Your Favourite Food Channel aka Healthy Yums

Mr. Green and I apologise for the month or so hiatus. Our lifestyles are pretty much nomadic right now which makes regular programming on this blog a bit of a challenge :o).

Mr. Green and I love fruits. Apples and bananas are two fruits we eat on almost a daily basis if we have access to them. Blueberries is another heavy favourite, and seedless green grapes if they look fresh and green :o). When we travel, we also try to sample as many local fruits as we possibly can.

Here's the jackfruit, native to South Asia and Southeast Asia:


The jackfruit is undoubtedly the largest fruit that I've ever come across. The fact that it can get to up to 40kg (~88lbs) is just mind-boggling. The edible bits looks like it's slimy but isn't. It has an almost meaty texture but don't be fooled...it's sweet. According to this, it is low in saturated fat (as most fruits are), cholesterol, sodium and is a good source of Vitamin C and manganese.

Here's another Southeast Asian fruit for you, the snakefruit or salak:

The snakefruit tastes sour and a little sweet and is a little crunchy to bite into. Definitely one of my favourites.

Someone once warned me that Southeast Asian fruits are high in sugar and carbohydrates. I never took the warning very seriously as natural sugar from fruits (fructose), is different than refined sugar (sucrose). You shouldn't really avoid high sugar fruits, which are still low in calories and very high in nutrition.

According to this, consuming refined sugar or sucrose drives the sugar levels in your blood to high levels extremely fast while fructose is broken down more slowly which gives your body more time to react to the sugar consumed.

So how much sugar can you consume?

Some experts or nutritionists say about 40g per day or 10 teaspoons (4g in one teaspoon). Some prescribe to the 10 percent rule, which means 10% of your daily calories can come from added sugars. If you know what your daily calorie intake is, 10% of that can come from added sugars and there are about 4 calories in 1g of sugar.

So if your daily calorie intake is 1800, your added sugar intake can be 180 calories which corresponds to 45g of sugar or 11 teaspoons.

11 teaspoons sound like a lot, huh? Especially when you picture shoving 11 teaspoons of table sugar into your mouth. But think again, added sugars here means all the refined sugar you consume daily, which means everything from sugar in your coffee or tea, that slice of cheesecake post-lunch, to sugar content in your morning cereal. Morning cereal. I used to love Post's Cranberry Almond Crunch cereal...and a serving of it delivers 15g of sugar already. Three servings of Post a day and you're over your suggested daily intake.

So 40g of sugar is actually pretty easy to exceed unfortunately. And let's not even begin to discuss weight gain from having too much sugar :o). That just leads to a lot more health problems and issues (heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure to name a few) :o).

Reduce your sugar intake, today!

I usually have more time to cook on the weekends, and I try to cook Asian half the time since Mr. Green is such a maestro at his pastas and pizzas. Today, however, when asked what I wanted for dinner, I said I felt like Asian food and wanted a sambal dish (sambal is a chili-based condiment, popular in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore), possibly with kale. I told him how to whip up a quick dish, and as always, Mr. Green delivered! The kale was cooked just right (not bitter), the sambal was flavourful, and the cut up chilies and tomatoes were just the right touch to the dish (it was interesting to note that the tomatoes managed to give the right amount of sour and sweet to the dish. In Malay cooking, tamarind is usually used for this purpose in sambal).

Kale is probably one of our favourite vegetables (spinach tops the list, hands down). Like broccoli, it's a form of cabbage and we usually either steam, or saute it lightly (like tonight) in order to retain its nutrients (I've been meaning to dedicate an entry to the topic of cooking methods in order to maximise nutritional value, but perhaps some other time). Also, kale is one of those vegetables where the more you cook them, the stronger it tastes. It's probably in your best interest to cook it lightly if you prefer kale not to taste so bitter in the first place.

According to it's wiki page, kale is sweeter in colder climates. I also had no idea that kale had such a huge following in countries like Portugal, Germany, Sweden and Denmark. Apparently, kale is quite the big deal in northwestern Germany, where it's on the agenda of most social clubs to visit a country inn and eat large quantities of kale, sausages and schnapps.

I cannot stress enough how great a vegetable kale is. It is an excellent source of Vitamins K, A, and C, manganese, beta carotene and a good source of calcium, dietary fibre and potassium. And that's just for starters! It's also rich in antioxidants, and is an anti-inflammatory.

The website The World's Healthiest Foods, provides all you need to know about kale. It quotes scientific studies that have been conducted to show health benefits such as how kale combats cancer (ovarian cancer especially), how it helps your body detoxify, it lowers cataract risks and promotes lung health. And...it has been shown that leafy greens rich in Vitamin E slows down the loss of mental functions. I could always use brain food!



I found other kale lovers on the net, such as the following blog, I heart Kale,



It's got tons of vegetarian recipes that I find verrrrry appealing *toothy grin* and will probably try some of them quite soon. Veg-box recipes also has more kale recipes for you-who-are-curious to browse through.

Tip of the day: The World's Healthiest Foods is a non-profit website that provides a lot of information on eating, cooking and feeling healthy.

I've been having these very strange sugar cravings lately. My sweet tooth has been in overdrive for the past two weeks or so. After indulging in some Ben & Jerry's last night, I decided to look up what the cause of these cravings could be.

Stress, depression, yeast in GI-tract, chromium deficiency, not enough omega-3...ahah! Perhaps that. I've hardly been having any fish lately.

But then I read a little further, and some experts suggest eating protein whenever you have sugar cravings. That seemed a much simpler explanation than the above mentioned. This is because protein helps stabilise blood sugar, and when your blood sugar is balanced, you're much less likely to crave sugar. I thought back to what I've been eating in the last month or so, and I've realised that I haven't had much meat in the last two weeks at all (which is when these cravings began). Usually, we eat quite a bit of tofu, but soy products aren't as readily available here in Denmark and so we've been going without.

Good examples of protein-rich foods are meat, poultry, fish, peanut butter, eggs, dairy, tofu, nuts, legumes, whey and soy.

And unfortunately, we haven't been getting enough protein. According to this online calculator by the University of Maryland (it gives you an estimation of how much protein/fibre/carbs you need a day), I need about 64g of protein in a day. That's a lot!



Of course, other google searches on our custom search sidebar (don't you just love the internet) brought up other online calculators that gave me numbers ranging from 45g-55g. 55g of protein is about 6-7 glasses of soy milk, and I probably get only 4 in a day.

According to Calorie Count, half a chicken breast, roasted gives you about 26.7g of protein. I should probably start eating chicken again :o).

OR, find a place which sells tofu. OR, take supplements. Nutrition in food these days aren't the same as they used to be 20 years ago, and supplements is a great way to make sure you're getting enough of your daily requirements.

I gotta go check out the pharmacies, soon!