Tag Archives: antioxidants

Antioxidants: 13 Ways to Lose Weight | Women’s Health Magazine

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An interesting way to look at meal planning…

semester’s picking up. Will try to update better in a lul! 

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY DARRIN HADDAD

When it comes to eating healthy and losing weight, we’ve been focusing on the wrong set of numbers, says nutritionist Keri Glassman, R.D. This month, Glassman launches a revolutionary way of eating in her new book, The O2 Diet, which is based on the foods that have the highest antioxidant activity levels. This plan will make it super-simple for you to shed pounds, look fabulous, boost your energy, and amp up your brainpower.

Glassman’s plan is based on the ORAC scale—a scientific value that represents the antioxidant levels of foods. (ORAC stands for oxygen radical absorbance capacity.) Using this scale, she has devised a diet that gets you 30,000 ORAC points a day—10 times the current recommended level of 3,000. It’s those mega ORAC points that scoop up free radicals, the damaging rogue elements in our bodies that contribute to everything from wrinkles and brain fog to cancer and heart disease.

And you can say good-bye to calorie counting: By focusing on high ORAC scores, you’ll chow down on foods that are healthy and have the right proportion of nutrients, so the extra weight will come off more easily.

In her book, Glassman explains how certain high-ORAC fruits and vegetables have specific powers. Load up on these antioxidant superstars every time you hit the grocery store—they’ll help you bring out your healthy best in these five ways.

via Antioxidants: 13 Ways to Lose Weight | Women’s Health Magazine.

Tips to max out your antioxidants from tea…

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I read this on NBC recently and it reminded me of a great tip I’ve run into before and wanted to share.

Small changes, big health payoff: Tweaks for your daily habits - TODAY Health

Brew tea for up to 5 minutes

The longer the steep time, the greater the quantity of health-boosting flavonoids, explains Jeffrey Blumberg, PhD, professor of nutrition at Tufts University. Drink tea with a squeeze of lemon juice and you’ll increase antioxidant levels by up to 80%.

Expert tip: If you like tea with milk, go easy: Milk may reduce the absorption of tea’s beneficial components, says Blumberg. This may explain why the consumption of black tea, which is associated with the reduction of heart disease, provides greater benefits to folks in the Netherlands and the United States—but not in Great Britain, where adding milk to tea is more common.

via Small changes, big health payoff: Tweaks for your daily habits – TODAY Health.

13 Reasons Tea Is (Healthy and) Awesome: Greatist.com | Healthland | TIME.com

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http://greatist.com/health/why-coffee-and-tea-are-amazing-for-you/

Put down those saucer cups and get chugging — tea is officially awesome for your health. But before loading up on Red Zinger, make sure that your “tea” is actually tea. Real tea is derived from a particular plant (Camellia sinensis) and includes only four varieties: green, black, white, and oolong. Anything else (like herbal “tea”) is an infusion of a different plant and isn’t technically tea.

But what real tea lacks in variety, it makes up for with some serious health benefits. Researchers attribute tea’s health properties to polyphenols (a type of antioxidant) and phytochemicals. Though most studies have focused on the better-known green and black teas, white and oolong also bring benefits to the table. Read on to find out why coffee’s little cousin rocks your health.

Tea can boost exercise endurance. Scientists have found that the catechins (antioxidants) in green tea extract increase the body’s ability to burn fat as fuel, which accounts for improved muscle endurance.

Drinking tea could help reduce the risk of heart attack. Tea might also help protect against cardiovascular and degenerative diseases.

The antioxidants in tea might help protect against a boatload of cancers, including breast, colon, colorectal, skin, lung, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, pancreas, liver, ovarian, prostate and oral cancers. But don’t rely solely on tea to keep a healthy body — tea is not a miracle cure, after all. While more studies than not suggest that tea has cancer-fighting benefits, the current research is mixed.

Tea helps fight free radicals. Tea is high in oxygen radical absorbance capacity (“ORAC” to its friends), which is a fancy way of saying that it helps destroy free radicals (which can damage DNA) in the body. … Continue reading →

Experimentation time! Beets…

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20120801-111050.jpgSo in honor of finally making it to my local green market, I decided to pick up a vegetable I’d never prepared before – but love – beets.

Apparently they’re one of those “power” foods. Here’s why:

  • high in vitamin C, potassium, niacin, pantothenic acid, and B-6.
  • Raw beets are high in folates
  • low in calories
  • contain phytonutrients which provide antioxidants and help inflammation
  • recent studies have shown regularly consuming them can shrink tumors
  • some great other facts found here
  • Also their greens have great nutrition too! (next step for me will be figuring out what to do with those…)

So since I’m new to cooking beets I decided to go easy!

  • I cut off the tops of the beets, coated with olive oil and tossed into the oven at 425 for 40 minutes or until tender. (I had no idea what that meant, so I poked mine with a knife and it went in easily.)
  • Let cool, rub off skin (I used latex gloves. Don’t need red hands at my shoot tomorrow…)
  • and chop into cubes. Voila!  From there I’ve seen recipes saying to splash with lemon juice or toss in some goat cheese or feta. Have fun with it. (yeah I really just said to have fun with beets…)
  • Ps – it’s jack russell approved.