Give Your Meal a Nutritious Boost

Looking for some ways to boost the nutritional content of your meal? Try out some of these quick and easy tips!

Breakfast
-Have leftover chicken from dinner? Forget your traditional cereal breakfast and go for a protein-packed, filling meal.
-Top oatmeal or cold cereal with sliced bananas, strawberries, or blueberries for some vitamins, minerals and fiber!
-Whip up an omelet with cancer-fighting veggies. Add avocado for some healthy fats.
-Instead of adding sugar to oatmeal, try some cinnamon instead.
-When making waffles or pancakes, sneak in some protein powder for a quick boost.
-Blend together a quick smoothie with fresh fruit and nut butter for a filling treat!

Lunch/Dinner
-Add extra veggies to your soups and salads.
-Add avocado slices to your sandwich for a boost of Vitamin E, Potassium, healthy fats, and Folate.
-Top spinach salads with tomatoes or fresh oranges. The Vitamin C in the oranges/tomatoes will help you to absorb the iron from the spinach.
-Food process mixed nuts, coconut oil, and cocoa powder for a nutty spread.
-Shred carrots or zucchini into meatloaf (or muffins) to add nutrients and fiber.
-Bread chicken in coconut or almond flour for extra fiber and protein.

How to Read a Nutrition Label

"Heart healthy!" "Low fat!" Confused on how to read a nutrition label? Well, you have come to the right place!

Why should you read a label anyway? For starters, it helps you determine the nutritional content of the product. It is also helpful for those with food allergies or intolerances. Reading the nutrition label helps you to see how the food fits into your overall diet.

One of the first things you want to look at when reading a nutrition label is the serving size. Many people consume over the amount suggested. You want to note the size of a single serving and how many servings are in the product. If you are doubling the serving size, you will need to double everything listed on the food label. For example, 20g of carbohydrates would then be 40g of carbohydrates.

As you look further down the label, you will see calories, calories from fat, total fat (includes saturated, trans, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fats), cholesterol, sodium, potassium, carbohydrates (includes fiber, sugars, and other carbohydrates), protein, vitamins, and minerals. To the right of these nutrients, you will see "% Daily Value." This is shown to see how the food fits into your overall diet. If a product says it has 5% of the daily value, it is considered a low source. 10% of the daily value is a good source and 20% or more of the daily value, it is considered a high source.

"Other carbohydrates" refers to the amount of starch in the product. Some products do not list "other carbohydrates." This number is found by subtracting both sugar and fiber from the total carbohydrates.

In general, you want to keep cholesterol, sodium, fat (trans and saturated), and added sugars low. Ingredients are listed in order from the greatest amount to the least. If sugar is one of the first 4 ingredients, toss the product aside and opt for something else. Sugars add calories with little to no nutritional value. You want to focus on foods that offer high amounts of mono and polyunsaturated fats, potassium, protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals.

Labeling Terms and Tips
-"No" or "Zero" trans fat means that a product must have less than .5g per serving of trans fat.
-When a product says "lean" it means that total fat must be less than 10g and saturated fat must be less than 4.5g.
-A product that says "calorie free" has less than 5 calories per serving.
-"Low calorie" means that the product has less than 40 calories per serving.
-Fruit drink usually just has a lot of added sugar, little to no real fruit, and no fiber. Skip it and opt for a piece of fruit instead.
-"Sugar-free" or "fat-free" does not mean the product is low calorie or that has a high nutrient value. Most of the fat-free products just substitute sugar to make the product palatable.

Hopefully, this has helped you to see that reading a nutrition label is not as hard as it may seem. Just a few final tips: the fewer ingredients, the better and if you can't pronounce most of the ingredients, you might want to opt for something else.

How to Preserve Nutrients in Cooking

Raw or cooked vegetables? Microwaved or steamed? Does it make a difference? Actually, the method of cooking does affect different types of vegetables in both a positive and negative way. For example, when cooking tomatoes, the bioavailablity of Lycopene (a carotenoid with antioxidant properties) is increased; however, the amount of Vitamin C decreases.

Microwaving
There is a lot of debating going on over microwaving vs. using a conventional oven. Some say microwaving is the devil because of nutrient loss and cancer causing properties. Some nutrients are broken down when they are exposed to heat. So, is microwaving better than cooking vegetables in a convention oven? Since both use heat to cook, and microwaving takes a shorter amount of time to cook food, it is a slightly better option than cooking in the oven.

Frying
Frying is probably one of the worst ways to cook your vegetables. The heat is so high that almost all nutrients are immediately destroyed.  Frying also causes the release of free radicals, which are detrimental to your health.

Boiling
Boiling is probably the second worst way to cook your vegetables, unless you plan on using the remaining broth. When you boil vegetables, all the nutrients leak out into the water. Since many people do not save the water from the vegetables, you are not getting the benefits of the cancer fighting properties they hold.

Steaming
Steaming is the gold standard for cooking vegetables. Steaming helps to retain the nutritional value of your vegetables. Some key things to remember when steaming are: don't use too much water (1/2 cup is usually good) and don't overcook (5-7 minutes is usually good for most vegetables).

Raw Food 
Just to clarify, I am only speaking about eating certain foods raw, like vegetables, not the raw food diet, where a person will only eat raw foods (no meats, fish, etc). Studies have shown that both raw and cooked vegetable consumption are inversely related to epithelial cancers, lung cancer, and breast cancer; however, these relationships may be stronger for raw vegetables than cooked vegetables.

Degradation of Vitamins & Minerals
Once vegetables are picked, their vitamin and mineral content begin to degrade. To slow this process, most vegetables should be refrigerated until they are used.  Also, many vitamins are easily destroyed by oxygen. In order to minimize nutrient loss, cut vegetables should be stored in airtight containers in the refrigerator. Just to keep in mind, after about 24 hours in the fridge, cooked vegetables will lose 1/4 of their Vitamin C content. Vitamin C is the most likely vitamin to be lost in cooking. It is very sensitive to heat, air, and water. To minimize nutrient loss, cook in as little water as possible.


The bottom line is, whether you are eating your vegetables raw or cooked, at least you are consuming vegetables!