s, and even fast food giants like Taco Bell, are changing their ways in response to the increasing public demand for healthier food options. To improve their image as healthy food manufacturers, Big Food corporations have called upon top chefs to help them create healthy menu makeovers, infusing real, fresh, whole food into old recipe favorites.

Why is this happening now? Intense pressure brought on by politicians and their constituents (you and me!) has given these food manufacturers no choice but to respond to the public outcry for healthier food. It’s no longer enough for these companies to earn a profit by selling food that tastes good. People are beginning to use the power of the pocketbook to show these companies that the food they sell must also be nutritious.

That’s because people everywhere are waking up. They are beginning to see the dangers of genetically modified ingredients and all the sugar, salt, and fats hidden in our food supply. From fancy restaurants to fast food chains, chefs are catching on that people want their food to make them feel good, not just while they are eating it but hours, days, and years afterward.

Really, this news shouldn’t make the headlines. This is common sense! Paying for food that makes us sick is as crazy as shooting ourselves in the foot. It just doesn’t make sense.

Big Food is finally getting the message and getting on board.

But remember, no processed or fast food option will ever be better than a healthy home-cooked meal. The best way to ensure you are eating the highest quality, most nutritious food possible is to prepare your own food in your own kitchen. We are all chefs. You don’t have to be trained at Le Cordon Bleu to know your way around a kitchen. You just need a little knowledge, some imagination, and a sense of adventure.

A desire for real food is a fundamental part of our basic biological blueprint. Given the chance, our taste receptors will naturally gravitate toward the inherent sweetness found in vegetables, fruits, and even nuts and seeds.

So, how do you reprogram your taste buds to ditch the cravings for sugar, salt, and fats? You can start by eating real, fresh, whole foods. Avoid fake, commercialized foods that come in convenience packages or are made in a lab.

Here are 10 more tips to get you excited about ditching the sugar, salt, and fats:

1. Sauté or roast your veggies to bring out their natural sweetness. Properly searing your chicken or meat brings out the inherent sweetness by way of the Maillard reaction. This is a fancy name for what happens when you create that nice, brown crust on your meat.

2. Play with herbs like cilantro, parsley, dill, basil, and oregano to add flavor and phytonutrients! Finish a meal by adding fresh herbs before plating or serving. This last-minute addition kicks the flavor up a notch!

3. Healthy fats found in avocado, coconut, and tahini not only increase the flavor of your meal, they also add that creamy, luscious texture found in many rich foods.

4. Try creating a savory, umami (Japanese for “delicious”) flavor. Add moderate amounts of tamari, umeboshi plum paste, balsamic vinegar, tomato paste, dried mushroom, or sea vegetables to your next stew, soup, sauce, or stir-fry.

5. Cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, clove, ginger, and even cayenne or chipotle pepper powder are all extremely flavorful additions to a meal. Spices like these excite your taste buds and grab your attention. This is helpful, because, as studies show, when we are focused on actually tasting our food rather than mindlessly gobbling it up, we actually need less food to feel satisfied.

6. Befriend some kitchen must-haves like real vanilla extract or vanilla bean or coconut butter. Or use common, every-day foods like lemons in some creative ways. For example, use lemon zest to add real zing to any meal!

7. For the most flavor, eat seasonally and locally. Canned or packaged foods or foods that have traveled great distances in the back of a truck just can’t compare to the succulence of a fresh piece of locally grown fruit.

8. Check your hydration. Digestion starts in your mouth with your saliva, which helps us taste all the magnificent flavor in food. If you are dehydrated and not producing enough saliva, you won’t really be able to enjoy your food.

9. Check your medications. Believe it or not, most medications interfere with the body’s ability to taste and smell. Some of them can even create an unpleasant metallic taste in the mouth. Wondering how you might decrease the number of pills you take?

10. Got nutrition? Nutrient deficiency is an important cause of improper taste perception. A lack of certain vitamins and minerals can markedly impair your ability to smell and taste food. Most Americans have several nutrient deficiencies, but there is one in particular that can especially keep you from enjoying your next meal: zinc. Try adding foods like oysters, pecans, sunflower seeds, and lentils to increase your daily intake of this important mineral.

Source: DrHyman.com

         

Singing Happy Birthday Makes Cake Taste Better.

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Story at-a-glance

  • Performing a simple ritual before eating makes the food more enjoyable – and it works whether the food is chocolate or carrots
  • Rituals may enhance enjoyment because they force you to become more involved in the experience at hand
  • Being mindful when you eat forces you to slow down and makes you feel more connected and involved in your eating experience
  • Rituals can be useful in other areas of your life too, such as before bedtime or helping you to de-stress after work

If you want to make your food taste better, and more thoroughly enjoy the experience of a meal, it may be as simple as performing a ritual first, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.

Singing ‘Happy Birthday’ before eating birthday cake is one example, but the beauty of this finding is that it works for healthy food too, giving simple strategies you can implement today to get more enjoyment out of your food.

cake

Ritualistic Behavior Enhances the Enjoyment of Eating, Improves Flavors of Food

If you’ve ever wolfed down a meal while working, driving or engaging in another task, you probably didn’t feel too satisfied afterward, and this is partly because you didn’t take the time to sit and savor your food.

Along these lines, researchers conducted a series of experiments to test whether performing a simple ritual before eating makes the food more enjoyable, and in each case, the answer was ‘yes.’

  • Participants who broke an unwrapped piece of chocolate in half and ate one half before unwrapping and eating the other half rated the chocolate more highly, savored it more, and were willing to pay more for it than those who ate it however they wanted
  • Those who waited to eat carrots after performing a small ritual enjoyed them more than those who had no delay
  • Simply watching someone perform a ritual, such as making lemonade, was not effective at improving its taste, which suggests personal involvement in the ritual process is key

How You Can Harness the Power of Rituals

The researchers concluded that rituals may have such an impact because they force you to become more involved in the experience at hand:

“Rituals enhance the enjoyment of consumption because of the greater involvement in the experience that they prompt.”

Rather than simply eating a bar of chocolate, for instance, stopping to feel the texture in your hands, breaking it into smaller pieces and waiting to savor each bite slowly is likely to enhance your enjoyment, even allowing you to feel moresatisfied by eating less chocolate.

Of course, this should work for other foods, too, like a bowl of steamed broccoli or a handful of nuts or berries. It’s not so much the food that matters, it’s the ritual beforehand. So you could try shaking the nuts in your hand before eating them, or placing your berries in an attractive dish first to make them taste even better.

This might also mean that as you take steps to prepare your food, such as makinghomemade fermented vegetables, the preparation ‘ritual’ will enhance your enjoyment of them, providing extra incentive to spend more time in the kitchen (a major benefit for your health!).

This also helps explain why certain foods seem to taste so much better at certain times of the year, such as on Thanksgiving or other holidays that involve long-held traditions. This can backfire, too, though, if you’ve become accustomed to watching TV while you snack on chips, for instance. In this case, breaking the ritual may help you to break your reliance on an unhealthy food.

Giving Thanks Before Eating

One of the most rewarding rituals you can do before a meal is to stop and give thanks for your food. Not only might this make your food taste better, but also people who are thankful for what they have are better able to cope with stress, have more positive emotions, and are better able to reach their goals.

People who give thanks before they eat also tend to eat more slowly and savor the meal more so than those who do not, lending a natural transition to mindful eating, as described below.

It can bring your family together too, and it’s even been shown by visionary researcher Dr. Masaru Emoto that human thoughts and emotions can alter the molecular structure of water, with positive emotions, such as gratitude, leading tobeautiful crystalline structures within the water. Your food, of course, contains water, so giving thanks before you eat may actually be able to transform your food in beneficial ways that are only beginning to be understood.

Being Mindful When You Eat

Practicing “mindfulness” means that you’re actively paying attention to the moment you’re in right now. In terms of eating, this means you’re focused on your food and you’re really taking the time to chew, taste and savor each bite that goes into your mouth. Mindless eating would be the opposite. Similar to engaging in a ritual beforehand, being mindful when you eat forces you to slow down and makes you feel more connected and involved in your eating experience. There are other ‘side effects’ too, as when you eat slower you give your brain time to register that you’re full, so you’ll likely eat less.

Taking the time to thoroughly chew your food also allows you to absorb more nutrients from your food, helps you maintain a healthy weight, allows for easier digestion, and leads to fewer digestive issues like gas and bloating, all while allowing you to actually taste your food before you swallow… a novel concept if you’re used to eating on the run.

Using Rituals to Establish Healthier Habits

Rituals can be extremely powerful in all facets of your life, especially if you use them to help create healthful habits. For instance, if you want to start getting to bed earlier, washing your face and brushing your teeth can be the ritual you use to trigger your earlier bedtime. Another example would be to spend time journaling, meditating, sipping herbal tea or even changing into loungewear when you come home from work as a ‘ritual’ to de-stress from your day and switch gears into relaxation mode.

Getting back to eating, a simple ritual like lighting a candle or two and setting your table can signal to your family that it’s time for a meal together. Saying grace or giving thanks before you eat, as mentioned, is another ritualistic way to enhance the enjoyment as you eat.

The opportunities to harness the power of rituals are truly endless, and only you can determine which rituals will be the most meaningful and productive in your own life. Chances are you have quite a few rituals already, and taking a few moments to create more is a simple way to live better.

 

HOW SAFE ID CHEWING GUM ?

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Recently, about thirty women, were asked whose ages were mostly under the age of forty, if they carried chewing gum with them. Twenty seven of the thirty were able to pull out a pack of gum, some even going as far as telling me why they loved a particular brand/flavor of gum.

While this demographic is not representative of all women, 90% of them chewed gum on a daily basis, some consuming more than one stick per day. As with many things that we expose our bodies to on a daily basis, let’s take a moment and analyze the ingredients of chewing gum and ask some important questions that pertain to whether it contributes to good health.

How many of us have looked at the ingredients on a pack of gum?

If you have, do you know what each one of the substances is?

Is a stick of chewing gum more of a “cancer stick” than a cigarette?

As you will see below, commercial gum products are some of the most toxic substances that you can expose your body too and literally can lead to some of the worst diseases on the planet.

Here is a list of the most common ingredients in the most popular chewing gum products on the market:

Sorbitol, Xylitol, Mannitol, Maltitol

Gum Base

Glycerol

Natural and Artificial Flavors

Hydrogenated Coconut Oil and Starch

Aspartame –Acesulfame

Soy Lecithin

Colors (titanium oxide, blue 2 lake, red 40)

BHT

Malic Acid, Citric Acid

Ingredient #1: Gum Base.

Imagine if someone came up to you and said, “Hey, would you like to chew on some tire rubber and plastic?” You probably would politely decline and want to report this person to a doctor for a psychological evaluation. “Gum base” is a blend of elastomers, plasticizers, fillers, and resin. Some of the other ingredients that go into this mix are polyvinyl acetate, which is frequently referred to as “carpenter glue” or “white glue”. Paraffin wax is another ingredient that is a byproduct of refined petroleum. Is chewing plastic, petroleum and rubber safe? As you chew, these substances leach into the mouth and body. Yummy.

Ingredient #2: Aspartame.

The controversy surrounding this substance is widespread. It is one of the most body toxic substances we can consume. The political corruption and money trail behind this agent of disease is a mile long. Aspartame has been linked to all of the major brain diseases including Alzheimer’s and ALS. It is also considered a prime contributor to many other diseases such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis, asthma, obesity, and many others. It is in many diet products on the market today, but in the long run actually contributes to obesity due to his extreme acidity. Aspartame is an excitotoxin, which over excites neurons in the brain until they burn out and die. Dr. Russell Blaylock is the leading expert on Aspartame and other excitotoxins and I would highly encourage you to see the documentary entitled “Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World”.

#3: Hydrogenated Coconut Oil and Starch.

Hydrogenation is chemical process that adds hydrogen across a double bonded carbon. This is done to increase the shelf life of a product, turning oil into a more plastic like substance. This process also creates Trans fats, which are now known to be very harmful to health.

Ingredient #4: Colors (titanium dioxide, blue 2 lake, red 40).

Titanium dioxide is a nanoparticle that is very common in sunscreen and many other health products, including synthetic nutritional supplements. New evidence is leading in the direction of this substance being carcinogenic, leading to cancer. We as humans are drawn to things that are colorful. Artificial food colorings, such as red 40, are made from petroleum and are dangerous to our health. Many people have extreme allergies to these substances and they have been implicated in contributing to ADD and other disorders and diseases.

Ingredient #5: Sorbitol, Xylitol, Mannitol, Maltitol.

These sugar alcohols are originally made from sugar, but are altered so much that they are considered sugar free. As a general rule, when nature is altered and changed to make a “better” product, more often than not, the result is something that is not healthy. Some even go so far as to say that these products are far worse than sugar and can stimulate weight gain. Other side effects can include abdominal pain and diarrhea. Is sugar alcohol better than sugar? Neither are good substances, so comparing the two is somewhat pointless.

Chewing Gum and Digestion

Every time you chew gum, your brain is tricked into thinking that you are eating food. Therefore, it sends signals to your stomach, pancreas and other organs involved in digestion to prepare for this “food”. Your salivary glands and pancreas will begin to emit enzymes, which are necessary to digest food and absorb nutrients from food. Constant emission of enzymes over time will deplete enzymes and over time this process can slow down. If you are not breaking down and absorbing food properly over time, you will get disease because the body needs nutrients to rebuild and thrive.

A Great Alternative for Fresh Breath

A great alternative to chewing gum is to carry around a small bottle of organic food grade peppermint oil and when you would like fresh breath, just put one drop in your mouth and you will have achieved the same effect. You can find many food grade oils that are wonderful for helping you have fresh breath.

Nothing in chewing gum is natural. It is chemical goop that in no way contributes to health or is good for your teeth. Don’t be fooled by fancy advertising. The five ingredients that we reviewed above, in one form or another, contribute to disease and poor health. Is this really a risk that you want to expose yourself to all for the sake of fresh breath? In the future, perhaps we will see that chewing gum may be as much of a contributor to disease as are cigarettes.

Source : http://www.activistpost.com/