How to Actually Have Five Servings of Fruit and Veg Every Day

You’ve been told to include fruits and vegetables in your diet for as long as you can remember, so why are we Brits so rubbish at getting our five-a-day? Let’s be honest, sometimes you manage three or four servings and give yourself a pat on the back for taking care of your wellbeing, but five servings EVERY day? Probably not. Still, your five-a-day is vital for your wellness, so how do you actually get your intake up and protect your health?

 

1. Think Outside the Box: One great way to eat more fruit and veg is to make them more interesting, so that you’ll actually want to eat them. Dunking veggies in dip isn’t just for parties, so crack out your favourite dressing or hummus and have a healthy and delicious snack. You can also sauté some veggies with olive oil and add your favourite spices. If you’re on Pinterest, there are thousands of creative ideas for fruit and vegetable dishes, so get searching.

 

2. Great Things Come in Small Packages: You know the mini versions of toiletries that come out in shops just before the summer holidays? Why are they just more appealing than their full-sized counterparts? The answer: because they’re small and cute! With fruits and vegetables, size does matter as baby carrots or grapes make for an easy and appealing snack on the go. Plus, the tiny versions of most vegetables actually tend to be sweeter and have more flavour in each bite.

 

3. Load Up Your Basket and Your Plate: Instead of getting your produce during your supermarket shop, go to your local greengrocers. Not only does this often work out cheaper; you’re more likely to purchase fresh fruits and veggies when you’re surrounded by them. Whenever you can’t seem to get your hands on the real thing, hit the frozen food aisle of your supermarket for equally nutritious alternatives. Once you’ve got plenty of produce to pick from, make sure they fill up half of your plate at mealtimes. According to the new USDA food guide, this should be a habit that everyone makes, as it guarantees one to two servings in a single sitting.

 

4. Slurp Em: If you’re not a fan of the texture of certain veggies but love the flavour, go ahead and slurp them in your soup. Vegetable soups provide satisfying new menu options to help stave off the winter chill, especially if you pair it with some nice bread. For an easy soup, pea soup can be easily made with fresh or frozen peas, and both taste just as good as each other. However, if you want a soup in the summer time – or any time of year – you can’t go wrong with a refreshing gazpacho.

 

5. Mary Berry Style: If you’re a dab hand at baking, why not add fruits and vegetables to your muffins and breads. Grating some carrots or scooping dried cranberries or raisins into your next batch of baked goods will add moisture and flavour to your bakes, as well as giving you another serving of your five-a-day. You can try classic recipes like carrot cake or banana bread, of you can impress your friends with out-there combinations like courgette and apple bread or blueberry bread.

 

6. Keep Them in Sight: If you want to eat more fruits and vegetables, you need to make them as noticeable and convenient as possible. Instead of hiding your produce away, keep them in a bowl on the kitchen counter. That way, you’ll be much more likely to grab fruit or veg after your busy day, rather dive into the bar of chocolate hidden in the fridge.

Categories: baking, Bread, Five a day, Fruits, nbsp, soup, vegetables, veggies

What Are the Healthy Foods That Could Make You Fat?

Think you know everything about diet and nutrition? Think again. The food that you may feel are beneficial for your wellness and wellbeing may actually be helping you to pile on the pounds and feel sluggish and unwell.

 

Bread is one of the biggest food traps. Bread lovers will be dismayed to find out that it is possible to eat too much bread in just one single sitting. If you really need bread in your life, and can’t live without sandwiches, then allow yourself to have some, but try to limit the amount that you eat to just one or two slices a day. Bread isn’t the enemy, but you do need to control the amount of it that you eat. Instead of bread, you can have grains such as rice, couscous, quinoa or whole-wheat pasta.

 

Fruit-flavoured yoghurt is also a trap – even if it’s low fat, it’s too easy to scoff several cartons of yoghurt, increasing the calorie intake. Instead of fruity yoghurt, buy plain non-fat yoghurt and stir in your own fresh fruit. Having to mix your own fresh fruit is enough of an incentive to stop you over indulging on yoghurt, according to a study carried out by Weight Watchers.

 

You may think that your breakfast cereals are a safe bet, but all kinds of breakfast cereal (even the healthy kinds) can make you pile on the pounds. This is especially the case if you eat breakfast cereal straight out of the packet as a snack during the day. Even healthy cereals can really help to increase your calorie count over the course of a day. To avoid falling into this trap, make sure that you only eat breakfast cereal in the morning, with milk and a spoon. When combined with the milk, you will eat less cereal, and if you use skim milk but with far fewer calories.

Categories: Bread, breakfast, breakfast cereal, Cereal, eat breakfast, Fat, foods, fresh fruit, Healthy, yoghurt

Five Things To Know If You Want To Dine Out Healthily

We all like dining out in restaurants; whether it is as a way of going out socialising, a chance to celebrate with family and friends or just for the enjoyment of eating good food. Unfortunately, dining out can be the scourge of even the most steadfast diet – this is because it can often seem difficult to make the right choice when you go out to a restaurant, which can lead to you eating a very large meal that is full of far more calories, fat and cholesterol that is good for you. But the fact that we know that eating out is not good for us means it’s possible to take steps to minimise the damage caused. Here are our top five tips to help you stay healthy when you go out for dinner.

 

One – Read the menu very well

Sometimes we have a habit of skipping through the majority of the menu in a restaurant and just choosing something quickly that we know we like. The problem is that the comfort food choices that we make are often not the healthiest for us. So to make up for this it is a much better idea to go through the menu and think about the levels of calories and fat likely to be in the different dishes. There will usually be healthy options available if you look hard enough and these can be the difference between staying on top of your diet and giving up.

 

Two – Ask for help if you need it

The waiter at the restaurant should have an excellent knowledge of the menu, so if you are reading it and having trouble picking the right thing to keep your levels of fat and cholesterol low, it pays to ask the waiter a few questions – they will be more than happy to help. Remember that in many restaurants the chef will be happy to change up the dish if you have certain requests such as making it with less unhealthy products. So make sure if you ask before you eat!

 

Three – Terms to look out for

Not all food is created equal and there are certain dining choices that you can make that are very bad for you, but others than are not remotely as unhealthy. Whilst it obviously isn’t always going to be possible to know all of the ingredients that go into something, but nevertheless there are certain words that are used within the menu that we can use to establish whether it is likely to be good for us. Bad words include au gratin, deep fried, pan fried, crispy and buttery – and these should be avoided, while you should look instead for words like boiled, grilled, baked or steamed.

 

Four – Look for the right oils

There are certain cooking oils that should be avoided, while others that are far more beneficial to us. Olive oil is clearly one of the best oils that can be used in the preparation of your food. Other good choices include corn, sunflower and canola oil. These should be asked for in preference of other oils that are not as unhealthy for you.

 

Five – The bread basket

The bread basket can be a real problem as it may often come around despite the very healthy choices you’ve made from the menu. But even here there are ways to minimise the negative effects of what you’re eating. Instead of choosing white bread, go for a multi-grain, brown or oat bread, which  will generally be much healthier for you. Also remember to choose margarine instead of butter.

Categories: Bread, bread basket, dining, Food, Healthy, menu, nbsp, oils, restaurant

Bread Wars: Cut the Carb Confusion by Choosing 100%

By now you must know your bread basics; whole grain is the Mack Daddy of nutrition, while white, refined bread is more devoid of goodness than Freddy Krueger. That said, why is it so difficult to tell which bread is best for your wellbeing when you’re at the supermarket? In any given bread aisle, you’ll see whole wheat, multi-grain, seven-grain, 12-grain, all natural, organic and enriched, to name a few, but this isn’t giving you as much of a choice as you think.  Unfortunately, loose labeling laws allow these “Kruegers” to masquerade as “Mack Daddies” all the while doing nothing for your wellness, and leaving you unaware. So, how do you beat the system, and still come out on top with the very best bread?

 

Don’t settle for less than 100%. On the packaging, look for the term “100% whole grain” or “100% whole wheat”– either one is fine as whole wheat is a whole grain. Most whole grain breads are primarily made with wheat anyway, but if you’d rather have a mix of grains then you need to check the list on the label. The order the ingredients are listed shows how much they feature within the loaf (wheat, oats, flax seeds, barley, buckwheat, etc). If you see terms like “Wheat” or “Multigrain” that don’t mention a percentage, put the package down and step away slowly. While these breads sound healthy, the chances are that they’re made with partially or mostly refined white flour. For example, 75% of wheat flour is actually white flour and only 25% is whole wheat.

 

Eliminate enriched. That’s a great word – enriched – as it covers all manner of sins. All this term means is that the manufacturer as added nutrients to an otherwise nutrient-free, white bread. These synthetic nutrients (yum) have been added to replace the natural ones that have been lost in the milling process – it’s like the bread equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig.

 

Understand the benefits. 100% whole grain breads can reduce your risks of stroke, diabetes, heart disease, asthma and colorectal cancer, as well as giving your body a powerful punch of protein, fibre, B vitamins and many other nutrients that help to lower your blood pressure, strengthen your immune system and maintain your weight. Other breads, on the other hand, have been cleared of all these nutrients, and even raise your risk for diseases like diabetes.

Categories: 100% wholegrain, Bread, grain, grain breads, labelling laws, Wheat, white bread, white flour

Have Lower Levels of Salt in Bread Contributed to UK Health?

Supermarket packaged bread may be more beneficial to your wellness than ever, as a new study has found that the average salt content in such bread has fallen by 20% over the last decade. Bread is the biggest contributor of salt to the UK diet, but the study, published in the online journal BMJ Open, found that your wellness may be more secure from the damaging impact of salt, as salt levels in packaged bread in supermarkets across the UK fell from 1.23g per 100g in 2001, to 0.98g per 100g in 2011.

 

‘This study shows that the salt content of bread has been progressively reduced over time, contributing to the evidence base that a target-based approach to salt reduction can lead to reductions being made,’ the study authors, from the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine in London, explained. ‘A wide variation in salt levels was found, with many products already meeting the 2012 targets, indicating that further reductions can be made. This requires further progressive lower targets to be set, so that the UK can continue to lead the world in salt reduction and save the maximum number of lives.’

 

Professor Graham MacGregor, chairman of Consensus Action on Salt and Health (CASH), and professor of cardiovascular medicine at the Wolfson Institute, commented, ‘A reduction in population salt intake is one of the most cost-effective measures to improve public health, as lowering salt intake lowers blood pressure and reduces the number of people suffering and dying from strokes, heart attacks and heart failure. Bread is the single biggest contributor of salt to the UK diet and it is vital that we set challenging targets for the bread industry in order to save the maximum number of lives.’

 

According to a spokesman from the Department of Health, ‘Too much salt can lead to high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke. So we are really pleased that there has been a 20 per cent reduction in the amount of salt in bread and are continuing to work with industry, through the Responsibility Deal, to help people reduce their salt intake. Many foods contain higher levels of salt than we might expect so it’s important to check the label. To make it easy for everyone to keep track of what they eat and make healthier choices, we will soon be announcing a simple and clear system for front-of-pack labelling that everyone can use to help people make healthier choices.’

Categories: Bread, Research, Salt

How to Make Your Skin Look Younger Using Household Resources

When it comes to ageing body parts, your skin really lets you down. Whether it’s dark circles, a few wrinkles, or a little bit of sagginess here and there, your skin may as well be tattooed with “Look how old I am!” So clearly your skin is the best place to start with your anti-ageing regime – and you don’t even have to leave the house to do it.

Firstly, when your face feels dull and exhausted, you can revive it with a simple skin-patting technique. You should start at the top of the cheek bones because – due to fluid retention – your eyes are likely to develop bags. Using the soft pads of your fingertips, quickly pat your face towards your nose and then back to your cheek bones in an upward motion, coming around to your temples and across your eyebrows. This will rejuvenate and brighten your face – especially if you then apply moisturiser using upward strokes, moving up the neck to your jaw line.

You can even get your skin looking gorgeous as you sleep – as long as your position is correct. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, sleeping in the same position can lead to wrinkles that don’t disappear once you’re up, so your best bet for smoother, wrinkle-free skin is to sleep face up, on your back. Many of us prefer to sleep on our side, but this position increases the wrinkles on your cheeks and chin, while sleeping face down gives you a furrowed brow.

This next tip may make Communion problematic, but anti-ageing skin sirens should dread white bread (although red wine is fine!) A recent study from Australia has found that a Low Glycaemic Index Diet helped participants to decrease spots, and so you need to ditch your white refined carbs, such as bread, cereal and pasta, in favour of wholemeal varieties.

However, red wine is great for your skin, as grapes contain resveratrol. This is one of the most powerful anti-ageing antioxidants that has ever been discovered, with a number of studies indicating that it can help you maintain a youthful complexion by fighting damaging free radicals. For obvious reasons, you shouldn’t overdo it – but a small glass of red wine every other day is practically doctor-recommended!

Categories: Bread, patting, Wine

Could Sneaky Salt be taking its Toll on Your Heart Health?

The American Heart Association has spoken out against salt sneaking into the average diet, as they report that the typical Americans’ daily sodium intake is over double what it should be. According to the American Heart Association, it is recommended that you only consume 1500mg of salt daily, but, on average, an Americans’ daily intake is more in the realm of 3400mg every day.

Kelli Dixon, executive director of The Miami Valley Division of the American Heart Association, commented, ‘Americans are eating too much salt, and they are not aware of hidden areas of salt.’ Sodium can sneak into your diet to a greater extent than you realise, and Dixon explained that this is bad news for your heart health and overall wellbeing. ‘Your intake of salt in your diet can mean the difference between having high blood pressure and not having high blood pressure,’ she said, adding that salt increases water retention and makes organs work harder.

With the nation’s wellness in mind, the American Heart Association and the American Stroke Association has created the Sodium Swap Challenge, an initiative designed to raise awareness and encourage Americans to reduce their sodium intake in 21 days. As part of the Sodium Swap Challenge, the American Heart Association has identified the Salty Six, which are a list of popular foods that can add high levels of sodium to a diet; breads and rolls, cold cuts and cured meats, pizza, poultry, soup, and sandwiches.

In the first week of the Sodium Swap Challenge, participants are encouraged to look for lower sodium options of breads, rolls, cold cuts and cured meats and to record their daily sodium intake. Then, in week two, the focus will turn on pizza and poultry, in which participants will be advised to make certain changes. This means adding more vegetables to pizza slices, limiting toppings such as cheese and meats, and opting for fresh poultry instead of processed, canned or fried.

Lastly, week three will focus on soups and sandwiches, requiring Americans to read labels closely, look for low sodium cans of soup, meats, cheeses and condiments and build a better sandwich by adding more salad and vegetables. Christine O’Connor, a registered dietician at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Centre, advised, ‘Read your food labels, especially the ingredients, which are listed in descending order from greatest to least. If you see sodium in the first couple of ingredients, it will be a high sodium food. There are also other names like monosodium glutamate, sodium citrate, or sodium alginate, to name a few.’

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Could Sneaky Salt be taking its Toll on Your Heart Health?

Categories: Bread, Pizza, Salt