Roasting vegetables – baking them with a drizzle of olive oil until they have a toasty color and flavor – is a mainstay of my fall and winter kitchen. I give my tomatoes and onions a light roast before pureeing them into soups and sauces and love the sweet roast flavor.
Is roasting vegetables a healthy way to eat them? There has been some attention to the downsides of charring meats and vegetables on the grill – is roasting in that category?
It depends. My favorite nutrition answer!
If you roast your vegetables to a deep crispy crunch, then well yes, you’re roasting the nutrients out and possibly creating some less-than-healthful new things that your liver will need to contend with. Too, if you are roasting over high heat – at 425F, for example, you will want to be aware of the type of oil you use. Unrefined oils, like some olive oils and certainly things like flax oil, have low smoke points, meaning that the oil begins to break down quickly at a fairly low temperature. Here are a few tips for nutritious roasting:
Choose a higher smoke point oil. Oils like grapeseed, lighter olive oils and refined oils have higher smoke points and won’t burn as easily. Coconut oil and ghee tend to be on the higher smoke-point end too.
Consider lower-temp roasting. I find that roasting vegetables at 325F for 25-40 minutes gives as much roasting flavor as I ever desire. Then I can use my flavorful olive oils, there isn’t oil breakdown (you can sometimes tell by the smokiness – if you are using a low smoke point oil and use a higher roasting temp, that billow of smoke tells you that you are learning this lesson).
Use your nose and common sense. Burned oils lose their nutritional benefits. If you enjoy roasting, go for it, but wean yourself off crispy charred vegetables, and enjoy the light toasting instead. Heat does destroy some nutrients. Some nutrients, however, are actually more available once they’ve been heated.
Eat your vegetables prepared a variety of ways – steamed (greens), sautéed (onions and greens), roasted (tomatoes, root vegetables) and not cooked at all (avocados, carrots). That way you’ll enjoy a full range of flavor and the nutrition advantages of each method.
In the end, chef knows thyself. If you (like I) am one who knows two stovetop burner settings – high and off – then get to know this idea of the smoke point. If you put the pan on the stove, turn it to high, pour in the oil and wait until it smokes – get yourself a bottle of high-temp grapeseed oil. Spectrum oil used to have a great chart of smoke points, but I see they no longer have it on their site. Here is one to take a look at, and here is another. For my roasted tomato sauce, I roasted piles of tomatoes (rinsed, sliced and cored when woody), an onion and a head of garlic, all drizzled with olive oil, at 325F for 25 minutes. Then I squeezed the garlic cloves out of their husks and blended everything. I had the most delicious soupy sauce – with seeds! – that we will enjoy all winter!
The mapping of the human genome brought tremendous opportunities for optimizing human health, but this flood of information has also led to more questions. Can genetic variations lead to long-term health consequences? How can these be bypassed? And, how can clinicians use genetic information to help people achieve their best health?
I just came from the national meeting of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) where I attended a seminar about how nutritionists can use common genetics tests (23& me) to help people customize their diet and supplements in accord to the own genetics. Imagine knowing which nutrition approaches and supplements would help address your unique mental health and metabolic genetics. What makes us each unique is the collection of single nucleotide polymorphisms – SNPs, in our genetics. 23&me testing will give you the raw data, and now there’s a group – a supplement manufacturer – who will help analyze those SNPs to guide nutrition based on your genetics.
The expanding field of nutritional genomics holds tremendous potential for healthcare providers to connect the dots between the human genome and nutrition to optimize health. The challenge lies in sorting through pages of genetic data, which requires a skilled eye and may take hours to interpret effectively. This means it is incredibly difficult for practitioners to take full advantage of this powerful information and provide every single patient with a personalized treatment plan for optimal health.
If you are interested in learning more about how your unique genetics interfaces with nutrition, and if you are interested in having your 23&me genetic report analyzed for its nutritional implications, let me know. annie(at)anniebkay.com. A note on fees and financials: I do not have a financial arrangement with 23&me nor with the supplement group I would use to translate the genetic reports into nutrition recommendations through. The supplement groups assumes that the process will turn into supplement recommendations. My fees to you will be analyzing your 23&me data, interpreting the tests for you and your coaching session around it.
If you have high cholesterol and don’t want to go on medication, beans are your friends. Studies have shown that eating beans a few times weekly can help lower LDL (the blood cholesterol most closely associated with heart disease). Actually, if you want to control your weight and not eat a lot of meat, beans are your friends.
I’ve been experimenting with spice blends over the last few seasons and if you are a fan of flavor but don’t want to purchase lots of expensive spices to mix and experiment with, this might be your flavor hack (shortcut). If you want to try lentils for their health benefits but haven’t liked them so far, this might be your recipe. It’s a snap. Tasty.
I’ve been using Mountain Rose Herb’s spice blends – I particularly like 5 Spice (which gives a Chinese flavor) and West Indies blends. They have nice clean fresh spices (not to mention lots of other goodies if you are herbal-inclined). Warning – their website is an herbal and culinary wonder-emporium…you may spend more time there than you intend.
Does everyone know by now that none of us are ever alone? That we all have guides – ancestral, animal, plant and angelic beings swirling about us pretty much all the time? Being introduced to my spirit guides has deeply enhanced my own life, and I encourage you to explore yours.
How do you find your guides? Here are a few ideas:
Pay attention
Is there anyone in your family (including pets!) that has passed on that you had a deep and special bond with, or who had a bit of the bodhisattva (love bunnie) in them? It is very likely that a part of them is still with you, but perhaps you are only aware of them on occasion in dreams. You can begin to connect with them in your dream (there are courses for that!) and you’ll often find that if and when you do, they become more present in your waking life.
You can ask, before you head off to sleep, for a dream that connects you with a guide who can help you at this time in your life. You can take notes – keep a dream journal of when you see them.
Go to where they live
From my experience, guides tend to hang out mostly in non-ordinary consciousness. I have met guides in dreams, when I was really sick and delirious, and when I was in an altered state thanks to medicine, breath work or being in a place conducive to it. So, the more time you spend in meditation, day-dreaming, sleep-dreaming and the like, the more likely you will encounter a guide.
Don’t be afraid to connect, but be discerning
Your guides are benevolent beings who want the best for you. They won’t be or feel creepy (though they may be funny or ironic), threatening or malevolent. If you don’t feel comfortable with them, I would recommend steering clear. You can go slow.
Once you have recognized someone, perhaps in your dreams, just say hello and because it is likely the family-member version, I don’t need to cue you on what to say. You might ask it a question, you might have a full conversation. If you do, remember to say thanks if you get a response to your query.
No rush.
If your guide doesn’t come to you today or tomorrow, no worries. They are there. I find that when I am open to them, they come wandering in. The animals, the grandparents, the being whom I don’t yet recognize but always knew was there. There they are. It’s just a matter of time. No rush.
Despite being at this game of health for decades, I continue to fascinate myself with my own resistance to…well, just about anything. I need help sustaining healthy change, and you probably do too.
I’ve been reading lately about the power of implementation intentions. There’s good research behind it as a strategy to help us move through our day and respond to the inevitable hitches that come up. When we get challenged, we remember what we are trying to do – “I intend to enjoy healthful eating,” and have a few if-then contingency decisions we pre-make every day.
If my husband isn’t home I’ll go to an extra yoga class. If my mom wants to come to Thanksgiving, then she’ll do the turkey.
Turns out that when set intention and we pre-make these decisions, we are more likely to carry them out.
Here are a few that may be helpful:
If I’m hungry after work and it’s not dinner time yet, I will have an apple.
If I don’t have time for lunch, I’ll grab a couple handfuls of nuts.
If I’m tired, I will move anyway – but it will be gentle and enjoyable.
If I work late and can’t get to yoga, I’ll take 10 minutes to unwind and meditate before leaving work, then another before going to bed.
If I haven’t eaten vegetables yet today, I will double up at dinner.
I find that having three if…thens on a given day do the trick for me. If you can take a moment in the morning and visualize your day, and create three if-thens for your day that help you set an intention to be balanced. If…then.
If I see you today, then I hope you say hi.
Be well,
Annie
