Making Healthy Food Choices - Are Gummy Fruit Snacks in Your Child's Diet?

You try to eat a healthy diet and you want to find healthy food for children too. Do you give your kids gummy fruit snacks, thinking a little fruit is better than none? How about baked potato chips instead of regular? Do you drink diet soda and eat light ice cream in a quest to eat healthier and lose weight? Your food choices may not be as healthy as you think.

Are Gummy Fruit Snacks Healthy Foods for Kids?

There are dozens of products these days, which contain added vitamins but what you need to look for is how much sugar is in them. Gummy snacks are loaded with sugar, such as high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated oils, or trans fats. These are linked to obesity, heart disease, diabetes and more health problems.

Baked Potato Chips - Are they Better Than Regular chips?

Potato chips are empty calories. They are high in calories and contain no nutrition or fiber. Baked chips are a little lower in fat but they are still high in calories and contain no nutrition. Not a healthy food. Try popcorn as a side dish for your kids as a healthy option.

Is Diet Soda Good For You?

I gave up diet soda years ago in favor of green tea or regular tea. To me diet soda is nothing but a can full of chemicals. Recent studies confirm that drinking just one diet soda a day can give you what's called metabolic syndrome. Some of the symptoms of metabolic syndrome are belly fat and high risk of heart disease.

Both my sisters proved to be allergic to NutraSweet and had vision problems as a result of this. They thought they had macular degeneration. But when they quit drinking diet soda, the problems disappeared!

Drinking soda is just a habit. You can break it by finding something healthier to substitute. Try different kinds of iced tea or even water with a spritz of lemon or a sprig of mint.

Is Non Fat Salad Dressing a Healthy Choice?

I have to admit I've bought fat free salad dressings for my husband without even looking at the label. However, I discovered that the fat free versions contain more sugar, which he isn't supposed to have, being pre-disposed to high blood sugar.

Fat free salad dressings are still usually loaded with calories. Besides which, a heart-healthy oil, like olive oil or grapeseed oil, actually helps you absorb the vitamins in that salad.

Make your own salad dressing with olive oil, apple cider or red wine vinegar and a little seasoning. It's easy and saves you money too.

These are just a few healthy food choices you can make for your family. Check labels and look for hidden sugar, non-hydrogenated oils, chemicals and preservatives. The more fresh and whole your food is, (like eating almonds instead of chips), the healthier your diet will be.

Read this new book, Eat This, Not That to help you make healthier food choices for yourself and your family.

Eat This Not That! Supermarket Survival Guide: The No-Diet Weight Loss Solution

Help you kids eat healthy too!

Eat This Not That! for Kids!: Be the Leanest, Fittest Family on the Block!

Is Eco-Living Really New?

Eco living is all the rage right now but I've been interested in eco-living since I was a kid. Back then though, we didn't call it that. I grew up on a small family farm where we raised our own beef, pigs and chickens. We drank fresh milk from the cows and ate fresh eggs laid by the chickens. Our huge vegetable garden was fertilized with composted manure from the animals and all of our table scraps went into a compost pile.

My mother worked from dawn to dusk, making our clothes, growing our food and then preserving it. She gathered eggs and sold that and the milk to our neighbors. She hung laundry on the clothes line outdoors and fed and milked cows right along with my dad. There was no inequality of pay in our family. They both worked for the common goal of feeding our family.

As kids we got to run free around our rural neighborhood.We spent our days at the creek or on the mountain behind our house. Nobody ever thought we'd get stolen. There were no cell phones to keep in touch. We showed up for meals and the rest of the time we were off being kids.

I didn't wear that many hand-me-downs but only because I was the oldest. My two sisters wore my old clothes though. We got a couple new outfits when school started and a fancier one - with shoes - at Easter. Our Christmas presents were clothes and ONE toy that we most especially wanted. Nobody had heard of designer clothes and NOBODY ever suspected that kids could also be consumers.

For fun my parents used to take us to the A&W Root Beer stand for a root beer float and once in a great while, not often, we went out to eat. The rest of our meals were all home cooked and mostly home raised, as well. Nothing we ate came from a package and we'd never heard of "processed" food.

We had no toxins in our air and water, no chemicals or pesticides on our food.

For all these reasons, it saddens me to see how much the world has changed. I'm happy to see the green living movement going strong. Perhaps we can keep what was good about the past, even while enjoying the conveniences and benefits of the modern world.

Don't Have Time to Eat Healthy?

You know how you enter the grocery store on a dead run after a busy day at work, maybe with your kids in tow, or maybe on your way to pick them up from school or daycare? You're tired, frazzled and stressed out. You KNOW you should pick up something healthy to eat but one look at all those veggies and all you can think is "A salad will take WAY too long to fix and the kids won't eat it anyway."

So you grab a frozen pizza and head out the door. You feel guilty but you promise yourself you'll sit down this weekend and plan some healthy, nutritious menus and do some real shopping.

Does this sound like your life? Even if you're married with no kids or single, life is hurried and stressful, leaving little time for elegant menu planning or putting together healthy salads. You end up with no energy and perhaps getting constant colds and flu from a lowered immune system or maybe even suffering from some more serious health problem like fibromyalgia or diabetes.

Many, if not all, health problems are related to life style choices. Eating healthier each and every day protects you from illness and disease and, if you are suffering from health issue right now, good nutrition can improve most any condition.

So now you're convinced you need to improve your nutrition but what can you do? You'll always be busy and stressed out, plus fresh fruits and veggies, especially organic, are not always in the budget.

I had exactly the same problems. I worked, I had a teen age daughter who didn't want to eat right, a husband with high blood pressure and high blood sugar, and I was overweight and out of sorts. What I discovered is that by starting our day with a green tea smoothie, filled with natural, whole food products, we could start our day with all the nutrition we needed for living a healthier life, even if we didn't always find time to eat perfectly at other times.

For convenience and our budget, I've discovered that Uri Life's The Feast and Beyond Berries beat all other products out there. I've tried Sunrider products and Juice Plus in the past but I've found The Feast and Beyond Berries to be cost effective, high quality products that supply everything we need in our diets. The Feast even contains miracle chia seeds.

Try a sample of Uri Life's The Feast and Beyond Berries

These two whole food powders are tasty in smoothies or just mixed in water or juice. Your kids will love them too and you won't have to worry about their nutrition any more. My daughter even makes her green tea smoothie with The Feast and Beyond Berries while she's at college. She's never gotten any of the colds and flu that runs through the campus and which lays all her friends low.

If you'd like more info on the unbeatable nutrition offered by the Feast and Beyond Berries, Click here.

Related topics:

• How to Get Your Kids to Eat their 7 to 9 Servings of Fruits and Veggies
• Green Tea Smoothie Recipe
• You may be eating 8 pounds of preservatives every year!
• Looking for a way to save money on Uri Life Products?
• For Optimum Health Add Superfoods to your Diet

Healthy Barbecue Tips Minimize Cancer Risk

With the Memorial Day weekend upon us, it's time to drag out the old barbecue. Barbecue and summer fun go hand in hand, don't they? By following these healthy barbecue tips, you can minimize the potential cancer risk from charred barbecued meat.

Cancer risk from barbecue is much lower if you reduce the charring of the meat so here are some great tips:

Before cooking barbecued meat:

• Barbecue only lean meats and remove skin and excess fat. It’s always a good idea to remove skin from any meat before you cook since skin is where many of the cancer-causing elements are found. With barbecued meats, though, it's especially important to remove skin because the fat stored there causes fire flare-ups and charring.
• Cut meat into smaller portions so it will cook faster.
• Partially cook your meat in the oven prior to putting it on the BBQ. This reduces exposure time of your meat to the fire and potential burning, smoke and charring.
• Marinade your meat to coat and protect it from the chemical changes caused by barbecuing to help minimize cancer risk. Be sure to discard excess marinade before cooking meat as it might drip into the fire and cause smoking and flare-ups.
• Use thin marinades made of vinegar or lemon. Thicker marinades can increase charring.

During the cooking stage of BBQ:

• Keep your grill at least 6 inches above the fire or heat source to prevent charring.
• Turn meat frequently on barbecue.
• Prevent grease drippings which create smoke by lining the grill with perforated aluminum foil.
• BBQ meat on cedar planks.
• Make kabobs, alternating the meat with veggies, as these take less cooking time.
• BBQ veggies with your meat. A diet rich in fruit and veggies can help greatly reduce cancer risk. Steamed or grilled vegetables are tasty and retain more nutrients than those that are boiled.
• Keep your exposure to barbecued meats to about once a week to minimize risk.

Remember too, don't stress out about enjoying your favorite summer pass time of barbecuing. A healthy lifestyle which includes lots of fruits and veggies, exercise and relaxation can tolerate a little barbecued meat in moderation.

Healthy Snacks - Plan Ahead for Convenience

Healthy snacking? What is that? Is there even such a thing?

I think almost everyone would really like to live a healthy lifestyle but, let's face it, when you're busy and stressed out, juggling hundreds of daily details, it's hard to even know what to have for dinner every night, so a healthy diet may fall to the bottom of your priority list. Healthy snacking is especially difficult when chips and chocolate bars always seem to be handy.

With a little planning, however, you CAN eat healthy and live healthy.

Start by going through your kitchen and taking out all the unhealthy snacks. If you have chips or candy stashed within easy reach, you'll be much more likely to grab that when a craving strikes.

Once the unhealthy stuff is gone, go to the farmer's market or grocery store (when you're NOT hungry) and shop for healthy alternatives. Need some ideas of what should you purchase that is easy, economical and healthy?

This list of healthy snacks is low on the glycemic index, meaning they are low in sugar and won't cause spikes in your blood sugar. Spikes in blood sugar lead to loss of energy and hunger.

Healthy Snack Ideas

To be satisfied with a healthy snack, rather than the unhealthy alternative is to reach for whole foods with the most nutritional value. These fill your stomach and satisfy cravings, keeping you from being hungry. Try keeping these items on hand:

• Low carb, whole wheat tortillas - add some mustard, a slice of turkey and of low cal cheese, plus a little lettuce, roll it up and you have a delicious snack or even a lunch.
  
• low-fat cheeses like individually wrapped mozzarella cheese sticks
• celery sticks - fill them with low-fat cheese spread
• cut up cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini or other veggies into bite size pieces so you can grab a handful, put in a plastic container and head out the door. If you need a dip, choose a low-fat, low cal dressing.
• dry roasted nuts - put them into individual snack bags so you aren't tempted to keep munching. Nuts are high in Leucine, which helps with muscle building and weight loss.
• apples - cut apples up in a bowl, with a tablespoon of peanut butter. If you want to do apples ahead, mix a teaspoon of lemon or orange juice with 1/4 cup of water and mix thoroughly with the apples. The citric acid keeps apples from browning.
• Hard boiled eggs - use only if eggs are not restricted on your diet due to elevated . If you do have high cholesterol, add a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon to your daily diet to reduce cholesterol by as much as 50 points within 6 months.
• Fruit smoothies can be made ahead and taken along, or if you tend to eat out of boredom, making a smoothie will give you something to do and give you a nutritious snack too. Here is one smoothie recipe:
  

Blend in a blender until smooth:
1 cup low fat, low sugar vanilla soymilk or orange juice
3/4 cup plain fat-free or low-fat flavored yogurt
6 ounces silken tofu
1/4 cup frozen berries

More great smoothie recipes.

• If you feel the urge to snack, try making a cup of green tea. This gives you something to do and also soothes the nerves. Try a variety of flavors, like chai tea with stevia and soy milk added.
• Keep high fiber cereal on hand and snack with soy milk or low fat milk added. This will fill you up.
  

Fruit low on the glycemic index. Snack liberally on these:

apples
apricots
blueberries
cantaloupe
cherries
strawberries
oranges
pears
kiwi
grapes
grapefruit
cherries

Snacks to avoid or eat only occasionally

pretzels
crackers
bread or starchy foods made with enriched flour

These processed foods are high on the glycemic index and contain lots of sugar:

bananas
pineapple
raisins
fruit juices or canned fruit

Have Healthy Snacks Ready to Use

Once you have purchased your healthy snacks, prepare then ahead of time so there won't be any excuse not to grab them first. If you don't have time for even this, purchase fruits and veggies already cut up.

• Clean your veggies. Use a veggie soak to remove all pesticides and chemicals, unless you purchase organic.
• Peel and cut up enough carrots for several days, cut up celery sticks, wash your apples.
  

If these are in your fridge, ready to grab, you can toss them into a container and take them to work or on the road, or, if you need a snack at home, it will be ready with no muss or fuss.

If you really need a quick to-go snack, look for granola bars or cookies made by Healthy Choice, South Beach Diet or Snack Well. The only draw-back to these type of snacks is that they are expensive.

Learn Easy Ways to Get Health Benefits of Fruits and Veggies in your Diet

Try Uri Life whole food products to get your recommended 5-9 servings of fruits and veggies.

You May be Eating 8 lbs of Preservatives a Year!

If You Care About What You Eat...watch this special Multimedia Report that reveals the TRUTH about what is going on with the food supply today.

Lots of people try to follow a nutritional diet and they think they’re doing very well with it but the fact is, there’s a lot happening to your food that most people don’t know.

Click on photo above to Watch Now!

This exclusive special online presentation tells you the real story, including...

• It’s the 21st Century, so why are we having so many problems with our food?
• What’s in our food supply today that wasn’t there 50 years ago
• How much has the nutrition in my food dropped and why is this happening
• What’s the big difference between conventional and organic farming?
• What are the real sources of vitamins and minerals?
• Shocking news: What’s really in your food?
• And many more eye-opening facts, warnings and secrets!

NOTICE: Due to the high quality of the graphics and audio, it may take several minutes for this presentation to download depending on your Internet connection. It is well worth the short wait, and MUCH faster than waiting 3-5 days to receive it in the mail.

Toxic Brew - Are the Chemicals in Cleaning Products Harming Your Family?

This You-Tube video shows the potentially deadly effects of the chemicals in cleaning products. Mothers want a clean home but are the cleaning products they use causing asthma and breathing problems, cancer and many other health problems for their family?

Toxic Brew

So what's the answer? How about organic cleaning products? They are becoming much easier to find and cost effective than they used to be.

MiEnviron cleaning products are 100% certified organic.

BioPure Probiotic Household Cleaner:

• Highly concentrated - 2 capfuls make 500ml
• 
  
• Contains powerful probiotic bacteria, antioxidants and enzymes that break down grease, grime and dirt and neutralise odors.
• BioPure offers cleaning with no chemicals and its living benefits continue to work even after the initial application.
• Cost effective - Only $14.95 for 4.3 oz

Ingredients:

• Purified Water
• organic sugar cane molasses
• Lactobacillus
• organic mineral powder
• Sea Salt
• organic rice bran extract non-gmo lecithin
• Organic Vanilla Extract

More information on MiEnviron BioPure

I decided for my own family's protection that using only organic cleaning products make sense. We're surrounded with chemicals in air, food and water so wherever I can cut chemical exposure in our family, I do so. Why take the chance?