Heart Healthy Month….Year

February offers a variety of hardy eating opportunities, with Valentine’s Day, Mardi Gras and those snack-filled tv nights in front of the Superbowl or the Oscars. In addition to these occasions for special feasts, February is also Heart Healthy Month. So while chocolates and candy tend to our hearts symbolically this month, the following foods will help keep it healthy and strong all year long.

A key heart-healthy nutrient is omega-3 fatty acids.  What’s important about these essential fatty acids is that you obtain them in the correct ratio of omega 3, 6 and 9.  Since the typically Western diet is (overly) abundant in omega-6, the simplified nutrition advice is add omega-3s to your diet.

Though they vary somewhat depending on their source, omega-3s can be obtained from both animal and plant foods. Some of the richest sources include wild Alaskan salmon (farmed salmon does not offer the same benefit), tuna and other cold-water fish, pasture-raised meat, organic grass-fed dairy and organic pastured eggs.  Good plant-based sources include flaxseed (which should be ground in order to enjoy their nutritional goodness), other nuts and seeds, and purslane.

Beans are a great source of plant-based, nutrient-dense, fiber-rich, inexpensive heart support. Adding beans to salads, soups, stews, making dips and spreads for sandwiches, (and making heart-shaped black bean brownies) allows you to enjoy bountiful fiber (good for cholesterol-lowering and blood sugar balancing), folate, manganese, magnesium, and very low-fat protein. Soy bean products, such as tofu, tempeh and natto offer similar benefits.

Whole grains such as brown rice, oat groats, wheat berries, amaranth, buckwheat, millet and quinoa provide beneficial fiber, B vitamins, and minerals such as magnesium, manganese, selenium and potassium.  Be aware of the growing selection of supermarket packages claiming “whole grain” status.  The best nutrition comes from grains which are indeed whole.

Fresh fruits and vegetables, particularly the large array of colorful ones (broccoli, spinach, winter squash, carrots, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, blueberries, cranberries, papaya, cantaloupe, etc.) contain heart-healthy antioxidants which help protect blood vessels and lower blood pressure.

Black and green tea contain some of the same healthful antioxidants.

There are several established heart-healthy diets, such as Dr. Andrew Weil’s Anti-inflammatory diet, which suggests many of the same foods, since inflammation is a leading cause of heart and blood vessel issues.

Dr. Esselstyn claims his no-oil, plant-based approach will leave you “heart attack proof.” Former President Bill Clinton adopted this diet after his heart surgery.

The Dr. Dean Ornish Spectrum also recommends a mostly plant-based, very low oil diet, but is not quite as strict.

And to keep things interesting, a new study shines the light on a more Mediterranean-style diet, including a significant daily helping of olive oil, nuts and fatty fish for optimal heart health.

What these dietary programs (and this is by no means a complete list) have in common is a focus on fresh whole foods with a high intake of vegetables and fruit, and very low (if any) consumption of processed and sweetened foods. Unless you find the most recent study definitive, the amount and type of animal foods (meat, fish, eggs and dairy products) as well as the amount of oil in a heart-healthy diet seems to still be keeping researchers busy.

Sharing a Superfood Breakfast

I love getting new ideas, great recipes and most importantly inspiration from blogs. Nourishing Words is one of those.  I’ve been a subscriber for some time, and always look forward to a new post.  On this snowy, icy morning without power or internet, Eleanor’s post on her Super Superfood Breakfast seems like just the thing to keep me going today and throughout the winter months to come.  I hope it inspires (and nourishes) you as well.

A Super Superfood Breakfast

Originally published on December 3, 2012 by Eleanor Baron of Nourishing Words.

When is good good enough? When it comes to nourishing our bodies, it makes sense to eat high-quality food—the best. Nutritionists agree that skimping on breakfast is a bad thing. When we rush out the door without breakfast, by mid-morning, we’re hungry, cranky, light-headed or worse. Developing a reliable breakfast routine is one of the basic building blocks of a healthy day.

I’ve long been fascinated by the so-called “superfoods.” Foods that pack so much nutrition that they’re set apart from other foods, by virtue of having something special to contribute to building health. The term itself has no legal meaning, and some say it’s become a useless marketing term. I use it here to loosely refer to any densely nutritious food that contributes to building health or preventing illness. No matter which foods are on the list or not on the list (there are many lists), it’s a challenge to figure out how to fit more healthy foods into the day.

Breakfast is the perfect opportunity to load up.

In warmer weather, I whiz up a remarkably good green or fruit smoothie, loaded with kale, fresh berries, flax seed, hemp seed and more to get me off to a good start. Come autumn, my tolerance for holding an ice-cold smoothie drops in direct proportion to the outside temperature.

It’s time to turn to something more warming. Something aromatic and comforting. Something hearty. Something with a good amount of protein and that will sustain me into the early afternoon.

Here’s a peek at my go-to winter breakfast routine.

Imagine me, in my fluffy sheepskin slippers, flannel pajamas, a fleece (or two) and a thick wool cap. I’ve made my way down the stairs, with a clatter of eight paws behind me, around me and in front of me. Out to the back porch I go, freeing the dogs for their morning constitutional and other wake-up routines—all of which, I must say, they embrace with more gleeful enthusiasm than I’ve ever been known to muster first thing in the morning. This gives me a few moments to breathe in the cold air, greeting the day with my sleepy version of a sun salutation—at least the part of it that keeps me upright.

Inside again, where the previously chilly-feeling house now feels toasty, I feed the dogs while water boils for a cup of green tea, which is to be my first superfood of the day.

The night before, if I remembered, I would have soaked a quarter cup of steel cut oats in warm water, covering it with a dish towel and tucking it away on top of the fridge. Soaking softens the oats up for cooking and removes the phytic acid, which inhibits mineral absorption in the body. It’s an easy step, well worth taking, that potentially doubles the minerals my body absorbs from that one serving of oatmeal. (Soaking grains in general is a good thing, but more on that, later.)

Oats are available in at least three different forms, from thick and chunky to thin and flaky. Steel cut oats are whole oats (known as groats), just cracked up into little chunks. They’re very hard and would be impossible to chew uncooked. Rolled oats are simply flattened groats, and they also retain all the goodness of the original grain. Quick oats are further processed and lack the bran portion of the grain. And the stuff that comes in little sweetened packets? Quick oats with flavors and plenty of sugar added.

Steel cut oats take about 30 minutes to cook. Some people cook them overnight in a crockpot, but I’m cooking for one and have an aversion to electrical gadgets, rendering the crockpot option clearly overkill. Because I mostly avoid dairy products, I cook my oats with a lot of extra water, making the finished product super soupy. (Soupy is necessary to handle the ground flax seed and chia seeds that will come later. Such thirsty ingredients will greedily pull water from my body if I don’t offer it to them first.)

I prefer steel cut oats because of their flavor, chewiness and the way they sustain me through the morning, but they’re also a healthy choice, although not a true super food. They’re rich in soluble fiber and have been proven to lower cholesterol and high blood pressure. They take a little longer to digest than rolled oats (which take just ten minutes or so to cook), but are otherwise about the same nutritionally. Steel cut oats have a considerably lower glycemic index than quick (instant) oats, however (42 versus 65), helping to avoid an early morning spike in blood sugar. One quarter cup serving of steel cut oats (dry) is worth 5 grams of protein—but that amount increases with all the ingredients I stir in later.

By the time I’ve finished my tea and checked my morning email, my oats are close to cooked. Now comes the fun part, creating a veritable compost heap of superfoods. To start, I grind up a couple of tablespoons of golden flax seed in the blender and pop it into my beautiful blue hand-thrown bowl that, to most people, looks way too big for a breakfast bowl. It may indeed be too big, but it gives me pleasure to hold it, and sensual pleasure is an important aspect of eating.

This is my current favorite heap of ingredients, some of which pack enough nutritional punch to qualify them as superfoods:

1. 2 tablespoons of ground golden flax seeds (an excellent source of fiber as well as the short chain omega-3 fatty acid, alpha linolenic acid, plus 3 more grams of protein) Read this post if you want to learn more about why flax seed is a true superfood.
2. 2 teaspoons of chia seeds (adds fiber, healthy omega-3 fatty acids and 1 more gram of protein)
3. 1 rounded tablespoon of hemp seeds (fiber, healthy omega-3 fatty acids, including alpha linoleic acid and 4 grams of additional protein)
4. shredded coconut (high in vitamins, potassium, magnesium and antioxidants; rich in fiber)
5. 1 tablespoon of fresh virgin coconut oil (a healthy fat with easy to metabolize medium-chain fatty acids; coconut oil’s lauric acid converts to monolaurin in the body, a powerful antiviral, antibacterial compound)
6. a few almonds (cholesterol lowering, heart-healthy fats and another 2 or so grams of protein)
7. two pieces of fresh fruit, chopped (sometimes just one)
8. a few fresh cranberries, because they’re in season locally at this time of year (cranberries are loaded with antioxidants, making them the most powerful fruit at scavenging free radicals in the body, protecting cells against cancerous changes)
9. lots of cinnamon (lots!—it lowers bad cholesterol and blood sugar, soothes arthritis pain—just smelling it boosts memory and cognitive function)
10. a splash of maple syrup, if the fruits were tart ones or I need a little sweetening up.

Stirring in the soupy oats, the coconut oil (solid at room temperature) melts, the cinnamon releases its fragrance, the flax seed and chia seeds soak in the extra liquid, and it all generally mixes together to perfect porridge. If including coconut oil in the mix seems strange to you, I can assure you that it disappears beautifully, leaving just an additional hint of coconut flavor and, more importantly, a bit of healthy fat that makes this a filling, sustaining breakfast.

The combination of soft and crunchy textures, along with contrasting sweet and tart flavors, makes it all more interesting than the average bowl of oatmeal. The combined nutritional power of so many superfoods in one bowl makes me feel like I’m giving my body the very best start to the day. I’m a lifelong oatmeal lover; this blend is delicious and keeps me going for hours. It’s a good breakfast.

It’s fun to shake things up now and then with other breakfast choices, but this is my reliable routine during the colder months. It’s plenty flexible to accommodate any ingredients I have on hand, and it always satisfies.

I’ll keep working on that sun salutation. Who knows, there might even be a downward dog in my future, if I can squeeze a few more superfoods into my diet.

Making Room for Sunchokes

Often called Jerusalem artichokes, Sunchokes are unusually nutritious tubers which have nothing to do with either Jerusalem or artichokes.  They grow vigorously to over ten feet tall and burst into abundant sunflower-like blooms in the fall. That would be reason enough to grow them, but after the plant has gone, and the first frost has touched the ground, the tubers multiplying under the ground become sweet, delicious and extraordinarily nutritious. Resembling a ginger-potato merger in appearance and a water chestnut-jicama-potato (maybe with a hint of artichoke heart?) blend in flavor, they make a fresh addition to fall and winter cooking.

A North American native plant, these edible tubers were a common food for several Native American tribes. They are still eaten both raw and cooked, and are increasingly appreciated for their high inulin content, a sweet fiber used medicinally to balance blood sugar and support healthy gut bacteria. With a flavor similar to cooked potatoes, they make a good substitute for those wanting to reduce their starch consumption, increase their fiber intake and eat a low glycemic diet. They are also an excellent source of iron and a good one of thiamine, niacin, potassium, magnesium and calcium.

I planted several last fall and did close to nothing to care for them besides eagerly await harvest time.  Last weekend, I dug up one plant. Did I happen to pick the plant sitting on the mother load or are all of these blooming beauties harboring bucket loads of sunchokes?!  I dug up another to find…. more bounty!  I had to stop since I didn’t have the storage space worked out for quantities at this scale.  Fortunately, until the ground freezes, they store well right where they are.

A few Sunchoke recipe ideas:

Sunchoke Slices on a Salad:  scrub and thinly slice several sunchokes and add them to your favorite green salad.  They offer a nice crunch with an earthy flavor making a fresh salad a more grounding food in fall and winter.  Dress with a light vinaigrette.

Sunchoke & Cheddar Soup (from The Victory Garden Cookbook):

• 1 pound sunchokes
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 celeriac bulb or 2 stalks celery
• 1 medium onion
• 6 tablespoons butter
• 2 1/2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 1 1/2 cups cheddar cheese
• 2 teaspoons dry mustard
• 1/2 cup cream
• salt & cayenne pepper to taste
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

Wash, peel (optional) and roughly chop sunchokes and keep in water to which lemon juice has been added until ready to use. Chop celery and onion and cook in 2 tablespoons butter until slightly wilted, approximately 10 minutes. Add sunchokes and 1 1/2 cups of broth, cover, and cook for 10-15 minutes or until vegetables are cooked through. Purée in a blender or food processor.

In a medium saucepan, melt 4 tablespoons butter, add flour, and cook for 2 minutes without browning. Remove from heat and whisk in 1 cup of broth and cook 5 minutes. Add cheese and mustard, and stir until blended. Stir in sunchoke mixture and cream, and cook until soup is heated through. Season with salt, cayenne pepper and Worcestershire sauce.

Sunchoke Mash: Cook or roast cubes of root vegetables and tubers, such as potatoes, turnips, rutabaga, carrots, celeriac, etc with a couple of cloves of garlic. Add cubed sunchokes and cook until tender. Mash with a bit of butter or olive oil and some milk or cream, depending on desired consistency.

Vegetable Sauté with Sunchokes: Prepare and sauté any vegetables (such as red onion, garlic and celery stalks) in a skillet, and add scrubbed and sliced sunchokes toward the end of the cooking time.  Season with salt and pepper. Garnish with parsley.

Our Favorite “Stinking Rose”

Yes, GARLIC!  It can do a number on your breath, but compared to what it does for your health, that’s a small price to pay.

As winter approaches and we brace ourselves for cold and flu season, today is not a day too early to add this easy, and flavorful food to your meals.  Particularly when eaten raw, garlic has antibiotic, antifungal and antiviral properties.  A new study shows it to be 100 times more effective than two common antibiotic drugs!  According to Dr. Andrew Weil, garlic works well for the common cold, sore throat, ear infections, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and fungal, yeast and bacterial infections.  Garlic also gets credit for cancer prevention and treatment and for the removal of heavy metals.

When you feel something coming on, make yourself some nice garlic toast: a couple of slices of whole wheat bread, butter or olive oil and then crush a good-sized clove of raw garlic on to it with a bit of salt to taste.

A simple all-purpose wellness measure is to add garlic at the end of the cooking time of recipes that call for it.  I used to start by sautéing onions and garlic, until I realized that the heat and cooking time greatly reduces the health benefits of garlic.  Now, I toss it in at the very end, keeping the garlic as raw as possible.

Salad dressings, sauces, spreads (such as pesto) and dips (such a hummus) present easy opportunities to consume additional raw garlic.  Using a garlic press or a sharp knife (chopping very fine), you can add garlic to just about any sauce or dressing.

If the fear of bad breath is keeping you from eating as much garlic as you would like, you can give this method a try.  Put a whole clove of garlic in a spoonful of applesauce and swallow whole.  As long as you don’t cut or chew raw garlic, you won’t have the smelly situation afterwards.

Garlic keeps well so you can stock up the next time you are at the market, but what is really fun and easy is to grow it yourself! Fall is the time to plant it, so don’t wait!  If you don’t already have a garden, you can start with a small patch of garlic this year.  This weekend, turn over a small piece of earth, and plant several cloves of garlic. They will settle in underground until spring, when they will greet warmer and longer days with fresh new shoots.  By early summer you will have interesting looking plants with a curlicue on the top. This is the garlic scape and should be cut off and used as you would garlic. Consider it your first harvest.  Later in the summer, the single cloves you planted in the fall, will have transformed into full bulbs of garlic.  Your second harvest.  A phenomenal rate of return!

Click here for Step-by-step directions for growing your own garlic.  If your ground is already frozen or you do not have garden space, you can grow garlic in containers.

As you watch fall take a few more degrees from the air and few more minutes of light from the day, enjoy one last round of spring-like planting.  You’ll be giving yourself the tasty and very healthy gift of fresh garlic next summer.  Enjoy!

It’s FOOD DAY!!

Dear fellow eaters, welcome to Food Day!  A day to celebrate real food, and bring much needed attention to the connections between the Standard American Diet (truly SAD) and our increasingly high rates of diet-related disease, the poor quality of school lunches, the poor health of many of our farm workers, and the economic and environmental impacts of our industrial food system, while at the same time supporting the growing opportunities for small family farms, farmers markets, sustainable agriculture, local food security and improved personal and public health by eating a real food diet.

“The typical American diet is promoting major health problems, causing serious environmental pollution, and unintentionally creating poor working conditions for those who harvest, process, and prepare our food,” said Michael F. Jacobson, Center for Science in the Public Interest’s (CSPI) executive director. “It’s time to urge Americans to change their own diets for the better and to mobilize for desperately needed changes in food and farm policy.”

So, what will you be eating today?

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As fun-filled, exciting, as well as tasty the numerous Food Day events around the country are sure to be today, this is a message which requires daily practice. We eat everyday, so let’s make it real everyday.

Happy Food Day, Today and Every Day!

Turnips Turn up in Alfredo Sauce

How often do you turn to turnips?  Perhaps not often enough?  A sorely overlooked vegetable today, the turnip has been eaten in Asia and Europe for 4,000 years.  The Greeks and Romans both appreciated the turnip and developed several varieties. It was popular in Europe until the potato took over as the number one tuber of choice. Though it does not always enjoy the highest praise, it is easy to grow, inexpensive to buy, holds up well in cool storage, and is a very versatile vegetable, worthy of more attention.

So, looking for a new way to incorporate its warming nourishment, I recently spun a pot of cooked turnips into a vegetable-filled alfredo sauce.

Turnip Alfredo Sauce:

• 1-2 onions, chopped
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 3-4 turnips (if you’re able to find Gilfeathers, this is the variety I would recommend — will turn previous turnip skeptics into lovers!), cut into small pieces
• 1/2 cup milk or cream (or substitute a vegan “milk” or coconut milk)
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
• 1 teaspoon salt
• freshly ground pepper to taste
• freshly ground nutmeg (optional)

1. Warm olive oil over medium high heat, add onions and saute until translucent (about 5 minutes)
2. Add garlic and turnip pieces and stir to combine.
3. Add just enough water to cover, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and allow to simmer until turnip pieces are tender (10-15 minutes).
4. Transfer mixture to a blender or food processor. Add milk, cheese, salt and pepper and puree until smooth.
5. Serve as an alfredo sauce over pasta or vegetables, or as a bechamel sauce over fish or eggs.

High in vitamin C, fiber, potassium, folic acid, calcium and other antioxidants and trace minerals, incorporating this hardy root into wintertime dishes is an easy way to increase nutritional value, particularly of creamy dishes.  With their low glycemic value, turnips make a useful addition to any weight loss or blood sugar balancing diet.

The Gilfeather Turnip

I first learned about this delicious root from one of my favorite (alas no longer in print) magazines: Edible Green Mountains. Now that I have eaten them, they are high on my own “to grow” list, for once you’ve eaten a Gilfeather, you’ll be a dedicated fan… and will need to track down some seeds.

From the Fall 2009 issue, in an article titled, “Vermont Roots: Gilfeather Turnips” by Andrea Chesman:

“In the late 1800s, the Gilfeather turnip was either developed or discovered by John Gilfeather of Wardsboro.  The eldest son of Irish immigrants Felix and Maria Gilfeather, John inherited the Wardsboro farm… Said to be a secretive, crusty old bachelor, he cut off the tops and bottoms of the plants before taking them to market…so that no one could reproduce them. Turnips – and rutabagas- are biennials. If you buy a turnip with the roots and tops in tact and store it in a root cellar, the vegetable will survive the winter dormancy; replant it in the spring and it will quickly reproduce seeds, enough to allow you to produce a new crop.  John Gilfeather wanted to prevent this.

Fortunately, after John Gilfeather died, a number of Wardsboro residents acquired the seed somehow and continued to plant the turnip.  Seeds passed from friend to friend, which is how Mary Lou and Bill Schmidt grew their first crop… They registered the turnip as an heirloom variety with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture. For many years, the Schmidts were the only authorized source for the seed in the world…”

Today the seeds are available through the Fedco Seed Company, who, incidentally, refers to this fine vegetable as a rutabaga, not a turnip.

Being referred to again as a turnip, the Gilfeather was recently inducted into the Slow Food, USA “Ark of Taste”, a Hall of Fame for heirloom foods. With growing appreciation for the Gilfeather turnip, you’ll enjoy Carol Egbert’s post, art work and recipe for turnip soup. You’ll quickly discover these turnips work beautifully in dishes from soups to sauces, salads to soufflés, roasts and gratins, even breads and pies. By now, you’re likely very curious about the Annual Gilfeather Turnip Festival in Wardsboro, VT where you can taste many wonderful recipes and leave inspired to expand your garden and your vegetable repertoire.

11 Simple Steps for a Healthier and Happier ’11: Step 9

1/9/11: DARK GREEN LEAFIES

Fill up on the most lacking vegetable in American diets

If your January is like ours here in Northern Vermont, you’re well tucked in under a blanket of snow and ice. Don’t you miss green?  Well, you don’t have to, since filling your plate of dark green leafy vegetables is one of the best things you can do for yourself. Think of it as spring arriving early…every day.

Worthy of the label “superfood,” dark green leafy vegetables are among the most concentrated sources of nutrition.  They are very high in calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, phosphorous, zinc, antioxidants and vitamins A, C, E, K and some of the vitamin B complex. They are crammed with fiber, folic acid, chlorophyll and many other micronutrients such as zeaxanthin, lutein and sulforaphane, which are increasingly receiving research attention for their disease-prevention properties.  Certain greens (purslane in particular) even contain omega-3 essential fatty acids.

Eating dark green leafy vegetables will help:

• purify your blood
• prevent cancer and other diseases
• improve circulation
• strengthen immune system
• promote healthy intestinal flora
• improve liver, gall bladder and kidney function
• clear congestion, especially in lungs by reducing mucus
• support strong bones
• may help prevent atherosclerosis by reducing calcium in arterial plaques
• support healthy regulation of inflammation, offering protection against inflammatory diseases such as arthitis
• alkalize the body, aiding in disease prevention
• slow your digestion, thereby supporting an even blood glucose level, which is beneficial for optimal weight, energy and diabetes prevention.

Broccoli is generally liked by adults and children, and can be a good place to start broadening your green horizons. Add the florets to macaroni and cheese for a more colorful and healthier “mac’n’trees.” Experiment with bok choy, nappa cabbage, kale, collards, watercress, nettles, broccoli rabe, dandelion and other leafy greens, by substituting them for more common greens such as broccoli and spinach in familiar recipes. Green cabbage is a nicely versatile vegetable, which can be enjoyed cooked, raw or fermented as sauerkraut or kim-chi (which adds probiotics to its list of nutrients). In addition to lettuce, greens typically eaten raw include arugula, endive, spinach, chicory, watercress, mesclun and wild greens.  Another source of green leafy goodness is culinary herbs, so use parsley, basil, cilantro, tarragon and others liberally.

With strong associations with regeneration, fertility, rebirth, and the natural world, green leafy vegetables deserve a prominent place in Western diets. A previous post includes preparation suggestions and a couple of easy recipes. All hale the Green!

11 Simple Steps for a Healthier and Happier ’11: Step 8

1/8/11: FLAXSEEDS

Put a little flax into your life

In the 8^th century, King Charlemagne was so convinced of the health benefits of flaxseeds that he passed laws requiring his subjects to eat them.  More recently, these little healthful gems have come back into nutritional vogue. What we know now is that flaxseeds contain an impressive amount of:

• Omega-3 essential fatty acids, believed to support brain function, heart health and decrease inflammation;
• Lignans, a variety of phyotochemicals recognized for their antioxidant properties; and
• Fiber, both the soluble and insoluble varieties, which supports digestive health, improves elimination, helps balance blood sugar and assists in weight loss.

But in order to take advantage of all this goodness, there are a few additional things to know.  We are not able to digest the seeds whole.  They pass right through our systems intact, and therefore without sharing their nutritional goodness with us.  To capture all they have to offer, you need to grind them. I use a designated coffee grinder for this.  Since the oils in flaxseeds are very fragile and exposure to heat and/or air cause them to become rancid quickly, I keep my seed grinder and a jar of whole flaxseeds in the refrigerator. I grind a small portion every other day, or as needed. Alternatively, you can buy already ground flaxseed meal.

You may have noticed that packaged food makers are speedily adding flaxseeds in their products. In most cases, they are included whole, in which case, there is no additional health reason to buy them.

Flaxseed oil is also gaining in popularity.  It is a good plant-based source of omega-3 fatty acids and lignans, but does not include the fiber of the ground seeds.  Because it is highly perishable, it should be purchased only in opaque bottles and be kept refrigerated. Flaxseed oil should not be used in cooking, but can be added to foods after they have been heated.

I have heard flaxseeds called one of the most powerful plant foods on the planet. Knowing that, make 2011 the year you start sprinkling ground flaxseeds on hot or cold cereal, on yogurt, over soups, stews, grains, cooked vegetables and salads, mixed into mayonnaise or mustard for on sandwiches, added into smoothies, blended into pancake batter, muffins, breads, and cookie dough.  Be creative, just put a little flax into your life, and add a lot to your health.

11 Simple Steps for a Healthier & Happier ’11: Step 7

1/7/11: GARLIC

Nature’s tasty medicine

Many people think of winter as “cold and flu season,” but it doesn’t have to be.  With a few key medicinal foods on hand, you can easily avoid most bugs, and feel confident that you know how to shorten their duration if you do catch one.  Garlic, a member of the allium family, is one of those foods. And since my computer does not (yet) transmit scents across the world wide web, I can safely sing garlic’s praises while chomping on a clove.

Yes, it may give you that less-than-desirable smelling breath, but isn’t that a small price to pay for staying healthy?  Think of the strength of that aroma as equivalent to the potency of the medicine, because this is an impressive list.

Garlic:

• is anti-bacterial (including bacteria which have become antibiotic-resistant!)
• is anti-viral,
• is anti-fungal,
• is anti-inflammatory,
• may help improve iron metabolism,
• is a good source of manganese, selenium, vitamin C, and vitamin B6,
• supports heart health by lowering triglycerides and total cholesterol,
• keeps blood pressure in check, and
• may help reduce the formation of fat cells.

Craving garlic bread, yet?  You can even increase the health benefits from garlic by letting it sit (5-10 minutes) after you’ve chopped it or crushed it, and by eating it raw or only slightly cooked.

Here are some ideas to help increase your garlic consumption, use it as medicine and even grow your own stash.