Tag Archive for: healthy eating

Healthy Natural Sugar Substitutes

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What Are Good Healthy Sugar Substitutes?

Sugar that is added to your diet has the potential to cause some pretty bad health problems. Some of these problems include: Tooth decay, liver problems, fatty liver disease, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, cancer, weight gain and heart disease.

Don’t despair because there are several natural healthy sugar substitutes available. Real sugar is not bad taken in moderation but the more often you can use alternatives the better your health can be.

According to Dawn Combs, a certified herbalist and author. There are some great healthy sugar substitutes to add to your diet and some not so great.

Agave nectar has a low glycemic index and therefore is believed to help keep blood sugar levels in check and thusly prevent fluctuations in hormones. Worrying solely about the glycemic index of a food is not a good indicator of health. Unfortunately, agave syrup contains the highest fructose amount of any commercial sweetener, even worse than high fructose corn syrup. High levels of fructose create insulin resistance, an even bigger problem than a temporary spike due to sugar intake. Further, agave nectar is mostly produced from Agave americana.

Found at Natural Sugar Substitutes: Which are Really Healthy?

Main Sugar Alternatives

  • Maple syrup – Great for baking and we like to use it in our oatmeal as well as the lower gluten einkorn pancakes that we love to have for breakfast.
  • Honey – Find local raw honey for an excellent sugar substitute. We use it in our tea and it is great to bake with. Honey baked ham, honey dips and honey in bread is wonderful. I personally like honey for its extra antibacterial benefits.
  • Agave – This is a popular sugar substitute but not always the best choice for healthy eating as it contains the highest amount of fructose that any of the other alternatives. Not my favorite flavor.
  • Coconut sugar – You are probably aware of the benefits of coconut oils and coconut sugar is no exception because of the low fructose content. Make sure you get pure coconut sugar if you choose this alternative .
  • Brown rice syrup – Good if it is organic. This sugar substitute is mostly used in baking or cooking.

Other Natural Sugar Alternatives

Some other natural sugar alternatives are products made from stevia which is an herb commonly found in Central and South America and is sweeter than sugar without the blood sugar spike. There is however a bitter aftertaste that is a bit like licorice but there are some good products out there like Sweetleaf and Truvia that are good sugar alternatives.

Another healthy sugar substitute is Xylitol. This is not one that I think of as a great alternative because of the way that it is processed. Xylitol is basically processed birch sap. Anything that is processed and hydrogenated I try to stay away from. Also the name makes it sound like a cough medicine.

I like to stick with honey, maple syrup and raw sugar for my sweet tooth because I know where they come from and that the process from nature to the store is very simple.

Simple 1 Day Energy Building Diet

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Energy Diet For Recovery

We developed this one day energy diet because we just got back from an amazing adventure! We went on a four day rafting river trip through the Gates of Lodore to Split Mountain. The Canyon commences as the Green River departs Brown’s Park and cuts through the Uinta Mountains meandering eighteen miles until its end at Echo Park (Colorado), the confluence of the Green and Yampa River. It was named by the Powell Expedition after the English poem Cataract of Lodore. The take out was just past echo park and when the Yampa is dumped into the Green it was a fast fun ride through the rapids. Nothing huge but a great first time experience.

Being our first time going there were stresses that are hitting us now upon our return showing up as a feeling of exhaustion. We ate and drank like kings and queens on this trip. Each meal planned had an animal protein incorporated in it, then there were the carbohydrate snacks and processed trail mixes with triple chocolate, yum. The lovely libations flowed just like the river too! Today we are doing a simple diet plan to rebuild our energy and help our bodies get back into the swing of things.

So this morning I started us out with an energy smoothie, I am calling it :

Energy Diet Smoothie: River Rat Repent

Served at 9:30 am (we slept in till 8:20!)

  • 2 bananas
  • 1 cup fresh blueberries
  • 2 cups fresh baby spinach
  • 1/2 avocado
  • 8 medium fresh strawberries (3/4 cup)
  • 1 cup almond milk

Blend ingredients in blender adjusting milk for desired thickness.

Then we took about a mile and a half hike with the dog and stopped to get a juice at Blue Star Juice Cafe where we picked up a Paradise and a Cobra. I believe we had this at noon.

Paradise   Cobra

Pear          Carrot
Orange     Pineapple
Parsley     Beet
Celery       Ginger

Around 2:30 I was getting grumpy so Blair whipped up a juice with left overs in the fridge.
I added pinch of sea salt to mine, for some reason it felt right. Our last day on the river we wished we had this sunny day. We had a hard cold rain through the rolling rapids where you get drenched, our ponchos didn’t do much for us.

Sunny Day C Energy Juice

  • 1 apple
  • 4 carrots
  • 2 cups spinach
  • 3 stalks of celery
  • 1 orange

At 3:30 the grumpiness returned so my answer to that was salad. We decided to call it:

Grumpy Girl Salad

  • 4 cups baby spinach
  • 1 cup butter leaf lettuce
  • 1/4 cup blueberries
  • 1 fresh mandarin orange
  • 1/4 cup peas
  • 1/2 cup raw walnuts
  • 1/8 cup strawberry vinaigrette

Once we had that down the grumpiness went straight away and energy just flowed out. So this evening for dinner the plan is to have a high energy smoothie with protein that will keep us full through out the evening and give our bodies the replenishment it needs to return to every day life.

Boaters Delight

  • 1 can (cooled) coconut milk
  • 2 tablespoons peanut butter or tahini
  • 1 banana
  • 1/2 avocado
  • 1/2 cup raw macadamia nuts
  • 1 tablespoon coco (optional)
  • You can substitute 1 cup mango for the banana if you want it lighter

Blend ingredients and enjoy !

We also incorporated lots of water during the day. This 1 day energy building menu really brought up our energy from the trip. It is packed with nutrition your body needs after an active vacation like the one we just took. Honestly this really got us through the” day after” blues with flying colors. So much so we are planning our next active trip with the energy it gave us.

How to Prepare Garden Soil [2020]

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Prepare Your Garden Soil With Perlite – 2020 Update

Here is a little introduction on how to prepare garden soil for your spring planting. We are just getting our garden started and the seeds have become little plants. They are big enough now to separate them into individual containers. You will want to prepare your garden soil properly to get the best nutrition from your food and create a healthy growing environment.

Getting Started

Usually the soil amendment is too think and heavy for seedlings so you will need to add something to make it lighter so the soil gets more air. You will need your soil amendment and Perlite which is an organic rock that  is used as a component of growing mixes where it provides aeration and optimum moisture retention for superior plant growth.

Here are the steps to take when preparing your garden soil for the seedlings.

  1. First you take the plain soil amendment that consists of fir bark, forest hummus, rice hulls, 15% chicken manure, worm castings, bat guano, kelp meal, oyster shell lime and mycorrhizae. Then add the perlite and mix it together in the ratio 1/3 perlite to 2/3 soil.
  2. When this is nicely mixed you can take the mixture and put it in some cups and then add your individual baby plants.
  3. You can cut slits in the cups for water drainage so the roots of the plant don’t drown. Make sure you don’t poke a hole in the middle.

I hope this has been helpful to you gardeners out there. We are looking forward to having some happy healthy plants.

Raw Foods Diet – Your Personal Raw Law

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Eating a raw foods diet means consuming plant based foods uncooked.

Eating a raw foods diet that include fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts and greens insures that the all the enzymes are intact. Heating these plant based foods above 118 degrees Fahrenheit or 48 degrees Celsius destroys all the enzymes, 50% proteins and some vitamins and minerals.

Choosing the raw law is something very personal. It is a personal law you gently impose on your own self, no one else.

We have an abundance of information out there now that can help to govern your raw law. I recently had the privilege to go to a lecture by Dr. David Jubb in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was in January and we were in the middle of a cold snap. Eating raw when it’s cold and finding fresh fruits and vegetables that cut into your budget deeply for me had been a huge struggle. I was very inspired by that lecture.

Check out your community for these types of events. Fortunately we have the internet to mine for wonderful people that have gone ahead of us and put the information out there. Dr. David Jubb, Dr Robert Cassar, and Russell James the Raw Chef are all part of my governing body I elect now.

Check out your local library too! Old fashion books like The Green Smoothie Bible by Kristine Miles is a wonderful resource with yummy recipes galore.

One of the biggest things I took away from the lecture was easy and gentle. This raw law doesn’t have to be iron clad with a throw away key rule.  Although eating a traditional western diet can be a death sentence for sure! So gently and easily I am moving towards more raw foods and the benefits are out weighing the consequences my traditional eating law by far. Some of the benefits and value this law can bring you are:

  • Weight loss
  • Staying at a healthy weight
  • Clear healthy skin
  • Depression free
  • Control diabetes & prevent it
  • Mental clarity & focus
  • Endless energy
  • You can eat as much as you want!
  • Regularity
  • Connection with the earth
  • Less for the landfill, cuts way back on packaging

A raw foods diet has been an eye opener on my moods, energy and overall well being. I have just begun writing my raw law, getting the lingo down. I agree its a great endeavor to achieve 100% raw foods diet, I am probably at 80% now.

Read this post to see how to get started with a raw foods diet.

Thanks for reading and I would love to read your comments.