Tackle Your Stubborn Belly Fat With These 5 Foods

 

While going on a diet can help you lose weight and improve your wellbeing in a general way, there are some foods that specifically target your belly fat. So, which foods can help your tummy wellness?

 

1. Avocadoes: Before we get onto belly fat, there are numerous health and beauty benefits to eating avocadoes. Not only does this fruit have some pretty stellar anti-ageing properties; its anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties will keep you free of fungal and bacterial infections too. When it comes to your tummy area, the key factor in avocadoes is Lecithin. This important amino acid helps to balance your weight, improve your memory, protect you from liver diseases, prevent your chances of heart attacks and strokes and offer you overall health benefits. Avocadoes are absolutely packed with lecithin, so add them to your salad to help you shake off that stubborn belly fat!

 

2. Apples: If you struggle with belly fat, apples should be your go-to wonder fruits. According to a study carried out by Brazilian researchers, women who ate three or more apples a day lost more weight compared to those who didn’t. Why? The main reason why apples help to aid weight loss is that they contain an abundance of pectin. This natural compound not only helps you to lose weight but, as an added bonus, can reduce your risk of colon cancer. Moreover, apples contain a hearty amount of antioxidants and vitamin C, helping to keep your skin free of wrinkles. Finally, apples are high in a bunch of other healthy nutrients, including dietary fibre, flavanoids, phytosterol and beta-carotene.

 

3. Watermelons: If you’re over the age of 30 and have stubborn belly fat, it’s likely that you have a high amount of plaque deposits in your arteries. However, at the University of Kentucky, an interesting study revealed that watermelons had a unique effect on these deposits; lowering them by altering the blood lipids. The researchers found that drinking two glasses of watermelon juice every day for eight weeks reduces body weight without altering muscle mass, and this weight is lost mostly around the belly. Moreover, the good thing about watermelon is that it has a high content of water, a low amount of calories and helps you to feel full quickly, all of which create a perfect storm for weight loss.

 

4. Bananas: Just like apples, bananas have multiple benefits to your wellness. As well as offering you a high amount of dietary fibre, bananas give your body an instant jolt of energy, which is essential for helping you to carry out a regular workout routine. As we’ve already seen with the pectin content of apples, the pectin found in bananas helps you to lose weight and protect you against cancer. Bananas work to fill up your stomach with healthy fibre, improve your digestion and give you very few calories. Plus, bananas are just plain good for you, offering a rich supply of calcium, magnesium, Vitamins A, C, E, B6 and potassium.

 

5. Tomatoes: In your average large tomato, there are just 33 calories, which is a great start for any weight loss success. However, tomatoes also contain a compound called as 9-oxo-ODA that reduces lipids in your blood and helps to control your belly fat, as well as fighting all chronic diseases that are obesity related. Moreover, tomatoes contain a powerful antioxidant known as lycopene which helps to reduce your wrinkles, fight cancer and lower your cholesterol levels. Not only can you add tomatoes to your salad, you can also cook a tomato-based sauce for your pasta to enjoy the health benefits of this powerful compound.

 

Categories: avocadoes, Belly Fat, Tomatoes

Is Modified Food Modifying Us As Well?

How much do you really know about genetically modified (GM) food? If you’re like most people, your answer to that question is probably “not very much”, yet it seems that many people have strong opinion about the gene modification of the food that they eat, even if they don’t really know much about why they don’t like it or why whether it is safe and healthy or otherwise. In fact, in a recent study it was revealed that more than half of people in the US do not want to eat GM foods despite their lack of knowledge as to what it is and the benefits of it.

 

Nevertheless, people still appear to eat GM foods in large numbers and this apparent distrust of GM foods has not led to a significant rejection of them at store level. Still, there is a big push going on, organised by those people who disapprove of genetically modified organisms, to get them to be removed from foods and food production in the US.

 

But what do we mean when we talk about GM foods? Well, here is a breakdown of what typically is going on within the production of GM food. In the traditional cross-breeding process, you take two varieties of, for example, tomatoes and then cross them together to create a more robust fruit. However, there has been a recent trend using the modern technology to insert out-of-species genes, that are often from bacteria and viruses, into the gene structure of plants like corn, soybean and cotton, introducing genetic matter into the food that we eat that has never been there before. In effect, then, we are eating things that are bodies have never ingested before.

 

This process is quite controversial as it can even allow conventional growers to do use even larger amounts of poisonous herbicides onto the modified plants without killing the crop – the plants have been created to be more able to stand up to strong chemicals so they doused in pesticides to help stop them be eaten. Unfortunately this has a number of problems in the fact that it introduces more chemicals into the groundwater and waterways near the farms that grow these crops and, perhaps worse, it also increases the amount of chemical residue on the foods – those same foods that you eat every day. It is even true that some crops have been specifically modified so the plant produces its own pesticide.

 

In another twist it seems that GM foods are being blamed for an increased level of allergies, new toxins and other immune problems. For instance, it has been noted that soy allergies increased by 50 per cent in the United Kingdom after GM soy was introduced here. And in studies on animal, feeding mice GM foods has been shown to cause issues with digestion, smaller livers, reproductive problems and even an increased rate of infant mortality. We also know that livestock that have grazed on GM cotton fields have died abruptly, too. If pesticide genes are able to transfer into the bacteria in our gut—as the only human study on the subject suggests they can—we’re in for some serious changes in our stomachs.

 

All in all, its clear that far more research needs to be done into the effects of GM foods and whether it is only certain types of gene modification that causes problems or if it is a concept that needs to be abandoned altogether. After all there are so many potential benefits of gene modification, it seems a shame to throw it away on flimsy evidence that might prove to be irrelevant in the long term.

Categories: eat gm, Food, foods, gene modification, genetically modified, GM, gm food, gm foods, modified, people, Tomatoes

Why Does Your Heart Health Depend on Vegetable Oil?

Losing weight seems to come with so many rules: no carbs after six, nothing processed or refined, and absolutely nothing fried. However, according to researchers at the University of Missouri and the University of Illinois, anything fried in vegetable oil is perfectly fine as part of a heart-healthy diet. In fact, even though previous studies have suggested that the linoleic acid (LA) in vegetable oil promote inflammation in animals, the new study argues that consuming between two to four teaspoons of vegetable oil a day is beneficial to your wellbeing.

 

According to Kevin Fritsche, an MU professor and lead researcher of animal science and nutrition in the Division of Animal Sciences, ‘In the field of nutrition and health, animals aren’t people. We’re not saying that you should just go out and consume vegetable oil freely. However, our evidence does suggest that you can achieve a heart-healthy diet by using soybean, canola, corn and sunflower oils instead of animal-based fats when cooking.’

 

So while you’re drizzling that vegetable oil into the frying pan, let’s look at some of the other heart-healthy foods you can toss in too. Firstly, tomatoes act as a blood purifier, and also contain lots of Vitamin K, which helps to prevent haemorrhages. As an added bonus, tomatoes are great for brightening your skin. While we’re on the fruit, your heart can benefit from pretty much any dark berry, but if you want a real boost to your heart wellness, blueberries are the way to go. These powerful little fruits can help widen your arteries, and this your helps blood to flow smoothly and prevents blockages.

 

To lower your cholesterol levels – and your LDL “bad” cholesterol in particular – you can’t go wrong with oats. This is because oats contain a soluble fibre called beta glucan, which targets the worst types of cholesterol. Likewise, avocadoes lower your LDL levels (which, in turn, lowers your risk of heart disease) while raising HDL “good” cholesterol levels in your body, which prevents your arteries from getting clogged. Avocadoes are also packed with the ‘good’ type of fat – monounsaturated – which further helps your heart health.

Categories: heart health, Tomatoes, vegetable oil

Fresh, Fruity and Nutty Ways to Slow the Signs of Ageing

You can end up spending hundreds of pounds a year on anti-ageing face creams and eye serums, but it’s all a waste of time and money if you don’t have a wellness-centred diet as well. So what foods are beneficial to your wellbeing, and also help you to look young and gorgeous?

 

Let’s start with an anti-ageing salad. While you’re popping cucumber on your eyes, save a few slices to munch on as well. Eating cucumber is beneficial to your skin from the inside out – just as long as you don’t peel them. Cucumber skin contains silica, which has been shown to reduce wrinkles and boost collagen. You should also throw a few tomatoes in your salad, as they contain lycopene. This is a powerful phytochemical which acts as a natural sun block for your skin, preventing some of the UV damage that causes dry spots, age spots, wrinkles, and the all round look of old age. As an added bonus, lycopene has also been shown to prevent cancer and heart disease.

 

If you fancy something a little fruitier, bump up your intake of berries. Blueberries are often hailed as one of nature’s superfoods, but all berries have amazing anti-ageing properties. Berries promote cell health and fight the free radicals that cause wrinkles, due to their high content of antioxidants such as flavonols and anthocyanins. If you drink cranberry juice, you can also develop a sparkling smile. As long as it isn’t drenched in sugar, cranberry juice halts plaque built-up, and so prevents your teeth from yellowing and counteracts the bacteria that can cause tooth decay.

 

Nuts and seeds can help you to look and feel young all over. The antioxidant lignin phytoestrogens – found in sunflower seeds – prevents collagen from breaking down and boosts your skin’s lipid barrier. This is responsible for the barrier function of your skin, and so sunflower seeds can protect your skin from moisture loss. Finally, just eating two Brazil nuts a day can help you to look young and fresh, as Brazil nuts contain extremely high levels of selenium. This boosts your body’s production of an antioxidant called glutathione, which not only repairs cell damage, but can actually slow down the ageing process.

Categories: berries, Brazil nuts, Tomatoes

An Apple a Day Keeps Cancer Away (As Do These Other Foods!)

In the Nature vs. Nurture debate, there’s a clear winner when it comes to cancer prevention. While up to 10% all cancer cases can be attributed to genetic defects, the remaining 90-95% percent have their roots in environment and lifestyle. One of these lifestyle factors is having the right diet, containing all the vitamins and antioxidants you need to guard your wellbeing against cancer. So, which foods should you be including in your diet?

Firstly, apples are a good source of cancer protection as they contain fibre and vitamin C. However, as most of apples’ antioxidant power come from phytochemicals – quercetin, flavonoids, and triterpenoids – found in the peel, make sure you don’t take the skin off! Cherries are also full of fibre and vitamin C, as well as potassium. Cherry juice, dried cherries and fresh cherries have a high antioxidant content in particular, but there is a still significant amount of antioxidants in frozen and canned varieties.

When it comes to cancer-fighting beverages, crack out the caffeine! Coffee is an excellent source of the B vitamin riboflavin, as well as antioxidant phytochemicals. However, the exact level to which coffee benefits your wellness will depend on how the beans are grown and how the coffee is prepared. For tea lovers, green tea contains potent antioxidants, polyphenols and flavonoids which are great for cancer protection. In fact, green tea has been shown to lower your risk of bladder, colon, stomach, pancreatic, and oesophageal cancers.

Whole grains are important for cancer protection as they are rich in fibre, vitamins, minerals and hundreds of phytochemicals, which protect cells from the types of damage that may lead to cancer. Studies have also shown that the phenols, lignans (which is a kind of phytoestrogen) and saponins found in whole grains work to lower your risk of cancer. When you’re eating your whole grain sandwich, don’t forget to add tomatoes! The phytochemical lycopene found in tomatoes has particularly attracted the attention of prostate cancer researchers because lycopene tends to concentrate in tissues of the prostate. However, laboratory studies have also shown tomato components to prevent the proliferation of several other cancer cells types, including breast, lung, and endometrial.

Categories: apples, cancer, Tomatoes