Good Foods to Eat

My great food for today is beets. Beets are excellent at purifying the blood and helping the liver. One of the best things about beets is that they reduce homocystein, which is an amino acid that is harmful to blood vessels. Beets also contain lots of potassium and antioxidants. The potassium is helpful in heart health and of course the antioxidants help our immune systems

One other thing about beets, they are a great source of fiber and while they contain the most sugar of any vegetable, they are considered low in calories.

The leaves of the beet plant have even more nutrients than the beets themselves, but aren't the tastiest. You can steam them or just put a few in a green salad with other field greens.

Benefits of Butternut Squash

A great treat in the fall is butternut squash. It is packed with nutrients that help you stay well.

Beta-carotene is present in the squash and your body converts this into Vitamin A. This helps your body ward off skin disorders, age related vision loss and even leukemia.

Smoking creates a Vitamin A deficiency which can lead to emphysema. Eating food rich in Vitamin A can reduce the chances of developing this disease.

The other powerful piece about butternut squash is that it contains potassium and fiber. This is an excellent source of potassium - better than bananas. It also contains folate which helps prevent heart disease.

So get some butternut squash!

How The Nutrients Work When Your Engine Is Running #3

In addition to the blood vessels dilating and bringing blood to the surface to cool the body, your body also begins to sweat. This is the body's most effective way of cooling itself. The sweat evaporates and results in cooling of the body.

There is a downside to this and that is if you sweat a lot, you can become dehydrated for two reasons. First, if you are sweating you are usually doing some activity that is going to require more oxygen, so you may have an increased respiratory rate. Usually, as you begin to breath faster you will open your mouth and breath through both nose and mouth. This will begin to dry the membranes of the air passages and hence begin the dehydration process. Secondly, as you sweat, you are not only losing water through the skin. If you lick your skin after you have been sweating, it will taste salty, because you lose sodium, chloride and potassium through the skin as well with the sweat. These elements stay on the skin while the water evaporates. Beware that you are replacing what you are losting.

Quinoa - Super Grain?

Actually quinoa is not a grain at all, although many believe it to be one. Quinoa is the the seed from a leafy plant that is distantly related to spinach. What quinoa contains that most grains do not is the amino acid lysine. Lysine is an essential amino acid, however, we are dependent upon getting it from our food as the body is unable to produce it.

Lysine helps the body convert fatty acids into energy by helping to produce carnitine in the body. You can immediately get the point that if you have too little lysine, you don't produce enough carnitine and you can become fatigued. This is usually not a problem unless you are not eating any protein sources in your diet.

Back to quinoa, this seed contains lots of good nutrients like potassium, riboflavin, manganese, magnesium, vitamin B6, niacin, thiamin, folate, zinc and copper. This is an excellent protein source as well.

Sources of Potassium

Here is a short list of foods that actually contain more potassium than bananas.
Sweet potato, potatoes, plain yogurt, prune juice, yellow fin tuna, clams, winter squash and cod. My favorite though is black strap molasses which actually contains quite a bit more potassium than bananas. If you are a calorie counter, this will help you see. 1 Tablespoon of black strap molasses is 47 calories and contains 498mg of Potassium. 1 medium banana is 105 calories and 419mg of Potassium. A sweet potato is 131 calories and contains 694mg of Potassium.

So there are other sources of potassium and most vegetables contain potassium. So eat your vegetables and be a little wary about eating bananas.

Bananas

I was speaking with a diabetic recently who was telling me that the only fruit she eats is bananas. Of course her next comment was because they are high in potassium. What most people don't realize is that there are better sources of potassium than bananas.

The thing to understand about bananas is that they are a starch. Starch gets converted in your body directly to glucose (sugar). The process in the body is one that the sugar is not easily broken down and causes the blood sugar to stay elevated in diabetics for several hours. So I usually advise my diabetics to pick other fruits than bananas.