Healthy Eating :Chicken,Oats, Legumes and nuts

Eating well isn’t always easy let alone finding the time to cook. But if your secret ingredient is chicken, maintaining a healthy diet is much less work. Dishing up a high-protein, low-fat meal, chicken is one of the leanest meats on grocery store shelves.

In fact, a skinless chicken breast contains less than 1.5 grams of fat per 100 gram serving, according to Bryan Hughes, New Product Development Manager, Maple Lodge Farms. An essential healthy ingredient to every meal, low-fat protein in chicken boosts your energy level by transporting oxygen and nutrients in your blood and cells while replacing and forming new tissue.

More Canadians are weighing in on the benefits of chicken than ever before. “Chicken consumption has almost doubled over the past 20 years in a country where over 75 per cent of households eat at least one chicken meal each week,” says Hughes. “The trend in comfort foods has hit home and consumers are turning to chicken as essential to a well-balanced meal.”

And it’s simple to be creative when serving chicken, adds Hughes. From picnic salads to garden party entrees, Maple Lodge Farm’s Premium Oven Roasted and Seasoned Chicken Breasts are quick suggestions to spice up any meal…and you can save the leftovers for sandwiches the next day.

Both products are easy to find at your neighbourhood Sobey’s, IGA or Knechtel’s.

But when it comes to food safety, refrigerate cooked chicken promptly after serving to protect yourself from harmful bacteria. Spread out large quantities of leftovers in a shallow container to chill faster. But leave the dishes for later.

Legumes, Seeds and Nuts

Beans, peas and lentels are in the legume family and are excellent healthy food choices. Legumes are healthy complex carbohydrates, full of vitamins and minerals as well as fibre. They are a good source of protein, although they do not have all the amino acids (the building blocks of protein) that the body needs, so supplement your legumes with a variety of foods to get the complete protein your body needs.

Beans have also been shown to help lower the risk of Diabetes and heart disease. Eating a cup of cooked beans a day can lower your total cholesterol by up to 10% in 6 weeks, which decreases your risk of heart disease by 20%. The phytonutrients in beans also help lower the risk of cancer.

Canned beans will give you much of the same benefits as dried beans, so if you don’t like to cook your beans from scratch, canned beans are a good alternative.
Some people avoid beans because of the gas and bloating that beans cause. This can be avoided in several ways. First always soak your dried beans overnight, and then discard that water and replace it with fresh water before you cook the beans. If beans still cause you problems, you might try gradually increasing the amount of beans you eat over several week, to help your body adapt. You could also try the product “Beano” found in most stores. It works well for most people.

Seeds and nuts can also be an important source of healthy fibre, plus they are often satisfying and help control the appetite. Nuts and seeds are full of healthy unprocessed monosaturated fats as well.

You might also seriously consider adding bean and seed sprouts to your diet, if you don’t eat them already. The nutritional content of sprouts is many times greater than the original seed or bean it sprouted from. Sprouts have the highest concentration of nutrition per calorie than any food. They are also known for their high enzyme activity, which is never surpassed in any other stage of plant growth.

Beans are almost always a good food choice, but one exception to this is soybeans. Although soy is a popular “healthy” additive to food today, originally the Chinese did not eat soybeans as they did other beans because they knew that soybeans contained harmful substances. Soybeans contain powerful enzyme inhibitors which block the action of the enzymes the body needs for protein digestion. Even cooking them does not get rid of these substances, which cause gas and bloating, as well as other very serious problems in the body, like cancer and blood clots.

The only soy products that do not cause these health problems are the traditional fermented soy products, such as tempeh, natto, miso and shoyu (tamari or soy sauce,) since the lengthy fermentation process seems to get rid of most of the harmful substances, and allow the soy to be easily digested. All other soy products should be avoided, and definitely not used as a replacement for meat in the diet.

Oats, Oatmeal, Vitamins Nutrition for Skin Care and Bath Products

Oats (botanical name Avena sativa) An oat is a grass that produces a fibrous root and a hollow jointed stem with narrow, flat, pale-green leaves. Oats are native to southern Europe and eastern Asia. They are widely cultivated as a food.

An oat is an edible cereal grain produced by the cereal grass of the same name. They are light coloured and have a nutty flavour and a chewy texture.

Usually we think of them as breakfast food but oatmeal has long been known for its skin-soothing properties. Many skin lotions and ointments are formulated with oats for it’s healthy skin healing properties.

As a nutritious breakfast food oats provide a healthy addition to your diet in that there is 140 calories per 1/2 cup serving. They also provide 4g of dietary fibre, of which 2g of this is soluble fibre and 2g is insoluble. Insoluble fibres are those that cannot be dissolved in water. And soluble fibres can be dissolved in water. They provide 10% of your daily iron needs. Also of this 1/2 cup serving, there is 26g of carbohydrate and 2.5g of fat, which is considered low-fat.

Three grams of soluble fibre from oatmeal daily, in a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol, may reduce the risk of heart disease. Besides all this, this nourishing cereal also contains, vitamins, starches, minerals and 5g of protein. Clinical trials have been done, and they have shown that regular consumption of oat bran reduces blood cholesterol levels in just one month. High-fibre diets may also reduce the risk of colon and rectal cancers.

Oats contain the alkaloid, gramine, which has been credited with mild sedative properties.

There are several forms of oats on the market and the following lists the most popular kinds. Whole oats without the hulls are groats.

Rolled: Oat groats that have been steamed then flattened into flakes. Also, known by the more common name of old-fashioned.

Quick-cooking: Oat groats that are cut into several pieces before rolling to shorten the cooking time.

Instant oatmeal: Oat groats that are cut into very small pieces and processed so that they need no cooking, just add boiling water.

Steel-cut: Oat groats that have been cut by steel blades. Often called Irish or Scottish oatmeal.

Oat flour: The finely ground grain.

Oat bran: The ground outer layer of the oat. Used as a hot cooked breakfast cereal and is a good source of fibre.

Other uses for Oats Are in Skin and Bath Products.

Oatmeal is found in many bath products and skin and body products. Oatmeal baths are wonderful for soothing dry, flaking skin, and poison ivy and dermatoses. It alleviates itching from poison oak and chicken pox. It has long been used in facial scrub products and is a very natural product.

Oat straw contains high levels of silicic acid, which makes it an effective treatment for many skin diseases, especially those associated with the nervous system. Try using an external oat-straw preparation to relieve shingles and herpes.

Besides eating them in the form we are most familiar with, the box of oats that we purchase in the supermarket, oat products can be purchased in commercial form as capsules, extracts, and tinctures.

One expert lists the primary functions of oats as: If eaten, a supportive, nurturing tonic for the nervous system, If eaten, it can be used to alleviate digestive problems associated with stress and tension

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Healthy Lifestyle – with Bill & Sheila