Dinner Diva: Best post-workout foods
Whenever you workout there are only three things you really want to do after: drink gallons of water, shower, and eat a nice, big and filling meal. The water and shower are easy to come by, but deciding what to eat is always a dilemma because you don’t want all of your hard work to go to waste. Believe it or not there are actually specific foods that are good for you right after a work out!
Now, if you work out in the middle of the afternoon or late morning and you’re hungry, but it isn’t time for lunch or dinner yet, there are a handful of good snack foods to choose from. One of my favorites is a smoothie with a good scoop of whey protein and some fruit, specifically some frozen organic berries. You want to combine protein and fiberlicious good carbohydrates together, and the berries have just the right amount of carbs to join with the protein. Or if you’d rather munch on something instead of sip, try a plain brown rice cake or a cut up apple with a thick layer of almond butter on top.
Maybe you do work out right before a meal. If it’s lunch you’re looking for, I would recommend a good sandwich. Try it opened face, just one slice of whole grain bread with either some turkey or tuna with a big lettuce leaf on top. That would meet those protein-carb standards we’re looking for. Try to incorporate some veggies into that sandwich, maybe some tomato or bell peppers – keep those antioxidants plentiful!
If you workout right before dinner, one of my favorite meals is wild grilled salmon with either a salad or array of grilled veggies or sometimes both. With that meal you get a good substantial dinner with a protein, some healthy fat and very low carbs (that time of night, you really don’t need much). It’ll keep you full, and you’ll feel great eating it because it’ll boost your health and promote the work you put into exercising.
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Dinner Diva: Common cooking salts
Let’s face it. If we’re in a kitchen cooking, chances are we’ll be using salt at some point, whether it’s searing, boiling, grilling, roasting, or baking. The chances that salt is involved probably averages in at 99 percent. But did you know that there are actually differences in salt? It’s so common, I think we often assume that all salt is the same, but there is actually a great deal of variety.
The most common salts we tend to see in grocery stores are table salt, kosher salt, and sea salt. But what makes one different from the other? Ordinary table salt is the most commonly used salt. It’s typically the cheapest and the most processed. It’s scraped down till most minerals are removed from it and tends to have the least flavor in comparison to other salts. Sea salt is pretty straightforward: it’s harvested from the sea. To get it processed, it’s generally evaporated naturally by being placed in clay trays in the sun, and with this method it’s a lot less processed than regular table salt.
Kosher salt is known for its easy dissolvability; it’s just regular table salt rolled out into a flake, easy to dissolve, though less dense, therefore less mass, than table salt and therefore it’s common to use a lot less.
Now that we’ve cover salt basics, it gets a lot more complicated.
There is a grey salt know for its moistness. Many consider it the best quality of salt around because most of the minerals stay intact. One of my favorite salts is a pink Himalayan salt. It really is a light pink tint and typically comes in a grinder for a good fresh flavor. Some of the minerals found in Himalayan salt are calcium, iron, copper, potassium, and magnesium. Beneficial minerals to your meal you probably didn’t even realize you were adding by simply using this particular salt.
So there’s just a little information on salt, it’s more than your standard old salt shaker. And if you’re feeling a little crazy sometimes you can find even smoked salt crystals, or other natural flavor infused salt. It’s a whole salty world you probably didn’t even realize existed!
If you’re watching your salt intake, we make it easy for you! Our Menu-Mailer subscription contains a Heart Healthy menu each week with recipes containing less than 500mg of sodium. More info at www.SavingDinner.com.
Dinner Diva: Time to go a little wild
Salmon is one of my all-time favorite fish and one of my all-time favorite meals for that matter. There are so many nutritional benefits to eating it – from its lovely, healthy fatty omega 3′s to its outstanding source of protein. It’s important to make sure you’re eating the right kind of fish.
Instead of choosing farm-raised fish, scrutinize the label (if buying frozen) or ask your fishmonger for wild caught only. For one it sounds more fun and makes your groceries sound a little more exciting than they really are, LOL. But the most obvious reason to choose wild salmon and other wild fish over farm raised, is that it is clean. There’s a bunch of stuff you don’t want to be eating via farm-raised fish, including dioxins (also found in plastics).
According to naturalnews.com, farm-raised salmon has 11 times more carcinogens than wild. Carcinogens root in dioxins and are directly linked to radiation that can mess with your metabolic system and is a prominent cause of cancer. Long story short: you do not want that in your body!
Naturalnews.com also touches on how this stark difference in environment comes to be. The dioxins creep more into farm-raised fish because the various types of feed those farmers will give to their stock contaminates the waters.
Even though wild will cost you a bit more, it’s worth the health benefits. So be a little wild (pun intended), and make the better buy!
Be sure to check out our Five for the Freezer Fish menu for wonderful dinners you assemble and freeze now to enjoy later! More info: www.SavingDinner.com.
Dinner Diva: So what’s wrong with soda?
Did you know that soda consumption among American children has increased by 500% in the last 50 years? It’s the biggest single source of sugar in the diet today. And after the age of 10, sodas are the most consumed beverage drunk daily—over water, milk or juice.
One 12 ounce can of soda contains 9 teaspoons of sugar. That is equal to about 1/4 cup of sugar and the average American drinks about 2 cans a day, equally 1/2 cup of sugar and 300 calories of negative nutrition. Get out your measuring cup and put 1/2 cup of sugar in it. Would you give this to anyone you love for them to eat?
The soda habit could push you a little closer to tooth decay (with all that sugar, you bet!), diabetes (ditto again on the sugar), osteoporosis (the phosphorus in soda leeches calcium from the bones), obesity (an extra 300 calories a day-2 sodas, will result in as much as a 30 pound a year weight gain!).
So there you have it, a quick education on sodas. Diet sodas aren’t any better, btw. Here’s a paragraph from a Food for Thought article so we don’t have to rerun it:
“The University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio ran an eight year study to study the effects of soft drink use. Sharon P. Fowler, MPH, who ran the study, had this shocking statement to say, “What didn’t surprise us was that total soft drink use was linked to overweight and obesity. What was surprising was when we looked at people only drinking diet soft drinks, their risk of obesity was even higher.”
For each can of diet soda consumed, a person’s risk of obesity went up 41%!!!”
Listen, Americans drink over 13 BILLION gallons of soda each year. Don’t you think it’s time we quit the soda habit and help take a million or so gallons of this stuff off the market so we can get healthier, leaner, stronger, have better teeth and prettier skin? Those are just some of the benefits by quitting the soda habit.
It’s time to drink up—make mine a water!
Want to Break Free from sugar addiction? Find out how at www.SavingDinner.com.
Dinner Diva: Eating for two
Pregnancy brings with it an instant responsibility for keeping two lives well-fed and nourished. The old excuse of “eating for two” does not mean that you should be gorging yourself with whatever is within arms length. Whatever you consume will also be consumed by the baby and will influence your growing child’s needs.
Once again, making a rainbow on your plate with a ton of fruits and veggies is just what the doctor ordered–the more colors the better! Protein is equally as important as baby needs it to make muscles, bones, teeth and hair. Just an extra half serving is usually enough to get you and your baby what you need, but do check with your doctor to make sure you’re getting your nutrition right.
You also need to watch what you’re drinking. There’s more to it then the obvious “no alcohol” rule. Caffeine and sodas need to go and don’t forget, drink up on the water! Your baby and your body both require a little extra.
This is the one time when you want to gain weight, there’s no way around it. You need to eat more healthfully than you ever have, so eat! And eat well!
Dinner Diva column by Leanne Ely. More at
Dinner Diva: Extreme Makeover-Lunchbox Edition
When packing a lunch for your kids to take to school, don’t even mention the word “lunchable” or I’ll cringe. I don’t care how easy it is to buy a pre-made and pre-packed lunch like that. I promise that all the junk, sugar, and fat you can find in those won’t make them worth it. So ditch the Lunchables.
It’s time for a makeover! And after those Lunchables, I want you to dispose of any fruit roll-ups, fruit gushers, and any other gummy fruit snack. Get rid of the Trix yogurt, I don’t care how often the commercial tries to convince you that “Trix are for kids.” And please, no bologna sandwiches on white bread. If I don’t even know everything they put in that so-called “meat” then it’s something that should be left untouched. And as far as chips are concerned, we should all know better with all those saturated oils.
So what should you put in your children’s lunch? Easy, I’ll give you a list of substitutes for all the items that I dismissed.
1. Instead of all those over-processed gummy fruit snacks, give your kids real fruit! Throw in a banana or some berries. Whatever fruit is in season and on sale in the store! That’ll stock your kid’s belly full of antioxidants and natural sugars that’ll quench the sweet tooth.
2. Trix yogurt is more of a trick than a treat. It’s only full of artificial food coloring, sugar, and artificial flavors. All of which are going to keep your child craving other artificial and sugary foods and make them more lazy and lethargic instead of energetic and happy the way kids are supposed to be. So grab the natural yogurts. It’s easy to tell them apart because they’ll have labels like “real fruit” attached to them. Always double-check the ingredients to confirm that, however.
3. And when you pack a sandwich, avoid white bread and mystery meats. Look for breads that aren’t bleached. I wrote an article on how to pick the right bread if you want to look that up for a more detailed guide (http://savingdinner.com/articles/truth-bread/). Also, use meat that doesn’t have any additives. How do you know if it has additives? The same way you know anything does, check the ingredients! I can’t stress enough how important it is to know what you’re consuming instead of blindly picking something off the shelf.
4. An easy substitute for chips would be whole grain crackers (again, check ingredients), or veggies! Even if you do opt for the crackers, I would include some sort of vegetable regardless. Your children are going to keep growing and developing all the way through high school and are always needing antioxidants and the vitamins found in vegetables. Don’t forget to keep it fun and colorful!
So there you go! Always remember that there is a healthy substitute for any nutritionally lacking lunchbox item.
More from Dinner Diva Leanne Ely at www.SavingDinner.com.
Dinner Diva: 10 Powerhouse Foods
Posted by afp on May 16, 2012 · Leave a Comment
1—Tomatoes. The all-powerful tomato can do all kinds of things, besides make your favorite spaghetti sauce. It’s rich in lycopene, an important nutrient that may lower the risk of all kinds of cancer, prostate included. Plus the vitamin C factor is an added bonus! Read more
Filed under Blogs · Tagged with 10 powerhouse foods, dinner diva, leanne ely