Pasta Salad
Pasta salads are delicious. Great for light easy, summer cooking. To maximize their flavour make sure you dress the pasta as soon as it is cooked while it is still hot. Try substituting fresh basil if it isn’t available, with dill, mint, oregano, or parsley.
For 8-10 servings:
Pasta:
2 pkts of brown rice pasta and vegetable pasta
Dressing:
2 large cloves garlic
1 tsp coarse mustard
2 Tbsp parmesan cheese
8-10 leaves fresh basil (or other fresh herbs)
1 tsp salt and pepper to taste
½ cup light Best Food mayonnaise
2 Tbsp pineapple juice with touch of cinnamon
Salad:
2 stalks celery, finely diced
1 red pepper finely diced
2 spring onions finely diced
½ cup toasted sesame seeds
Tinned pineapple pieces 125 g (unsweetened)
Boil the pasta as per the packet directions, until tender. ***
While the pasta is cooking make the dressing by pureeing the ingredients until smooth.
Drain the cooked pasta and put in a salad bowl and immediately toss the dressing through the pasta while it is still hot.
Allow to cool then toss the rest of the salad ingredients with the pasta.
*** Tip: Cook the pasta until just al dente; brown rice pasta will disintegrate if over-cooked.

To eat more healthily start by substituting healthier ingredients in your cooking, but keeping to tried and true recipes your family love. If they are particularly fussy eaters they may complain at first. Persevere though and before you know it they will eating it up, just as they did before.

In the recipe above I’ve exchanged plain old white wheat pasta with brown rice pasta, for two reasons. First, whole grains provide better nutritional value than processed grains. Second wheat based foods so predominate in the western diet that we miss out on the nutrients present in other grains, and many people have allergies to wheat and other gluten containing foods, so it’s a good idea to find creative ways of getting other grains into our diet. As we age too our bodies lose their ability to metabolise processed gluten containing grains well and this can cause a host of health challenges from easy weight gain to a tendency towards diabetes. Take home message, use whole grains, and vary them.

To reduce the number of calories in a recipe you can substitute ‘lite’ varieties of dressings as I’ve done here and help your cause of weight loss if that’s an issue for you or your family. If using canned fruit in a recipe go for an unsweetened variety for the same reason.

Using fresh herbs in your cooking as I’ve done here will increase flavour and nutritional value, because of the enzymes present in fresh produce verses cooked, canned or dried, all helping us toward our goal of optimum nutrition for better living.

The recipe above is contained in our nutrition book for more information on our products, go to www.flexibilityplus.com

Bon Appetite,
Yours in Health,
Nancy

The Truth About Fats

For years many of us have been yoyo dieting and counting calories and been anxious about every fat containing morsel that has crossed our lips. A whole industry had evolved around food labels proclaiming the benefits of this or that product because of the miniscule percentage of fat it contains. After all fat makes you fat right? Well this is the danger of half truths.

Yes fat contains per gram almost twice as many calories as carbs or protein so on the surface of it it does have the potential to pack on the kilos more so than the other nutrient types. Also fat from most animal sources is saturated and is more difficult for the body to handle and as a result it can cause problems especially for one’s heart and blood vessels. Fats derived from plant sources such as nuts, seeds, and some animal sources (i.e cold water fatty fish such as salmon) have the ability to protect the heart and blood vessels as well as producing many other health benefits protection of the brain and nervous system to name one other.

“Ya great for my ticker” I hear you say “but what about my thighs?” Well interestingly enough the right kind of fats positively benefits your girth as well. For more on how go to our nutrition product on our web site www.flexibilityplus.com.

Yours in health,

Nancy

In his book I Can Make You Thin Psychologist Paul McKenna outlines 4 easy weight loss tips I wanted to share here and elaborate on a little.

1.    Eat only when physically hungry.  Learn to listen to your body’s cues about hunger and differentiate between peckish, slightly hungry, hungry, very hungry, ravenous, and faint with hunger. Aim to eat when you are some where in the middle of that range. Also learn to differentiate between physical hunger and emotional hunger. Here are a couple of easy clues that can help. First emotional hunger comes on as a sudden craving and is usually unsatisfied by food. Physical hunger comes on gradually. Second the brain’s signal to the body for thirst and hunger are identical. To tell what your body is saying to you, have a glass of water or two before eating. If you still feel hungry eat, if not then the message being communicated was just “Man I was parched! “
2.    When you are physically hungry, eat what you want: Whether it’s  a crsip cool salad, a crunchy fresh sweet juicy apple, hot soup and a chunk of crusty fresh bread with lashings of butter , creamy mashed potatoes , a bowl of delicious Rojan Gosh, Chilli Con Carne, or Chicken Chow Mein, a meat pie or Black Forest Gateau, if that’s what you’d like and you have it on hand go for it.
3.    Enjoy EVERY  morsel : Pay close attention to every bite, slow down, chew well ( digestion begins in the mouth) and eat with healthy relish
4.    Stop when you have had enough: Give up being one of the clean your plate brigade. If you are full save the left overs for later, if eating out ask for a doggy bag. Differentiate between: a) still hungry, b)satisfied, c)full, d) stuffed . Aim for some where between b and c.

Don’t worry that you will endlessly indulge your cravings at the expense of a healthy balanced diet, if you follow these principles your diet will even out. Your body will tell after the third day in a row of Death by Chocolate Cake for breakfast, lunch and dinner that it has had enough of that and would like something else thank you.

For help overcoming dependence on certain foods and other advanced behaviour modification techniques check out Paul’s CD I Can Make you Thin, and for great info on healthy food choices and delicious recipes, see our products on our web site www.flexibilityplus.com.

Yours In Health,

Nancy

Why should you care about this? Quite, simply your future health depends on it. If you are female, particularly though not exclusively, paying attention to how you feed your bones optimally now could mean the difference between an active healthy, independent elderhood and one, that sees you living out your life as a ‘shut in’, greatly dependant on family and friends for your basic survival, racked with the pain of arthritis, deformity, risk of fracture due to osteoporosis, increased frailty and even premature death. How does that strike you? Well if you don’t like the thought of pain, hip replacements dependence and the like listen up this blog post is for you.

A myth abounds that once our bones are formed what we eat has no influence on them, but bone is a living tissue that is formed, breaks down, and is reformed continually. Bones use calcium and magnesium and phosphorous as building materials. The ability to absorb calcium is dependent on Vitamin D and assisted by the trace element boron. Vitamin C makes the collagen the intercellular glue which collect calcium, magnesium and phosphorous. Zinc makes new bones cells. All these nutrients work together to create strong bones.

Here’s a list of foods you will want to include in your diet on a regular basis to help your body to build of strong bones:

Organic dairy products, brewers’ yeast buckwheat, sesame seeds and tahini or sesame seed paste, organic black strap molasses ( varies in flavours, if the first brand you strike tastes bitter persevere until you find a brand that tastes nice), nuts and seeds like almond, brazils, cashews, pecans, pumpkin, sesame, and sunflower seeds,  cooked dry beans, green peas,

Here’s to a happy skeleton!

Nancy