Baking and cooking with my toddler is a very regular occurrence, it’s one activity that I find teaches her lots, keeps us both amused and we get to eat the results.
So here is out latest recipe, in the final stages of pregnancy I had a bit of morning sickness creeping back in, so these ginger biscuits were a cunning ploy to help me get through the day. They have a great texture, in fact you won’t know they are gluten free and they last week in the biscuit tin.
Blog post written for Slimsticks.com
Eating a more plant based diet is becoming increasingly popular and the current research is suggesting it’s the way to go. If you don’t want to go the whole “hog” then why not have a few meat free days in your week?
A plant based diet is thought to reduce the risk of several cancers including throat, stomach, colon, prostrate and oesophagus. For example eating too much red meat and processed meat increases your risk of colon cancer. Eating more fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds leads to a diet lower in fat and calories so can help you lose weight or maintain a healthy weight. A plant based diet is also higher in fibre, antioxidants and phytochemicals, all of which can help prevent disease such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer.
But eating a more vegetarian diet does mean you need to plan and be a bit organised. Plant based protein foods do not contain the full complement of amino acids which can leave you lacking in protein. Therefore it is important to ensure that you eat a range of different protein foods. Good choices include nuts, fish, seeds, beans, legumes, eggs, cheese, dairy, tofu, quinoa and soya.
Top tips for plant based protein:
An interesting piece of research caught my eye this week. A team of psychology researchers in Montreal looked into how using mental imagery techniques may increase the likelihood of people eating more fruit and vegetables. They asked 177 students to aim to eat more fruit over the next 7 days. Those who planned, wrote it down and visualised how they were going to do it (e.g. where and when they would buy, prepare and eat the fruit) were twice as likely to increase their consumption.
This was based on sports psychology. “Athletes do lots of work mentally rehearsing their performances before competing and it’s often very successful. So we thought having people mentally rehearse how they were going to buy and eat their fruit should make it more likely that they would actually do it. And this is exactly what happened,” says Bärbel Knäuper.
As a dietitian part of my job is helping people plan how they will manage to alter their eating habits so this research is further evidence that planning really is key. Talking through with someone what your long term goals are, how you can put them into place and having a short term goal to achieve are vital components of achieving dietary change.
Reference:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21337259