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Sugar - Many
people's soft spot!
Quite often I am asked about sugar and how to avoid it and the cravings
associated with it. Well, let me
start by saying sugar has never had a grip  on me.
I find it much harder to control myself around
a bag of salty potato chips than I do around a box of chocolates.
However, I believe the principles of healthy
eating and how to avoid excessive sugar consumption are the same as
they are for excess salt consumption. (And
if you ask my husband whose weakness is sweets - I am sure he would
agree!) I face these challenges by
following two simple philosophies....click here
for the rest of the article.
It's
the middle of winter - why is my
produce
market full of fruits?
It's always amazing to me to find so much fruit in the produce
department in the middle of February. Yes,
we live in a "warm" climate - but not that warm! Perhaps
you've noticed the same thing. It's
cold out, maybe even snowy, yet there are fresh peaches at the grocer's.
What's the scoop? Well,
while its winter in North America, its summer in South America and every country
south  of the
equator. While our ground is frozen
and the air too cold for tropical fruit, southern hemisphere countries
are entering bathing suit season and summer sporting events.
Right now, citrus fruits and strawberries are
about the only fruits being grown in
North America.
All of the other fruit is coming either from
storage or right off the boats and planes from far off countries.
With the advent of global shipping, it's no
longer unusual to find fresh fruit all year. But
is it any good? Yes and no.
What I have discovered is that in order to
satisfy both our taste buds and our budgetary constraints, I normally
bypass fruits and vegetables grown half a world away.
It's not just the uncontrolled pesticides that
keep me away. I have often found
that while globally-shipped fruits look quite nice on the outside, the
insides are rotten. Many, many
times I have cut into a beautiful Chilean peach, plum or nectarine to
find the area surrounding the pit to be brown and rotten.
When we owned our large produce store, we
stopped carrying Chilean fruits because of the undetectable center rot.
There was no way to guarantee the quality of
the fruit. I will admit, sometimes
I would be pleasantly surprised by the taste, but not very often.
Right now, we are feasting on American grown
pears,
Florida
strawberries, organic apples, bananas and fresh pineapple.
When
Georgia
and
California
are awash in fresh peaches we will be too, enjoying cobblers and
sorbets. But until then, we'll stick with fresh strawberries and
bananas.
If
you live in the Melbourne area, please join me on March 1. Click Workshops for more detail.
I
now have available My First Cookbook. It will be available at my
cooking demonstrations or order online here.
Also available is my
new ebook: How to Eat
Healthy Without Spending More Time in Your Kitchen or Money in Your
Budget. Click here.
Please
feel free to drop me an email
at
Nancy@veg4health.com
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