Is anyone eating HEALTHY with HEALTHY FOOD ?

[Gary350]

We took a Health Food class a few weeks ago. I think we eat healthy already but we thought maybe we could do better. First thing we were told is eat Activia Yogurt for breakfast every morning it will clean out your bad intestine bacteria and replace it with good bacteria. Activia Yogurt is like taking a Laxative it keeps a person running to the bathroom every 30 minutes for about 5 hours. I have eaten yogurt before but not Activia, I am not liking this, I did this for 1 week.

We were told to eat whole wheat bread, no white bread, no multi grain bread, no 9 grain bread. They claim the whole grain breads are too heavy not good for the intestines. I never heard this before?

No caffeine, no sugar, they both make you hungry. I know this is true and this works I have done this before but I cheat sometimes. I feel a lot better drinking decaf coffee, not drinking soft drinks, not eating sweets. I am not hungry all the time.

We were told to replace sweets with fruit. Apple with peanut butter, pears, grapes, berries, melon, pineapple, etc. No grocery store fruit in a Cans it has sugar added. No more donuts, cookies, cakes, pies, pastry.

NO fried food. No french fries from fast food restaurants, no fried chicken from KFC or Popeye's, no country fried steak from Cracker Barrel. If you fry at home use butter or olive oil. Fried food no more than once each week at home.

Brown rice is good, no white rice. Small baked potatoes once a week is ok. No pasta. Spaghetti is good replace real pasta with vegetable pasta or spaghetti squash.

Eat lots of protein, cook meat so all the fat drains out. Microwave bacon on a paper towel. Cook chicken on oven wrack so grease drips out. No Beef. Deer, Lamb, goat, buffalo meat is all ok. Fish is good, salmon & white fish are top of the list. No bottom crawler fish, catfish, snails, shrimp, carp, shell fish, clams, etc. I already knew this Bible says, not to eat bottom feeders.

Eat all the vegetables you want but try not to eat too much corn or other things that contain a lot of carbohydrates.

Beans are very good, some beans are better than others.

Soup, stew, chili are all good.

Cheese is good it is concentrated protein.

Eat 3 meals a day, snack on fruit with protein like peanut butter for snacks between meals. No food 2 hours before bed. Eat a good breakfast, medium size lunch, don't over stuff yourself for dinner. Get accustom to feeling hungry the longer you can wait before you eat again it good. Fruit + protein will take away the hungry feeling.

We are already doing good eating from the garden and most of this stuff above. We need to cut out fast food french fries. Less cake donuts and pastry. I did not know until yesterday there is an all vegetable pasta available at the grocery store it was good for dinner last might with spaghetti sauce. We are going to start eating spaghetti sauce over other things, broccoli, peas, green beans, etc. I always thought cheese was bad I don't care much for cheese anyway except on Mexican food, now maybe I start eating more cheese. I watch all the food cooking shows on TV trying to learn new things to cook, Bazaar Food is good I got 3 new recipes last might. I would love to eat more foods from other countries. Here are 2 new recipes look them up on Google search, How to cook Zard, How to cook Falafel baked version. We are going to try Falafel for dinner tonight. I need to get my old VCR connected to TV I can not write fast enough to get many new recipes.

How you cook is just as important as what you eat.

[MoonShadows]

In April, I cut out all obvious sugars...no candy, cookies, cake, pies, ice cream, soda etc. I also started watching for hidden sugars in foods by reading more closely the nutrition panels. 4 grams of sugar are equal to a teaspoon. I cut out white bread and started eating sprout bread, like Ezekiel. In this time, I lost 50 lbs. I had my yearly physical last week, and my overall cholesterol is down with my good cholesterol up and my bad cholesterol down. My triglycerides went from 221 at my last physical to 71.

Despite many health practitioners saying it's OK to eat meat and cheese, you really don't need that much protein as people think, and more and more studies are finding correlations between meat, dairy and cheese and cancer. That doesn't mean we can't eat it, but American consume so much more of it than is healthy. Fats are fine, but watch out for saturated and trans fats. Studies on sugar (sucrose) are beginning to point out just how bad it is for us. Most people think it's because it can lead to diabetes, but even more so to heart disease.

I am in no way a health nut, but I read a lot about health. I do what I can. Sounds like you are off to a good start, too. Most Americans don't have a clue. I am amazed at what I see in people's grocery baskets. I seldom veer from shopping in the perimeter of the grocery store. It's what's down the aisles that will kill you.

[digitS']

Gary, I often feel that you are a half mile ahead of me but maybe, I'm catching up. This might have gone on for a few decades .

I'm probably not trying hard enough. Growing up with a health conscious, Seventh Day Adventist mother set me on a fairly good course, despite later transgressions. However, a lot of my "healthy eating has been prompted by using garden produce. This moves me away from processed foods somewhat.

We give government agencies responsibilities for gathering information. Academically trained people there and in our schools help us understand what the information and all the numbers mean. At least, I think that is how it should work. And, we all eat. Too many people just turn off the information available out there for us and drift with whatever whim and food industry tide that hits them. I think that's a real shame.

I am amazed at what I see in people's grocery baskets.

Yes, I am too. Then, I see the reports from the CDC on diabetes and obesity. And sure, I struggle with overeating. I didn't know caffeine encourages feelings of hunger. It tends to upset my stomach, so I have tried to work around it some with decaf and limits.

And what is the big deal with limits?! You know, ripe fruit is about 10% sugar. That's sweet. I like desserts (with my coffee ) but there are lots of foods that are too sweet for me. I'd almost have to push myself to eat them - crazy.

Animal fats. Is it such a problem to choose lean meats? But, I LIKE it! Haven't you ever thought about what it means to be an adult? Most of us in this country have the freedom to make choices.

Steve
having a mid-morning slice of "pumpkin" pie (made from garden-grown buttercup squash ) with his first cup of coffee. hold the whipped cream and the creamer

[webmaster]

The Activa yogurt might elevate your risk for diabetes. Check the sugar levels as some yogurts have as high as two tablespoons of sugar.

If you're going to eat yogurt, eat the plain flavor yogurt but compare to find the one with the least amount of sugar.

Sugar is a huge cause of disease in the world.

[SQWIB]

I don't go too nutso about it but when I'm on my healthy kick I try to avoid bread, rolls and such, I will make a flat bread with spelt. I replaced my white rice with Barley.
I try to stay away form refined flours and sugars.
Increase my fruit and veggie intake and decrease my portions on proteins, I will snack on canned fruit if thats all I got. All proteins are allowed, beef, chicken, salmon, but in smaller portions, Ill pass up on the starches and eat more veggies or grapes with dinner.
I live on bananas
No sweets, no chips, no pretzels
Smoothies with no sugar added using almond milk, bananas, berries, carrots, kale, broccoli (I try to do a 50/50 portion of veggies to fruit)
No soda. lots of water
Milk is replaced with unsweetened almond milk
Sugar substitute for coffee
Dry out period from alcohol 4 weeks to 12 weeks
My purge is usually a 5-7 days of nothing but fruits and veggies (immediate 10 pound drop if I'm good)

[SQWIB]

Oh and thanks to this site, I've been experimenting with making flatbread using a mix of spelt and Eggplant Flour and with great results.

[webmaster]

Wow Sqwib, that's a good regimen. I've cut down my meat protein portions as well, and increased amount of veggies. Fruit I get in the morning or lunch.

The refined flour thing is the hardest!

[Allyn]

Nothing in the original post was a surprise to me, except for the Activa yogurt. I hadn't heard that before. I eat plain Greek yogurt which is supposed to be good for the digestive system.

I avoid refined flour. I buy wheat berries and use a flour mill. Shelf life is about three days max, so I grind what I need today and tomorrow. I hadn't heard that whole grains breads are 'too heavy'. The problem with whole grain breads from the supermarket is that the packaging is misleading. If a bread claims it has 9 grains, for example, it might be 99% refined white flour and then a teaspoon or less each of 8 other grains. I'd hardly consider that '9-grain bread.' My solution is to grind my own flour and then I know I have whole-grain flour and when I make multi-grain bread, it really is whole-grain, multi-grain bread.

Make sure the olive oil you use is 'authentic' meaning that it is what the label says it is. The FDA has no guidelines governing olive oil labeling so the manufacturers can call their oils 'cold pressed,' 'virgin,' or 'extra virgin' and there's no one to call them on it if they're lying. Much of the olive oil sold in the U.S. as "extra-virgin" is really adulterated in some way and lacks the health and the taste benefits of real “extra-virgin” olive oil. To make sure you are actually getting what the label says you are getting, go to the North American Olive Oil Association website (https://aboutoliveoil.org) and check their list of manufacturers to see which oils they have certified as authentic, meaning what the label says is in the bottle actually is in the bottle. A bottle of oil that is certified by the NAOOA will have the NAOOA logo stamped somewhere on the label.

Another thing about olive oil is it loses the health benefits we associate with olive oil when it is overheated. 'Extra virgin' has a low smoke point, so it’s good for cold dishes and recipes that don’t require much heat. 'Virgin' has a little higher smoke point and is good for lower-temperature cooking. No olive oil is going to stand up to the high temperatures for frying. If you fry with olive oil, do it on as low a temp as you can because the health benefits from using olive oil are severely compromised with high heat.

I make my own condiments, marinades, sauces, and salad dressings. There is a surprising amount of sugar in these things from the supermarket and the manufacturers try their best to hide them in the ingredients list by breaking them into different components. The main culprit is high-fructose corn syrup, but lactose and saccharose (or anything ending in 'ose') are also sugars. Anything identified as a syrup, sweetener, or sugar with an adjective (beet sugar, invert sugar, palm sugar, et al) are all sugars. Once you start looking for them in the ingredients list, it is easy to find four or five (or more) different sugars on a food label. Making ketchup and mayonnaise from scratch is easy and if you make it, you know there are no sugars in it.

Another benefit of making your own mayonnaise is you can pick the fat. I use NAOOA-certified extra virgin olive oil (and no, it doesn't taste nasty like the olive-oil mayonnaise from the supermarket). Again, shelf life is just a few days, but that's why supermarket foods are so bad for you is because the manufacturers process out all the healthy parts of the food to extend the shelf life. If it is good for you, it has a short shelf life.

[MoonShadows]

@Allyn, LOL...newbie olive oil would look funny! Can you post your recipe for mayonnaise?

[Allyn]

@Allyn, LOL...newbie olive oil would look funny! Can you post your recipe for mayonnaise?

It did look very odd, talking about 'newbie' and 'extra-newbie' oil. I was more than a little annoyed.

This is the original ingredient's list for the mayonnaise:
1 egg yolk
2 1/2 tsp acid (white vinegar, lemon juice or a combination of both)
3/8 tsp of canning salt (1/4 tsp plus 1/8 teaspoon)
3/8 tsp of granulated sugar (1/4 tsp plus 1/8 teaspoon)
1 cup oil

It was a Hellmann's copycat recipe that I picked up somewhere. I use white vinegar, and since the point was to get rid of the sugar, I either eliminate the sugar or I use artificial sweetener. Since sugar and salt kinda balance each other taste-wise, if you eliminate the sugar, you'll have to adjust the amount of salt to your taste. You can use table salt instead of canning salt. I use canning salt because it is a finer grain and dissolves more readily in cold liquid.

If you have an emulsion blender, you can throw everything in the blender and give it a whirl. I don't yet, so I use a stand mixer with a whisk equipped. You can also do this with a hand whisk, but it is a LOT of whisking, so you'll probably want helpers to hand off to when your arm starts to ache. You can also do this with a hand-held electric mixer, again with a helper so the helper can hold the mixer and keep it going while you add the oil.

Usually, you collect all your ingredients and then start, but I throw the egg yolk into the mixer bowl and start the mixer and then collect the rest of the ingredients. This lets the yolk get good and creamy by the time I am ready with everything else.

The trick to making mayonnaise (if you don't have an emulsion blender) is to add the oil SLOWLY. If you add the oil too quickly, you drown the emulsion and it stays runny.

1. Add the yolk to a mixing bowl. With a whisk or whisk attachment in a stand mixer, whisk the yolk very fast (mixer on High) for several minutes. The yolk will became creamy. (This beats up the lecithin in the yolk to thicken the mayonnaise.)

While the yolk is whisking:

2. In a custard cup, add the vinegar, sugar and salt. Stir until the salt and sugar are dissolved. (Use a clear-glass cup/bowl so you can see when the granules are all dissolved and vinegar is clear.)

3. Measure 1 cup of oil into a pouring vessel (A measuring cup if the cup has a pour spout or use a plastic mustard/ketchup squirt bottle. Whatever pouring vessel you use, use one that gives you fine control of the pour stream.)

With the yolk still whisking on High:

4. Add about half of the vinegar solution to the yolk. Start pouring the oil in VERY slowly. (Very, very slowly, like the smallest stream possible, like if the stream was any smaller, it would be dripping.)

5. After adding about half of the oil, add the rest of the vinegar solution and then continue adding the rest of the oil (-- still very slowly.)

6. Keep whisking until the mayonnaise is smooth and creamy.

Additional Tips:

I have a hard time getting the mayonnaise to have any body if it is raining outside. I think the high humidity dampens the emulsion effect. The mayo tastes okay, but it is a little runny. To salvage runny mayonnaise, start with a clean bowl. Add an egg yolk, beat it creamy and then slowly add the runny mayonnaise like adding the oil in the first go-round.

[MoonShadows]

Thank you for the recipe. I am going to try it out.

[Gary350]

N
I avoid refined flour. I buy wheat berries and use a flour mill. Shelf life is about three days max, so I grind what I need today and tomorrow. I hadn't heard that whole grains breads are 'too heavy'. The problem with whole grain breads from the supermarket is that the packaging is misleading. If a bread claims it has 9 grains, for example, it might be 99% refined white flour and then a teaspoon or less each of 8 other grains. I'd hardly consider that '9-grain bread.' My solution is to grind my own flour and then I know I have whole-grain flour and when I make multi-grain bread, it really is whole-grain, multi-grain bread..

Where do you buy wheat berries? I have a grain mill it grinds grain about the size of corn meal. I would like to grind my own wheat flour I don't think this grain mill will work for flour. Tell me about your flour mill?

Doctor told me to avoid factory processed food if possible. Eat nothing with more than 5% fat or 5% trans fat.

[pepperhead212]

I have a Nutrimill, which grinds very fine, to pastry flour fineness, but it all depends on feed speed, as well as the grinding speed - it takes some playing around to get the right combos for different grains. Many of the things I only want a small amount of I grind in my Vitamix - I also use that for the weird stuff, like the ground eggplant and butternut squash.

Here is my favorite source for some grains and flours. Great prices, a flat rate $4.99 shipping charge, and a few times a year you'll get a 15 or 20% off your entire order, with a promo code!
https://shop.honeyville.com/products/grains.html

For those of you making your own mayo with EVOO, here's something I learned years ago, that explained a problem I had whenever I made it with 100% EVOO: it would be bitter. I would use at least 50% of a neutral oil, to overcome the problem. Had no clue as to what caused it, until I read something in a James Peterson CB (probably SAUCES, but it could have been another) - aerating the EVOO in a blender caused the bitterness! Even making it by hand, with a whisk, aerated it too much, and caused bitterness, according to him, and the only way to make it w/o bitterness was to beat the yolk(s) with a fork, adding the oil, drop by drop, speeding it up as the mayo got thick. And it worked! I only did this a couple of times, sticking with my 50/50 mix for most things.

And another thing I found that was really good in mayo many years ago, was rice vinegar (the white, not chenkiang). Used with lemon juice, it adds a wonderful taste to the mayo.

[Allyn]

...For those of you making your own mayo with EVOO, here's something I learned years ago, that explained a problem I had whenever I made it with 100% EVOO: it would be bitter. I would use at least 50% of a neutral oil, to overcome the problem. Had no clue as to what caused it, until I read something in a James Peterson CB (probably SAUCES, but it could have been another) - aerating the EVOO in a blender caused the bitterness! Even making it by hand, with a whisk, aerated it too much, and caused bitterness, according to him, and the only way to make it w/o bitterness was to beat the yolk(s) with a fork, adding the oil, drop by drop, speeding it up as the mayo got thick. And it worked! I only did this a couple of times, sticking with my 50/50 mix for most things.

That's interesting. I have never had bitter mayonnaise using 100% extra-virgin olive oil and I make it quite regularly. I beat the yolk until very creamy and then add the oil very slowly. Maybe my method is Peterson's solution to prevent bitterness, but I have never had that problem. If the oil isn't actually extra-virgin, if it is not certified as extra-virgin by the NAOOA, I wonder if that's where the bitterness comes from.

Where do you buy wheat berries? I have a grain mill it grinds grain about the size of corn meal. I would like to grind my own wheat flour I don't think this grain mill will work for flour. Tell me about your flour mill?....

I use a CGoldenwall grinder and I get my berries from Barry Farm (https://www.barryfarm.com/Grains.htm).