Thin Mint Ice Cream and Some New Products

Thank goodness it's Friday! This week has gone by fast, obviously, and I'm happy that it's going to be partly sunny today :) Here are some of my latest food experiences:

New Ice Cream Flavor
Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookie Delight
I probably added about 6 crumbled up cookies.
Then I served it up with some crunchy granola!


Recent New Products (well, for me at least)
Pom Juice
Flavor: Pomegranate Blueberry!



Health Benefits: Both blueberries and pomegranates are high in antioxidants (similar to the antioxidants in red wine), can help reduce heart disease risk factors, and can also help decrease high blood pressure (among several other super benefits).
The Bad: I wouldn't ever recommend this as a drink. Why? 1 cup has 160 calories, 33 grams of sugar, and zero fiber. Compared to the whole pomegranate, which has 140 calories, 6 grams of fiber, and 24 grams of sugar (in one cup), and whole blueberries, which have 80 calories, 13 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of fiber (3/4 cup).

Taste: SWEET, as in way too sweet, but since I am not planning on drinking it as a beverage I am ok with the sweet taste. My plan is to use this juice to make:
Smoothies
Popsickles
Ice cream (maybe...)

Laughing Cow Cheese Wedges
Flavor: Light French Onion

Health Benefits: If you only stick to one a day, these things can be a great addition to a healthy diet. Why? They are only 35 calories each, they provide 6% daily value of calcium, 2.5 grams of protein, and only 2 grams of fat! Be careful though, they are super tasty and it's easy to eat more than one in a sitting. Why is this bad? Well, they also provide eleven percent of your daily sodium needs, and 1 gram of saturated fat. Click on the link above to check out their website and some awesome recipes.

Taste: If I didn't know the flavor was French onion, I would have guessed it! In other words, the taste was just as I expected and the texture was creamy and delightful.

Fiber One Cereal
Flavor: Caramel Delight

Health Benefits: Remember when I said I was made at Fiber One because they put aspartame in their cereal? Well, not this one! The first ingredient is whole grain wheat, which explains the 9 grams of fiber (3 of which is soluble) in one cup. The cereal is fortified, which means it also provides 25% of several other important vitamins and minerals, PLUS it has 3 grams of protein per serving. Unfortunately the second ingredient is sugar, which explains the 10 grams of sugar per serving (no bueno), but the high amount of fiber makes up for that in my opinion :)

Taste: Have you ever had Cinnamon Toast Crunch? If you have, and you loved it as much as I did, you will LOVE this cereal. I mix 1/2 cup with Cheerios (off brand) because Fiber One is expensive :(

Well I'm off to finish my week. I have to complete the poster I am designing for the Russel Klein Symposium next week. This is a symposium organized in memory of an OSU professor who did research related to foods and cancer. Ironically he died of cancer about 6 years ago. The symposium is meant for nutrition students to display all the hard work they have been doing for the past year or two. The posters are large (about 46 inches by 56 inches) and that means they have to be PERFECT before I print the final product. Anyway, have a great day and thanks for reading!

Watermelon Salsa and Other Good Eats

Happy Hump Day! So Monday, Memorial Day, was a great time. Nick and I went to my parent's house and had a cookout with some good friends of ours. I was thinking about the summer and all the great fun I'm looking forward to, then I remembered the real reason I was off from school. Memorial Day is a day to thank all of the men and women who have risked their lives for our country. I have such admiration and appreciation in my heart for all of the people, both living and deceased, who have protected our nation and allowed us all to live here, happy, healthy, and with few cares in the world. Thanks.

Memorial Day Recipe of Day

WATERMELON SALSA!

The recipe is from allrecipes.com. All you need is Watermelon (3 cups)
Green pepper (1/2 cup)
Cilantro (2 T, I add more!)
Green Onion (1 T chopped)
1 T Jalapeno, 1/2 t garlic salt (I put more!), 2 T lime juice
Mix and serve!
More Kitchen Fun
Oil drizzled, and garlic enhanced, grilled eggplant
Health Benefit: High in Dietary Fiber, Folate, Potassium, Manganese, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Thiamin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Pantothenic Acid, Magnesium, Phosphorus and Copper. And, it tastes great.
My new favorite yogurt: GREEK YOGURT FROM TRADER JOE'S, with my farmer's market strawberry :)

More POPSICKLES!
I still had leftover smoothie form the other day. I knew if I didn't eat it soon it would go bad, so I froze it! This smoothie had silken tofu, blueberries, honey, V8 Fusion, lemon, almond milk, yum.

NUTRITION RESEARCH
Last but not least, check out this survey that was done by the International Food Information Council. They asked Americans just about every personal health question known to man, then ran the statistics and found out some crazy things! Did you know that 53 percent of Americans are actively trying to loose weight?! Check it out!

Which of these statistics surprises you the most? For me it was the fact that 50 percent of Americans don't wash their cutting boards between different foods...yikes! I just hope they aren't cutting meat and vegetables. If so, I hope they aren't cutting my food.

Thanks for reading today. Have a great Wednesday!

Canned Foods; Nutritious, Delicious, and Cost Effective!

It's such a beautiful day out and I want to capture it and keep it forever :) I hope everyone is doing well. Today I have been working hard at preparing a poster for a nutrition research symposium coming up in June. I have never prepared a poster, or even written a thesis, so to say the least I am stressed!

Today I have decided to stick with the theme of "saving time", and discuss an article I read in Today's Dietitian magazine about canned foods.


Canned Foods!





For years I have been eating canned foods. My mom always had, and still has, a cupboard full of canned foods and my grandma even used to make her own! Often I get asked the question "are canned foods healthy?", to which I answer "yes and no, it depends". It's true, it really depends on the type of canned food. So many canned foods are full of sodium and/or sugar and really provide little nutritional benefits, but if you find the right ones you can really save money, time AND contribute to your healthy diet.

Cost Example:
Fresh green beans $3.14 vs. canned green beans $1.09

Ok, so fresh green beans probably taste better, but when you are in a hurry canned green beans can be so convenient! Not to mention the two dollar savings, it's a nice perk.

Research:
A recent University of California, Davis study found that all forms of fruits and vegetables; canned, cooked fresh, and frozen, were nutritionally similar!

Canning actually locks in many nutrients since canning is done soon after fruits and vegetables are harvested. Some vegetables, such as green beans and spinach, can loose up to 70% of their vitamin C within seven days of harvest! When the vegetables are canned, however, this vitamin is locked in. In some instances canned foods can even have more nutrients, such as vitamin A in pumpkin. Also cooking and canning of tomatoes has been shown to increase the heart-healthy antioxidant lycopene.
Source: Today's Dietitian Magazine

Canned Foods From My Cupboard:

Glory Foods are a great brand of food. I would recommend sticking with their "low sodium" choices, such as these mixed greens. If you buy canned foods that are not low sodium, simply dump them in a strainer and rinse them, it makes a huge difference in the sodium and sugar content!


Noteworthy nutrition facts:
Serving size 1/2 cup
240 mg sodium
2 grams fiber
110% vitamin A
35% vitamin C
4% iron


Pizza Sauce:
Noteworthy nutrition facts:
Serving size 1/4 cup
270 mg sodium (yeah, this is high considering no one only uses 1/4 cup on their pizza, but if you only eat 1-2 slices, this isn't so bad!)
10% vitamin A
10% vitamin C

Black Beans:
Noteworthy Nutrition Facts:
Serving size 1/2 cup
370 mg sodium (not bad, but if you rinse the beans this number will drastically decrease)
340 mg potassium (10%)
7g dietary fiber
15% iron

Other Canned Food Favorites

Baked Beans
Spinach
Carrots
Mushrooms
Mustard greens

Pineapple in light syrup
Peaches in light syrup

Tuna (not a fruit or vegetable, but oh so convenient, tasty, and cheap!)

Bottom Line: Fresh is always best, but if you want to save time and money, consuming canned fruits and vegetables isn't such a bad idea! The nutritional content is often similar and sometimes better than fresh, so enjoy a canned good every once in a while!


Have a wonderful day :)

Ice Cream for Mom, and Vitamin D for All

So it's crunch time for me, as I have to finish my thesis by August 13th. If this sounds like plenty of time, trust me, it's not! I am not known for my ability to write research papers and I have found that my adviser (who reads my drafts) has a completely different writing style than myself, which adds to the difficulty. Let's just say I can't WAIT to be done with graduate school and get a real job. Until then, I've got this blog to allow me to do some of the writing that I actually enjoy, thankfully.

In the News

Check this out: You're Obese, So Pay Up
My friend Amanda sent me a newsletter with a ton of interesting health-related news bites. This was one of them, and I didn't know what to think about it. Part of me thought it was fair but another part of me felt bad for the person who would be asked to pay extra, how embarrassing!

Recent Food Experiences

Edy's Slow Churned Yogurt is my favorite name brand of ice cream/yogurt.


Check out these nutrition facts, they aren't so bad (until you start eating more than one serving, which is not difficult to do)
Here is another favorite of mine:
BUT do you want to know the best kind?! MINE! I know I've blogged about my frozen yogurt before, but yesterday I made some of the best ever. Last night I celebrated Mother's Day with my mom (Sunday isn't a good day for either of us) and she had asked for a batch of my frozen yogurt. So of course this batch had some extra love.

I added SIX pieces of milk and dark chocolate (yeah, only four are pictured)


2 T peanut butter and about 1/2 cup chopped almonds and pecans

Started with 3/4 cup sugar and 1 cup vanilla soymilk.
After adding 2 cups 1/2 and 1/2, plus some vanilla extract and a bit of cayenne :) , I poured it into the ice cream maker.

Five minutes later:

15 minutes later:

20 minutes later, YUM!


I added all of the yummy pieces and then mixed it up:
































Nutrition Research Update
The American Dietetic Association reports that children and adolescents are continuing to be deficient in vitamin D. Rickets, which is the softening of the bone in children, is often the result of inadequate vitamin D. Recently the American Academy of Pediatrics raised the Adequate Intake (AI) of vitamin D to 400 IU, from 200IU, for children and adolescents. This is especially important for children who are fully or partially breastfed, children/adolescents who do not get enough sun or drink enough milk, and children/adolescents who have fat malabsorption problems (such as cystic fibrosis).

When I read this I remembered reading another article about the possibility of raising the adult recommendation. Currently the reccomendation is 200 IU for those aged 19-50, but I personally do not think this is enough and I predict that this number will increase in the next year.

Vitamin D has been in the news for its possible ability to prevent cancer and increase immunity. Mainly, however, it is known for its ability to maintain normal calcium and phosphorus levels in the blood and it helps absorb calcium and maintain strong bones (prevention of rickets in children, and osteomalacia in adults, which is softening of the bones).


With summer coming up we are all hopefully in good shape as far as vitamin D. Why? Because we will be outside more often and therefore will have more exposure to the vitamin D producing sun. You normally don't get told to not where sunscreen, but 10-15 minutes out in the sun without sunscreen is all you need, 2-3 days a week, to get enough vitamin D. But in my opinion it never hurts to get more. The upper limit (UL) is 2000 IU and if you are out in the sun all day your body will not continuously make vitamin D, therefore you don't have to worry about "overdosing" on vitamin D because of your sun exposure.

Food sources of vitamin D:
Yogurt (look at the label to make sure it has vitamin D)
Cheddar cheese (" ")
Milk (soy or cow's, but look at the label)
Calcium and vitamin D fortified cereals and/or juices
Salmon, pink, with soft bones
Supplements:

Viactiv provides 500 IU of vitamin D
Flintstones vitamins provide 400 IU vitamin D


New Food Experiences

On the topic of Vitamin D, I thought I would share with you a tasty treat my mom taught me yesterday. I am probably the ONLY person who hasn't ever tried greek yogurt. I think I just figured I wouldn't like it, but thanks to my mom I learned that it's AWESOME!!!
Unfortunately it doesn't have any vitamin D, but 20 grams of protein, zero grams fat (my mom buys the fat free one), and only 9 grams of sugar (compared to about 14-25 grams in normal yogurt) makes this a very healthy treat!


It's especially good with:
1 T unsweetened cocoa powder
2 packets of Splenda
1 T peanut butter


This was a true treat. I have to say, it was better than the dairy free chocolate pudding I made, although the dairy free pudding has its own health benefits that outweigh this.

Until next time, get some vitamin D, and enjoy a great Mother's Day tomorrow!