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

In our last post we spoke about weight loss and the importance of keeping blood sugar levels stable by consuming small frequent meals which included complex carbohydrates especially but not exclusively non starchy fruit and vegetables, and whole grains. Other foods to be included in a weight loss programme are:
•    Lean protein like soy, other beans, low fat dairy products, and moderate amounts of lean meat poultry and eggs.
•    You should also consume healthy fats such as avocado, and cold pressed oils, for example, flax seed oil, extra virgin olive oil, nuts and seeds, fish liver oils and fatty fish.
•    “The balance of carbohydrate, fat, and protein in each meal makes a big difference to how your blood sugar rises and how you are able to burn fat”. The aim as we’ve said earlier is to keep blood sugar and insulin production on an even keel
•    In general aim to have an equal portion of carbohydrates and protein at each meal. Include non starchy vegetables and fruit in two of  these meals
•    Eat 5-6 small meals of whole foods  a day instead of three large meals
•    Divide your plate so one third is made up starch, the other of protein, and two thirds of vegetables
•    Keep portion sizes reasonable eg. Palm or fist size for carbohydrates and protein and thumb size for fats
•    A sample meal might consist of : salmon, brown rice, broccoli, and raw vegetable salad with and olive oil and lemon juice dressing
•    A snack could include a piece of an apple a dozen almonds or equal amount of sunflower seeds

All the best

Nancy

Exercise revs up our metabolism (i.e. the way our bodies utilise the energy we gain from food) enabling us to stay lean. Eating certain foods also helps us lose weight and stay lean. In order to lose weight we need to program our bodies to become fat burners instead of fat storers.

Glucose, the end product of digestion and the body’s preferred fuel source is removed from the blood by the hormone insulin, and delivered to the body’s cells where it is used for energy.

If we frequently consume foods that release their sugars into the blood stream quickly (for example, white flour products, sugar, white rice) and do so to excess, we produce a lot of insulin to deal with the onslaught and our blood sugar spikes, then  drops dramatically. When blood sugar spikes the excess sugar is put into storage as fat, when it drops we feel wobbly and lethargic.

To burn fat and stay lean we need to keep our blood sugar even.  Foods that release their sugars slowly into the blood stream, and eaten frequently, in small amounts at a time, achieve this.

Complex carbohydrate foods contain slow releasing sugars. The ones that are the most beneficial to maintain leanness are those which have a medium to low glycemic index and a medium to low glycemic load, as these carbohydrates have the least adverse influence on blood sugar  . These include non starchy vegetables, most fruit (exceptions would be bananas, raisins and mangos), oats, barley, whole meal pasta, whole rye bread, whole wheat bread, beans.

These carbohydrates contain as well water and fibre which are also important for staying lean.

Until next time, think “complex!”

Nancy