How Cooking Affects Your Vegetables' Nutritional Value

Sure, you're eating your five a day servings of fruits and vegetables, but did you know that how you prepare them and how you serve them factor into how much good they do your body?

NPR recently did a story about how to get the most nutrition from your vegetables. As Tanya told you last year, a fat-free diet can actually keep you from getting the most from your food. If you're eating fat-free dressing on your salads, you aren't absorbing as many of the phytonutrients that make vegetables so good for you.

According to NPR, Iowa State University researchers fed people salads with and without fat in the dressing and tested their blood before and after eating the salads each morning. "When researchers went back and analyzed the blood samples they realized that people who had eaten fat-free or low-fat dressings didn't absorb the beneficial carotenoids from the salad. Only when they had eaten the oil-based dressing did they get the nutrients." (Carotenoids are pigments found in red, yellow and orange veggies, plus dark greens, that become vitamin A in the body. SparkPeople dietitian Becky Hand says they can help prevent cancers, and they have antioxidant properties that protect cells. )

In addition to adding a bit of heart-healthy fat, cutting vegetables into small pieces and chewing them well can also help maximize your absorption of the good stuff they possess. And how you prepare vegetables has an effect, too.

Which Sunny Condiment Can Save You Hundreds of Calories a Month?

It's mustard, of course, and it happens to be one of the lightest condiments out there. It truly is a healthy eater's great friend.

A tablespoon of the yellow stuff has just 10 calories and no fat. A tablespoon of mayo has 90 calories and 10 g fat. You would have to eat a half-cup of mustard to get that many calories. According to French's, if you replace mayo with mustard on all your sandwiches this summer, you can save more than 8,000 calories!

National Mustard Day is this Saturday, Aug. 1, but we wanted to give you time to prepare all your favorite mustard dishes.

Did you know that mustard has a long history that dates back to the Roman times? And the yellow stuff we squirt on our hot dogs at baseball games is almost the same as it was back them.

Create 15 Healthful Meals--from a Box and a Can

In a perfect world, we would all cook healthful, balanced meals from scratch seven nights a week. But who's perfect? When you're trying to eat right, work out and live your life, there's no harm in taking some help from the supermarket. According to a recent survey of SparkPeople members, more than 60% of us rely on a microwave, a can opener and a toaster oven for dinner from time to time. (Check out the FITNESS 2009 Healthy Food Awards for more dinner ideas that use supermarket products.)

However, we all know a can of soup or a frozen cheese pizza doesn't constitute a well-balanced meal. The trick to eating right with these shortcut foods is to use them as a basis for your meal, not as your entire meal.
We took five popular "convenience" foods from the supermarket and used them to create an entire meal!

We Cut the Calories in Your 5 Favorite Cocktails

When you're out to dinner, you probably make special requests to slim down your meal: sauce on the side, no butter, hold the salt. You can also to the same for your favorite cocktails!

When we sidle on up to the bar or pour a drink at home, we can treat ourselves without bankrupting our calorie bank for the day. Many cocktails served in bars and especially in restaurants are super sized, loaded with caloric garnishes and overpriced. Find out how you can slim down five of the most popular--and caloric--cocktails out there. (Some of these requests and recipes are more suited for home, but you can always ask the bartender to specially make your drink.)

Speedy Suppers: Burgers for Under 250 Calories

Fire up the grill--it's dinner time! Tonight, let's celebrate summer with burgers, grilled corn, a salad and cantaloupe. Warm night, juicy burger, fresh melon… that's the life!

Burgers have earned a bad rep. When made with lean meat and kept a moderate size (3-4 ounces before cooking), burgers can have a regular place in a healthy meal plan.

Be creative with your burgers tonight! I've scoured SparkRecipes for new and delicious burger recipes. (If, like me, you prefer meat-free burgers, we've got plenty of those recipes, too.

Try the Super Juicy Grain & Seed Turkey Burgers, Blue Cheese Burgers or
Spicy Black Bean Burgers

3 New Supermarket Products!

Who's hungry? Me, too!

It's a great time to share some of the NEW foods and drinks we've tried--and want you to try! Here are some quick reviews of these new products.

NEW flavors from Gnu
The folks at Gnu sent us their high-fiber bars to try a few months ago, and we reviewed them on the dailySpark.

Now there are two more flavors, which we recently sampled: Lemon Ginger and Espresso Chip. If you like lemon, you'll love the new Lemon Ginger bar. The Espresso Chip bar has more espresso than chip, so if you like coffee, this is the bar for you. Like all Gnu bars, these have 12 g of fiber (about half of your daily recommended value). The lemon flavor has 130 calories and 4 g fat; the espresso bar has 140 calories and 4 g fat. It's just my opinion, but I think the Lemon Ginger bars are the best Gnu flavor yet! For more info on Gnu bars, including where to buy, read this post.

Who's thirsty? We were recently sent some new drinks, too.

Eat It: All-Natural, 100-Calorie, No-Fat 'Ice Cream'

I love to read food and healthy living blogs in my spare time. In the last few weeks, I've been seeing the same frozen treat pop up in various incarnations all over the healthy living blogosphere: banana soft-serve "ice cream."

With a mild intolerance to lactose, I can't even glance at ice cream without getting a bellyache. I rely on soy and coconut versions when I have a craving, but the former have an ingredient list as long as my arm and the latter are expensive! When I heard that there was a way to make soft-serve ice cream with no dairy, no cholesterol, no artificial ingredients, no added sugar and no preservatives, I was intrigued but skeptical. Then I saw the results on one of my favorite food blogs.

I decided to give it a whirl. To prepare, I cut up three bananas and put them in a plastic container in the freezer over the weekend. Last night, I broke out my food processor and whipped up a batch of Easy, Breezy Banana Soft Serve.
Served with a drizzle of homemade chocolate syrup on top, this was a simple and decadent dessert.

My 17-year-old meat-and-potatoes eating brother cleaned his bowl, and so did my ice cream snob of a boyfriend. The proof is in the (frozen banana) pudding!

There's really no recipe involved, but the instructions and some tips are below.

Megan Fox Doesn't Work Out, Eats Once a Day

Megan Fox is a huge movie star and undoubtedly a beautiful woman, but she's also an example of how appearances can be deceiving.

Though she's been lauded as "the sexiest woman in the world," she probably won't be named "the healthiest" or "fittest" woman in the world any time soon.

The star of the Transformers franchise said in an interview that she only eats once a day, smokes and rarely exercises. She actually had to gain weight for her big role.

"I don’t have a special diet, I just sort of exist and survive," she said.
According to the Examiner, she said: "I’m 23. I’m prepared for when I hit 28 and I’ve got to change my whole thing. But, for now, if I can get away with it, I’m going to do it."

Fox, and other celebrities who are thin and unfit, proves that what you look like on the outside isn't always reflective of your overall health and well-being.

Real Men, Including Jeremy Piven, Do Yoga

Yoga has quite a polarizing effect on people. They either love the strength, calmness and flexibility that yoga affords them, or they're turned off because they think they have to be super skinny and bendy to do yoga. (Not true!)

The number of people practicing yoga in this country has tripled in just seven years, so some of those long-held stereotypes are dissipating. Jeremy Piven, one of the stars of Entourage, is among those who were initially apprehensive of the practice.

He thought he would have to hold incense and wear a leotard to do yoga.

Not so, he learned.

Soon, he fell in love with yoga.

Natural vs. Organic: What's Truth and What's Hype?

Pop quiz: Which is the best product description to read on a food label?
A. “100% natural”
B. “All natural ingredients”
C. “100% organic”
D. “Certified organic ingredients”

(Keep reading for the answer!)

This spring, Eco Pulse, a recent survey conducted by the Shelton Group, asked that same question, and though natural and organic foods are now available in seven in 10 supermarkets nationwide, according to the Food Marketing Institute, most of the 1,006 respondents didn't do so well.

We're paying more attention to the food that goes into our mouths.

Sales of natural and organic food topped $28 billion in 2006, according to the Nutrition Business Journal, with demand for organic foods alone increasing 22 percent, to almost $17 billion.

However, as consumers try to become more discerning at the supermarket, the buzzwords used on food labels are growing more complicated and convoluted. Whether you want the greenest option or products that are minimally processed and free of laboratory-created ingredients, all those grandiose marketing claims can confound even the savviest shopper.

“Many consumers do not understand green terminology,” said Suzanne Shelton of the Shelton Group.

In a world where burgers are "now made with real beef," carrots are labeled cholesterol-free and sugary drinks are sold as vitamin supplements, what's hype and what's healthy?

Weekly Links: Celebrity Trainers' Tips and French Fries, Hold (Some of) the Guilt!

It's Friday! Woo-hoo! Hope you've got some healthy weekend plans lined up. Before you start the weekend, check out these interesting and entertaining links from around the web.

Slim Down, Tone Up: Quick Tips That Really Work
These tricks from celebrity trainers work the parts that really matter at the gym or anywhere.
From Yahoo! Shine

Speedy Suppers: Cobb Salad Wraps

I don't know what the weather's like where you live, but it's smoking hot in the Midwest these days, which means that I'm in no mood to turn on the oven.

This week's Speedy Supper will help you keep your cool in the kitchen: Cobb Salad Wraps!

The classic composed salad is filled with plenty of tasty ingredients: hearty romaine lettuce, avocado, chicken, bacon, hard-boiled eggs and more.

Unfortunately, many of those ingredients are high in fat and calories.

A restaurant version can have more than 500 calories and 25 grams of fat. This wrap, made with whole-wheat tortillas for some fiber and staying power, clocks in at about 350 calories and 15 grams of fat--a better option than the original.

This salad, made famous at the Brown Derby in Los Angeles, is delicious and easy to make. Even better, it's open to interpretation; you can add or omit ingredients to suit your tastes and depending on what you have on hand.

Get the recipe for Cobb Salad Wraps now!

Updates to the dailySpark

Here's a quick bit of good news! We've added a couple of great new features to your favorite healthy lifestyle site.

You can now edit your comments on the site.

And, in addition to the number of comments on each blog post, you can see how many times posts have been viewed. It's just one more way to find popular and interesting stories on the site.

Cheers!

Enter the SparkPeople Web Search Sweepstakes

We're excited to announce more improvements to our "Web Search" page--PLUS a new contest and a chance to earn more SparkPoints!

Most Internet users like to set a search engine such as Google or Yahoo as their homepage, and some people like to customize that page with things like news or favorite links. Did you know that SparkPeople offers a page just like that?

Setting your browser's homepage to www.sparkpeople.com/websearch is another great reminder of your health and fitness goals and will allow you to:

• Search the web with a search powered by Google or search all of SparkPeople.com
  
  
• NEW: view your SparkPeople Friend Feed to see what your SparkFriends are up to
  
  
• See your local weather, including the current temperature and forecast
  
  
• Add news feeds from USA Today (See the latest Headlines, Entertainment, Sports, Tech, and Health News and more)
  
  
• Add your other favorite RSS Feeds
  
  
• View your daily horoscopes from Tarot.com
  
  
• Create a list of links to your favorite websites
  
  
• View fun SparkPeople content, including our motivational Quote of the Day

7 Ways to Survive a 4th of July Cookout

Need help resisting a second or third helping? Or do you need willpower to make smart choices?

Check out these tips from dailySpark readers, who share
How to Resist Overeating at a Party:

1. Keep a water bottle in your hand or close by. Stay hydrated instead of stuffed. (Dozens of you suggested this. A GREAT tip!)

   Posted 7/3/2009  3:53:36 PM By:   : 28 comments   13,729 views

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