dairy Archives - Family Health Advocacy

How To Encourage Children To Eat Vegetables

July 22, 2020August 29, 2019 by Jo-Anne Richardson, RHN

Getting your kids to eat their vegetables can be one of the greatest daily struggles for parents. Building healthy eating habits takes a lot of effort for parents to sometimes battle it out with their children.

Start Small & Tackle One Meal At A Time

First, start off with breakfast and work on getting sugary cereals, pastries, and dairy off the menu. Substitute cereals for oatmeal and fruit. Pastries for homemade muffins (recipe below), and dairy milk for almond or coconut milk to use in smoothies.

First and foremost, parents need to set the example to their children on how to eat properly.

Children easily pick up on the habits of their parents and will gravitate towards the eating style presented at home. Take a minute and think about the kind of example you are setting for your children. Ask yourself the following;

Do you make meal time a priority? Preparing regular healthy meals as a family? Or are you picking up takeout on the way home from work because you are exhausted?
What is your attitude towards food and your body image?
What messages are you consciously or unconsciously sending your children?

Encouraging your children to take care of their health is one of the greatest acts of love a parent can give their child.

Mindset around meals and snacks can easily be shifted to a more positive experience. Involve the family in weekly meal planning and grocery shopping for the ingredients that will be needed for those meals.

Older children and teens can also take part in meal prep by washing vegetables and helping to prepare dinner. Giving children a voice around their meal choices will help with encouraging healthier eating habits. Provide your children with a choice of what vegetables they are going to eat each day. In addition, add one wild card vegetable to the menu each week that they may not like, but are willing to try.

Click here to read, “Are You Eating Enough Colour?”

Tips & Tricks To Add Vegetables To Every Day Meals

Throw a handful of spinach or kale into smoothies. Yes, the smoothie will be green, but the flavour and texture of the spinach is masked by all the fruit.

For a a fantastic green pineapple smoothie, click here to read, “Happy St. Patrick’s Day Recipes”.

2. Use the food processor to turn cauliflower into the texture of rice. Sauté the cauliflower “rice” in a tablespoon of olive oil and season to taste.

3. Use a spiral slicing tool to turn zucchini into noodles. It will resemble pasta and can be topped with your favourite sauce and veggies.

4. Use spaghetti squash instead of pasta to make traditional spaghetti with meatballs (remember to use grass fed beef for the meatballs).

Click here for “The Ultimate Guide For How to Cook Spaghetti Squash”.

5. Rather than ice cream for dessert, serve a plate of fresh fruit.

Almond-Berry Muffin Recipe

As promised, below is a recipe for healthy muffins that freeze well and are easy to serve as part of a healthy breakfast.

Ingredients:

2 cups raw almonds, ground
2 free-range eggs
1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon sea salt (optional)
1 cup fresh or frozen berries (raspberries, blueberries)
1/4 cup chocolate chips
12 muffin liners

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F.
Grind raw almonds until fine.
Mix eggs, coconut oil maple syrup, vanilla and apple cider vinegar in a bowl. Add ground almonds and baking soda. Mix thoroughly.
Fold in berries and sprinkle with chocolate chips.
Evenly distribute batter between 12 muffin cups.
Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes.
ENJOY!!

Also, try this recipe breakfast muffins. It’s another great healthy breakfast idea that you can prepare in advance!

Jo-Anne Richardson, RHN

Jo-Anne Richardson has almost a decade of experience managing a chiropractic office and educating patients on how chiropractic can allow your body to express optimal health. She is a Registered Holistic Nutritionist and holds a Degree in Communications. She loves to experiment with raw vegan recipes, loves to salsa dance, travel and learn new holistic health information to share tips with everyone who visits the office.

Master The Psychology of the Supermarket

July 22, 2020March 7, 2017 by Jo-Anne Richardson, RHN

This information is courtesy of bon appetit and the research they have put together from a massive study on how we buy food.

Here, we summarize the most interesting pieces of information discovered about how supermarkets are designed, how and why we buy what we choose, and how it’s all a trap!!

I want you to be aware of these things the next time you go to the grocery store so you can be mindful about why you’re walking the direction you are, what you are choosing to put in your cart (with which hand!) and how many items you are walking past to get to what you actually wanted in the first place!

The five experts who contributed to the original study are:

• BA senior food editor Dawn Perry
• Environmental psychologist Paco Underhill and author of What Women Want: The Science of Female Shopping
• Architect and supermarket designer Kevin Kelley, of the firm Shook Kelley
• The director of the graduate nutrition program at the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University, Sharon Akabas
• Efficiency expert Gwynnae Byrd

• “Upward of 50 percent of what we buy in a supermarket we had no intention of buying as we walked in the door,” psychologist Underhill says.

• The average supermarket has 64,000 products (you’d have to eat or use more than 175 different products every day for a year before you tried everything once).

• There are too many choices!! With this vast array of options, our brains overload and instead of the two items on our list, we come out with 20! Marketers are really good at getting us to buy stuff we don’t need.

• The primary goal of supermarkets is to subtly convince shoppers to spend more time inside, to give products more opportunities to fly into your cart!

• Very similar to casinos, it is rare to see many indicators of the time, like clocks, skylights, or even windows.

• Dairy is generally in the back corner—the deepest section of the store, because virtually everyone who walks in has some dairy product on their list. (aka stop buying dairy!! check out this blog for the reasons why!)

• About nine in ten people are right-handed, and a counterclockwise route through the store makes it easier for right-handed people to put stuff in their carts. (really!! can you imagine who studied and realized this!)

• Most stores work better with a counterclockwise circulation pattern because you tend to push your cart with your left hand and pick things up with your right hand.

• Of every ten people who walk through the entrance, only one will go down the soda aisle, so supermarkets hijack shoppers’ subconscious to linger in these aisles, often by literally slowing them down with bumpier or tackier floor surfaces. (or giant bins in the centre of the aisle that need stop lights to navigate)

• It is not a coincidence that brightly coloured, sugar-laden cereals with the new kiddie-cartoon craze is on the shelf at knee level – it’s in the perfect line of sight for a six-year-old kid.

• The point of those bite-sized food samples is not only to get you to buy a particular product. It’s to trick your body into thinking it’s hungry. And we all know what happens when we shop hungry!!

These are really interesting points to consider when you are navigating your grocery store. Be aware of these subconscious tricks to get us to buy more, eat more, spend more and consume more and be sure you are only buying what you set out to buy! (Stay in the produce section as much as possible!)

With Sources From:

http://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/how-to/article/supermarket-psychology

Jo-Anne Richardson, RHN

Are You Still Consuming Dairy Products? Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Be!

July 22, 2020January 16, 2017 by Jo-Anne Richardson, RHN

Are you a big fan of dairy milk? Did you know that humans are the only species that drink milk past infancy? Also, we are the only species to drink the milk of another animal – that grows to be 1500 pounds!!

If you are still drinking cow’s milk, it’s time to ask yourself two question. Firstly, are you a calf? Secondly, are you aiming to grow to 1500 pounds?

Dairy milk is specifically designed to nourish a baby cow. It contains all of the nutrients necessary to grow a calf into a healthy, 1500 pound adult cow. The same is true for human breast milk. It is perfectly designed to nourish a developing infant.

Dairy milk contains proteins that are much larger than those in human breast milk. As such, it is very difficult for humans to break it down effectively. Because of this, our body identifies dairy milk as an invader in our system. So in response, our bodies go into defensive mode. Dairy sensitivities and allergies can then develop which can wreak havoc on your immune system long term.

Common Dairy Misconception: But If I Don’t Drink Milk, Where Will I Get My Calcium?

The dairy industry has done an excellent job marketing milk to “protect your bones”. Assigning it as the go-to substance to fulfill your daily requirements for calcium. Studies have reported higher contents of calcium circulating in the blood stream after drinking milk. However, what these studies fail to illustrate is the source of where the calcium came from.

Milk creates a very acidic residue inside the body. In order to maintain a healthy pH internally, it must be buffered immediately by an alkaline balance. Your body’s response to this acidic effect (caused by ingesting milk) is to release calcium stored inside your bones. This will buffer the acidic levels and bring them back to a safe reading.

So, yes. After drinking milk, there is more calcium in your bloodstream. However, this is only because your body had to release it from its own storage inside your bones. For more information on bone health, click here to read, “Calcium without Vitamin K2 is a Heart Breaker”.

So Where Will I Get My Calcium?

Where do cows get their calcium? Greens! It is much easier for your body to break down and assimilate nutrients from fruit and vegetables. Especially compared to breaking down dense, heavy foods like meat and dairy products. Include the following in your diet for great sources of calcium that your body can easily use.

For some great ‘green’ recipes, click here to read, “Happy St. Patrick’s Day Recipes”.

Important Tip:

Focus on magnesium if you are worried about your bone health and calcium levels. The majority of adults are deficient in magnesium. As a result, serious health issues may develop. Having excessive amounts of calcium in the body, while having a deficiency in magnesium, can lead to the following according to Dr. Mercola:

Heart disease
Problems with your heart muscle spasming
Sudden heart attack

Be sure you are getting enough magnesium. Eat your green leafy veggies, beans, nuts, seeds, and avocados.