Healthful Kitchen

This website is for sale. Due to personal reasons I can no longer maintain it. Please make me an offer.

You want good food that is healthy to eat, right? Food labels should help you find it. However deciphering the claims on the package can lead to much confusion. Added to this is the bold print advertising placed on the front of the box proclaiming all the good “reasons” to buy the product and then also trying to decipher the standardized nutrition label on the side. It is hard to keep track of how much is good and how much of something is bad and to compare one label to the next. Even beyond all of this, not everything you need to know is on the label. The government does not inform us if the food has been genetically modified (GM). It may or may not tell us the source of where the food was grown, and definitely not where it was packaged.

So what is the difference between buying natural vs. organic? Natural and All-Natural lables have no legalfood definition, regulation or inspection, whereas organic does. Organic is USDA verified that it is grown without pesticides or herbicides or fungicides or artificial fertilizers, it has no GMOs (genetically modified organisms), it has no artificial preservatives, colors, or ingredients added, and it is not irradiated.

People with low incomes cannot always afford organic and they try to budget between natural and organic foods. Also many people are in denial that the food can be so polluted and think that organic food folks are just crazy, whereas others are just know waking up to the importance of eating organic food and are eager to learn the reasons why.

For those of us forced to buy natural food, it is important that we as a public demand that the government alert us to GMO foods and also to the source of the food. Many GMOs are often over-sprayed with Roundup (which is toxic), other foods are sprayed with neonic pesticides (another toxin). Knowing the source of the food also helps me choose to buy local and save the world’s global warming problems with less transport costs. It may also warn me of a third world country where the use of chemicals is not regulated well (although this takes some research to be informed). The bottom line is I personally would like to be know about what I put in my mouth and labels need to reveal much more than they do.

The Holidays likely were too tempting for many and now it is time to work off that weight gain for the spring and summer look. Who knows a good work-out may even catch you a good -looking girl or guy.

Along with a physical work-out one also should think about food consumption, what to eat and what not to eat. I am one who believes fad diets are just fads. And eating the wrong kinds of foods will make you malnourished. In fact many overweight people are badly malnourished. They eat more of the wrong things and keep putting on the weight.

Losing weight is not a diet, rather it must be a change in life style. Eat nutrient-rich foods. Follow these practices:
1. Always eat some raw foods with every meal.
2. Cut down and, if you can, eliminate white flour and white sugar products.
3. Make sure you eat foods with a low glycemic index. Go to for help in selecting these foods.
4. Consume only healthy fats, such as olive oil, and don’t eat foods with unhealthy fats, such as animal fats. I have totally eliminated all vegetable shortening, corn oil, canola oil, cottonseed oil and soy oil from my diet. Fats high in omega 3 and omega 6 are very good for you and actually decrease your cholesterol instead of increasing it.
5. Eat vegetables, vegetables, vegetables! Vegetarians are lean compared to people who are more carnivorous in their eating habits.
6. Cook in healthful ways. This means no fried foods. Grilling is low in fat but consuming too much grilled food is also not healthy for you, especially the dark charred pieces. (Yes I know they taste yummy; just be aware and don’t consume it often.)
7. Take a daily dose of vitamins that come from a reputable source, such as .
8. Don’t forget to exercise and build up the number of repeats in your routine. Even simple speed walking for 30 minutes a day regularly will help you lose the weight.

I just read an interesting article I would like to share with my bloggers. Have you ever wondered how much real food you are actually buying and how much of it is processed, altered, artificially made food like substance? When you add into this formula all the food that is genetically modified (GM) and perhaps heavily laden with round-up pesticide and other toxins, it is no wonder that the overall health of American citizens is declining. People just need to wake up to the reality and ethics of the food problem in the U.S.

Go to “>http://www.takepart.com/news/2011/01/06/how-can-you-tell-if-theyre-real to read more on this subject.

A good friend recently gave me 4 butternut squashes from her garden. That is a lot of squash for me! Oh what to do with them…
Here is one idea I had. Do you have any other suggestions for me?

Butternut Squash Souflfle

Ingredients
2 cups cooked, mashed butternut squash
3 tablespoons butter, softened
1/2 cup honey or maple syrup
1/3 cup milk, coconut milk or almond milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Heat the oven to 325 F. Grease a 1 1/2-quart casserole dish. Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer until well combined. Pour the mixture into the casserole dish and bake for 75 minutes or until set. Serves 6 to 8.

I just came across this great post of free self-learning of bio-intensive gardening.

http://www.growbiointensive.org/Self_Teaching.html

I recently planted spinach and mustard greens in my winter garden. They should be ready to eat in early spring. Otherwise I have covered the ground with a cover crop, such as clover or winter rye. It will be a green manure when I plant the spring garden.

I am aware of choosing healthful food choices and prefer buying organic and local whenever I can. I believe one of the biggest problems for folks is lack of money. Organic food does cost more. One way to curtail the cost is to grow your own. Therefore I wanted to share the great link with you.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Well that is what my mailbox sign says. And it has a honeybee painted on it. Remember honey is the healthy sweetener to choose when making your holiday meals. Also during the holiday time we tend to add extra worry and anxiety onto our daily thoughts. I just came across this great email that I want to share with you…. and it was titled “Don’t Worry Be Happy.”

Don’t Worry, Be Happy

Country life might seem inherently relaxing, but it isn’t really. Our culture prepares us for life by teaching us a wide variety of ways to keep ourselves totally stressed out 24/7. You can’t unlearn these in a day! When you move to the country, they’ll be right at your fingertips.

The human mind is a funny thing. A lot of things we do are holdovers from long, long ago. For example, when you get goosebumps during a scary movie, what’s up with that? The answer is, the goose bumps are trying to make you look really big by fluffing up the fur you don’t have to frighten a monster that doesn’t exist! Thanks, human mind! It’s the thought that counts!

So you’re probably asking yourself, “What other delightfully useless mechanisms does the human mind have in store for us?” I’m glad you asked! My favorite is anxiety. Unlike fear, which is triggered by an actual threat right now, anxiety is about something that happened in the past, or something that might happen in the future. As Mark Twain said, “I am an old man and have known many troubles, but most of them never happened.”

The same part of your mind that helpfully fluffs up your imaginary fur will trigger your fight-or-flight reflex whenever you so much as think about a problem in a scary way. That way, you’re all set to run away from a threat that isn’t there. Thanks again, human mind!

Unfortunately, energizing your body for desperate action takes its toll. It diverts resources from your immune system, your digestion, and your higher mental functions into fighting or running. This is worse than goosebumps — it can take years off your life if you’re stressed a lot of the time. So maybe it’s not the thought that counts, after all. Good intentions should be followed by good results.

I’ve come to the conclusion that hypothetical threats deserve only hypothetical worry. Worry doesn’t keep you safe, any more than goosebumps make you look huge. Planning can help keep you safe, though. Have you noticed that worrying is the opposite of planning? Planning focuses on success, while worrying focuses on failure. Being calm can keep you safe, too — there’s nothing like being calm in a crisis. Once again, worry is your enemy here. Fear and adrenaline are a bad combination.

I didn’t always think this way: I used to worry a lot more. I had insomnia, and moving to the country didn’t help it a bit. If I woke up in the night, I’d worry about all sorts of things in a semi-conscious way, and that made it hard to get back to sleep. Then I read a book (whose title I have since forgotten), where the author claimed that worrying is basically a meaningless activity, one that wastes your time and returns nothing but misery. The author insisted that worrying is simply a bad habit — one that can be broken, and broken more easily than losing weight or giving up smoking.

A classic method to deal with insomnia is to tell yourself, “I’m not allowed to worry in bed. If it’s really important that I worry, I have to get up.” I tried it, and, you know, it turned out that, given the choice between a warm bed and worrying, I preferred the warm bed! I thought worrying was unstoppable. It wasn’t. I could stop it with a small effort of will: “I’ll worry in the morning, when I’m actually awake.” Some people write a list of their problems before going to bed, to convince themselves they won’t forget their worries in the morning. Funny thing — if you write down your worries clearly, they usually sound less convincing than they did inside your head. Have you ever watched a monster movie with the sound turned off? It’s like that. So you get double duty out of the list. I find that journali writing works in a similar way. It gives me a place to download and release my worries and negative thoughts and also as I release, I grow spiritually especially as I begin to write down my blessings. It is amazing how the positive will slowly begin to outweigh the negative and how God will grant me some inner peace.

Worrying is certainly no substitute for planning! For example, everyone in my area has tall trees that could fall against their houses during winter storms. It happens sometimes, when the ground is really wet and the winds are really strong. A worrier can spend a lot of energy envisioning this disaster over and over, creating mental images of trees crashing into the house, with a mental voice-over of “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!”

Have you ever watched one of your drama-queen acquaintances doing this sort of thing out loud? it’s annoying, isn’t it? Hypothetical troubles are dull unless you’re being fooled by your own adrenaline. As soon as you dial your anxiety down a little, your worries become less interesting. “I wonder what else is on?”

With planning, on the other hand, you spend two seconds in thought and decide, “Well, obviously, if the tree falls against the house, I’ll call the insurance company!” And that’s it. Move along, citizens. Nothing to see here.

A year or two ago, I discovered that I could stop worrying just by telling myself, “I don’t do that stuff anymore.” It usually works. One technique to help you stop worrying, favored by Richard Bandler, is to repeat this mantra to yourself: “Shut up! Shut up!” Just because fears are vivid doesn’t mean they’re meaningful! They don’t deserve any more respect than goosebumps.

You see, you can focus on success or you can focus on failure. The rule is, “Whatever you focus on, you get more of.” People who focus on success tend to succeed, because they’re looking for opportunities. Worriers focus on failure, and that’s what they get. That’s why people who haven’t let go of their past keep repeating it — they’re navigating with their rear-view mirror, and that only works if you’re going backwards!

I saw a summary of a research report on the effect of mental imagery on performance (in this case, putting a golf ball). Some test subjects were instructed to imagine sinking the putt, some were told to imagine missing the putt, and some weren’t told anything. The ones who used positive imagery did best, the ones in the control group came in second, and the ones who visualized failure came in last. If you visualize success, that’s what you get. If you visualize failure, that’s what you get. When you worry, you’re practicing to become better at failing, just like the loser group in the study.

When I realized that the economy was headed off into the ditch, I told myself, “Hey, this is a good time to expand my publishing business!” Partly this was because hard times cause people to look into country life as an alternative to the rat race, and partly because there’s less competition during hard times. Also, it seemed prudent to bolster as many of my income sources as I could! It all worked better than I expected. It helped that it takes very little money for me to bring a book into print — it’s mostly labor — so I didn’t have to bet the farm. Attitude was a big part, too. I don’t find success unless I remember to look for it. Sometimes I forget.

I’ve found self-hypnosis programs to be helpful. Self-hypnosis is a two-fer deal, since it combines the benefits of meditation with a to-do list — whatever self-help issue you’re interested in at the moment. All the meditation, relaxation, and self-hypnosis stuff is really in the same ballpark. Try ‘em all and stick with the ones you like! A good place to start is HypnosisDownloads.com, which has a more rational and practical approach than most. I like that. I’ve bought a lot of their stuff.

I’ve also found Richard Bandler’s book, Get the Life You Want, to be very helpful.

With all these self-help products, persistence pays off. Maybe it works the first time and maybe it doesn’t, but it gets better over time.

The human mind is an amazing thing. We have even invented meta-emotions: we can be afraid of being afraid and we can worry about being worried — but we can also feel happy about feeling happy. Hey, let’s try for that last one! Count your blessings each and every day.

Happy Halloween dear bloggers! I hope you have an enjoyable holiday and eat healthful treats and stay away from too many sweets.

I do want to say a word to you. I appreciate the feedback and all about how good my blogs are, however I am disappointed that no one comments about them beyond a mere “good blog” post. I am frustrated with this, and especially so when the same person re-posts the same multiple times. If there is not more intelligence in the replies I will delete these posts because they do not add anything to my page. Also people with porn and spam links please stay away from my page.

Should oats be soaked overnight in order to lower the level of phytic acid that they contain?

Oats are not particularly high in phytic acid, nor Soaking of oats is not necessary in creating an optimally nourishing meal that contained oats. Following are some details that may help to more fully explain my position.

Raw, uncooked and unprocessed whole oats contain an amount of phytic acid that is similar to the amount found in other grains like wheat, corn, and barley. Like those grains, oats contain their phytic acid in their outside layers. For this reason, whether you are making oat muffins, oatmeal, granola, or just eating a pre-packaged rolled oat cereal or bread made from oat flour, the level of phytates in your oats is naturally reduced as a result of cooking the oats. This reduction is a part of healthy eating.

One of the major concerns about phytates in food has been their ability to interfere with mineral absorption. When oats have been cooked, or milled into flour, their phytate content will typically fall into a range of approximately 2-7 milligrams per gram. Studies in which the absorption of minerals like zinc and copper-given a phytic acid level of 4 milligrams per gram in the grain or legume-falls into the general range of 10-30%. When virtually all of the phytic acid is removed from the grain or legume, this range will increase for zinc into the area of 25-40% but will remain essentially unchanged for copper.

While soaking can have some impact on the phytic acid found in oats and can lower this amount somewhat, it cannot remove as much phytic acid from the oats as was accomplished in these scientific research studies. As a result, I do not believe you would be able to increase the availability of minerals from your oats by a significant amount by soaking them overnight. In this context, it is also important to remember that phytic acid is often a plant’s key storage form for the mineral phosphorus and for a nutrient called inositol. These nutrient components of phytic acid are potentially health supportive substances.

References:

Cheryan M.Phytic acid interactions in food systems. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 1980;13(4):297-335.

Garcia-Estepa RM, Guerra-Hernandex E, Garcia-Villanova B. Phytic acid content in milled cereal products and breads. Food Res Int. 1999;32(3):217-21.

Did you know that along with its wealth of vitamins, minerals and dietary fiber, kale, collards, mustard, and turnip greens provide unique sulfur-containing phyto-nutrients? Like These cruciferous greens, along with broccoli, cabbage, and brussel sprouts contain health-promoting organo-sulfur compounds, which have been found to help prevent a wide variety of cancers. Research suggests that the phyto-nutrients found in these foods also help activate detoxifying enzymes in the liver, which work to neutralize potentially carcinogenic substances. One of these compounds, sulforaphane, is formed when cruciferous vegetables (such as kale) are chopped or chewed. Sulforaphane has been found to trigger the liver to produce enzymes that detoxify cancer-causing chemicals and inhibit chemically-induced breast cancers in animal studies.