KTK-Nutrition

On road trips, who doesn’t have to stop at a gas station?   Are there some healthier grab and go foods you can buy at gas stations?   How can you stop those hunger pains but not fill up on junk food?   Healthier Beverage Options 1.   Water – always a good choice to stay hydrated.   Choose a no-calorie sparkling water.   Or treat yourself to some Perrier mineral water. 2.    Juice – most gas stations have 100% juice.   Just make sure you are not reaching for Sunny D, Hi-C or some other highly sugared beverage.    Just heard on TV that half the added sugar in our diets comes from sugar sweetened beverages.   Not sure if this is a true fact but Americans eat a lot of added sugar.   Some people might say juice is high in sugar. 100% juice has no added sugar, just the natural sugar from fructose.   Look for some Naked Juice which is a blend of many juices and always no sugar added. 3. Milk – yes, milk ...

Vitamin C is a vitamin we need just about every day.   What foods have vitamin C and why do we need vitamin C?   I like to drink a glass of 100% orange or grapefruit juice every morning for breakfast.   One night my husband asked if watermelon had vitamin C in it.   I said it was a good source of vitamin C.   The next morning, I opened the fridge to find out we were out of juice.   But there on the table was a plate of watermelon wedges for my morning vitamin C. Why do we need vitamin C?   Such an important vitamin for our health. Healthy skin – vitamin C promotes youthful looking skin.   Having enough vitamin C in your diet helps prevent wrinkles, and dry skin.   Fruits and veggies that provide vitamin C also provide those healthy antioxidants.   These antioxidants act like a natural sun screen as they help protect your skin against harmful ultraviolet rays of the sun.   Antioxidants help promote collagen synthesis which he...

Most everyone knows that we all should eat at least 5 servings of fruit and vegetables a day.   For years USDA has a slogan:   5 A DAY, to remind us to eat at least 5 servings of fruit and veggies a day.   Many people ask how much of the 5 A Day should be fruit and how much should be veggies?   Mixing up fruits and veggies are a good idea as each provides us with different vitamins, minerals and those good antioxidants.   Some say to limit fruit to 2 servings a day as fruit has “sugar” in it.   But fruit has natural sugar in it, not “added sugar”.   It is the “added sugar” that we need to cut back on.   So what guidance is there about how much fruit we can or should eat?   An interesting article appeared in Time, Is it possible to eat too much fruit?   Dr. Robert Lustig, a professor at University of California at San Francisco discusses some interesting new research on fruit. What are the concerns about eating too much fruit? A...

Is the bread you are eating healthy?   What does it matter?   Last weekend my daughters wanted to try a new sandwich shop advertising its signature sandwiches.   A big draw is that they use meat from the upstairs butcher shop. The meat is not only really fresh but also antibiotic free.   The greens are locally grown and also healthy.   So, I order a ham and cheese sandwich with lettuce, tomato, onion and ask for whole wheat bread.   No whole wheat.   I ask for multi-grain bread.   No multi-grain.   I finally ask, “Do you have any bread that is healthy?”   They responded they had rye bread.   Well, that could be healthy if it is whole grain rye, which is pretty hard to find.   But it was refined rye bread, so not really healthier than refined white bread.   The sandwich was good but could have been so much tastier and healthier with better bread choices.   Recently my husband and I stopped at a French bakery in Nova S...