In the coming days I want to highlight the importance of maintaining a good cross section of foods from all main food groups. There are certain foods that it may be important to avoid in order to encourage health, but there are an abundance of foods that can be enjoyed freely. Top of this list comes vegetables! Of course, there may be clients that need to avoid vegetables from the nightshad family, or who need to watch their potassium intake, but generally, vegetable intake should be increased. Drs. Murray and Pizzorno, in their book, ‘The Encyclopaedia of Healing Foods’, recommend that rather than staying with the government’s guidelines of ’5-a-day’, we should be aiming for 10 portions of fresh produce a day. I will post some of their ideas today and next week from their list of ‘Easy Tips For Reaching The Ten-Servings-A-Day Goal’.
If you are on a diet plan to support gut ecology you will need to avoid the fruit for the time-being, but if you are feeding a family it is better to encourage them to eat a piece of fruit rather than buscuits and cakes.
- Buy many kinds of vegetables and fruit when you shop, so you have plenty of choices in the house
- Stock up on frozen vegetables for easy cooking so that you can have a vegetable dish with every dinner. You can easily steam frozen vegetables
- Use the vegetables and fruits that go bad quickly, such as peaches and asparagus, first. Save hardier varieties, such as butternut squash and apples, and frozen goods, for later use if you do not shop frequently in a week.
- Keep vegetables and fruits where you can see them. The more often you see them, the more often you are to eat them.
- Keep a bowl of cut-up vegetable at eye level in the refrigerator. Choose carrot sticks, celery sticks, topped and tailed mange-tout or sugar-snap peas, slices of red pepper etc. to snack on when hungry.
- Make a big tossed salad with several kinds of greens, cherry tomatoes, cut-up carrots,red pepper, broccoli, spring onion and been sprouts. Refrigerate in a large glass bowl with an airtight lid, so a delicious mixed salad will be ready to enjoy for several days. Do not add a dressing as this will prevent the salad from keeping so well.
I will continue the list from Murray and Pizzorno next week, but here I will add some helpful salad and vegetable dressings that are suitable for those on a Nutritionhelp programme, and can make a big difference to the enjoyment of meals.
Break an egg into a blender with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, some black pepper and ½ tsp of mixed herbs. Whiz the blender on low, very slowly adding 1 cup of Rice Bran Oil (extra cold filtered by Alfa One, available in most supermarkets). This should result in a soft mayonnaise, however, all blenders are different so it will be a matter of getting to know how to get best results with your own machine – e.g. it may be best to add the oils slowly, but then finish on a fast whiz. Alter flavour according to taste, using different herbs or garlic granules etc. Keep refrigerated.
Olive Oil Dressing
Shake together in a jar 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and 3 tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Add fresh or dried herbs to taste. If you find the olive oil taste too strong, replace 1 tablespoon with Rice Bran oil. Add more or less lemon juice according to taste. Keep refrigerated.
Stir 1-2 teaspoons of chives and 1 teaspoon of onion powder and some black pepper into 1 cup of natural yoghurt. Keep refrigerated.