Diet food fat is vitally important to your well-being. Most nutritional authorities counsel that 25% to thirty percent of the total daily calories consumed by adults be food fat.

But the difficulty is that not all fats are made equal. Some fats are excellent for you and some are bad for you. Some fats can heal and other fats can kill. That is why you need to have a fat list handy at all times. Knowing the difference between good fats and bad fats is crucial for good health.

Let’s have a look at the bad fats fat list. Essentially, there are two bad fats. They are saturated fat and trans fat.

Saturated fat is present in animal products such as red beef and whole milk dairy products – butter, cheese, ice cream, for example. Saturated fat adds to the flavor of food, but too much saturated fat can raise cholesterol, clog up your arteries and seriously contribute to the onset of heart problems.

Saturated fat intake should be kept to less than ten percent of your total daily calories. Avoid bad saturated fats by eating lean meats, skinless poultry and low fat or skim milk dairy goods. Also, stay away from highly saturated tropical palm and coconut oils.

Trans fat is the most hazardous fat and may be eliminated from your diet. It has no nutritional value, but has been found to noticeably increase the risk of coronary heart disease by raising artery clogging bad LDL cholesterol while lowering good LDL cholesterol.

Trans fat is formed when plant oils are hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated. It is found in about all commercially processed foods like crackers, cookies, cake, candy plant shortening, margarine, salad dressing, fried food and snack food.

The fat list of good fats are monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats, particularly omega three fish oil trans acids.

Monounsaturated fat lowers bad LDL cholesterol and raises good HDL cholesterol, extra virgin olive oil is the number one source. Monounsaturated fats are also found in canola oil, peanut oil, avocados, almonds, pecans and pumpkin and sesame seeds..

Polyunsaturated oils aren’t as highly rated now as they once were. The reason is too many folks were getting way too much polyunsaturated omega 6 fat from highly refined plant oils and not enough polyunsaturated omega three oils, particularly the healthy EPA and DHA trans acids from fish.

That’s the reason why most nutritive authorities today recommend everyone eat fatty fish loaded in EPA and DHA omega three oils at least three times every week. Salmon, tuna, mackerel, herring and sardines are all excellent sources of omega 3 EPA and DHA. The experts also counsel people use monounsaturated olive oil for cooking and salads and get their essential omega 6 oils from one hundred pc whole grain wheat, rye and oats, soybeans, walnuts and sunflower seeds.

Learn all you are able to about food fat so you can make critical changes that will benefit your whole family. Learn the way a complete fat list can help you to live a long, happy, active life.

Making a habit of eating healthy is difficult on a daily basis. Weekends are however a much easier time for most to prepare a full cooked breakfast. As for me, pancakes are almost always part of a healthy full cooked meal.

Still, there are healthy pancakes and then, there are healthy pancakes. For our family it wasn’t so much what we put in the pancakes as it was what we put on them, and for many families that’s the same.

Healthy whole wheat pancakes that are drowned in a sugary substance such as corn syrup aren’t really the best kind of breakfast, but without syrup, you have sometimes just a plain piece of bread. Tasty bread, granted, but not all that you really want for breakfast.

I suggest foregoing the corn syrup based toppings smothered all over the top, but try putting just a little maple syrup in the batter. Another idea is to use real butter. It is more flavorful and requires you to use less to get more flavor than you’ll get out of the fake stuff. In general I like to stick with natural substances instead of anything artificial.

Bringing out the flavor of healthy whole wheat pancakes can be done without drizzling sugary syrup all over the hot steaming little thing on our plate. Try finding a whole wheat pancake mix with delicious ingredients to begin with. You can add to those ingredients too to find a way of making them tasty at the start. By doing this you are a lot less likely to pour the calories on after you have cooked up your little treat.

Having a tasty whole wheat pancake is good, but for many of us having pancakes with a topping is just part of having pancakes. However, now that you have a delicious cake to start all you need is a little jam or a touch of fruit. Homemade jams have a lot less sugar and are soft and easily spreadable. Fruits lower in sugar like peaches or pears are delicious too. Applesauce or yogurt are also a very tasty ways to top your whole wheat pancakes.

There are many other great things you can do with whole wheat pancakes. Try cooking them in different shapes or even mixing the batter much thinner so that you can roll the pancakes up with fruit on the inside. Kids love to do different things with their yummy food. You can even use a little whipped cream to help thing a long without taking too much away from the healthiness you have tried so hard to create. Making them look good is often just as important as making them healthy and tasty.

Finding a meal that will get us and our kids to stop for a minute and enjoy healthy food isn’t at all easy. Having a meal that is so quick and easy to make helps on a daily basis. Of course a well planed cooked meal on the weekend with all the creative ideas you have come up with will really help to get the family together or just help you to eat a little healthier.

There are many of great recipe ideas for eating a healthy breakfast. Enjoying good healthy food with your family is necessary in achieving a healthy lifestyle. Spending time around the table with your family with a yummy plate of whole wheat pancakes will bring health and happiness. Go to doctorgrandmas.com to get free recipe ideas for your healthy breakfast.

We’ve gotten into the habit of eating a more healthy breakfast when we cook a full meal breakfast on the weekends. We do include sometimes some lean meats, but primarily we’re pancake people.

The thing about pancakes however, is that they are so easily made into a not so healthy meal. Pancakes in general don’t have too much about them individually that isn’t so healthy, it’s what we put on them that causes the problems. We want them to be tasty so cover them with all sorts of things.

Healthy whole wheat pancakes that are drowned in a sugary substance such as corn syrup aren’t really the best kind of breakfast, but without syrup, you have sometimes just a plain piece of bread. Tasty bread, granted, but not all that you really want for breakfast.

I suggest foregoing the corn syrup based toppings smothered all over the top, but try putting just a little maple syrup in the batter. Another idea is to use real butter. It is more flavorful and requires you to use less to get more flavor than you’ll get out of the fake stuff. In general I like to stick with natural substances instead of anything artificial.

Adding flavor to our healthy whole wheat pancakes doesn’t have to be a high calorie operation. There are lots of great ways to bring out flavor that will decrease our desire to pour sugary whatever all over the top of our steaming little pancake. The best place to start is with a yummy recipe that you can add to. By making the pancake taste better to begin with you will be able to enjoy them with a lot less calories after they are cooked.

A lonely stack of pancakes for most of us is not enough. The versatility of pancakes is because of the variety of toppings that taste so good. So if you are like me and just don’t like eating pancakes plain regardless of how tasty they are try some lower sugar toppings. Freezer jams that are homemade are my favorite. They have much less sugar and they are soft and easy to spread. Another favorite of mine is a little fruit and yogurt. Peaches, pears and applesauce are a bit less in sugar than some of the other fruits you might consider.

For a real treat, cook them a bit thinner, roll them up with fresh fruit inside them and top with a single dollop of whipped topping. Fresh fruit adds a festive look and taste to breakfast and no one is going to say no to healthy whole wheat pancakes and strawberries for breakfast.

Having a meal that will invite you or an entire family to sit down long enough to eat something healthy is not always an easy task. Now, with healthy whole wheat pancakes that can be made up so many different ways and taste good without all the sugar, you can do a little better. Take a morning out of your weekend and put your creative brain to work and come up with a way to enjoy healthy pancakes.

There are thousands of great recipe ideas for eating a healthy breakfast. Enjoying good healthy food with your family is necessary in achieving a healthy lifestyle. Sitting around the table with your family with a delicious plate of whole wheat pancakes will bring health and happiness. Go to doctorgrandmas.com to get free recipe ideas for your healthy breakfast.

Is there a certain line of defense to engage when you are not well? Is it true that once you hit a certain age things begin to fall apart and youre at the mercy of a life of medication to keep organ systems going? Well, it will be true for you if you believe that. My job here though is to remind you that your body has the greatest potential for healing, and once you taste the triumph when Infinite Intelligence reverses an illness or condition, youll be empowered for life. Youll be invincible.

Everyone needs reminders. They come in the form of a good friend, a spouse, a mentor, a movie like the Secret or What the Bleep, a class or a book. The reminder is simple yet profound and that is that YOU ARE IN CHARGE. You can turn poor health around by going to the root cause of all disease: bad digestion. Bad digestion simply means youve run out of or are very low in digestive enzymes and minerals. Your job now is to eat whole, organic, take digestive enzymes every time you eat and combine your foods properly.

When denatured or mineral-depleted foods are the mainstay of the body, the body uses it’s supply of pancreatic enzymes to move a bolus of food through the body at any given time. As the body supply runs low food putrefies, disease sets in, the body has little or no energy to heal or restore homeostasis and a person finds themselves in a crisis.

When and if you find yourself in a healing crisis the best natural healing methods are rest and to re-mineralize. That takes the stress off of the body, freeing it up to do much needed healing, restoration. The idea is to eat as much organic and raw as possible. Not only is juicing the most effective way to put minerals in and replenish, a juicer is the best pharmacy you can go to. Juicing should be a daily routine. It can keep any family healthy and alert. It is often times up to mothers to be the serious juice masters. The rewards are great.

There are some really tasty juice combinations. In our home we love carrots, a cucumber, a green apple, celery, spinach, fennel and watercress. The cucumber and green apple lend a lot of juice and cut any heaviness in the carrots and spinach. Carrots are rich in beta carotene, great for the immune system, spinach is rich in folic acid, vitamin E and a great blood builder, celery is rich in potassium, fennel great for the digestive system and cucumber promotes beautiful skin.

Buy a couple of good juicing books and start with those recommendations. Add your own favorite additions for taste preferences. A wonderful mix that does it all for our family is the following for beautiful skin and a healthy immune system: 7 carrots, 1 cucumber, 1 or 2 green apple(s), a handful of parsley and kale. If it seems too green, add some fresh pineapple in there for digestion (bromelain).

Always use organics. To juice non-organic is to ingest an inordinate amount of pesticides in one or two gulps. Pesticides are oil based and most plants are sprayed (grapes) up to thirty times in a growing season. The oil base ensures water will not rinse it off. So juice organic and allow the fresh healthy juice to revitalize and mineralize your body.

Although you can have some lifeless in your diet; make 75% real and live food. As Earth Day is on our minds, take a stand for organic, both for fabrics and foods. Ask store owners to make sure that they do not stock genetically engineered, seedless varieties. Remember that the middle isles of stores contain lifeless food. Eat around the periphery of any store. Quality life as we age depends on replenishing the body storehouses of minerals and enzymes.

If you are healing, there are certain rules of thumb: it is better to not eat than to eat something that will throw the healing process back, drink lots of pure water every day, use only the freshest of everything you put in or on your body, make sure you eliminate several times a day, get lots of rest or meditation time, or both, have people you can trust to talk to, change the way you do things, eat every bite of food with gratitude and consciousness, help a friend, and love yourself above all else so you have more to give to others.

You Are Healthy, Ellen Valentine

Ellen Valentine is a Nutritionist and Life Coach in Sacramento, CA.Organic Choices create health for Your Precious Child. She is passionate in her belief that change is not only constant – it is good.Coaching Successful Life Transitions.

categories: Juicing,Organic Food,Minerals,Self Care,Alternative Health Care,Yoga Lifestyle,Family,Health

Is there really any truth to the assumption that cooking with a crock pot, or slow cooker, saves you both money and time? How exactly can a crock pot do this?

Save Time With a Crock Pot – This may seem like an oxymoron to some people. After all, how can having a meal in the crock pot for eight hours save time? It all depends on your lifestyle and your routine for dinnertime, but most have to agree that getting dinner in the crock pot, then walking away from any further time spent in the kitchen, definitely frees up time.

Gone are the days of someone being home all day to prepare the family meals. In this day and age of the busy, scattered family, we need to rely on more than one person to get dinner on the table. Because using a crock pot doesn’t expose youngsters to hot burners and open flames, getting the little ones in the family, and the less experienced cooks, involved becomes much easier. Simply having someone there to help throw ingredients into the crock pot can be a big help. Now, it’s a joint venture and meal preparation is shared, freeing up some much needed time for you to focus on other chores.

Standing over a stove, watching a pot boil, is certainly time wasted. We all know what it’s like to monitor some soup or stew as it simmers on top of the stove, constantly checking its progress. Putting that same soup together in a crock pot, then walking away, frees up hours and hours of your time – time in which you can accomplish another task!

Frantic stops at the grocery store to quick grab something for dinner are a huge waste of time. You know you’re going to spend 30 minutes or more wandering around the store trying to think of something to cook for dinner. Of course, as time goes by, the choices for dinner start to narrow as time starts to slip further and further away. Planning two or three simple crock pot meals for the week allows you to consolidate your shopping trips into one instead of wasting time stopping every night trying to figure out what to cook. The time it takes to plan the meals and the shopping trip never adds up to the time you spend stopping every night in a panic. And, it’s so nice to come straight home after a busy day to enjoy a delicious meal.

Save Money With a Crock Pot – There are a couple schools of thought here. One is saving on your food, and the other is saving on energy. How exactly can cooking with a crock pot save on your food budget? And why would running a crock pot for six hours be cheaper than running your oven for three hours?

March right past those expensive cuts of meat in your grocery store’s meat department and head over to the budget cuts. Yes, those less expensive cuts of meat such as rump roasts, pork shoulders, and briskets make the perfect choice for a crock pot meal. Why? Because more expensive cuts tend to cook apart in a crock pot, losing their texture very quickly. Budget cuts with more sinew and other connective tissue hold up better, while those fibers break down in the crock pots environment, ending up with a perfectly tender and succulent meat. The slow, low cooking method is perfect for less expensive cuts of meat, while the moisture trapped inside the crock pot keeps the meat juicy. You can provide a wonderful meal for your family without spending the extra money on expensive ingredients!

Considering the design of a crock pot, it just makes sense that you are using less energy when you cook with your crock pot for extended periods of time. Take, for instance, cooking a pot roast in your oven. That meal is committing your oven to roughly 2500 watts, whereas that same pot roast in a crock pot would be committing about 200 watts for the same meal. So, a 3 hour oven cooked pot roast would use 10 kWh, while a 6 hour crock pot cooked roast would use about 1.2 kWh. These are rough estimates, but you can see how using a miniature oven, your crock pot, to do extended cooking will save money on your energy bills.

You know what it’s like when you’re in the middle of running kids around and finally break down and call the hubby to pick up something for dinner. You know it’s going to be an expense that you really didn’t have in the budget this week. The evening rush is not the time to start thinking about dinner if you want to save money. When you’re out driving the kids between practices and lessons, your crock pot could be happily bubbling away at home on your kitchen counter. Dinner is ready when you are, and no more money wasted on fast food stops!

Save Both Time and Money With a Crock Pot – Cooking larger portions, and planning for your leftovers, is one way to save both time and money. With a large crock pot, a 6 quart size, you can cook larger cuts of meat, turn that meat into several dinners, then package up the leftovers for lunches. By cooking one large meal, you have now created several dinners plus lunches all in about the same time it takes to cook one meal. Not only are you saving energy by cooking more than meal at a time, but you’re saving the time it takes each day to put together a new meal. Plus, if eating lunch out is a routine for you, just think of the money you’ll be saving by bringing your own home-cooked meal to eat each day. And, maybe instead of using your lunch hour to run out and get something to eat, you can use the extra time to do something you enjoy.

I think these reasons for cooking with a crock pot will convince most folks that it just makes sense. Using a crock pot does save time and money, yes, but above all it saves your sanity when you’ve got a busy family! That hectic “what’s for dinner” cry when everyone finally comes through the door each night no longer has to overwhelm you – not when you’ve got dinner in the crock pot!

Your family will get hooked on slowcooker cooking with some delicious new slowcooker recipes that are sure to please!

Tips On Making A Homemade Hydroponics System

It used to be that hydroponics were thought of as being something used by regular people far into the future, but that is not true anymore. Many of today’s home gardeners are using hydroponic systems in order to grow different plants and vegetables to supplement their grocery consumption on a regular basis. Hydroponic systems that are purchased ready made are usually very expensive. You can make your own Homemade Hydroponics System easy and inexpensively.

Hydroponics is a method in which one grows plants without the aid of using soil. The roots of the plants are placed in a soil-less medium or they may just grow in water itself. This is a cleaner method because there is no soil and you can grow plants indoors all during the year. A homemade system will not cost much and will save you money because you will have fresh vegetables any time.

One easy method of hydroponics is referred to as the Wick Method. Here liquid with nutrients is sucked up by nylon rope into the pots of the plants that have been inserted into a planting medium. You do not need much to achieve this method and nothing costs much money.

Make your own hydroponic system by starting with one black or dark blue plastic storage tub. You need a dark color to stop algae from growing in the liquid solution. Algae needs sunlight to grow and a dark container does not let it even get started. Also purchase a storage tub of the same relative size that will fit inside the dark one. In this tub you will place the pots your plants grow in. It can be the same color or any other color you wish. You need to purchase a few yards of half inch rope made from nylon. Also needed is an aquarium air pump that will keep your solution oxygenated. Get pots that fit into the one tub. These will be filled with a growing medium and the best used are pebbles made of clay that will absorb the solution and keep it for awhile or you can use equal amounts of vermiculite and perlite. You will never be able to duplicate the rays of the sun indoors so be sure to get some grow lights.

In each pot put a length of the roping in through the hole in the bottom before putting the plant in it. Start filling the pot with the medium but hold the rope up so it comes up around the plant roots. The rope should dangle from the bottom of the pot to be immersed in the liquid solution in the other tub. Once the rope is in, place the plants into the medium. The tub that contains the plants needs to have half inch holes drilled directly under where the pots will be placed. Situate the pots in the container and pull the nylon rope through the hole so it hangs down into the solution once you place the tub in the dark colored tub. The air pump needs to go into the dark colored container immersed into the nutrient solution. Finally you will insert the tub with the plants into the darker colored tub.

You will have little care to deal with in the wick system. The only thing you must do is make sure there is an adequate supply of nutrient solution in the bottom tub. Check the same time every week or maybe two times a week. You will be able to bring that grocery bill down with all the vegetables you can grow during the winter.

Learn more about A Homemade Hydroponics System. Stop by James Morley’s site where you can find out all about A Homemade Hydroponics System and what it can do for you.

categories: hydroponics,gardening,hobbies,family,arts,outdoors,health,entertainment,home and garden,miscellaneous,other,food,education

Beginning every morning with healthy breakfast foods is imperative. Without it you’re going to be feeling the mid-morning let down that makes us less productive and far less healthy in the long run. Skipping breakfast is not a viable way to lose weight. In fact,it has quite the opposite effect.

If we do get some healthy breakfast foods into our bodies first thing at the start of our day we will not be tempted to eat the nutritionally challenged goods. We’ll have the strength to resist and the energy to stand up to the challenges of the day. Generally speaking the “fast” foods around us will not provide the nutrition you need and your body will not be healthy living on those alone.

The healthy breakfast foods are those full of nutrient rich ingredients. Whole foods, like fruits and vegetables and whole wheat grain products are full of nutrition that will sustain your body with the need energy. Those foods advertised as fast and convenient are usually low in substance with add-in vitamins that look good on the box but there is nothing to them. Your stomach never gets full because there is no substance.

When you take a closer look at the breakfast foods that many of eat because it is easy you will find they are full of processed sugars and little else. Many have even taken the steps to qualify “technically” as a good source of whole grains, but when you look closely you’ll see it simply is not a good source of anything but sugar. It’s common sense really. If you crush it between your fingers and there is nothing there then you’ve proven that there is nothing there. Your body needs food not only vitamins and a dash of add-in whole grain.

Healthy breakfast foods are going to be those that are more slowly broken down by your digestive system. Unlike the sugary cereals that boost your blood sugar to give you that boost but let you down, whole foods will fill your tummy and give you the sustainable energy to work and play and not snack and wait for the next meal. Real food with real ingredients and not just sugar and vitamins will keep your blood sugar steady and provide the nutrition your muscles and bones need.

When you think healthy breakfast foods, think higher in fiber, higher in whole grains, added protein, extra iron. Bran cereals, whole wheat, high fiber foods are going to give you the edge that you want when it comes to your breakfast.

In your search for healthy breakfast foods please consider the experience and expertise of Doctor Grandma. DoctorGrandmas.com has been a providing premium healthy breakfast foods and healthy eating tips for years. Discover recipes and great eating tips for FREE at www.doctorgrandmas.com