Green Energy Smoothies - Drink your Vitamins

Drink your vitamins !

(recipe  from Shutterbean)

• 1 1/2 cups orange juice
• 1 frozen banana, cut into 2 inch pieces
• 1/2 cup kale leaves, chopped with center stalk & stem removed
• 1/2 Bosc pear, chopped
• 2 pitted Medjool dates, coarsely chopped

Combine orange juice & kale in a blender and blend until there are no recognizable kale bits. It should be completely smooth. Add the banana, pear & chopped dates to the blender. Puree until smooth, scraping the sides down if needed. Divide between two 12 oz. glasses and serve.

Kale Spinach and Pear Smoothie (recipe Joy the Baker)

1 heaping cup spinach leaves

1 heaping cup chopped kale leaves

1/2 pear

1 frozen banana

1 1/2 cups cold almond milk (or soy milk or orange juice)

1 tablespoon honey

Remove kale leaves from their rough center stalk and coarsely chop.  In a blender, combine kale spinach and almond milk.  Blend until no big kale bits remain.  Stop blender and add banana honey and pear.  Blend until smooth.  Enjoy immediately.

Sunblocks and Vitamin D Deficiency

We're now being warned that high UV sun blocks may be causing a Vitamin D deficiency, The EU recommend 5 micrograms of Vitamin D daily.

Sources of Vitamin D other than sunlight include:
 cod liver oil
sardines
salmon
egg yolks
tinned tuna
mackerel

Eggs and Cholestrol

A recent study at Surrey University involoving volunteers eating two eggs a day for 12 weeks found that none of the participants had raised cholestrol levels.

Eggs actually contain less cholestrol now than they did 10 years ago due to a change in the chickens diet. Chickens are no longer fed on bone meal but on a mix of cereal grains and high protein making egg far more nutritious and lower in cholestrol.

A typical medium sized egg aill contain about 100mg of cholestrol, a third of the US recommended daily limit of 300mg.

Strawberries health benefits

Just 10 strawberries will provide you with the recommended daily amount of Vitamin C.

10 strawberries contain only 27 calories & 0g fat.

Strawberries are a source of folic acid.

Strawberries are high in omega-3 fatty acids.

Eating butter and cheese 'doesn't increase risk of heart attacks'

It's great news for cheese and butter fans - scientists have found that eating dairy food doesn't increase your risk of a heart attack.

Nutritionists surveyed thousands of middle-aged people and found that even those who ate more than half a kilo of cheese did not seem to suffer from increased risk.
Contrary to earlier beliefs that saturated fat might lead to a heart attack, researchers found that nutrients in dairy products actually counteract the harmful effects.
Researcher Stella Aslibekyan, of Brown University, Rhode Island, where the research was carried out, said: 'Things like milk and cheese are very complex substances.
'We looked at heart attack risk and dairy products in their entirety and then looked at separate components of those dairy products, including fats, and it turns out that the results are null. 
'Perhaps the evidence is not there.'
Her team doesn't believe the saturated fats in dairy products are harmless, but suggest other nutrients such as calcium, vitamin D and potassium may protect against heart disease for all but those who ate the most of them in their study.
Their findings, taken from 3,630 Costa Rican men, are published in the Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases journal.
They found the dairy intake of people who had heart attacks was no different to the intake of people who did not.
Looking at how much dairy food they ate, there was no link between consumption and heart attack risk, even among those who consumed as much as 593 grams a day.
When the researchers accounted for other factors such as smoking, alcohol and exercise, there was still no difference, statistically.
Dr Ana Baylin said: 'The message is that it is important to look at the net effect of whole foods and dietary patterns and not only isolated nutrients.'

dailymail.co.uk - 5-20-11