The time has come to grab a basket and head out to your nearest farmers market or grocery store because we have reached the season for FRESH fruits and vegetables.  Fall is a great time to fill your crisper and kitchen counter with great tasting fruits and vegetables for your family.  Here are a couple of my favorite fall veggies to spice up the season and some reasons why you should include them on your plate.

Broccoli:  When it comes to a super food, broccoli has the title knocked out of the park.  It is a member of the cabbage family that packs a might vitamin C punch.  Eating only one cup of raw broccoli provides more than double your daily need for the vitamin!  Broccoli is packed with cancer fighting phytochemicals, reducing the risk of many common caners.  But wait that isn’t all.  Broccoli has calcium to help maintain strong bones and is full of folic acid aiding in the prevention of birth defects.  Serving broccoli raw or steamed helps keep all those nutrients trapped inside the floret to deposit in your body.

 Brussels sprouts: Another cancer fighting food and member of the cabbage family, it is great for its fiber content.  It has equal parts soluble and insoluble fiber, helping to decrease that bad cholesterol while keeping you regular!  Now like most vegetables Brussels sprouts are low in fat and calories, however they are rather high in protein! Only 24 calories in a half cup of cooked sprouts.  So add some quinoa or other whole grain to make a protein packed meal without adding any animal products.

Cranberries:  What is Thanksgiving without a bowl of cranberry sauce? But why should you eat these berries more often?  They are full of antioxidants, protecting cells from cancer causing agents.  They can help prevent plaque from forming on your teeth and can help decrease the cause of stomach cancer and ulcers by binding with bacteria.  With that bacteria binding power, some research shows they aid in the prevention of urinary tract infections!

Pumpkins:  It isn’t fall without a friendly jack-o-lantern smiling at you!  But pumpkins are not only useful for your front porch, they are full of antioxidants.  Pumpkin is a great source of vitamin A, which aids in skin integrity and vision and helps protect your body against some cancers.  And don’t forget those seeds!  Pumpkin seeds are a good source of fiber and healthy mono-unsaturated fat which are both heart helping food components.

Spinach: Great in early fall, spinach is a great source of vitamin K and vitamin A, as well as folate, magnesium and iron.  Research shows that spinach can help to reduce the risk of several types of cancer, including stomach, prostate, and skin.  It can also act as an anti-inflammatory to reduce the severity of symptoms associated with asthma, arthritis and other inflammatory conditions. When shopping for spinach, look for firm, crisp, deep green leaves. Spinach is great as a base for salads, delicious when added to soups or casseroles to provide bulk.  I like to add spinach into my pasta sauces, on pizza, and in sandwiches instead of lettuce.

So what are you waiting for?  Run to the store and start whipping up some of these delicious vegetables and fruit to have fresh super healthy foods in your diet.  What is your favorite fall recipe?

Check out this post on Health Bytes: http://healthbytesnyc.com/uncategorized/fresh-for-fall/

You hear about nuts in the media; from advertising telling you they are high calorie, high fat belly bombs to captions proclaiming them as missing manna from heaven.  I’m going to crack open the research and information to provide you with the skinny on nuts.

First and foremost let’s take a minute to appreciate the wonderful ways to enjoy nuts! Hmm mmm  delish!  Nuts are a fantastic addition to salad, chopped up for pesto, baked in pies, sprinkled on casseroles, puréed for dips, or chopped up for German Chocolate Cake… oh my the list is endless when it comes to adding nuts to dishes.   A fantastic feature of nuts is that they require no enhancements; they are delicious on their own, they can be taken right out of the shell and popped into your mouth.

So why are nuts so delicious?

Well…because they are made up mostly of fat! Oh no the dreaded word!  That’s right folks; nuts are a great source of fat.  Check out my article on the properties and types of fat, to understand not only the need for fat, but healthy properties that fat provides.

Fat accounts for roughly 50-70% of the weight of nuts, however the amount of saturated fat (bad fat) is extremely low 4-15%, the rest of the fat is made up of healthy useful fats our body can use.  Walnuts have the highest amount of healthy omega 6 fat, so if you need a boost grab them first.

What else do nuts provide?

Walnuts, followed closely by pecans, have the highest amount of flavanoids!  What is a flavanoid? Sounds like something you might find in your nasal cavity.  Well a flavanoid is a type of antioxidant that aids in lowering cholesterol!!  Antioxidants are super food compounds that fight against cancer, heart disease, and work to maintain the health of your entire body!

So why choose nuts when they are high in calories?

Nuts are energy dense, meaning a lot goes a long way.  They will fill you up long before a package of chips or cookies will.  Nuts are high in fiber!! And if you know me, you know I love anything high in fiber! Fiber is your friend and fights against most common diseases, heart disease, diabetes, and old constipation!  Let’s not forget that they are packed full of antioxidants!

Common nuts include walnuts, almonds, pecans, pistachios, peanuts, hazelnuts, Macadamia, brazilnuts,  cashews, chestnuts, Pinenuts, etc.

So, what are you waiting for?  Go have a snack

~A snack of nuts should be about 10-20nuts for 100-200calories

The larger the nut the higher the calories, so watch out for those brazilnuts!

What is your favorite nut?

What makes a donut, fettucini alfredo, peanut butter and that picture of cheese cakes mouth watering and delicious you can’t get enough?  Fat!! They all contain a lot of fat; that’s right folks that dreaded 3 letter word, F-A-T.  And fat tastes good:)  Some of you might say, wait Kristina fat is bad, that means high calories, increased waist line, tears!   Why are you talking about fatty foods, shouldn’t we avoid them all?  Well my friend, let me start by telling you that fat is not ‘bad,’ in fact fat is an essential component of your diet; 20-30% of a diet should be made up of fat.  Now after saying this, I must put in a small caveat, fat is not created equal.  Saturated fat, the kind you find in butter, coconut oil, cream, chocolate and in animal products, provides us with high calories, but not much else… you might call it the insulating fat!  In that it is great for putting inches to your waist and keeping you warm from the cold, however provides little other nutrition quality!  Small amounts are fine, but you do not want this to be your primary source of fat, research shows that diets high in saturated fat increase the risk of heart disease, high cholesterol, and possibly some forms of cancer.  So watch the sat fat!

So if 30% of our diet needs to come from fat and sat fat seems rather evil what do I eat? Excellent question, which leads us to unsaturated fats.

CHEMISTRY BREAK

Because I was (and quite possibly still am) a chemistry nerd, you have the honor of suffering through a small chemistry lesson.  What does saturated versus unsaturated mean?  (I know everyone is asking this question)  This has to do with chemical bonds! (A bond is the link between two elements, think periodic table)

For example: water’s (H2O) structure looks like this, H-O-H,  with two elements of hydrogen and one of oxygen joined together with dashes.  The  ‘-‘is the bond.

Saturated fats have only single bonds, one ‘-‘between elements.

Unsaturated fats have two bonds, think equal sign, ‘=’.

For example:  formaldehyde (CH2O), that smelly embalming fluid, looks like this O=C-2Hs.  The oxygen has a double bond with the carbon.

So the difference between the fats is the bonding!  Unsaturated fat has an ‘=’ whereas sat fat only gets ‘-‘s.

Back to the fat!

Unsaturated fats like olive oil, peanut oil, canola oil, avocados, safflower, corn, sunflower, soy, and cottonseed oils have those double bonds and do not react in our body the same their fat brother, saturated fat, does.    You can call them the healthy fats or the unsat is the better fat!

There are two forms of unsaturated fat, poly-unsaturated fat and mono-unsaturated fat.   Any guesses on the difference??   Ohh you smarty pants, I know you said number of double bonds!  That’s right.  Mono, meaning one or sole, refers to a single double bond i.e. one ‘=’ sign.  Poly, meaning multiple or many, has more than one double bond.

Monounsaturated fat is found in nuts, olives, olive oil, avocados, whole grain wheat, oatmeal, and many other foods.  Eaten in moderation, it has been shown to decrease LDL cholesterol (the bad one) and thus lowers total cholesterol and prevents heart disease.

Polyunsaturated fats are found in nuts, seeds, fish, algae, leafy greens, and an assortment of other foods.   Polyunsaturated fats are affected by heat and processing; so eating whole food sources is always best.    Polyunsaturated is the parent of our popular omega 3 and omega 6 fats.

Omega 3 fats, found in our aquatic friends, fish, has been shown to lower the risk of high blood pressure, heart attacks, and research is showing a possible protective effect against breast cancer reoccurrence.  This leads to the recommendation of at least one fish meal a week or for the vegetarian a fish oil supplement!

Omega-6 is found in palm, soybean, rapeseed, and sunflower oils.  There are still many controversies over the benefits or harm of this fat, so I cannot tell you to avoid or ingest a specific amount.  Moderation in all things, stick to monounsaturated fat (olive oil) as your go to cooking fat of choice.

You may be saying to yourself, hey Kristina, you left out a fat!  And you are right.  Let’s talk about the infamous Trans fat!  It went from being the magic ingredient in almost all processed foods to the unhealthiest additive on the market!  But why?  How is trans fat different from the other fats.  Well, I guess we need one more chemistry review.

Watch Out More Chemistry Ahead!

Trans fat belongs in the unsaturated fat family, i.e. has one of those pesty double bonds “=”!  Its full name is trans unsaturated fat, trans fat is just easier to say.

So you are saying there is good and bad unsaturated fat? What gives?  Let’s begin with understanding what trans fat means.  The word trans has to do with the location of the hydrogens surrounding the double bond.  That make any sense?  Hmm let’s start from the beginning.

So fat is made up a chain of carbons and hydrogens.  A carbon is allowed four bonds or four ‘-‘s.  So if you were to write a ‘C’ on a paper, then place two H’s, one north and one south of the C and two more C’s, one east and west of that C, draw a bond, ‘-,‘ to each H and C you would have our saturated fat.  And looks like a row of C’s with H’s as the bun.  The C is filled up with single bonds and there are no equal signs.

Now if we had a unsaturated fat we need a double bond, “=,” which is made up of two lines, we now only have room for 2 more H’s.  So on that paper where you drew the saturated fat, let’s draw a unsaturated fat.  So draw two C’s with an equal sign linking them (C=C) on the paper, draw one H directly above each C.  Link the H to the C with one bond ‘-‘ and voila we have a our typical unsaturated fat !

Some of you might say, yea so what?  Why are you talking about all of this stuff… well my friends, what you have just drawn with the H’s above the C’s is the cis unsaturated fat (these are the ones I talked about above, the mono and poly-unsaturated fat).  Cis, refers to the H’s being on the same side.  This brings us to Trans fats, this is where the H’s are on opposite sides of the C.  See the below picture.

Trans fat are almost nonexistent in the natural word (a small amount is found in milk), they are created.  Scientist found a way to blast the regular unsaturated fat structure, where the H’s were neighbors, to one where the H’s are enemies!  This small change in the structure causes a catastrophic change in our body.  We do not digest this fat the same we digest other fats, it acts a little bit like a saturated fat as well as uniquely evil human body hating agent at the same time.

Trans fat increases the risk of heart disease by raising the LDL (bad) cholesterol levels similar to sat fat AND lowers HDL (good) cholesterol.  It has a double trigger in clogging up those arteries! You might considerate a wee bit evil as far as hurting your body.

You find trans fats in hydrogenated oils and Crisco, which are used in most snack, boxed, and processed foods (take look at labels in your kitchen, you might be surprised).   My recommendation…  avoid the fat.  There is absolutely no reason to eat it and many reasons not to eat it, like your for health.  (This does not count the natural occurring trans fat in milk, its special and not inherently evil like the one we create in labs)

Fat Recap

So I have covered a lot of information and some of it can be extremely confusing so I will make a quick recap.

1. Sat Fat- not stellar, increases bad cholesterol, found in animal products, coconut oils, etc.  Use sparingly.
2. Mono unsaturated fat- favorite fat! Our go-to cholesterol lowering, kick ass fat! Found in olive oil, whole grains, avocados, etc.
3. Polyunsaturated fat- Omega 3 is fishtastic! Eat it J, at least 1 meal a week, but go for 3!  Great health benefits
4. Trans fat = devil. Avoid Avoid!  Increases bad cholesterol, decreases good cholesterol.  Wants you to have a heart attack.

As always I love hearing comments and receiving questions from readers! So don’t hesitate, write something, was this helpful at all?