Why
can frozen berries sometimes be more nutritious than fresh berries? Many fresh
fruits, like berries, and some vegetables too are picked before they are ripe.
This allows them to fully ripen during
transportation, but it means they had less time to obtain and develop a full
range of vitamins, minerals and natural antioxidants with help from the soil.
Berries destined to be frozen, on the other hand, are picked at peak ripeness,
when they’re most nutritious. Both fresh and frozen berries are wonderfully
nutritious, and incredibly antioxidant rich. Include these little gems in your
meals and snacks whenever possible 🙂
I always get really excited when I
get to share nutrition tips with you guys and I think you’re especially gonna
love these ones because they will help you improve your meal and snack choices
and just boost healthy eating and nutrition all-around.
Now some of these tips you might
have heard of before, some of them though are going to be completely new. At
least I hope so.
So, let’s dive in.
One of the most common tips that
were taught to nutrionist to share with clients is that you eat what you see.
Now this works equally well for
people who want to gain weight, who want to lose weight or for people who are
just looking to make more wholesome food choices.
For example, if you want to eat more
fruits, keep it on the counter in clear sight and instead of just throwing an
orange into your bag, which let’s be honest, hardly ever finds its way out, we
can instead peel it up or cut it, put it in a container and put it on our desk
to enjoy when hungry. And if we cut them up and put them in front of our
partner or kids it’ll also increase the chance that they’ll eat it too.
If you usually place a bowl of chips
on your desk, maybe swapping it out for something like nuts might help. And
when you open your pantry and chocolate is the first thing you see, chances are
that’s what you’re gonna reach for.
So, maybe try shifting it to the
side or behind some of the dried fruit or trail mix.
This isn’t to say that food is
forbidden, it just means we’re less likely to impulsively reach for it if it’s
out of sight. And the same thing goes for drinking our fluids, whether it’s tea
or water, placing it in front of you while you work or study. It’s gonna
increase the chances that you’ll take periodic sips and stay hydrated
throughout the day.
Carrots and celery are awesome
carrying devices for our favorite dips and sauces, but if you’ve ever tried to
cut them up ahead of time to store in the fridge, you might have noticed that
they lose their crunch and sometimes they get this slimy film.
So, there is a way to avoid that and
it’s just to store them in a glass container or jar with some water. It helps
the veggies stay crisp and fresh and they store in the fridge for a longer
time.
Just change out the water every
couple of days or so, and keep in mind that the carrots will keep longer than
the celery. Now I know some people might be worried about cutting up their
veggies ahead of time because you feel you might lose some nutrients.
Now there are three factors that can
cause nutrient loss and that is heat, oxygen and light.
In this case there’s no exposure to
heat or light, just oxygen and the nutrient that’s most easily affected by this
is vitamin C and sometimes vitamin E, but what you don’t lose are all the other
incredible nutrients like fiber, some of the B vitamins, minerals and many
more.
So long story short, the benefit of
eating pre-cut veggies, even with a little less vitamin C, it far outweighs not
eating the veggies at all or reaching for less wholesome convenient foods
instead.
This next one is a tip that my mum
actually recently taught me.
I go through a lot of nut butters. Peanut
butter and almond butter especially, and as nutrient-dense as they already are there’s
something we can actually do to pump up the nutrition a little bit more. And
how we can do that is with seeds.
Seeds offer a unique combination of
phytonutrients and antioxidants that have a whole bunch of health benefits.
So I take a full jar of peanut
butter, I empty out about a third of it. I store that away to enjoy later. And
to the large jar I add a couple spoonfuls of some seeds. You can use whatever
you have on hand. I use sunflower seeds, coarsely ground flax seeds, chia
seeds, lightly toasted sesame seeds, and pumpkin seeds. I then give it a mix
and store it in the fridge. You can add it to oatmeal or spread it on toast. It
just makes for a colorful and nutrient-packed addition to any meal.
And if you can’t tolerate nut
butters you can still make the seed mix alone and use it in the same way, like
add it to smoothies or parfaits.
I feel like it also makes the foods
just look so much more vibrant and wholesome. You might have heard of this
little hack to fill a few Tupperware containers with the ingredients you need
for a smoothie. That way when you’re looking for a morning or afternoon
pick-me-up you just pop it into a blender, no chopping required, add a splash
of milk or maybe some greens or nut butter
to accompany it.
It’s also an awesome way to use up
leftover fruits that are at their peak ripeness. But if you already make smoothies
you might find that you’ve kind of gotten into this routine of making the same
thing over and over again. At least I know that that happens to me.
So I have two ingredients that I
want to recommend.
These are nutrient-dense additions
to your frosty drink and trust me, you can’t even taste them in there.
First up is frozen zucchini. And
this is especially great for people who can’t tolerate bananas or just don’t
like the taste of it. Because it gives it a similar creaminess but without that
banana flavor.
And the second one is white beans. These
are packed in protein, fiber, vitamins, antioxidants and again trust me, you
won’t even know that they’re in there!
So if you’re looking for a new twist
to your smoothies give these two a try.
You know how they say an apple a day
keeps the doctor away?
It’s more like something that
berries are capable of doing.
An apple, for example, has 60 units
of antioxidants, whereas a cup of berries offers 650 units. And that’s why I
try to have at least a handful of berries each day. Either on our oatmeal, on a
parfait and smoothies or just as a snack.
So this little tip is just a
reminder to up that berry intake if you can.
And I know that berries can be expensive
when they’re not in season so in the colder months we opt for frozen berries. And
did you know that frozen berries in many cases are more nutrient-dense than
fresh berries? But another side kind of tip is:
if you are lucky enough to have
access to berry picking in the summer months wherever you live, load up on that
stuff, cut it up and put it in the freezer to enjoy in the fall and winter
months.
Second to berries, herbs and spices
are the foods highest in antioxidants and that’s something I only recently
learned in a new book that I was reading to I’m totally a bookworm. I love and
need to learn new things. So this book I recently read is called How not to die by dr. Greger. It’s
one of the most comprehensive books on health and nutrition that I’ve ever
read.
In one section dr. Greger, who’s a
physician, he talks about how we can make healthy foods even more wholesome by
just spicing it up. He shares how a bowl of whole wheat pasta with tomato sauce
and broccoli, for example, has a 150 units of antioxidants but if we had just
one teaspoon of dried oregano that number doubles up to 300. That goes to show
how powerful spices can be.
Now we’ve talked about the nutrient
density of spices. And many spices come from fresh herbs. You’ve likely noticed
we use a lot of fresh herbs in our recipes. And as much as I’ve gotten better
at keeping my potted herbs alive, sometimes they just die for certain dried out
ones like rosemary and thyme you can just pick off the branches and use as a
spice but you can also salvage some of
the living leaves by picking them off the plant chopping them up and then
placing them in an ice cube tray with some water alternatively you can also add
them to a food processor with equal parts oil and water blend it and then add
that to the ice cube tray once it’s frozen I then transfer the cubes into a
Tupperware container now the herbs they’re not going to freeze in a way that’s
going to retain its former glories but it’s going to retain its flavor and
nutrient profile if you enjoy it with a 1 to 2 month period you can then add
these cubes to soups or stews or pasta sauces it’s a great way to reduce food
waste and add some flavor to dishes plus some extra vitamins minerals and
antioxidants something I’ve noticed I’ve been doing lately which I never used
to do before is adding spinach to my cooked meals and I do it in super huge
quantities because within just a few
minutes the big pile of greens cooks
down to a super small amount and it hides perfectly well in dishes like curries
stir fries its soups and more As with other veggies there are pros and cons to
both the raw and cooked form with spinach for example the raw form offers
higher amounts of certain nutrients whereas the cooked form offers higher
amounts of other nutrients so longer the short enjoy both the cooked and raw versions
but don’t shy away from cooked it’s just such an easy way to get a whole bunch
of greens onto your plate and into your body with loads of nutrients to
accompany it we’ve all been there feeling like you’re hungry for no reason but
you just want something to snack on or maybe you’re legitimately hungry but you
don’t have the energy or patience to figure out what you want to make so if
there’s one tip I can give it is to have 3 snack ideas in your arsenal that
take 2 minutes or less to put together that way they serve as alternatives to
something that might have been a little less wholesome so for example my three
quick and dirty snacks or medjool dates filled with nut butter, an apple that i
dip into yogurt and sometimes I put into the cinnamon or maple syrup and some
hummus on crackers or rice cakes topped with cucumbers tomatoes and arugula
having an arsenal of crazy easy wholesome snacks it’s not only going to limit
decision fatigue around snack choices it’s also going to give you a
nutrient-dense energy boost there is no doubt about it planning our meals helps
us make more wholesome food choices and it helps to decrease the food waste and
it’s 100% natural to not be able to stick to it 100% of the time but if we plan
our meals like a week in advance chances are more often than not that we do
stick to its some of the time.
I recommend whipping together your
own wholesome contribution that others can also enjoy whether it’s a huge batch
of filling and comforting soup or a platter with dips crackers fruits or
veggies or hummus pinwheels it’s one of my favorites to take which is just loaded
with fresh and roasted veggies and it’s always a crowd-pleaser everyone always
appreciates contributions and I think you might appreciate having something
that you can fill up on that helps you feel a bit more balanced.
I hope that you learned something new today
I hope you enjoyed it if you did
than please do comment.
Bye for now.
