Adventures of the Bauer's: food

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Healthy Habits: The Truth About Metabolism

Many theories about metabolism are falsely rooted in the idea that there are particular foods or beverages that will magically increase your ability to burn calories. While most nutritionists agree that eating meals based on whole grains and lean proteins is a healthy diet practice, this approach won't actually help you burn calories faster. Neither will "fat-burning" foods like grapefruit or cabbage.

Here's the truth about other popular metabolism-boosting theories, including the one that actually works.

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Thanks Deal Finding Chik

FREE Halloween Recipe Ideas eCookbook

Want to do some Halloween Baking?! You can click HERE for a FREE eCookbook Download of 23 Quick and Easy Halloween Recipe Ideas!!!

Healthy Habits: 10 Foods That Can Enhance Your Skin and Hair

Natural products containing healthy food ingredients can help you achieve more radiant skin and hair.

You eat a healthy diet, regularly choosing natural foods, so why not follow suit with your beauty routine? Many foods that are healthy to eat also offer powerful benefits for your skin and hair — and they've found their way into a wide variety of beauty products. “A lot of chemicals can cause irritation, while natural ingredients tend to be absorbed well and contain actual antioxidants and enzymes in their purest, most potent form,” says Deborah Longwill, MD, a dermatologist at the Miami Center for Dermatology. Check out these natural ingredients that can aid your beauty regimen.

Olive Oil

Olive Oil

Olive oil has been revered for centuries as a natural moisturizer, and with good reason. “Olive oil is ultrahydrating,” says Dr. Longwill. It creates a barrier that protects dry skin and is particularly helpful for people who have psoriasis or eczema. Use it straight from the bottle — yes, the same olive oil you use to make healthy salad dressings — to slather on after a shower. Or try it as a homemade hair treatment for split ends. “Hair follicles absorb olive oil nicely,” says Longwill. You can find olive oil in numerous skin and hair care products, including soaps, facial washes, moisturizers, shampoos, and conditioners.

Oatmeal

Oatmeal

The buzz about this popular breakfast food usually focuses on its cholesterol-lowering effects, though if you stop there, you’re selling this “superfood” short. Oatmeal can also soothe rashes and irritations caused by poisonous plants, such as poison ivy and oak, as well as pain and itching caused by chicken pox and sunburn. Simply sprinkle some dry oatmeal into a lukewarm bath and soak for 10 minutes. Because of its grainy texture, oatmeal is also ideal for gentle skin exfoliation: Mix with warm water, apply to your face with circular motions, let dry for 10 to 15 minutes, then rinse off.

Honey

Honey

Known as nature’s sweetener, honey is also Mother Nature’s antiseptic — it has been proven to help speed the healing of wounds and superficial burns. Because it kills bacteria, Longwill recommends products that contain honey to her patients with acne. In addition, honey is an effective skin moisturizer. Look for honey in lip balms, soaps, and moisturizers, among other skin care products.

Pumpkin

Pumpkins

“As we progress into our forties, fifties, and beyond, our skin cells turn over less frequently, causing a duller appearance,” says Longwill. That’s where pumpkin can help. It contains an enzyme that gently peels away dead skin, speeding the production of new cells. In addition, pumpkin is rich in essential fatty acids, which hydrate the skin, and the antioxidant vitamins A and C, which fight free radicals that can age skin. Look for pumpkin products in facial and body peels and in treatments for the hair and scalp.

Salmon

Salmon

While you would never apply salmon directly to your face or body, cold-water fish like salmon contain DMAE, short for dimethylaminoethanol, a compound that helps rejuvenate skin. You can get the benefits of DMAE by eating cold-water fish or by applying it to your skin by means of creams and moisturizers, says Longwill. Products that contain DMAE are thought to help firm skin and reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.

Seaweed

Seaweed

Seaweed is a popular skin care ingredient across the globe, especially in Japan and France. It’s rich in vitamins, minerals, and amino acids and is thought to have a host of cosmetic benefits, including reducing inflammation and irritation, cleansing, firming, and softening. Because seaweed is also thought to help improve circulation, it’s a key ingredient in many cellulite-reducing creams and is used in detoxifying body wraps at spas. Several varieties of seaweed are used in skin care products.

Green Tea

Green Tea

The many health benefits of drinking green tea are widely known — it can help reduce cholesterol and may protect against certain cancers and glaucoma. When applied to your skin, green tea is a potent antioxidant that helps skin retain moisture and reduces the appearance of wrinkles, says Longwill. Look for green tea in facial and body washes, masks, and moisturizers. For a refreshing treat, apply green tea bags dampened with cold water to your eyes for 10 to 15 minutes.

Aloe

Aloe

Aloe, which is instantly cooling and soothing, has been used medicinally for years to heal light burns, including those caused by the sun and certain chemicals. Its gel provides a barrier that protects against irritants and bacteria, and it hydrates and reduces inflammation, says Longwill. For the most potent burn relief, break a piece straight from a plant and squeeze the gel directly onto the burn. Moisturizers and other products that contain aloe are generally nonirritating, so they are a good choice for people with sensitive skin.

Acai

Acai Berries

The benefits of this trendy berry are not just hype. Acai berries, found in the Amazon jungle, contain a high concentration of antioxidants, vitamins, and essential fatty acids. When this super food is added to moisturizers, it may help neutralize oxidative stress and protect skin against signs of sun damage. In addition, acai is known to reduce fine lines and wrinkles and to even out skin tone.

Healthy Habits: 10 Easy Portion Control Tricks

Portion control is an important part of maintaining a healthy diet. Here are 10 easy ways to limit what you eat.

When most of us sit down to eat, the last thing we want to think about is portion control. But for anyone on a diet or just looking to maintain their current figure, that’s exactly what they should be doing.

Control Your Portions

Gone are the days of eating a bagel or muffin and feeling safe about its calories. In fact, researchers measured typical servings from takeout restaurants, fast food chains, and family-style eateries and found that bagels were 195 percent larger than the standard set by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), muffins were 333 percent bigger and cooked pasta exceeded the standard by 480 percent. Scariest of all were cookies, which were a whopping seven times the USDA recommended serving size.

Portion Control and Diet: How It Works

The first step in successful portion control is learning the correct serving size — the amount of food recommended by government agencies, such as the Dietary Guidelines for Americans put out by the USDA and Department of Health and Human Services, and the USDA Food Guide Pyramid. The serving size can usually be found by reading nutritional labels. But the portion is the amount of food or drink a person chooses to consume. In many cases, the portion eaten is larger than the serving size simply because we don’t know any better.

Portion Control and Diet: 10 Easy Tips for Smaller Servings

The good news is that with a little practice, portion control is easy to do and can help people be successful in reaching and then maintaining a proper weight.

Here are 10 simple ways to keep your portions a healthy size:

1. Measure accurately. For foods and beverages, use gadgets like a measuring cup, tablespoon, teaspoon, or food scale.

2. Learn how to estimate serving sizes. “‘Ballpark’ food portion sizes by estimating serving sizes in comparison to known objects. For example, three ounces of cooked meat, fish, or poultry is about the size of a deck of cards.” Other easy measurements to eyeball include:

½ cup is the size of an ice cream scoop
1 cup is the size of a tennis ball
1 ounce of cheese is the size of a domino

3. Use portion control dishware. Pick out smaller plates, bowls, cups, and glassware in your kitchen and measure what they hold. You might find that a bowl you thought held 8 ounces of soup actually holds 16, meaning you’ve been eating twice what you planned.

4. Dish out your servings separately. Serve food from the stove onto plates rather than family-style at the table, which encourages seconds.

5. Make your own single-serving packs. “Re-portion bulk quantities of favorite foods such as pasta, rice, and cereal into individual portions in zipper bags so that when you’re in the mood for some food you’ll instantly see the number of portions you’re preparing."

6. Add the milk before the coffee. When possible, put your (fat-free) milk into the cup before adding the hot beverage to better gauge the amount used.

7. Measure oil carefully. This is especially important because oil (even the healthful kinds like olive and safflower) have so many calories; don’t pour it directly into your cooking pan or over food.

8. Control portions when eating out. Eat half or share the meal with a friend. If eating a salad, ask for dressing on the side. Dip your fork into the dressing and then into the salad.

9. Add vegetables. Eat a cup of low-calorie vegetable soup prior to eating a meal, or add vegetables to casseroles and sandwiches to add volume without a lot of calories.

10. Listen to your hunger cues. Eat when hungry and stop when satisfied or comfortably full. “Try to gauge when you are 80 percent full and stop there. There will be more food at the next meal or snack!”

FREEbie: The Perfect Recipe eBook

The recipes in this eBook showcase a variety of Wisconsin cheeses. From breakfast to dessert, the recipes have been adapted for the home kitchen. And in each, Wisconsin Cheese stars, highlighted by the delicious flavor combinations created by some of America's top chefs!!

This makes me want to go to the stove top and cook some of these amazing dishes!! You will, too!!!

Healthy Habits: Get the Right Tools for the Job

So you've cleared your cupboards of hormone-disrupting processed foods and stocked up on fresh vegetables and fruits, organic meats, low-fat organic dairy products, and whole grains. Excellent. You've replaced high-calorie cooking methods like frying with low-calorie methods like baking, roasting, and steaming. Awesome! Now let's take a closer look at another aspect of healthy cooking: your cookware.

See previous related post HERE.

Believe it or not, the pots and pans you cook your food in can have an impact on your metabolism. Some choices are better than others, and I'll start with the good ones:

Cast iron. This classic material conducts heat well and can even add a little iron, an essential nutrient, to your food. Cooking experts recommend seasoning cast-iron pans with vegetable oil so foods won't stick to them.
Porcelain-coated cookware. Pots and pans coated with porcelain are naturally low-stick and easy to clean.
Stainless steel. An alloy of iron and other metals, stainless steel is nontoxic and doesn't react with acidic foods.
Glass. Glass cookware is great for baking and roasting and has the advantage of being microwave safe.

What I'm not so crazy about are pans with chemical nonstick coatings like Teflon. For years, nonstick pans had a great rap because they made cleanup easier and required less butter and oil for lubrication. But in recent years, organizations like the Environmental Working Group have spoken out against Teflon because it contains the chemical perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), which may be released when Teflon is heated. The Environmental Protection Agency has labeled PFOA a likely human carcinogen, and some research has linked it to abnormal levels of thyroid hormone, liver inflammation, and elevated cholesterol. The maker of Teflon has committed to phasing out PFOA by 2015, but until then you're better off using healthy alternatives.

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Healthy Habits: 9 Ways to Eat More Fruits and Vegetables

Get easy tips to incorporate healthy food choices into your diet. Plus, find out the right amount of fruits and vegetables to eat for your individual needs.
Vegetables and fruits have essential fiber, vitamins, and minerals that work to protect you from a variety of chronic diseases and maintain your digestive health. So how many fruits and vegetables do you need to eat each day for optimal health, and how can you easily incorporate more into your diet?
Add fruits and vegetables to your diet

What Are the Right Amounts for You?
To maintain a healthy body and good digestive health, eat fiber-rich fruits and vegetables in the right amounts for your age, sex, and level of physical activity. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now offer guidelines in cups rather than number of servings, as they did previously, so you can better understand portion sizes.
The CDC daily recommends the following amounts of vegetables per day for these age categories:
Girls and women

9 to 13	2 cups
14 through 50	2.5 cups
51 and over	2 cups

Boys and men

9 to 13	2.5 cups
14 through 50	3 cups
51 and over	2.5 cups

The recommended amounts of fruit are a bit smaller:
Girls and women

9 to 18	1.5 cups
19 through 30	2 cups
31 and over	1.5 cups

Boys and men

9 to 13	1.5 cups
18 and over	2 cups

If you’re active for 30 minutes or more each day, you may need to eat more fruits and vegetables than these guidelines indicate because you will be burning more calories. You can use the CDC’s fruits and vegetables calculator to find portion recommendations based on your level of physical activity.
A Cup Here, a Cup There
It’s fairly simple to meet — and exceed — these goals through your daily meals and snacks, says Susan Kraus, MS, RD, a registered dietitian at the Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack, N.J.
If you start your day with an 8-ounce glass of fruit juice at home — which is often also the size served at a restaurant — that’s already one full cup of your daily fruit requirement. One piece of whole fruit, like an apple, banana, or pear, counts as one cup, too — perfect for a mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack.
As for your daily requirement of vegetables, if you’re already eating a cup of vegetables with dinner, it might only take adding a salad to put you over the top — just toss a cup of greens with a one-cup medley of tomatoes, cucumber slices, and red bell pepper rings. Pre-mix a larger amount to keep in the fridge for meals and snacks, suggests Kraus.
Picking the Best Produce
When buying fruits and vegetables, pick yourself a rainbow. “Choosing a rainbow of colors helps to guarantee that you get various types of nutrients, since the various nutrients are what impart color to the fruits and veggies,” explains Kraus. By eating green broccoli and grapes, yellow squash and pineapple, orange carrots and cantaloupe, red apples and strawberries, purple plums and eggplant, and blueberries, you’ll get the widest range of nutrients plus both soluble and insoluble fiber for better digestive health.
9 Ways to Meet Your Needs
Here are nine tips to help meet your daily goals for fruits and vegetables:
1. Try it raw. Not only are raw vegetables good for you, it's typically easier to get children to eat vegetables raw. Try serving vegetables at the start of a meal, when kids are hungriest and less likely to reject them; you can offer them with a low-fat dip to add flavor. Then enjoy some yourself.
2. Eat fiber-filled fruit with breakfast. It's easy to include fruit in the morning. Slice a variety of fruits, like peaches, plums, nectarines, and various berries, to add to cold or cooked cereal or to top French toast, waffles, or pancakes instead of syrup. “If you like yogurt in the morning, make a parfait by layering assorted cut-up fruit with yogurt and a high-fiber cereal,” says Kraus. If you don’t have time for a sit-down breakfast, grab a handful of grapes or an apple to take with you.
3. Make your own yogurt toppers. Top low-fat or fat-free yogurt with fresh berries and low-fat or fat-free granola for breakfast.
4. Excite your eggs. Add chopped vegetables like mushrooms and peppers to omelets or egg scrambles.
5. Switch “sides.” Skip the greasy fries and choose corn on the cob, a tossed salad, or a high-fiber bean medley. Or grill a batch of vegetables, such as eggplant, peppers, onions, and mushrooms, or fruits, like pineapple, peaches, bananas, and apples. “They’re good hot or cold,” says Kraus.
6. Add vegetables to pasta. Use olive oil to sauté vegetables of your choice, such as tomatoes, cauliflower, eggplant, zucchini, and onions, and toss with whole-grain pasta for a delicious pasta primavera.
7. Pick better pizza toppings. Opt for a veggie-topped pizza rather than choosing fatty meat toppings or extra cheese.
8. Dish up the dried fruit. Pack some dried fruit to eat on the run, perhaps mixed with a handful of seeds or nuts. Remember that 1/4 cup of dried fruit equals 1/2 cup of fresh fruit.
9. In a pinch, frozen is fine. Especially in winter months when fresh choices are limited or expensive, try buying a bag of frozen berries or broccoli. “Using frozen fruits and veggies is a great option for out-of-season produce — they’ve been processed within an hour of harvesting, so the flavor and nutritional value are usually well preserved,” says Kraus. If you’re purchasing frozen produce that includes sauce, look for a low-fat, low-calorie option — or better yet, buy frozen produce with no sauce and season it yourself.
With a little ingenuity, you can enjoy a variety of fruits and vegetables to keep your diet interesting and healthy every day.
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Add this ingredient to help you shed pounds!!

Idea from EatingWell in Healthy Eating

My husband and I are fairly active people, but I'm always looking for more ways to shed a few pounds. (Who isn’t, right?) So when I read that adding more fiber to your diet can help you lose weight, I started to think about where I could sneak in some extra fiber during the day.

We already get a decent amount of fiber at breakfast and dinner, so lunch seemed like a good experiment. Especially when I realized I could turn some leftover dinner ingredients into high-fiber lunches.

Here are 4 easy ideas:

• One of my favorite quick lunch solutions is to make a big pot of soup over the weekend. Homemade soup tastes a lot better than canned and I can control what goes in it. One of my cold-weather favorites is Cumin-Scented Wheat Berry-Lentil Soup, packed with heart-healthy, fiber-rich wheat berries and lentils. We eat some for dinner, then I freeze the leftovers in individual containers. That way, it won’t go bad before I use it, and I can just grab a container from the freezer when I’m making my lunch.

• Rice & Lentil Salad—Turn leftover cooked brown rice into a simple salad with canned cooked lentils and a delicious sherry vinaigrette.

• Mediterranean Tuna Antipasto Salad—Packed with protein and fiber, this tuna and bean salad is ready in a flash. Serve with warm, crusty bread or pack it in a pita for a sandwich. For an extra kick, add a pinch of crushed red pepper or cayenne.

• Curried Chicken Pita—Roasting a chicken for dinner is a pretty easy meal, and I always turn leftover meat into chicken salad. I like the sweet touch that cranberries and pear add to this tangy curried chicken salad. Toasted sliced almonds add a nutty crunch.

4 Waste-Free Lunches To Go: Green Eating!!

Idea from EatingWell in Healthy Eating

You all might stone me when I say this, but sometimes I make my husband’s lunch. I know, I know, it’s so very June Cleaver, but hear me out. If I didn’t make him lunch he would most definitely resort to a slice of greasy pizza or a fast-food value meal. Instead, I sometimes would make him Pizza Roll-Up Bento Lunch. It’s healthier than grabbing a couple slices of pizza, costs far less than take-out and I like to make it in reusable containers, following these 5 principles of Japanese-style bento boxes. The containers cut down on waste, keeps us from spending on bags and allows me to perfectly portion servings sizes.

Pizza Roll-Up Bento Lunch: This easy pizza-inspired roll-up is a kid-pleaser. Make crunchy vegetables more appealing by selecting colorful varieties like orange and purple cauliflower—and don’t forget the dip! Keep ’em smiling with watermelon cut into fun shapes with cookie cutters.

Salmon Salad Bento Lunch: Watercress acts as a tasty divider between the salmon salad and crackers. Multicolored peppers and grapes add color to this bento and boost your daily servings of fruits and veggies.

Soy-Lime Tofu & Rice Bento Lunch: Tofu, rice and vegetables are classic bento ingredients. Make extra rice for dinner and roll leftovers into balls for lunch. To keep green veggies vibrant and crisp, cook them briefly and immediately dunk them into a bowl of ice water. You can also use cubed store-bought baked tofu in place of the roasted tofu.

Egg Salad Bento Lunch: This egg salad bento box is a hearty lunch and snack all in one. Spoon the egg salad into a lettuce “bowl” to keep it looking pretty and enjoy with cocktail bread and veggies. Toss banana and blueberries with yogurt to keep the bananas from turning brown. Save the chocolate chips and pistachios for an afternoon pick-me-up.

5 Ways to Eat Green at Work

Idea from EatingWell in Healthy Eating

Increasingly, employers are encouraging and rewarding healthy behaviors. We’ve gathered 5 great ideas from employers all over the country to inspire you to eat healthy and be green at work. Want even more ideas? Read a special report about 5 employers—of all kinds and sizes—that are helping their staffers to eat and live well.

Great Idea #1

Stock healthy snacks—like the fresh fruit and nuts that managers at Chandler Chicco Agency, a healthcare PR firm in New York City, bring into the office each week.

Great Idea #2

Ditch the vending machine and replace it with a refrigerator, as NRG Systems in Hinesburg, Vermont, did to save energy (the machines are notorious guzzlers). They also got rid of a tempting junk-food showcase; now the fridge is stocked with water, 100% fruit juices and other healthy beverages, and employees help themselves. Read more about NRG Systems’ green choices.

Great Idea #3

Send in the farm: once a week, a local farm delivers a CSA (community supported agriculture) "share" of fresh produce to Laloo’s, a goat-milk ice cream company in Petaluma, California. From the bounty, the 15 staffers prepare communal lunches (three days a week).

Great Idea #4

Call in a healthy caterer instead of ordering pizzas to sustain your team during seminars or late work nights. Employees of Boeing and Starbucks (corporate office) turn to Organic To Go, a quick-service food retailer that also does delivery and corporate catering in Seattle, Los Angeles and Orange County, California. The company’s fresh organic line includes a big selection of wraps, salads and sandwiches—available buffet-style or packed into individual lunch bags (along with apple slices, bottled water and a homemade cookie).

Great Idea #5

Demand change—like college students across the country who rallied to bring local foods to campus cafeterias and won. When the University of Vermont’s food service, Sodexho, responded to students’ requests for local foods, it shifted $50,000 of purchasing to area farmers in 8 weeks. Your vote matters so find that comment box at your work café and use it or present an idea of “Going Green” to your Administrator.

Does your workplace make it easy or hard to eat healthy food? Comment below and share your thoughts...