Wellness Journey with Joe

Week 7 - Healthy Snacks

9/12/2015

So by now you have a good basis for choosing breakfast lunch and dinner.  Make sure your plate has a healthy balance of carbohydrate, fat and protein, leaning heavily on the carbohydrates from vegetables and fruits, and eliminating grain as much as possible.

But what about between meals? Food is always available at the office, car, and home in the form of easy to purchase, easy to carry, and easy to store snack food.  Chips, pretzels, soft drinks, cheese and crackers, cookies, pastries, candies and candy bars, snack cakes, etc. are prevalent in our society.  They are billed as a quick “pick me up” and are cheap and convenient to purchase. 

But there is a reason for all this convenience.  To create the “ease” of purchasing and storing these so called food products these items are super processed.  Organic items have been cooked, dried, and stripped of many of their original qualities to avoid spoilage and allow for travel over long distances, and have needed additives to produce a desirable color and add to their shelf life.  Obscene amounts of salt and sugar are added to further entice the consumer into buying the products.

In doing so we’ve created “food” that has been diminished of its original nutritious quality, and even more important, is an irritant to the cells of your body.  Original motives are always good; feeding multitudes of people, storing food for easy future use, etc.  But in depleting nutrients we have created a society that is very susceptible to disease due to the negative effect these products have on the cells of our bodies.  Now large companies like Hershey, Little Debbie, Kellogg’s etc. have become quite profitable and employ millions of people, yet their products are contributing to the demise of our population. 

HEALTHY SNACKING

Snacking can be an excellent way to add powerfully nutritious food to your diet.  Food that will nourish the cells of your body in order to more effectively provide strength and vitality, and guard against the life-style causing diseases such as heart disease, Type II diabetes, and many cancers.

Raw vegetables such as carrots, radishes, broccoli, cauliflower, etc. can be dipped in organic hummus for a wonderful snack.  Apples and other fruits are convenient to carry and can provide satisfaction to that sweet tooth. 

Another great snack is a hardboiled egg.  This protein packed food will help ward off hunger pangs as eggs take longer to digest than the high glycemic sugar filled typical convenient store fare.

Almonds, sunflower seeds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, cashews, pistachios, etc. are a fabulous source of amino acids (building blocks of proteins) and good fats.  A gorp mixture of nuts, seeds, and raisins is good to have available to satisfy you between meals.

Remember good fats are needed since every cell in our body is encased in a fat filled cell membrane.  It is at the site of the cell membrane that substances are allowed in to the cell.  The healthier the cell wall the more efficient your cells will function.  And remember, all the functions of your body occurs in the cell.  It is here where the result of healthy maintenance or susceptibility to disease occurs!  Because of the fat content, however, portion control will be important when eating handfuls of nuts and seeds, or a gorp mixture.

I know those of you who have had a lifelong habit of eating candy bars and chips will scoff at the idea of eating vegetables and fruits as snacks.  But believe me, with the little-by-little adding of these items into your snack choices you will slowly feel a healthy difference and  you will find yourself naturally going to these items instead of the candy bar.

It does take a bit of forethought since these items are not so readily available at the convenient stores when the urge hits you on the road.  But, once again, as your physiology changes with the addition of these high quality foods you will look ahead and pack healthy snacks prior to leaving the house.