vegetables

Now that fall is on its way, the fresh summer bounty is dwindling down; but the truth is your diet doesn’t have to hibernate for the winter. You can get lots of great foods in the canned and frozen food aisles that are full of nutrition at a price that will have you dancing to the cash register. In this post, I’ll share some of my favorite picks and recipe ideas.

Canned beans

Not just the “musical fruit,” beans provide complex carbohydrates, protein, and fiber. In fact, a one-cup serving provides one-third of your day’s protein needs, half your fiber needs, and 65% of your folate needs (an important B-complex vitamin that helps prevent osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease, anemia, and homocysteine buildup in the blood). For less than a dollar a can, you can-not go wrong! Try cannelini beans, black beans, kidney beans, lentils and black-eyed peas. You can buy them with no salt added, low sodium, or rinse them before use to remove about half the salt.

Recipe ideas: add to salads, home-made bean dip, three bean chili, and breakfast burritos.

Experts recommend eating a low-fat diet to manage diabetes. But, evidence shows that a Mediterranean diet may be even better in helping people with type 2 diabetes keep it under control without drugs.

A Mediterranean diet is rich in vegetables and whole grains. In a new Italian study the subjects ate the Mediterranean way, with 30 percent of their calories from fat (mostly olive oil). They were better able to manage their disease without diabetes medications than those people who ate a low-fat diet with no more than 30 percent of calories from fat (with less than 10 percent coming from saturated fat choices).

If you are like most people out there trying to lose weight, chances are you aren’t doing at least a few of these five weight loss strategies on a regular basis. Check your behaviors against this list and let me know how you measure up!

1. Dieting at Night – The key to weight loss is eating, believe it or not. You need to fuel your body with healthy food during the day, starting with breakfast and have a lighter dinner; then let the dieting begin right when you are winding down. I usually tell my clients to focus on “protein and produce” at dinner. Swap your salad at lunch for a tuna wrap (choose either light mayo or cheese not both) and have an entree salad at dinner.

2. Controlling Alcohol Intake – This is probably the #1 behavior I see with clients who are trying to lose weight when they first come in. They say they drink 1-2 times a week, but then their food journal shows 2 glasses of wine.

I’ve always dreamt of owning a house one day and having a backyard full of vegetables that I could pick from to make dinner each night. I’ve since ended up settling down in Brooklyn with no yard to speak of and felt the dream fade away, or so I thought.

Container gardening has become a growing trend and a great way to grow fresh produce at home that hasn’t traveled over 1,500 miles or been sprayed with all types of pesticides and herbicides. I started small with some herbs, tomato plants and jalapenos. Not feeling quite confident, as I don’t have the greenest thumb, I thought it was a great start I could build off of each year once my first crops were produced.  

You probably don’t know what glutamic acid is, but it could help with lowering your blood pressure. The acid is found in abundance in vegetable protein. This is just the latest research that supports the notion that vegetable proteins reduce blood pressure.

Researchers believe that these finding may explain why the DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) helps lower blood pressure. The DASH diet is low in sodium and includes lots of vegetables, whole grains, and beans. Beans are also a great source of vegetable protein.