Tag: healthy eating

Categories
Health & Home Wellness

4 Recipes for Pumpkin Seeds

4 Recipes for Pumpkin Seeds

Have you been throwing pumpkin seeds when carving it for a Jack-o’-lantern? Save them! They are a source of nutrients and are delicious too. Wondering how? Look into this piece to save up the seeds for fall’s secret super food. 

Are Pumpkin Seeds Healthy to Eat? 

Pumpkin seeds are also known as pepitas- a Mexican term. A cup of them is 151 calories with mainly fats and proteins. They are rich in fibers, carbohydrates, Vitamin K, Phosphorus, and Manganese, Magnesium, and Iron. 

Using these seeds in food can protect your cells from harmful free radicals as they contain oxidants. These oxidants can greatly reduce inflammation. Various studies report that using pumpkin seeds in your food can reduce the chances of lung, breast, stomach, and colon cancers. 

A study says that 79% of adults in the US do not take the required amount of magnesium. Using pumpkins in your diet can help you intake a significant amount of magnesium. Being a good source of antioxidants, zinc, magnesium, and fatty acids, it may improve your heart’s health. 

To include pumpkin seeds in your diet this fall, check out these 4 pumpkins seed recipes. 

Recipes for Pumpkin’s Seeds-Fall’s Secret Super Food 

Before getting started with your recipes you need to prep the seeds. Here’s how 

How to Prep Them? 

It’s ideal to dry or roast the seeds because they are low in acid. This can minimize the risk of illness-causing bacteria. To get started, scoop out the seeds with a spoon and your hands. Rinse the seeds to remove any pumpkin flesh. However, some of you may save it for later use in pumpkin smoothies or pureed pumpkin soup. 

To soften the outer hull, boil it in salted water for 10 minutes. The hull is rich in fiber and is edible but if you want to get rid of them, continue to boil the seeds until the hull slips off. After boiling, strain and dry them with a kitchen towel. 

Once completely dried, spread them on a baking pan and add a little olive oil. You may sprinkle seasonings like salt, cumin, and cinnamon. Roast them at 325 degrees for 10 minutes until golden. 

After roasting, you can eat them or can toss them into your salads making them crunchier. Don’t forget to save them for more delicious fall recipes. 

Spanish-Pumpkin Seed Pesto 

Using pine nuts for roasted pumpkin seeds can give your sauce a boost along with some nutrients. You can toss it on crackers, spread it on sandwiches or drizzle it over your favorite veggies. 

All you need is: 

  • 1 cup basil leaves 
  • 1 cup baby spinach
  • ½ cup roasted pumpkin seeds
  • 1 large garlic clove
  • ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
  • Salt and paper to taste 

Add garlic, spinach, basil leaves, and pumpkin seeds to the food processor and chop them finely. Gradually add the olive oil to make it a thin paste. After this, add salt and pepper and refrigerate it in an air-tight jar for up to 1 week. 

Sweet-And-Salty Popcorn Trail Mix

To enjoy the flavors of salt and chocolate along with the proteins and fibers of pumpkin seeds in a single snack, you need the following items 

  • 8 cups of air-popped popcorns
  • 1 cup roasted cup almonds
  • ¾ cup roasted pumpkin seeds
  • ½ cup dark chocolate chunks ‘
  • ½ dried cranberries 

Cinnamon-Vanilla Pumpkin Seed Butter 

You can always make pumpkin seed butter, which is quite similar to peanut butter. The pocket-friendly and flavorful butter is ideal for sandwiches. To make your own flavored butter you need: 

  • 3 cups shelled pumpkin seeds
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • ½ tsp grounded synonyms 
  • ¼ tsp salt and;
  • 1 to 2 tsp canola oil

Add pumpkin seeds, vanilla extract cinnamon, and salt to a food processor container. Blend it until it becomes  thin . You can add more oil if you want it thick. 

Double Pumpkin Hummus 

Give your typical hummus a boost of sweet, creamy and salty flavors. You can use it as a dip for crackers or just spread it over your sandwich or use it as a pasta sauce. To try this, you must have: 

  • 1 can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed 
  • Pumpkin puree 
  • 2 tsp tahini 
  • 2 tbsp lemon juice 
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 1 tbsp roasted pumpkin seeds
  • Salt and pepper 

Add all the ingredients to a food processor and mix it until smooth. Refrigerate the leftovers for up to a week. Give your family this fall, a boost of flavors with these pumpkin recipes. Eat healthily and enjoy!

Categories
Health & Home Wellness

The Best Meal Kit Delivery Services In 2021

The Best Meal Kit Delivery Services In 2021

A well-balanced diet is essential to living a healthy life. However, with all the hype and anxiety around diet culture, it can be tricky to actually consume what your body needs. There’s always a new food or drink or supplement that claims to be the best healthy option. This makes grocery shopping intimidating for many people.

However, there are more at-home meal delivery kits available that take the anxiety out of grocery shopping and give you the nutrients and delicious foods that your body craves. We’re going to highlight the top three meal kit delivery services for you right here.

Home Chef – The Family Meal Kit Fave

Home Chef offers 38 different meal options each week. With that, the subscriber has the ability to modify each meal to their specific needs. Modification is important, especially for people who are or live with picky eaters or those who have special dietary needs. The delivery service is extremely flexible and allows you to accommodate more people when necessary.

Along with meal kit services, Home Chef also offers ready-made meals that require no prep and minimal cooking time. With them, you have the ability to choose a variety of different meal styles including grill-ready packs, 15-minute kits, and culinary specialties for entertaining. The cost of this meal kit delivery service begins at $7.99 per serving and allows you to add on extra features for a price.

Green Chef – For the Plant-Based Itinerary

Although they also offer meat protein plates, Green Chef is an excellent choice for anyone following a vegetarian or vegan diet. The meal kit delivery service has three different menus to choose from: keto + paleo, balanced living (standard), and plant-powered. The ability to choose between menus and mix and match different meals allows for flexibility when needed.

Green Chef is a certified organic company and they use completely eco-friendly shipping materials to avoid larger carbon footprints. Depending on the plan you choose, meals start at $9.99 per serving each week. The company also allows you to skip up to four consecutive weeks if needed.

EveryPlate – Healthy Eating on a Budget

Meal kit delivery services can get pretty pricey, but EveryPlate is one of the most inexpensive services available. Unlike the other two services we’ve mentioned here, EveryPlate starting costs begin at $5 per serving each week. Subscribers can choose between eight meals each week and you get special sign up offers when you start using their services.

The only downside to using EveryPlate is that the lack of choices each week makes it trickier for those who have dietary restrictions or follow vegan/plant-based diets.

In Conclusion

Meal kit delivery services are the best option for anyone who doesn’t like venturing out to the grocery store each week. They give you flexibility by adding more time into your day and take away the stress by giving you recipe ideas and all the ingredients necessary to complete them.

In 2021 especially, meal kit delivery services are the safest and most convenient option for meal planning and grocery shopping. Whether you have dietary restrictions or you need something on a budget, there’s an option out there for you.

Categories
Health & Home Wellness

How What You Eat Can Actually Boost Your Mood

How What You Eat Can Actually Boost Your Mood

How Can Food Boost Your Mood?

You may know that unhealthy eating habits and food can lead to mood swings. Nutritional imbalances and blood sugar fluctuations are among the causes. When you don’t get the energy from the right source, your mind and body may stop functioning appropriately. The following are some ways unhealthy patterns can disturb your mood and emotions:

  • Avoiding entire food groups decreases the variety of foods in your diet and reduces your chances of getting essential nutrients. This leads to low levels of magnesium, iron, zinc, vitamin D, omega-3 fatty acid, and other nutrients. It decreases energy and causes mood swings.
  • Skipping meals leads to low blood sugar, which makes you tired and weak throughout the day.
  • High consumption of refined carbohydrates, such as pastries and white bread, can alter your blood sugar levels, which lead to irritability and low energy.

Some researchers also show that food can contribute to the treatment and prevention of psychological conditions, including anxiety and depression disorders. Although scientists still have to learn more about the effects of food patterns on mental health, some studies show that eating healthy food may have a protective effect. Not to mention, many doctors and researchers believe that balanced consumption of healthy nutrients is as important for your mental wellbeing as physical health.

What Food Can Boost Your Mood?

Here are some nutrients that give you energy and help you avoid nutritional deficiency, which is one of the causes of mood swings. They can also help you produce mood-boosting hormones that make you feel satisfied and happy.

Omega-3 Fatty Acids

These nutrients are present in fatty fish like sardines, lake trout, salmon, and albacore tuna. The Omega-3 fatty acid can help you lower inflammation in your body. However, if you don’t like fish, you can consume chia seeds, flax seeds, and walnuts to meet your body’s omega-3 fatty acids needs.

Magnesium

Magnesium is one of the most important components that can help you keep your mood balance. Do you know that spinach is not only high in tryptophan but also in magnesium? This nutrient plays a great role in reducing anxiety and support sleep. Other foods that contain a significant amount of magnesium include whole grains, nuts, and legumes.

Leafy Green Vegetables

Many green veggies offer you B vitamin folate. Although the connection is not yet understood, low levels of folate may have a link with depression.  According to the research of the Journal of Psychiatric, depression patients have lower levels of folate as well as lower intake of folate in their diet compared to people without depression. Other researches also show that low vegetables and fruit consumption can increase the risk of depression.

Here are some folate-rich veggies that you can consume.

  • Okra
  • Avocado
  • Broccoli
  • Lentils
  • Turnip greens
  • Spinach
  • Artichokes
  • Edamame

Vitamin D

Experts believe that vitamin D can increase the serotonin levels in your body that can boost your mood. Some studies also suggest that vitamin D deficiency can increase the risk of depression in older adults. People who fall in the following categories are at a higher risk of vitamin D deficiency:

  • Darker skin
  • Living further from the equator
  • Spend more time indoors
  • Living in a location with more air pollution

For vitamin D, you can eat foods like egg yolks, salmon, milk, orange juice, soy milk, cheese, and sockeye salmon.

Bottom Line

So, if you want to boost your mood, the only thing you need to do is to eat healthy. Other factors that can impact your mood even if you are taking nutrient-rich diets include:

  • Lack of sleep
  • Dehydration
  • Work stress

To uplift your mood, make sure that you consider every factor that can alter your emotions.

Categories
Health & Home Wellness

6 Ways to Make Your Salads Like Sweetgreen

6 Ways to Make Your Salads As Good As Sweetgreen

Salads are hard to resist, especially for those who take their health seriously. Now there are salad parlors offering the best combination of fruit, vegetables and lettuce as a salad.

You may find it difficult to convince younger people in the house to take a salad. If they don’t like it, you may change your salad preparation methods. Surely they will like it.

Let’s go for easy but healthy 6 ways to make your salads taste as good as Sweetgreen.

1. Switch up your greens

There’s a lot of variety to green up your salad. You can do mix and match greens like spinach, romaine, arugula, cabbage, iceberg, and dandelion greens, etc.

Mixing a few of these greens together can add a different flavour to your salad dish you will savour for a long. Kale will offer you healthy vitamin A and C, whereas arugula will give you bet calcium and potassium.

2. Change the Texture

A mix of creamy and crunchy textures will bring your salad to new heights. One serving of ricotta cheese, Greek yoghurt, and or avocado will add a creamy and filling texture to your meal. You can make it taste crunchy by adding some juicy and crispy slices of apple, celery or kiwi.

3. Add a Red to Your greens

You may not like a lot of green in your salad. As many people don’t like green alone, they may like to see a tinge of red in it instead. So you can add a red by cutting small cubes of tomato, or long slices of red chilli. You can go further by adding dry cranberries or nuts; both will add a lot of nutrition and necessary healthy fats.

4. Tomato Replacements

Fresh tomatoes may be in abundance in your area in other areas it may be rare. Rather than going for off-season frozen tomatoes, you can opt for its substitutes:

  • Sweet peppers offer more Vitamin C than tomatoes
  • Raw Beets
  • Strawberries

These are friendly alternatives to tomatoes for offering good antioxidants, vitamins and minerals like a tomato.

5. Get plant-based protein

You can add plant-based protein to your daily salad by adding a small amount of cooked or boiled grains like beans and rice. Whereas cooked lentils are also a significant source for getting proteins.

Besides nuts, seeds and avocado slices will make it a nice and full meal. Such salads will get your proteins, fats, starchy and non-starchy carbs and a unique flavour on top of everything.

6. Add Fruit To Your Salad

Adding fruits to your salad will make it an unbeatable meal. Fruits will give you the fibres, nutrition, and tinge of sweetness. You can go for chopped, sliced, or pieces of fruits for your creation. Remember, to opt for seasonal fruits only to get their best for your health.

In winters, you can add citrus to your salads through caracara, blood red oranges or clementine.

Conclusion

Now, you see there are more reasons to keep salad on your table with every meal. Salads are a fresh way to get healthy food in a manner of your liking and choice.