So I had to try them out again just to get a fresh opinion.

Sardines rock!  They’re so good.  All you have to do is dump them in a bowl, add a lot of mustard, mix it together, and put them on some toast and you have a beautifully tasty meal.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I think people who don’t like sardines just haven’t tried them with mustard (mustard is a good approach to hiding strange flavors, as you may have gathered from the liver mcnuggets post.)  Also, if sardines aren’t packaged or processed right their flavor will really suffer. You can get good sardines at Costco, or online at Vital Choice seafood.

Sardines are high in omega-3 fatty acids.  They are low on the food chain, and thus are very low in mercury.  Not only do they contain a lot of omega-3, sardines also contain a lot of iron, selenium, vitamin D, vitamin B12, phosphorus, potassium, protein, and coenzyme Q-10.  Sardines are good for your heart, brain, joints, and pretty much everything else.  Yes, sardines are very good for you!  You can read more about sardines at Associated Content, or better yet, at whfoods.org.

Sardines can have a lot of histamine, which isn’t a problem unless you’re sensitive or have urticaria or hives.  Check out an article about histamine avoidance if you’re curious.

If you get quality sardines and you like fish, you’ll probably love them right out of the can.  But mixing them with mustard has never failed at making them a hit for me.  I have not tried them on the kids yet because we haven’t yet incorporated them into our routine like we have with salmon.  That’s on my agenda, and I’ll let you know what they think by posting a comment.

A tin of sardines

I made some Indian Chili with Avocado tonight.  I love the recipe.  Isaac wanted some right after it was made, but it was still very hot.  So what did I do?

I added ice cubes of course!  But cooling with ice creates a problem: it waters down your food as it melts.

Science Lesson

If there’s one thing I’ve learned while studying free radicals and natural products in a laboratory, it’s that a standard freezer has a temperature of -20ºC.  But (and this is important) ice begins to melt at 0ºC.

So what?  Well, that means that you have 20 degrees of cooling power in an ice cube before it starts to melt!  Isn’t that amazing?!

Real-world Application

I put my neurons to work on Isaac’s quandary.  Because I care about the little guy, I didn’t want his chili to be watery, so I added six ice cubes immediately out of the freezer, stirred madly for ten seconds, then scooped the cubes into the sink.  They were a little melted around the edges, but were not that much smaller.  The magic?  His chili was the perfect temperature, but it wasn’t watery!  I put those extra 20 degrees of cooling power to work.

The bottom line for cooling without watering down

The bottom line is this: when you have hot soup, stew, or chili you want to cool down without watering down, add a lot of ice cubes, stir them in quickly, and then discard them just after they start to melt.  This way you get maximum cooling power with minimum wateriness.  Oh, and it helps if you have a lot of ice cubes on hand.

I should teach this concept to Isaac.  Naahh…It’s his bed time.  Maybe he’ll read this some day.

That said, I cannot stress more whole-heartedly the benefits that you will receive by feeding your family right. I have listed below a few of the benefits of health and nutrition, although the list can go on much longer.

Avoiding Disease

• Put simply, the top ten killers in the United States are diet related. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, overweight, stroke, and the rest have significant ties with the foods we eat. Virtually all chronic disease is preventable, and nutrition is one of the tip-top factors in this.

Energy Levels

• Our biochemistry thrives on what we were designed to eat. One of the best ways to get prolonged energy throughout the day is to feed your body what it needs to keep the metabolism running efficiently and quickly– so that you become efficient and quick. Additionally, your energy will naturally increase as a by-product of making healthy food choices.

A Healthy Foundation for Children

• The buds of cancer start in a child’s early years, long before they grow old. This is because their cells are dividing most rapidly at this time. But adequate nutrition can significantly reduce the damage that causes cancer. For lifelong health, it is necessary that children have a healthy foundation. Health coaching provides hands-on, practical knowledge of how to get kids and teens eating what is healthy and enjoying it. Their brains, bodies, and little organs will benefit for years to come.

Saving Money

• All other benefits aside, the money savings involved in eating healthy are well worth it. Unexpected health problems can significantly drain a family’s finances, and healthy lifestyle is directly associated with the prevention of many diseases. In addition, a healthier family means more time doing what we like to do and need to do, and less time nursing sicknesses. Last year in the United States, the cost of insuring the average family of four was $11,500.(1) Investing in a healthy eating plan is much less costly, yet it provides much greater dividends.

1. I bring a big tub of pre-washed spring mix, spinach, or lettuce to work on Monday. I keep it in the fridge, alongside a nice bottle of healthy salad dressing.  The big Costco-sized bag lasts me half the week, or the whole week if I ration it.
2. I also bring a pre-mixed bag of toppings. And no, they’re not sundae toppings, they’re raw nuts and dried fruit type stuff.  A good combo to get you started is: pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds), sunflower seeds, and golden raisins.
3. Oh, and I keep a fork and plate in the drawer. Anything else for the salad?  I don’t think so… not unless it’s an extra special day.

That’s it.  Here’s a photo for some eye candy (this was an extra special day with smoked salmon):

Why Vitamin D and Omega-3?

Scientists are unraveling a link between Vitamin D levels and susceptibility to respiratory infections. Low Vitamin D levels are cited with the fact that colds, pneumonia, and especially the flu are confined to winter months, when exposure to sunlight is most limited.  It’s no mere coincidence. And Omega-3 fatty acids (like DHA and EPA) are important in preventing your immune system from causing excess damage.

Vitamin D and Omega-3 (both found in cod liver oil) greatly diminish flu problems in two ways:

1. Vitamin D is necessary for immune cell production of anti-microbial peptides. These peptides, spurred only by vitamin D, are indispensable for directly killing the influenza virus.  Without Vitamin D, the immune system is greatly crippled.
2. Vitamin D and Omega-3’s help lower respiratory inflammation. Often, what is worse than the actual infection itself is the body’s response to the infection.  This is no less true with the flu and swine flu.  Without the calming effects of vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids, the body often damages itself by an over-reactive immune response, making the infection worse.  Over-reactive immunity is analogous to “friendly fire” in a war zone.  Without vitamin D and omega-3, your body will end up killing itself trying to fight the enemy.

Action Steps

1. Get cod liver oil. Cod liver oil can be found at your health food store.  TwinLabs is the best “cheap” brand, while Carlson’s and Nordic Naturals are the highest quality (and highest priced).  Consider lemon-flavored.  Don’t get emulsified (comment if you’re curious why).
2. Feed it to your family by the teaspoonful every day. Cod liver oil doesn’t taste bad (if it’s fresh), although most people aren’t used to the buoyancy of pure oil on their tongue.  It “don’t seem right.”  Therefore, I give you permission to gently bribe your kids with a treat (eek!).  After swallowing the oil they can have a chewable vitamin!  (By the way, this last tactic worked for us when we started cod liver oil a few years ago with Isaac.  Now they eat it without bribery.  Anika loves it unconditionally because she’s had it from infancy.)
3. Read more about Vitamin D.

Alternatively, you can get separate Vitamin D tablets or capsules and fish oil capsules.  This is fine.  You can smash vitamin D easily and since it doesn’t have a taste, you can sprinkle it in the child’s food.  The food needs to have fat in it for proper absorption of the Vitamin D. Vitamin D capsules have the added benefit of allowing you to load up quickly by giving a more concentrated form of Vitamin D.  But you shouldn’t give anyone more than 2,000 IU for extended periods.  Post-menopausal women should not eat cod liver oil because they lack the hormones that would handle the Vitamin A correctly.

Vitamin D is not the only factor in susceptibility to bad respiratory infections.  A healthy diet full of whole foods is an important protection.  But increasing your levels of Vitamin D is so easy, and can make such a vast improvement in your health, that I recommend you purchase it as soon as you can.

Oh, and don’t forget to make sure you’re getting enough zinc in your diet!  Zinc is also essential for the immune system, but that’s for another post.

Good luck and flourish.

Nick

The problem was, I wanted food

1. I wanted it FAST
2. I wanted it healthy
3. And I wanted it real (as in, like a meal)

Kind of hard to do, right? Years ago I might have stopped at step one, but this time I used a few brain cells, got creative, and saw that we had some rinsed romaine in the salad spinner in the fridge.

SCORE.

It pays to have prepared food at times like this. But what substantial food could I add to the lettuce?

AHA! Black beans in the pantry. I didn’t want to spend the time heating them and cleaning a pan, though. So I opened them, drained them, put them in a bowl an added a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar and a tablespoon of olive oil. Then I mixed it up with a fork and spread it over the romaine.

That was it.  It was gone in a few minutes, AND IT WAS VERY ENJOYABLE.

So what’s the point of this story?

The point is:

1. It’s a good idea to have a meal plan, but…
2. If you don’t have a meal plan, it’s good to have some healthy, fresh food prepared. And…
3. If you don’t have healthy fresh food prepared, at least you can have some healthy items stocked in the pantry.
4. THUS… it’s not necessarily hard to eat healthy in a hurry (if you take a few minutes to get some helpful tips and info)

So, what should you do?

We’re in the process of putting together some FREE QUICK TIPS on eating healthy.  Sign up and we’ll start sending them to you as they’re ready.

His wife just wrote a blog post about their children’s experiences being raised in a nutrition-conscious family. Their three-year-old’s first exposure to a chocolate chip cookie is pretty funny. They’ve come to the same belief we have: you can’t keep your kids in a bubble forever. The point is to train them to love healthy eating and then send them off to govern themselves as they grow older.

To learn more, read the blog post or go to the official site of Disease Proof Your Child.

Please comment and tell us your biggest challenge in eating healthier.  It could be anything, but here are a few guesses at what you might want to know:

• You want food knowledge. i.e. “I don’t know for sure what’s healthy.  I keep hearing all these recommendations but it’s overwhelming.”
• You want to learn to eat healthy in a hurry. i.e. “Finding time to cook healthy food is difficult.”
• You need a crash course in child psychology. i.e. “My kids are picky.  Whenever I feed them healthy food they turn up their noses.”
• Or whatever else…

So let us know.  We look forward to hearing about it!