Soul Saturday with Danette

Archives for December 2016

It doesn't have to be the weekend to spend a little time getting in touch with your soul.

Here are some rituals I do to ground myself and I felt moved to share this with you today.

Yours in Health,

Danette

P.S. Please share this with someone you care about and I love to hear from you in the comments below.

It's hard to go wrong with a good soup recipe! Soups offer versatility because they can be served as a starter but also work perfectly as a main dish.

These recipes will store in the freezer for quick “heat and eat” meals on the run. Here are 5 of my favorites that will warm your belly and soothe your soul!

5 Soul Soothing Soup Recipes

1. Classic Crock Pot Chicken Noodle

Topping my list of soothing soup recipes is the ever popular Chicken Noodle! A sure-fire way to cure what ails you and nourish both your body and your soul.

chicken noodle soup

2. Creamy Carrot Soup

An often overlooked soup, this Creamy Carrot Soup is bursting with flavor! The creamy goodness is light but full of flavor and a breeze to whip up.

carrot soup

3. Skinny Mini Minestrone

A hearty Minestrone is a hit, whether you're feeding a crowd or simply curling up with your own personal warm mug of goodness!

minestrone soup

4. Butternut Squash Soup

This Butternut Squash Soup is a perfect starter for your meal but it's also filling and nutritious enough to be a stand-alone meal. So creamy and yummy!

butternut squash soup

5. Hearty Quinoa and White Bean Chili

Not quite a soup but this Hearty Quinoa and White Bean Chili recipe is ideal for warming up after a long day in the Winter weather.

white bean soup

Yours in Health,

Danette

Please share these recipes with your friends and I love reading your comments below.

Soup can be one of the healthiest comfort foods when you use just the right ingredients.

And a classic Minestrone is a always a real crowd pleaser. The best part is that it's loaded with healing ingredients to soothe both your body and your soul.

I just love soup by the fire after a day on the slopes with my family. You can serve it up with some healthy crackers for a hearty Winter meal that will stick to your ribs but not to your waist.

minestrone soup

Pop the leftovers in freezer containers or freezer bags for a healthy lunch on the go later.

Yours in Health,

Danette

P.S. Please share this yummy goodness with your friends and I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.

Thanks for coming along on our journey to give back to children in Denver.

Between 100 business owners spread out to various Walmarts around Denver, we were able to buy around 11,000 toys!

Yours in Health,

Danette

P.S. Please share the gift of giving with your loved ones and I welcome your comments below.

Perhaps the shining star of ALL soup recipes is the all healing Chicken Noodle Soup! It's a go-to recipe when you're feeling under the weather or when you just want something yummy to warm you up on a cold day.

This recipe will take the healing powers of your Chicken Noodle Soup to the next level and I love that it can be cooking in the crockpot while I tend to other things.

I personally love the healthy gut enhancing power of bone broth but don't have hours to make my own, so I use this homemade quality chicken bone broth as my soup base for this recipe.

crock pot chicken noodle soupYours in Health,

Danette

P.S. Please share this yummy recipe with your friends and I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.

 

For a long time, people who wanted to cut sugar from their diets used artificial sweeteners.

Saccharin, cyclamates and aspartame were easy, but they posed real concerns about health. Now there’s a new trend towards Stevia.

To call Stevia new isn’t exactly right. It’s been used in South America for over 1,500 years. It began being used in Japan in 1971 and was introduced in the U.S. in the 1980s.

But competitor companies tried to fight its use, and it was only allowed to be used in a highly processed version.

Not All Stevia is Created Equally

Today Stevia, which is a sweet herb, is widely available in different forms. Unfortunately, not all of them are healthy.

Some Stevia is highly processed while other kinds are more natural.

Stevia contains 2 glycosides:

  • One is called rebaudioside. It’s 200 to 300 times sweeter than sugar.
  • The other is called stevioside. It’s less sweet, and even a little bitter.

When Stevia is highly processed, chemicals are used and all the stevioside goes away. What’s left is rebaudioside.

Knowing if your Stevia is all rebaudioside or if it contains stevioside helps you choose the one that is healthiest.

3 Types of Stevia (from good to bad)

Green Leaf Stevia

Green Leaf Stevia is hardly processed at all. The leaves of a Stevia plant are dried. Then they’re crumbled and ground into powder. What’s left is a little bit bitter. It’s 30 to 40 times sweeter than sugar. This is the best type of Stevia.

Stevia Extracts

Some companies take the sweet rebaudioside out of the Stevia and only use that part of the plant. It’s much sweeter, but doesn’t have the health benefits that Green Leaf Stevia has.

Altered Stevia

This is the most processed form of Stevia. It’s made using chemicals in a 42-step process. Some of the chemicals are toxic, or cause cancer. Altered Stevia has extra ingredients such as dextrose and sugar. These make it 400 times sweeter than sugar.

Benefits of the “good” kind of stevia

Some studies have shown that using green leaf stevia can cut the risk of breast cancer.

Another showed that when it’s used with other cancer fighting natural materials, it raises antioxidant levels.

Still others have linked Green Leaf Stevia use to lower cholesterol and blood pressure.

What to look for on the label

If you want to use Stevia as a sweetener, you should know what to look for on food labels. Here’s how to make sure you're buying the real deal.

The first thing you need to know is that Truvia isn’t the good kind of Stevia. Its ingredients list shows that though it does contain Stevia leaf extract, the first item listed is erythritol. This is a chemical sweetener.

If the first thing on an ingredient list is something other than Stevia, don’t buy it.

The best way to make sure that you’re getting the right kind of Stevia is to grow your own plant. You can also buy fresh or dried Stevia leaves online. Then you can grind the leaves yourself.

Yours in Health,

Danette

Please share this and I always love hearing from you in the comments below.

Have you ever heard of a breadfruit?

They’re not very well known in the United States, but they will be soon.

Breadfruit may just be the next superfood, and with good reason.

This tropical fruit that’s about the size of a cantaloupe has loads of high-quality protein as over 100% of the daily dose of Vitamin C you should get. Add to that plenty of potassium and fiber and it’s no wonder that so many people call it a nutritional powerhouse.

Around the world, people are looking to breadfruit as the answer to global hunger. It's easy to grow and can be eaten at any stage.

One breadfruit tree will produce about 250 fruit per year, and that can feed a family for a long time.

In the United States, people are starting to seek out breadfruit for its antioxidants and nutrients, which include:

Calcium ? Carotenoids ? Copper ? Iron ? Magnesium ? Niacin ? Omega 3
Omega 6 ? Phosphorus ? Potassium ? Protein ?Thiamine ?Vitamin A ? Vitamin C

Top 5 Reasons to Eat Breadfruit

1. Breadfruit is high in antioxidants. These prevent and reverse the damage caused by free radicals. This reduces your risk of cancer, heart disease and stroke. It also combats the effects of aging.

2. Breadfruit is rich in amino acids. These are the building blocks of our body’s cells. Amino acids are essential to keeping our bodies fueled and functioning properly.

3. Breadfruit gives your immune system a boost. It's loaded with bioflavonoids, which fight inflammation. It also has high levels of thiamine, which support digestive health.

4. Breadfruit is a heart healthy food. It contains the phytochemicals that fight the buildup of plaque in the heart’s arteries and has been shown to contain a cholesterol-lowering component. It's also high in fiber which reduces blood pressure, and is high in potassium. Many people who suffer from heart conditions have low levels of potassium.

5. Breadfruit may help fight cancer. Studies have shown that an extract applied to the skin reduced the size and number of tumors on the skin. It has also been successfully tested in the treatment of liver cancer.

How to Eat Breadfruit

Breadfruit gets softer as it matures. It can be baked, boiled, candied, fried, pickled, roasted or steamed.

According to the National Tropical Botanical Garden’s Breadfruit Institute, breadfruit can be eaten at any point in its maturity.

“When it’s small and green, it tastes like an artichoke. When it’s starchy and mature, it’s the equivalent of a potato. When it’s soft and ripe, it’s dessert.”

That makes it one versatile fruit!

One of the biggest advantages that breadfruit offers is that it's gluten free. Breadfruit flour is already available online. It can be used in recipes in place of wheat flour one for one and adds tremendous nutritional value.

For a healthy and delicious way to add breadfruit to your diet, try making these tasty pancakes:

Breadfruit Pancakes

INGREDIENTS

One ripe* breadfruit

Dash of cinnamon (to taste)

Splash of vanilla (to taste)

*Note -You can tell the breadfruit is ripe if it's starting to turn brown and is very soft.

1. Cut the breadfruit open and scrape its insides into your blender.

2. Add a dash of cinnamon and a splash of vanilla, then blend for just 5 seconds.

3. Heat up a nonstick pan and melt a bit of coconut oil in the pan.

4. Spoon a scoop of the mixture into the pan and heat until golden, then flip.

5. Top with a dollop of Greek Yogurt and 100% Maple Syrup. Enjoy!

Also worth noting, breadfruit and jackfruit look similar and they're related but jackfruit is much larger.

Yours in Health,

Danette

P.S. I hope you will help me spread the word about breadfruit. Have you tried it? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.

If you've been using artificial sweeteners to lose weight or to lower sugar intake, read this before you open another one of those brightly colored packets.

Before I tell you why you need to stay away from them, let me clarify what I mean when I say “artificial sweetener.”

Artificial sweetener – What is it?

Artificial sweeteners are sugar substitutes, that are sweet to taste. They have no or few calories when compared to regular white sugar (you should avoid that too!)

They are many times sweeter than your table sugar and as a result, you end up using less of it. This means no or low calorie recipes and products which may seem attractive but I'll come back to how calorie counting can backfire in a minute.

A couple of points to show just HOW attractive these little pink packets are:

? An estimated 8 out of 10 in the United States consume some sort of artificial sweetener.

? In the last year, a whopping 2225 sugar free and reduced sugar foods hit the food market.

Artificial Sweeteners are Everywhere

The most common foods include:

  • cereals
  • flavored yogurts
  • sports drinks
  • fruit juices
  • candies
  • packaged desserts and many more

Unfortunately, they are not safe. Although marketed as safe, there is enough evidence that they harm your body in many ways.

One of the trickier brands I get a lot of questions about is Truvia. And yes, I will use some raw green leaf stevia sometimes but Truvia is not the same. It's loaded with chemicals so read those labels closely.

3 Dangers of Artificial Sweeteners

1. Promotes obesity

The link between artificial sweeteners and obesity is direct. Evidence from 2 studies links drinking artificially sweetened beverages to obesity.

A study on diet soda drinkers and non-drinkers showed a clear difference. Those that drank diet soda (contains artificial sweetener) had TRIPLE the abdominal fat.

This data was from 749 people, aged 65+, observed over a period of 9 years. Non-diet soda drinkers did have abdomen fat, but it was not as high as in the other group.

Another study that observed 3000 pregnant women and their babies found a strong link as well.

Mothers that drank diet soda drinks were TWICE as likely to have overweight babies. These infants were overweight or obese at the first year of their birth.

2. Alters metabolic pathways

Research suggests that artificial sweeteners alter the metabolic activity of your body.

There are 2 ways it does this:

  • by changing your gut bacteria and
  • by messing with your glucose tolerance level.

Both cases lead to increase in body weight and obesity.

Changes in gut bacteria:

A 12 week lab study showed adverse effects with artificial sweetener (splenda). The study found the following:

  • Steep drop in beneficial gut bacteria
  • Increased acidity in the intestine
  • Poor absorption of certain drugs used in certain treatments like chemotherapy, heart disease, etc.

Poor glucose tolerance:

One of the effects of changes in the gut is poor glucose tolerance. Glucose intolerance is an umbrella term for metabolic condition. This causes high blood sugar levels.

In this condition, the body isn't able to use insulin to carry glucose into cells for energy. This causes insulin resistance, a typical condition for type 2 diabetes.

One study linked artificial sweetener containing drinks to increased risk of type 2 diabetes.

3. They are chemicals. Plain and simple.

Perhaps the simplest reason of all. These sweeteners are loaded with chemicals. Most things on the label I can't pronounce. All artificial sweeteners are born in the laboratory, they are chemicals that taste sweet.

So, what is my say on artificial sweeteners?

Will I be willing to put it in my body?..NO!!

If you've been following me for a while, you know I don't count calories. I mention this because many will wonder why the natural sweeteners that I use and recommend are higher in calories than those colorful packets.

Artificial sweeteners are a perfect example of why counting calories doesn't pay off. Trading calories for chemicals is not a good plan.

So, What DO I recommend for sweeteners?

My favorites are:

  • coconut sugar
  • 100% maple syrup
  • raw honey.

They're less processed too!

Also, to sweeten your drinks use spices like:

  • cardamom
  • nutmeg
  • cinnamon

With so much controversy surrounding artificial sweeteners, we're better off not using them.

Yours in Health,

Danette

P.S. Please share this with your friends and I'd love to hear from you in the comments below. Have you kicked artificial sweeteners yet?

If you have fluctuating blood sugar levels, you know all about the ups and downs.

You've been dealing with weakness, extreme hunger, irritability and a feeling of constant exhaustion.

The good news is by mindful eating and choosing the right foods you can avoid these fluctuations.

The answer could be as simple as eating a daily serving of beans.

That's right, legumes, are one of the most recommended to eat for healthy blood sugar.

The American Diabetes Association recommends legumes for better blood sugar management.

Legumes are a great source of protein and are packed with minerals. They come from plants that produce a pod with seeds inside. Dry beans, lentils, and peas belong to this group. Legumes are rich in nutrients and have many health benefits if you eat them everyday.

How do beans help my blood sugar?

Recent research shows that when gut bacteria feed on beans, it improves the satiety of the meal. This is the ”second meal effect”.

When good bacteria feed on the fiber in beans it releases propionate. This compound gets into the blood stream and slows down the rate at which foods leaves your stomach.

For instance, if you had lentils for breakfast it can help keep your blood sugar stable past lunch time.

Nutrient Density is a Nice Bonus

They are rich in protein and fiber, which makes it a great weight loss food.

For instance, a cup of cooked lentils gives you:

  • 40 grams of carbohydrates
  • 18 grams of protein
  • 16 grams of fiber

Besides, it is a good source of iron, copper, phosphorus, folate and manganese.

Beans Can Slim Your Waist too

Eating beans and legumes on a regular basis helps you reach and maintain a healthy weight.

Research shows that populations that eat more legumes have a slimmer waistline.

Heart healthy

Legumes are rich in fiber which helps to lower cholesterol.

A study examined food intake and heart disease risk among 15,000 middle aged men. Researchers found that those that ate legumes had a 82% lowered risk for heart disease.

Lowers colon cancer risk

The resistant starch in the legumes helps lower the risk of cancer. Gut bacteria release short chain fats when they act on undigested starch.

Plenty of studies show that short chain fats cuts colon cancer.

Choose to eat a variety of legumes so you get the most of its benefits. Each legume delivers specific compounds that improve your health in the long run.

But won't they give me gas and keep me bloated?

For some people, flatulence can be a problem while eating legumes. You can avoid this by doing the following:

Soak: Soak the legumes overnight and discard the soaked water. Soaking remove antinutrients which can cause bloating.

Spice it up: Adding fresh ginger pieces, while cooking helps. You can also add cumin seeds for tempering the legumes.

Discard: While cooking some beans tend to froth and foam. Skim and discard this foam, this helps reduce gas formation

Easy ways to enjoy more legumes

Freeze: Legumes are easy to cook. You can freeze cooked chick peas, kidney beans, etc to add them to your soups and salads for a quick fix.

Snack: They are easy and versatile snack.

Dip: Grind beans like chick peas along with some spices to make a healthy, creamy hummus dip.

You can store legumes for many months when you keep them in a dry, clean place.

Besides, choosing to eat beans and legumes, follow a regular exercise regimen. Exercising everyday helps you keep a healthy blood sugar.

Needless to say that you need to stay away from refined carbohydrates like white bread, etc.

Next time you see lentils or beans in the bulk bins of natural food store grab some and start finding ways to add them to your recipes.

Yours in Health,

Danette

P.S. Please share this with your loved ones and I always love reading your comments below.