Keeping cool and healthy – healthy chocolate smoothie!

Three treats for you: a cooling summer cordial, a wonderful and healthy chocolate smoothie and good news on white tea.

Summer cordial first as I have passed on this recipe to several friends and it is ideal if you are bored with drinking plain water but you want to keep up your fluid intake in this hot weather. This is a very flexible recipe and you can vary it to suit your taste, I prefer it slightly more astringent than sweet as it’s more refreshing, but you experiment:

In a jug mix together juice of 1 lemon, large glass fruit juice such as apple or cranberry (not orange!) a mug of green (or white) tea steeped until cold, slug of high juice cordial such as apple or elderflower (not sugar free or with any sweeteners in it). Mix and chill then dilute to taste with still or sparkling water – 50/50 is what I use but you may prefer it stronger. I match the fruit juice to the cordial for best effect so apple and elderflower or cranberry juice and red fruit cordial and undiluted it makes a lovely mix for Pimms or white rum for a long drink.

You will see I mentioned white tea in that recipe, it has similar antioxidant levels to green tea, and new research from Germany shows that it has possible anti-obesity effects based on a series of experiments on human fat cells, known as adipocytes. An extract of the tea inhibits the production and growth of new adipocytes and stimulates fat mobilization from mature fat cells. So if your fat cells are as mature as mine you could try making that cordial with white tea and see what happens!

Healthy Chocolate Vanilla Smoothie Recipe

This recipe comes from Dr Kim and if you are a regular smoothie maker you will know that it works best with frozen fruit not ice. I buy frozen berries by the bagful for mine, but this recipe needs a little forward planning as you have to freeze a couple of bananas – easier if you peel and cut them into slices first!

This recipe tastes wonderful, and is rich in flavonoids, which are phytonutrients that can help keep your cardiovascular system healthy as you age. So make two and get even younger:

In a blender combine two handfuls of frozen sliced bananas, 1 flat tablespoon of raw, organic chocolate powder, few drops of vanilla essence to taste (or use vanilla bean specks from one whole vanilla bean) and enough milk to submerge about 3/4 of the banana slices in liquid if you want a very thick smoothie, or cover them completely for a more drinkable version.   Healthiest options here are soy, almond, cashew, rice, or oat milk rather than dairy, and you will find them in the supermarket or health store.

Healthy superfoods made easy

Many health regimes advocate you have lots of seeds which can mean lots of opened packets that rapidly go off as you forget to use them up. There is an easier way which is to let someone else put together the perfect health combination and happily a company called Linwoods have taken up the task. They have an interesting combination of milled flaxseed, sunflower, sesame and goji berries which has all your essential fatty acids, vitamins and minerals. It’s the Super 5 mix and it has a number of health benefits:

Balances your nervous system as there is an amazing 230% of the RDA (recommended daily amount) of Vitamin B12 which plays a key role in the normal functioning of the brain and nervous system, and is involved in the metabolism of every cell in your body.

Keeps your Hair, Skin and Nails Beautiful with it’s Vitamin E content. This fat soluble antioxidant protects cellular tissue from oxidation and helps protect and repair any damage to your skin, hair and nails.

Boosts your vitamin and mineral intake as it contains a large range of vitamins and minerals including Vitamin B Complex, D, E and minerals including Zinc, Iron and Calcium.

Helps prevent osteoporosis as the calcium found in flaxseed and sunflower seeds is a vital mineral that builds bone and keeps it strong.

Keeps you regular and lowers cholesterol as flaxseed is very high in fibre. It contains insoluble fibre help to maintain healthy bowel regularity and soluble fibre which can assist in lowering cholesterol.

Assists in prevention of prostate enlargement as it contains zinc which can help regulate normal cell activity and build immune system response. A strong immune system is needed to calm enlarged and inflamed prostates

A good source of dietary phytooestrogens that help regulate oestrogen levels in the body.

Anti-ageing and good for the immune system, and although Goji berries sound highly exotic they are now found on supermarket shelves – at least they are in my local Sainsbury’s. Very useful if you have vegetarians in the family as they contain all 8 essential amino acids which are the building blocks of protein and can only be obtained from the diet. Something that vegetarians can struggle to have enough of as amino acids cannot be stored in the body but have to be used up every day. They also contain Iron so that makes them a good source of energy and vitamin C which is essential for a healthy immune system.

If you want to stay young and beautiful then Goji berries are high in antioxidants which are indeed anti-ageing, as well as supporting your immune system.

The top 10 fruit and veg that may or may not include pesticides

If you are looking to eat healthily, but find organics a stretch on your budget then it’s useful to know where to spend your money wisely.

These are the top ten non organic fruit and veg that are least likely to contain pesticides:

1. Asparagus
2. Kiwi
3. Avocados
4. Mangos
5. Bananas
6. Onions
7. Broccoli
8. Papaya
9. Cauliflower
10. Pineapples

The following list however are well worth spending your money on as according to the Environmental Working Group.
These are the most likely to be contaminated with pesticides:

1. Apples
2. Peaches
3. Bell Peppers
4. Pears
5. Celery
6. Potatoes
7. Cherries
8. Raspberries
9. Grapes
10. Spinach

Successful dieting depends on vitamin D

The Endocrine Society reported at their AGM of 12 June that if you are planning on a low calorie diet to get in shape for those summer clothes then you need to have good levels of vitamin D in your body at the start if you want it to succeed.

The study was reported on from a study at the University of Minnesota and although we associate Vitamin D deficiency with obesity, it’s never been clear as to whether low levels of vitamin D causes obesity or the other way around. The study put their test subjects on a diet that provided 750 calories a day less than they actually felt they needed. Most of their people had low levels of vitamin D at the start, but surprisingly even low levels were able to predict how successful the diet would be. The more vitamin D in their blood, then the greater the weight loss – and vice versa.

Probably of more interest before you shimmy into that swimsuit is the fact that higher baseline levels of vitamin D levels also predicted there would be a greater loss of fat from the abdomen – the prime target for most dieters.

Just taking vitamin D as a supplement won’t help you lose weight on its own. Sadly the same advice applies as usual – eat less, exercise more and focus on healthy foods rather than saturated fats and alcohol. Liqueur chocolates are probably the worst combination, so wait until Christmas!

Do you need an alibi?

Not for anything criminal you understand, but in order to help you to better health? I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the importance of probiotics in helping our overall health, and the rise of a new focus on prebiotics that are designed to help your body’s natural defence system perform at its best. The newest way to take these is in a product called Alibi that you will find in the soft drinks section of your supermarket or health store and it works by combining a blend of 17 body cleansing ingredients including vitamins, amino acids and herbal extracts. The herbs include milk thistle, gingko, shchizandra and last weeks featured weed – dandelion! If you are tired of throwing down supplements, then Alibi looks and tastes like any other refreshing soft drink and you can get it in two flavours, though personally I prefer the pomegranate. It is claimed to help keep you healthy and has associated itself with a campaign, POM354, which persuades farmers in Afghanistan to replant opium poppy fields with pomegranates. So they shouldn’t run out of ingredients any time soon.

Alli – All it’s cracked up to be?

This is the time when the diet industry is maximising it’s advertising as we approach the season of maximum exposure. Great if you are body confident, but the statistics show that the vast majority of women are unhappy with their weight, so the advent of a new ‘miracle’ diet product is greeted with delight, but is it justified?

Alli is on sale at pharmacies like Boots and has been highly featured in magazines as a ‘miracle’ weight loss product, but it is a drug and ought to be treated with caution.

What and how

The pills contain Orlistat that has been used for years but only on prescription to treat obesity. It works by attaching itself to some of that fat in your food and blocking it from being broken down by your body’s natural enzymes. It then passes the fat through your digestive system, into your intestines and eventually out through your bowels. So most of the fat you eat isn’t being absorbed by the body, so those calories aren’t heading for your hips. So what’s the problem?

It won’t get rid of any fat you have already stored, just new intake, so you still have to go on a low calorie diet and these are linked to weight re-gain and unbalanced hormones. Also, these pills strongly suggest you seriously restrict the amount of fat intake you have, but when you block fat from being absorbed in the body, you are blocking the valuable nutrients that fat can provide. You will see those effects in the deteriorating condition of both your skin and hair.

If you go over the fat amount recommendations with Alli you get something called “Treatment Effects”. This has been reported by women as meaning that you will spend a lot of time in the loo as your body rushes to expel the fat straight out of your system, and it will be mostly liquid. Effects include leaking, wet gas, and diarrhoea, plus a sense of urgency you could probably live without.

Risk links you don’t need

The National Cancer Institute in the USA reports a study showing significant increase in the incidence of aberrant crypt foci that are widely believed to be a precursor of colon cancer. There also appears to be a link between Orlistat and breast cancer that the FDA reported as being a higher relative risk of between four and seven times than in women not taking Orlistat. There is also a risk of liver damage from the prescription strength version of Alli available in the USA called Xenical. This is currently under FDA investigation and lists hepatitis as one of the side effects.

There is no doubt that Alli is highly effective for some people, but like all supplements and drugs what suits one may not be ideal for someone else. Popping a pill to lose weight is not a healthy option, sadly the only effective way to diet is to eat less of healthy foods, reduce saturated fats, sugar and alcohol and exercise more. Now if I could get that into a pill I would probably make a fortune!

Sports drinks beaten by cereals

After training, athletes look to restore their energy and they often do it with sports drinks. However, there is another option that will help them recover faster according to the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition and it’s found in most kitchens. The answer lies in a bowl of cereal with non-fat milk as that provides similar results as athletes look for from an electrolyte drink. Athletes may get the same post-workout boost from a bowl of cereal as they might expect from a sports drink, researchers found.A bowl of cereal with nonfat milk after exercise produced statistically similar results as a carbohydrate-electrolyte drink for nearly all measures of muscle glycogen and protein synthesis, Lynne Kammer, M.S.E., M.A., of the, and colleagues reported.

The researchers at the University of Texas at Austin findings, who carried out the study, focused on cyclists and triathletes and they were looking to see how when muscle is broken down and depleted of oxygen by exercise, what is the best way to restore it to normal levels. The researchers looked at how exercise depletes muscle stores of glycogen and turns it into glucose, which fuels the physical activity, and in doing so it breaks down muscle protein. This led to the researchers investigating the logical extension of this, which is that to replace the lost protein any post-exercise food or drink needs protein as well as carbohydrate to replace that which has been lost.

By having a bowl of cereal after exercise you get carbohydrate replacement and the milk that accompanies it provides essential, easily digestible protein and in a less expensive form than sports drinks.

Delicious greens recipe

Dr. Ben Kim has some wonderful recipes and I wanted to share this one with you as it is the best way I have found to make dark green vegetables delicious. I appreciate I may be in the minority who struggle with eating enough of these vegetables – something to do with the iron in them I suspect – but if anyone has my own aversion – or wants to get their kids eating more dark green vegetables then this recipe is a winner. Although many people eat them raw, cooking can help make vegetables like broccoli, kale, chard, spinach, and Asian bok choy easier to digest as it softens the fibre they contain and helps your body get the most of the vitamins and minerals It is actually his wife Margaret’s recipe and let me know if you enjoy it:

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 heads of broccoli, cut up into pieces
1 large or 2 small sliced courgettes
1 clove of garlic finely chopped or minced
2 cups organic vegetable or chicken stock Sea salt and pepper to taste

It is simple to make, you just heat the olive oil in a large lidded saucepan on medium and when hot add the broccoli and stir fry for a minute. Add the stock and garlic, put the lid on and once at the boil turn heat down low and simmer. Give it an occasional stir and once the broccoli has turned a bright green colour, wait a couple of minutes so that it develops a little bit of tenderness and then add the courgette plus salt and pepper to taste. Simmer until vegetables are tender and make sure there is a little bit of the stock left and serve that with it for maximum juiciness. Personally, I also add a dash of tamari or soy sauce for a bit of extra flavour, but if you do that then miss out the salt!

Folic acid may help treat allergies and asthma

This is the season when allergies can begin to make themselves felt and among natural remedies available, including bee pollen, there is now new evidence that folic acid, or vitamin B9, may also suppress allergic reactions and lessen the severity of allergy and asthma symptoms. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, carried out at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in the US, and reported in the Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology.

The link between blood levels of folate – the naturally occurring form of folic acid — and allergies adds to increased evidence that folate can help regulate inflammation which is at the root of allergic reactions. This research showed that people with the lowest folate levels had a 30 percent higher risk of developing allergies and a 31 percent higher risk of allergic symptoms than people with the highest folate levels. On the asthma front, there was a 16 percent higher risk of having asthma in those with the lowest folate levels.

Asthma affects more than 5 million adults and children in the UK, and is the most common chronic condition among children. Environmental allergies have an even wider reach so anything that helps strengthen your system to resist them has to be worth considering, particularly if you are already suffering from allergies.

The researchers say it’s too soon to start recommending folic acid supplements to prevent or treat people with asthma and allergies, but you could check how many of the folic-deficiency symptoms you have from this list:

* Irritability
* Mental fatigue, forgetfulness, or confusion
* Depression
* Insomnia
* General or muscular fatigue
* Gingivitis or periodontal disease

Adult men and women (except during pregnancy) are recommended to have 400 micrograms of folate a day and many cereals and grain products are already fortified with it so you may be getting enough. If you think you might be deficient then you might want to increase, or add, excellent food sources such as broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, spinach, green peas, avocado, banana, lentils and nuts.

MSG by any other name?

Chinese restaurants many years ago got a bad reputation for over use of MSG (mono sodium glutamate), with people reporting symptoms such as headache, numbness in the arms, palpitations and increased risk of asthma attacks. None of these have ever been scientifically verified, though I certainly had a headache or two from some Chinese restaurants, which made me avoid the flavour-enhancing additive wherever possible.

If you are similarly sensitive, it may help you to know that MSG, or E621 to give it the chemical label, may have vanished from restaurants or food products but in many cases has been replaced with other substances have the same effects, but you may not be familiar with their names.

You may not be as sensitive to some, or all of these, but it is worth checking labels for these added ingredients if you want a headache-free dining experience: yeast extract, torula yeast, autolyzed vegetable protein, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, calcium caseinate, sodium casinate, and textured protein.

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