One Reason Not to Go Raw

I just had an ah-ha moment. Did you know that some greens actually provide more of a certain vitamin or mineral AFTER they are cooked? Chard is one of those and so are spinach and kale. I got this data below by going to Self Nutrition Data and comparing cooked kale's nutrients to raw kale's.

Click on the images for a closer look. Are you surprised? It looks like if you're wanting more vitamin C, go for the raw kale, but if you're looking for an even more gargantuan amount of vitamin A, go for the cooked version.

What really caught my eye was the "Inflammatory Factor" numbers. Kale is already a highly anti-inflammatory green, but look at how that factor almost doubles when cooked. I had no idea! The lesson we learn, as always? Eat more kale. Eat more greens!

Just in case you're wondering why this information matters, stress causes inflammation and a whole lot of the foods we eat cause inflammation. People who deal with chronic or acute pain issues would do themselves good to eat more foods that are anti-inflammatory. I am always looking for ways to decrease the inflammation in my joints, so discovering this little secret about kale is huge. This morning, before I even made this discovery, I had some scrambled eggs cooked with garlic, bell pepper, and kale. Guess I'll be keeping that up and creating all kinds of new concoctions with cooked kale.

Go to Self Nutrition Data and type in chard and spinach (or any other food) to check out their nutrition facts and inflammatory factor.

(Out of curiosity I just looked up dandelion greens too. Same pattern of the nutrients skyrocketing when cooked. I'm going to have to look into this some more. Any insights? What is it that increases the anti-inflammatory property in greens when they are cooked? Time for me to do some research.)

My Top 4 Diet Changes for Rheumatoid Arthritis, Cancer, and Other Illnesses

Oh the joy! There's nothing that makes me want to dance and leap around the room more than when I hear someone say they are ready to take a stand for their health. Lucky me, I've been able to hear it come out of 4 different people's mouths in the last 3 days—this morning I happened to hear it from one of my most favorite aunts, who also happens to have rheumatoid arthritis. I feel overjoyed after hanging up with her.

I'm blogging today to not only share my joy and excitement but to also share how when you set your sights on something, truly desiring it, we inevitably collide with the answers we're seeking through multiple sources. My aunt wanted to know how I first went about changing my diet, and after practically every new thing I told her she'd say, "No way! My friend was just telling me that same thing yesterday," or "We went to dinner last night, and a man there was talking about how his cancer has been getting better because he's been doing that too!"

So it's time to share. Here are the 4 main health changes I made to get improve my nutritional intake and improve my health on multiple levels:

1. Eat alkaline foods.
2. Eat salmon and/or fish oil.
3. Eat cruciferous vegetables (i.e., cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, bok choy, kale, and collard greens.
4. Drink green smoothies.

You may hear me got on my soap box time after time about alkaline foods, but it's for a reason. Everything we eat falls on a spectrum of acidic on one end and alkaline on the other end. Click here and here for a chart of where foods fall on this spectrum. The goal is to eat more alkaline foods so that your body can reserve it's resources to fighting illness rather than neutralizing acidic foods in digestion.

Salmon contains much needed omega 3s that reduce inflammation and build up muscles to support joints, particularly helpful for rheumatoid arthritis. Salmon is also high in Vitamin D, which has been shown to reduce the production of blood vessels that cancer tumors feed off of.

Cruciferous vegetables are full of disease-fighting phytochemicals and are known to help prevent various forms of cancer, such as colon, prostate, and breast cancers, as well as rheumatoid arthritis. If you're dealing with poor health, it's recommended that we eat these friendly veggies 4 to 7 times a week. At first I thought this was ridiculously impossible until I realized that I already was drinking kale practically daily in my morning green smoothie! Who knew kale was a cruciferous vegetable?—The more you learn. And if you'd like to learn more about cruciferous vegetables, click here.

Drinking green smoothies not the first health change I made 2 years ago, but hands down it was the most significant. Greens such as kale, spinach, collard greens, and chard are packed with vitamins and minerals. They are full of iron, calcium—no wonder there's calcium in cow's milk because cows eat greens all day long, but who knew you didn't need milk to get calcium?—and mega amounts of vitamin A and C. According to Self Nutrition Data, kale is "a good source of Dietary Fiber, Protein, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Folate, Iron, Magnesium and Phosphorus, and a very good source of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Vitamin B6, Calcium, Potassium, Copper and Manganese." Apparently it's a vegetable worth including in your diet! Self Nutrition Data is an awesome website for looking up the health benefits of foods.

Here's a blog post bonus to keep inspiring you. It's time to take a stand for your health!

Rosemary & Garlic Roasted Vegetables

On my drive home tonight I got a text from Sam saying, "I just made the best dinner ever, and it was sooo easy! I roasted onions, carrots, potatoes, zucchini, green onions whole, and sliced oranges mixed with olive oil, salt & pepper, and fresh rosemary in the oven." I was starving and this did sound amazing, so even though I wasn't going to get home till 8pm, I knew I wanted to make it tonight. I called Sam to get the details and on the way home ended up mentally creating my own rendition with what I knew was in my fridge. I miraculously had fresh rosemary too and thought I had green onions, but those have mysteriously disappeared. Get creative and add your favorite vegetables.

You know a recipe is to die for when your cute grandma tries it and says, "I don't feel sorry for you anymore." She'd been feeling bad for me on Sunday when I told her I don't eat canned vegetables. She said, "These are way better than canned vegetables!" Here's what Grandma was raving about:

Olive oil
Coconut oil
5 cloves garlic, chopped and separated
2 cups baby carrots, sliced

1/2 onion, chopped into large sections, separated

2 sprigs fresh rosemary, separated

2 large beets, sliced thin
1 orange, sliced and separated
About 1/8 head purple cabbage, chopped into medium-size pieces
2 handfuls fresh kale, torn into bite-size pieces
Sea salt to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Coat the bottom of a glass casserole dish with olive oil. Coat the bottom of another glass dish (or whatever baking dish you have) with coconut oil. I used both oils for variety, but use what you have. In the olive oil I put 4 cloves of garlic and in the coconut oil I put 2 cloves, mostly because the second dish was smaller than the first. In the olive oil I then added the carrots, most of the onion, 1 sprig of rosemary, half the orange slices, and salt. In the coconut oil I then added the beets, a little bit of onion, 1 sprig of rosemary, half the orange slices, and salt. I separated the beets to keep the purple from dying the rest of the veggies.

Bake both dishes at the same time for 40 minutes total. After the first 20 minutes, remove the beet dish and add the cabbage. Mix well and put back in oven. Then 10 minutes later remove carrot dish and add kale. Mix well and put back in oven for final 10 minutes. Remove from oven and serve.

It's 10pm now and I'm exhausted, but it was worth taking the time to cook this gourmet dish, especially because now I have lunch for tomorrow! Enjoy!

Kale by Candlelight

Sometimes I like to eat dinner by candlelight. Sometimes I like to do anything by candlelight. Hey, it's 2012, my year of JOY, so I'm looking for every opportunity to love each moment of my life.

Tonight's salad was going to be pretty typical—spinach, kale, carrots, purple cabbage—but then I decided to try a new dressing I just bought. Organic Ville's Miso Ginger Organic Vinaigrette. Usually I go the simple route and drizzle my salad with olive oil and sea salt with maybe a quick splash of rice vinegar. Well the vinaigrette was a little too savory for my taste, so I had a brilliant idea to add pomegranate seeds to the salad to sweeten things up a bit. Love it! I think it was the kale that inspired me. Tonight I'm eating Lacinato Kale (also known as dinosaur kale), which is dark green with flat leaves bumpy leaves, and a beautiful purple kale called Borecole Redbor, which has a bright purple filtering through the curly leaves and stem. I usually eat kale raw in a salad or a smoothie, but I am open to any other suggestions you guys have. Anyone prefer it steamed?

Kale is a rockstar of a leafy green that should find a place on anyone's plate or blender. I love kale for its anti-inflammatory benefits as well as cancer-fighting properties. Only 1 cup of raw kale gives you more vitamin K than any other food and 684% of the recommended daily allowance (RDA). To read more about the health benefits of kale, click here and here.

Please pass the green!

Last weekend I joined a fellow at his work party. The buffet wasn't as expansive as we expected, so when I got to the end of the line, all I had on my plate was a pile of lettuce and three slices of tomato . . . until I noticed the cheese platter garnish. Kale. KALE! I eat kale. So I carefully tugged at one of the leafs with the metals tongs, trying to be inconspicuous and searching for a way to not leave a bald spot in the decor. As I was taking my second piece of kale, I glanced up directly into the eyes of a little girl, probably 8 or 9 years old. I smiled at her over the buffet table. She froze, expressionless. I laughed, and she grinned and looked down. My guess is she was thinking, "People eat that stuff?" I hope she tried it, just to see for herself. So now you know not to overlook the garnish.