June 15, 2006
Welcome to the second issue of Eat Healthy! Thank you for subscribing.
Free download with this issue Healthy Snacks for Kids now available on the site.
Issue #002 June 15 2006
www.healthy-eating-made-easy.com
Contents
- What’s new at Healthy Eating Made Easy
- Seasonal suggestions
- Recipe of the month
- Healthy eating for kids
What’s new at Healthy Eating Made Easy
Four fantastic new information-packed healthy eating articles on the site.
Eating Healthy While Pregnant
Tips for expectant mums, on how to eat healthily for you and your baby, at this all-important time.
Vitamins
Vitamins – you know you ought to get enough, but what are they, and what foods should you be eating? This page has the answers.
Health and Nutrition News
Keep in touch with healthy eating news from around the world on this page.
Chocolate Coated Strawberries
Pure indulgence, with a healthy slant, of course! Try this simple recipe for chocolate coated strawberries and enjoy two favourite flavours in one juicy mouthful.
Seasonal Suggestions
Courgettes (Zucchini)
Pity the poor zucchini, so often drowned and unrecognisable in the depths of a vegetable lasagne, or boiled out of existence.
This delicate vegetable needs sensitive handling if you’re going to fully enjoy its subtle flavour and tender texture.
- Nutrition: High in water and therefore low in calories. They do have a nutritional worth, though, and contain vitamins A and C, plus potassium and folate.
- Choosing and storing: Pick out the smaller, firmer courgettes, and look for those with clear, glossy dark skins and no blemishes. The huge ones are marrows-in-the-making, and will be too watery. They keep refrigerated for up to 5 days.
- Cooking: Wash thoroughly and remove ends. Slice into rings or batons and steam briefly, or stew slowly with onions and garlic in a little olive oil. You can also oven roast them – cut in half, brush with oil and sprinkle with herbs.
- Serving: use in vegetable sauces for pasta and rice, as an accompaniment for simple grilled meats or fish, or try the delectable soup recipe below.
Crab
Well-flavoured and versatile, with both white and dark meat in the same shell, crabs are a useful summer ingredient. Buy whole if you don’t mind spending some time with the crackers to extract the flesh. Otherwise, buy them ready-dressed.
- Nutrition: contains B vitamins, iron, zinc and other minerals.
- Storing: Be careful with storage. If you are sure the crab is totally fresh, you can refrigerate it for 2-3 days. To be on the safe side, eat with 24 hours of purchase.
- Serving: Flake the flesh and add to pasta sauce. Serve in salads, with boiled new potatoes, or add to rice or cous cous. Make crab cakes, mixing the flesh with mashed potato. Great in sandwiches. Season with a little chilli to bring out the flavour.
Recipe of the Month
This soup is perfect for the time of year, but frozen peas work just as well as fresh if you prefer. It’s lovely chilled, but also good served warm. Make it as thick as you like – the recipe makes a chunky texture, but you can easily thin with more stock or water. And don’t omit the basil and Parmesan – they add fragrance and tang to the fresh, sweet but quite bland flavour of the soup.
Courgette and Pea Soup
- Wash 2 medium courgettes and cut into medium-sized chunks. Chop 2 cloves of garlic and soften gently in olive oil, watching to make sure they don’t burn.
- Add the courgette and stir around, then pour over 550ml (2.5 cups) vegetable stock (Marigold bouillon powder is good). Add 300g (2 cups) fresh or frozen peas. Leave it all to simmer gently until the vegetables have softened.
- Pour into a food processor (careful!) and use the pulse control to reduce it to a chunky mixture – you’re not aiming for a puree. Return to the pan, and add a further handful of whole peas. Simmer until peas are tender, and thin if you wish.
- Serve sprinkled with finely grated Parmesan, and a few shredded basil leaves.
Healthy eating for kids
Shop-bought snacks – the facts
Wise up on labels – foods are often not what they seem. If this puts you off shop-bought snacks, remember to download this month’s freebie – a chart of 20 healthy snacks for kids that won’t fill them up with additives and the rest.
- Cereal bars are a lot less healthy than the same cereal product served in a bowl. Alpen, for instance, as a loose cereal, has less than 6g fat per 100g, and 21g sugar. Buy it in cereal bar form, and fat rises to 13g per 100g, sugar to 31g. And that’s quite a healthy bar – some types can have 20g fat and up to 40g sugar per 100g.
- Beware the ‘reduced fat’ label. In the UK, on a packet of crisps for example, that has to mean containing 25% less fat than regular crisps. Even so, reduced fat crisps still count as high-fat foods, simply because crisps are fatty by their very nature.
- Reduced fat versions of low fat foods are also dodgy – because often the fat has been replaced with sugar.
- Reduced salt – this isn’t the same as low salt or no added salt, and those are the terms to look for. Kids get three-quarters of their salt intake from processed foods, and most children (and adults) eat too much salt. No added salt is always the best choice.
- No added sugars – sounds comforting, and many parents would choose these products to protect their kids’ teeth. Yet snack bars and squashes with this label can still be sweetened with fruit sugars, found in fruit juice, which is just as bad for teeth. These products are also likely to contain artificial sweeteners, which some experts think could be harmful to children.
- Words like ‘lite’, ‘light’, ‘fresh’, ‘natural’, ‘farmhouse’, ‘selected’, ‘best’ are totally meaningless – they’re just weasel-words manufacturers use to con you into thinking you’re getting something better than you are.
Send me your favorite healthy eating tip or recipe. You can get in touch here.
Coming next month, another freebie on Easy Healthy Salads.