For Active Lifestyles On The Go!
March 12, 2009 at 1:56 pm · Filed under Health
Try these quick-grab prepared foods that pump up your health:
- Smoothies – Those made with whole fruits, vegetables and yogurt are full of antioxidants, fiber, and calcium.
- Mini Yogurt Packs – Yogurt has 100 more milligrams of calcium per serving than milk. Go for those with no added sugar.
- Trail Mix – Dried fruits are full of antioxidants. And nuts offer vitamin E, protein and healthy fats. Both are high in calories, so a small handful will do.
- Frozen Fruits and Vegetables – They’re processed at the peak of freshness.
- Instant Oatmeal – High in fiber and iron, this whole grain beats back heart disease. Skip the flavored, sugary packs.
- Whole Grain Cereals and Frozen Waffles – Fiber-rich whole grains offer lots of nutrients like cancer-fighting selenium and heart-healthy potassium and magnesium.
- Low-Sodium, Low-Fat Soups – Try vegetable, bean, or chicken noodle for about 90-170 calories per cup, 2 grams of fat, and 90-470 milligrams of sodium (your daily limit should hover at 2,300 milligrams of sodium).
- Nut Butters – Add cashew or almond butter to your peanut butter routine. They’re full of healthy unsaturated oils and protein – but watch the calories.
March 5, 2009 at 3:54 pm · Filed under Nutrition
In today’s world of fast foods, packaged and processed snacks, and sugar laden soft drinks, teaching your children about healthy eating habits can be a real challenge. But while it’s true that temptation is all around, it’s still possible to instill a healthy nutritional foundation in your children. In fact, now more than ever parents need to take responsibility to help their children avoid the obesity trap. The key: the earlier you start, the better.
The foundation for teaching kids about good nutrition should be laid when they are babies. Medical editor Dr. Michael Breen in Chicago suggests that parents should expose young children to new foods regularly, but separately. For example, one week you might introduce your toddler to broccoli, and the next week black beans. Breen also recommends introducing a new food alongside a child’s favorite food.
Children Do As You Do, Not As You Say
Another finding, which may not be what some parents want to hear, is that if you want your kids to eat well, you need to practice what you preach. A March 2000 study presented by the American Heart Association found a strong connection between parents who exhibited impulsive eating and obesity in their children. It’s important for parents to realize that children are being influenced by their own eating habits even if the child is not participating directly in it.
Take for example, a mother who eats a pint of ice cream out of the container while watching television with her 5 year old. While the child did not eat the ice cream them self, and in fact may only be allowed moderate portions of ice cream on occasion, the behavior of their mother is still indirectly influencing their attitude, opinions, and eventually their own eating habits.
Another interesting point brought up by this study is that parents who scored highest on the dietary restraint scale (which is a scale that measures an individual’s effort to restrict food intake) had children whose body fat was consistently higher than parents who scored lower on the scale. This suggests that parents who attempt to exert too much control over their child’s eating (I.E. “Finish all your pasta before you play” or “No dessert until you clear your plate”, etc.) may cause the child to lose their ability to regulate and recognize their own hunger cues.
So besides starting early, practicing what you preach and introducing new foods regularly, what else can you do as a parent to help foster a healthy nutritional foundation in your child? Here are some other simple tips to get you on your way:
- Limit soda to special occasions only, and instead offer water and no sugar added juices to drink. One really healthy and fun snack for kids is real fruit smoothies. They pack in the nutritional punch as well as taste so good!
- Use milk containing no more than 2% milk fat, 1% or skim is preferred
- Don’t completely restrict foods (unless of course your child has an allergy to that food). Restricting and banning certain foods tends to backfire and cause the child to seek the forbidden food even more.
- When introducing new foods, don’t force your child to eat it. If they taste it and express dislike, don’t make them finish the food. Instead, put it aside and re-introduce it in a few months, perhaps prepared differently. For example, if they didn’t like cauliflower the first time around, in a few months make it with a tasty sauce.
- Breakfast is important! If you have a child that isn’t particularly fond of traditional “breakfast foods”, a small portion of leftover dinner will do the trick. The goal is to get the metabolism going and prevent overeating at lunch or snack time from excessive hunger..
February 19, 2009 at 2:08 pm · Filed under MixStirs Smoothie Franchise
Many of our members have responded to their current economic challenges by increasing their focus on customer service. They are working with their service staff now more than ever to ensure that their servers are genuinely friendly, smile, and are willing to go the extra mile to take the best possible care of their guests.
Creating warm, fuzzy feelings with your guests and earning a reputation for having the friendliest staff in town is definitely something to shoot for. But there’s still no substitute for operational competence, i.e. good food, clean restrooms and no surprises.
Operational competence, the ability to deliver a quality dining experience, consistently over and over depends on having good systems. While having the friendliest, most personable staff in the world is certainly a plus, it won’t make up for a kitchen that can’t get it right.
Good systems help ensure that things get done right the first time so your guests can expect the same quality experience every time they come in.
Improving your customer service in these challenging times is a smart way to give your guests a reason to choose your restaurant more often. But don’t forget that good customer service depends on good systems, not just smiles.
February 18, 2009 at 3:44 pm · Filed under Health, Nutrition
It’s common knowledge that ideally, for optimum health, people should eat a balanced diet rich in fruits and vegetables. But the reality is that most people fall short of that ideal, leaving them with a diet that is severely lacking in essential vitamins and minerals. Luckily, there are ways to compensate for a less-than-perfect diet. Vitamin and mineral supplements are a great way to fill the gaps left by your diet, or to provide a potential boost in the vitality and health of anyone.
Most dieticians and doctors will agree that it’s best to consume most of your vitamins through the foods you eat rather than through a pill. One reason for this is that vitamins in healthy foods work in conjunction with other elements in the food that are not found in supplements alone. In other words, the combined effect of the vitamins with other nutrients hold a stronger punch than vitamin supplements alone. But that’s not to say that supplements hold no value, of course.
In certain groups, in fact, vitamin supplements are imperative. It is recommended that all pregnant women, for example, consume folic acid supplements regardless of their diet to help prevent debilitating birth defects like spina bifida. Doctors also suggest that dark skinned people and people lacking regular sunlight should take vitamin D supplements. Senior citizens should take B12 complexes, and the list goes on and on.
While their potential to improve health is great, too much of a good thing can be wasteful at best, dangerous at worst. Certain supplements, like vitamins E and A for example, can be toxic in high doses so care must be taken to keep track of your supplement regimen.
While there are still naysayers who dispute the benefit of taking vitamin supplements when the diet is balanced, the fact is that when taken in appropriate doses, vitamin supplements carry little true risks, yet offer great potential benefits, such as reduced risk of cancer and heart disease.
February 17, 2009 at 11:29 am · Filed under Health, Nutrition, Smoothies
Most physical activity requires a lot of time and physical demand on your body, so taking in the proper nutrients is of the utmost importance. Whether you are Mr. Universe or an MMA champion consuming the proper amount of proteins, fats and carbohydrates will give your body the energy to get through those grueling workouts and, in addition, grant you a healthy lifestyle in the long run.
So what about the different nutrients that your body takes in? Why is it so important? How much and when should you be eating? When devising your daily meal plan always divide up all your nutrients that you should be taking in over the course of 5 meals. You want to feed your body every 3-4 hours. Giving it the nutrients that it needs throughout the course of the day will maximize energy levels and consumption of vitamins and minerals.
Let’s start with protein. Everyone knows the common cliché that protein is only meant for bodybuilders who want to gain muscle. This is totally untrue. The rule for protein intake can stretch across all athletes, particularly MMA fighters. Protein is the one type of calorie that your body does not store for energy. Lack of protein throughout the day will cause you to feel sluggish, weak and in the long run you will lose overall muscle on your body. General rule for protein is that it should be taken in with every meal. Great sources of protein are chicken and turkey breast, lean red meat, fish, eggs and protein shakes. All of these sources are very low in saturated fat and will help you complete your daily protein needs.
Consumption of fats in your daily meal plan is also important and essential. Fats are needed to sustain energy levels in the body and to help in muscle repair after a
grueling workout. Try and stay away from foods that are high in saturated fat such as fried or fast food, really fatty cuts of beef and corn oils. These are the fats that will make you fat and that can raise your cholesterol levels, potentially giving you heart problems. The fats that your body needs to sustain high levels of energy are low in saturated fats but higher in mono-saturated and poly-saturated fats. These fats help you get through your training and in addition will actually help your cholesterol levels. Great fats to eat are nuts (almonds, walnuts, peanuts or cashews), fish (salmon, tuna, tilapia and cod), eggs, lean cuts of beef (sirloin or fillet), peanut butter, and olive oil. These fats should be used moderately throughout the day with almost every meal to sustain your performance levels.
Carbohydrates are also very important to the body because it replenishes the body of the simple sugars and starches that it needs to function at optimal performance. The two best times to take in starches are in the morning and after you workout. In both cases your body is depleted: in the morning from sleeping from 6-8 hours and not eating and after a workout when your body’s blood sugar levels have been drained from intense exercise. In both instances, carbohydrates are needed to replenish the body and to get it out of a catabolic effect, when your body burns muscle. Great carbohydrates to eat during these times are oatmeal, sweet or baked potatoes and white/brown rice. All of these sources are slower to digest and your body will utilize them throughout the day.
Carbohydrates to stay away from are breads, fast foods, pasta and refined sugars such as cakes and other desserts. These sources will spike your sugar levels in the body, making you feel very lethargic and will be stored in the body as fat. Fruits and vegetables also play an important part in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Vegetables such as salad, broccoli, cauliflower and asparagus give your body lots of vitamins and nutrients. Fruits such as apples, oranges, berries and bananas also provide the body with antioxidants to fight off any sicknesses.
Two of the highlights of this article above are on protein and carbohydrates. Protein is mentioned as a necessity with every meal and carbohydrates are mentioned as a necessity after a work out. For those who are familiar with a smoothie, it is all fruit and juice which is primarily carbohydrates.
February 5, 2009 at 11:21 am · Filed under MixStirs Smoothie Franchise
November 4, 2008 at 11:48 pm · Filed under Smoothies
Send a few simple ingredients for a wild ride in a blender and you’ll have delicious, nutritious, kid-pleasing smoothies in mere seconds.
Smoothies pull double duty by quenching thirst and satisfying hunger at the same time. Quick and easy to prepare, smoothies can be an ideal between-meal snack.
What We Love About Smoothies :
- They taste as bright and pretty as they look.
- They’re a great way to sneak more fiber and antioxidants into your kids. (But all they’ll care about is the taste.)
- They don’t require a lot of fussy ingredients.
- They give new life to overripe fruit.
- They can be easily tailored to suit individual needs.
- Even kids with dairy allergies can enjoy fabulous fruit or vegetable smoothies.
Find a MixStirs in your neighborhood and give your kids a smoothie they will enjoy!!!
October 23, 2008 at 4:20 pm · Filed under Smoothies
We don’t mean looking in the mirror after 10 pints of Stella, either – root vegetables such as parsnips are high in potassium, which strengthens hair and nails, while the carrots, peppers and melon are full of skin-healing and cleansing vitamins A and C.
Ingredients
2 peeled carrots
1 ½ peeled and diced
Galia melon
1 peeled parsnip
1 deseeded green pepper
100ml fresh orange juice
Blend all the fruit and veggies together, adding the juice at the end to improve the drink’s texture and give an extra boost of vitamin C.
October 16, 2008 at 5:16 pm · Filed under Health, Nutrition
While the media focus on low-carb vs. low-fat diets, they tend to miss the point about high-protein diets. It’s well known in the fitness industry that higher protein intakes help with fat loss. For one thing, protein helps control appetite.
Most bodybuilding nutritionists recommend that 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight is effective for building muscle and burning fat in normal-weight men and women. But overweight individuals should have more.
A study published in The Nutrition Journal tested the effect of supplemental protein intake on weight loss in 100 obese men and women. All of the subjects received two protein-enriched meal replacement shakes per day. But half received a total of 1 extra gram of protein per pound of lean body mass per day. And the other half received a total of 0.5 extra grams of protein per pound of lean body mass per day.
At the end of 12 weeks, both groups had lost approximately 8 to 9 pounds of weight, but the higher-protein group had lost more fat (3.6 pounds vs. 1.32 pounds).
You can get protein from nuts (a few grams per ounce), beans, tofu, peanut butter, lentils, peas, bananas, apples, oranges, sesame seeds, the list goes on.
If you want to lose fat, a little extra protein can go a long way.
October 10, 2008 at 4:27 pm · Filed under Health, Nutrition
CoQ10 helps the heart pump blood
Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), a nutrient that occurs naturally in every cell in the body, improved blood-vessel function and increased peak exercise capacity in those with heart disease, in two new studies.
In a coronary artery disease (CAD) study, researchers recruited 33 men and five women, average age 55, who had CAD and whose hearts pumped blood normally, to take 300 mg of CoQ10 in three 100 mg does per day or a placebo for one month. Doctors measured the activity of an important antioxidant enzyme, superoxide dismutase or SOD on blood vessel walls, which declines in CAD. Those who had taken CoQ10 had a 29% increase in SOD activity compared to 4% for placebo. Scientists also measured the arteries’ ability to relax (dilate), the heart’s ability to deliver oxygen and the cells’ capacity to absorb oxygen and found that, in all three measures, those who had taken CoQ10 had significantly greater improvement compared to placebo. Participants who began with the lowest SOD activity improved remarkably.
In chronic heart failure (CHF), the heart is damaged and may not fill with or pump enough blood. Researchers recruited 20 men and three women with CHF, average age 59, to participate in four, four-week double-blind phases taking: 1) 300 mg of CoQ10 in three 100 mg doses per day without exercise training, 3) a placebo without exercise, or 4) a placebo with supervised exercise training. Doctors measured the capacity of the cells to absorb oxygen and the ability of the arteries to dilate. Compared to placebo, the CoQ10 group increased by 9% and 38% respectively. Scientists also tracked an index that measures the ability of the left ventricle of the heart to pump blood, which improved by 12%.
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