Healthy Diet Recipes

Finding the energy, motivation and enthusiasm to do the things you love is often difficult at the end of a work day. In this situation most of us either stay in or reach for a drink loaded with sugar and caffeine, without a real understanding of what effect this will have on us.

Drinks such as coffee, and the new swathe of energy drinks, are crammed full of caffeine, and for a short duration they give us the boost we need. The problem, however, is that this is short-lived and after a few minutes we usually feel worse than we originally did, due to what is described as a caffeine crash, or have to go back and drink more, creating a vicious circle. Others may be tempted to raise our blood sugar levels by eating sugary and starchy foods, but this not only brings about a later sugar crash, but also inhibits the absorption of fluids into the bloodstream so, for example, if you are at the gym you are risking dehydration and lengthening your recovery time.

Mad Dog Energy Shots, however, are a new type of energy drink specifically designed for people with an active lifestyle who want a real solution to help them feel more energetic and alive, in fact the energy boost from Mad Dog Energy Shots lasts at least six hours. They contain no added sugars or carbohydrates and come in six tasty flavours.

Mad Dog Energy Shots are designed to fit into your gym bag or even your pocket, so you can get that boost you want whenever you need it.

Mad Dog also produces Energy Chews, which are energy bars that contain 100mg of caffeine, designed to allow you to regulate your energy intake to avoid those caffeine peaks and valleys. The Chews come in a selection of four flavours : Chocolate, Chocolate Mint, Tropical Blend, Blueberry Pomegranate, and because of their size they are ultra convenient to carry and eat on the go.

You can learn more about both products, and order them from their site MadDogEnergyProducts.com

Today, while searching for few recipes, I found a nice site recipe sharing community..

Mydish.co.uk is a new cookery community where members share and store their favourite recipes. The founder of the website, Carol Savage, created the site to save the scraps of paper which her mother-in-law’s best recipes were kept on. Now more than 2000 people are doing the same thing. Membership is free, and what makes Mydish.co.uk different to all the other recipe sites you have come across is that not only can you create a personalised cookbook to share the recipe, but you also get the opportunity to share in the stories behind their creation.

Categories on Mydish are separated into types of meal such as ‘Sports’ or ‘Pregnancy-eating for two’, and types of food like ‘appertizers’ and ‘snacks’ so you can quickly find the recipe for what you want to eat, when you want to eat it. You can also see who the top rated chefs on the website are, and the most popular recipes, so you don’t even have to worry about which recipes you should prepare. With the recent global financial problems, the ‘Credit Crunch Bites’ section is particularly useful as it provides the user with Recipes that are both cheap to produce and pleasant to eat.

Finally, Mydish.co.uk includes some of the latest news on supermarket offers in the UK, with recipes on how to use these ingredients, as well as a series of links to the best places to purchase your cooking equipment, books, find the best and cheapest local food shops, and even where to attend cookery courses.

Grilling is a fast and healthy way to cook food, and you can prepare a wide variety of exciting and tasty dishes this way. One of the best ways to grill is outdoors on a barbeque grill in the summer, and there are two main types of grill you can use, a charcoal grill or a gas grill.

Charcoal grills give an authentic, smoky flavour to meat and fish, but they are more challenging to prepare and cook with. The coals need to be lit well before the cooking time to ensure that the flames do not burn the outside of the food without cooking the inside, and the ash and grease left over can take a bit of clearing up. Charcoal grills are less expensive though, and you can set them up almost anywhere, especially if you have one of those small disposable grill packs.

Gas grills are much more expensive and require a bottled gas supply, and they are generally heavier and less portable than charcoal grills. However they can be turned on with the switch of a knob, and the heat is instant and constant, so there is no waiting around for the flames to die down. Some gas grills also provide a smoker box, so that you can add wood chips to simulate that authentic smoky flavour that a charcoal grill gives. There is no mess of ashes and grease to clear up with a gas grill, and so they are very convenient to use in an everyday situation.

Grilling food is very healthy, as it allows the fat to drip away so it is a good idea to incorporate grilling into your diet. If the weather is bad you can also grill indoors on an electric grill. Modern cookers usually have a grill feature, called ‘top contact’ grills where bars in the top of the oven are heated and cook food on trays below. You could also buy a separate ‘closed grill’, which cooks thinner pieces of food, (burgers, fillets, sandwiches and sliced vegetables), between two pressed heating plates. These closed cookers are very easy to use and have digital thermostats and timers so that you can cook food precisely, and they are usually based on a sloping design that allows grease to drip away.

Banana bread has a lovely moist cake-like texture, and is a delicious way to use up ripe bananas. It is not as sweet as some other cakes, and it can be served hot with cream and slices of fresh banana, or at room temperature with a drizzle of icing for afternoon tea. A good banana bread recipe should be easy to follow, and the bread should stay fresh and moist for at least 4 days.

Banana bread recipes were first officially recorded in a set of recipes by the Pillsbury Company in 1933, but it wasn’t until the 1960s, after a revival in simple home baking, that banana bread become so popular in the western culture.

Here is an easy banana bread recipe that you can try at home:
You will need:

125g butter
175g soft brown sugar
2 eggs
280g plain flour
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
Pinch of salt
125ml milk
3 medium ripe bananas, mashed
1tsp vanilla extract
Small handful of chopped walnuts

Method:

· Heat the oven to 180C/Gas mark 4 and lightly grease a 25cm x 11cm (10in x 4½in) loaf tin.

· In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar until it is smooth and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat in well. Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt together, and slowly add half of this to the mixture and beat well. Now add the milk and remaining flour and mix until smooth.

· In a separate bowl mash the ripe bananas with a fork and then gently fold them into the mixture along with the vanilla extract. Tip the mixture into the greased loaf tin, and top with the chopped walnuts.

· Cover the top with foil and bake in the oven for an hour, or until the loaf is cooked through and browned on top. Cool in the tin a little before turning out.

· Serve immediately in thick slices, with a drizzle of cream and some slices of fresh banana.  

Among hoards of diet regimes available for the troubled obese people, Japanese diet has acquired quite fame recently. No wonder even celebrities like Madonna are die-hard fans of Japanese diet.

Well, who doesn’t want to be like Madonna with that unique diet? Let’s see what it is-
Wonderfully enough, the Kushi macro diet was introduced through a restaurant in New York City by a couple, Mr. and Mrs. Kushi! They were the first to discover the macrobiotic way of cooking or use of macrobiotics in the day to day meals. Mr. Michio Kushi even has a book “The Macrobiotic Way” to his credit.

The basic principle upon which the Kushi diet is conceptualized is that, certain diets have certain effects on the human body and therefore, one should eat certain diet that helps gain adequate energy without gaining fat. Thus, Macro-diet propounds a diet that includes lots of vegetables(20-30%), white meat fish, some shellfish, beans and sea vegetables (5-10%), whole grains (60%), soy, nuts, soups (5-10%), milk drink prepared fro brown rice, etc. also the macro diet supports the use of unrefined sesame oil and/or corn oil for cooking.

Kushi diet along with supporting certain diet items, opposes certain food items that are unhealthy for the body. Avoiding these items helps one remain hale and hearty. Thus, if you want to enjoy good health with good physique, avoid dairy products (cow’s milk, margarine, and butter), meat, poultry, asparagus, spinach, refined grain cereals, eggplant, etc.

Kushi also warns you against certain food items that are absolutely dangerous for your health and so he says you should totally avoid them as far as possible. Do not consume refined sugar, curry spice, commercial soy sauce, and pepper (green and red) either directly or combined with any food.
This doesn’t mean that Kushi diet or Macro Diet is totally against snacking! You can have them even with your Kushi diet regimen in place. Just you need to balance the food ingredients in such a fashion that a meal plan is distributed for seven days period with three meals per day. With this diet, you will consume 2,126 calories per meal.

Definitely those who want to follow Macro Diet can be benefited in great way to combat dreads of twenty first century, which are hypertension and hypercholesterolemia. Also the Macro diet can aid the cancer treatment in a big way. Why not to give it a try then? You may use diet pills in order to help you lose weight, by the way.