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We’re getting into the dead of winter right now and fresh fruits and vegetables are just getting more expensive and less common. So what are we going to do? There are actually a lot of holiday treats out there that will not only satisfy us in our healthy cravings, but will also entice our hosts at holiday gatherings.

Try this tasty recipe. On a 100% whole grain cracker, spread some puréed sweet potato or squash and then dust with a little cinnamon. Decorate with a strip of roasted red pepper and a mint leaf.

Peppermint bark is easy to come by this year, but often loaded with sugar and far too sweet. Here’s a low sugar one that I’m sure diabetics will just love. In a double boiler, melt down some dark chocolate, which is already low in sugar, and then stir in some finely chopped mint leaves. Add a drop or two of peppermint extract and then spread out on a piece of parchment paper. If you’re not too worried about sugar, you can spread some ground-up peppermint candy canes on top.

Cakes and pies do not need to be overloaded with sugar. In fact, using pectin and lots of herbs and spices, you may not need any sugar at all. If you do need to add a little more sweetness to your pies and cakes, use stevia. It will not raise your blood sugar, because your body treats this as an herb.

One of my favorite treats in the winter time is baked apples. And this one is really easy. I cut an apple in half, remove the core, dust with some cinnamon and bake for about 15 minutes. It comes out soft and delicious and the cinnamon is a great addition. You could always add some brown sugar or honey for a little bit more sweetness, but if you choose the right apples, you don’t need any added sweetness at all.

This is actually a great dessert for your holiday meals. Once you turn the oven off after cooking your ham or turkey, just put a tray with a bunch of halved apples and cinnamon in the oven. The residual heat will cook your apples as you’re eating dinner. You could always dress up these apples with but a few mint leaves, whole wheat ginger snaps or some of the dark chocolate peppermint bark I mentioned earlier.

Neal Barnard and Robyn Webb team up to write The Get Healthy, Go Vegan Cookbook: 125 Easy and Delicious Recipes to Jump-Start Weight Loss and Help You Feel Great. The book with the length title offers many suggestions and great recipes that are intended for people who wish to lose some weight, lower their cholesterol levels, or reverse the symptoms of their type 2 diabetes. The book includes some useful scientific data that outlines the importance of having this low fat diet, and then offers many healthy, and easy to make recipes to have delicious meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. No matter what kind of plate you seek, this book will have the recipes that allow for you to make great meals with only vegetables, containing important information about calories, saturated fat, as well as vitamins and minerals.

John La Puma and Rebecca Powell Marx write ChefMD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine: A Food Lover’s Road Map to Losing Weight, Preventing Disease, and Getting Really Healthy. In this book, there is plenty of medical experience, from an actual doctor’s point of view, so there is plenty of science to back up the claims of the importance of eating well, but there is also great cooking suggestions that will allow you to make wonderful food that not only tastes great but also keeps you young and fit, as well. He is like doctor merged with chef so you will not only be taking care of yourself but you will be eating well, too.

Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Matthew Ruscigno write Appetite for Reduction: 125 Fast and Filling Low-Fat Vegan Recipes, a book that offers 125 recipes for a low-fat diet. You will be able to make a number of healthy dishes like Tamarind BBQ and Sweet Potatoes, Chipotle Lentil Burgers, and Onion Rings that are Oven Baked for extra healthy aspects and no fatty, greasy additives.

Daniel G. Amen brings you Change Your Brain, Change your Body Cookbook, a book specially designed to eat right by using wonderful, fresh recipes that will help you make things like spaghetti squash pasta and mushroom sauce, or sweet potato soup, or salmon curry chowder soup, or southwestern tacos, or tuna with avocado sauce, or veggie burgers, or pomegranate walnut salad, or veggie wraps, or turkey chili. All kinds of things will be able to be brought to the table with this book and also keep you and your family healthy and fit, as well.

Finally, Sally Fallon writes Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and Diet Dictocrats. This book contradicts a lot of the others, as it insists that animal fats and cholesterol are really important and cannot be ignored if you mean to reproduce and grow properly and have a well functioning brain and nervous system. In order to stay healthy and fit, the author provides a diet that moderately balances the foods to eat without totally banning anything so that you get in the proper amount without overdoing it to the point where it does really become unhealthy and detrimental. This way, you get a balanced diet.

Horses are animals that are known for their speed, strength, and stamina. Despite a very strong exterior though, these animals have a very delicate and sensitive digestive system. For this reason, stable managers are advised to pay close consideration into their diet and the type of feed being given to them to ensure that it will not upset their digestive ability. You should take time to give flaxseed for horses to allow their digestive system to restore its natural function.

The ideal method of caring for the horse’s digestive system is to give them small amounts of food as part of their daily intake. They have relatively small stomach so they can only hold a limited amount of food at a time. For this reason, it is important that you choose their food supplements wisely to ensure that they can get packed amount of nutritional properties for the same amount of food. Feeding flaxseed to horses can address this issue such that your pet can acquire maximum health benefits.

Ideally, you should give something for the horse to feed on throughout the day. This is why some recommended that you stack up on hay or grass near their stable so they can eat it even when they are not given their feed. The gut track of horses will consume their food rather quickly so they will likely feel hungry again after only about an hour since their last meal. You cannot afford to leave them hungry because it will put them at risk for developing stomach ulcers as the digestive acids in their intestine causes damage to the stomach tissues. The worst that could happen is for your horse to develop other similar conditions such as diarrhea, colic, and other stomach disturbances.

Right now, experts recommended that feeding bran mash combined with water and ground flaxseed for horses is the most beneficial form of feeding them to your equine pet. Mash that is combined with bran is known to facilitate in healing of a depleted gut, as well as fighting the causes of any forms of colic that is very common in most horses. When you add flaxseed to the mash, it helps to soothe the digestive system and this is referred to by traditional horsemen as an effective method to clean out the digestive tract.

One more reason why you should be feeding flaxseed to horses as combined into the mash is the fact that it can provide consistency into the exchange of water within the digestive system. Thus, this is a preventive measure in order to keep your horses from becoming dehydrated. The mash is also rich in electrolytes, which is beneficial in water regeneration within your pet’s digestive system.

Ideally, a mash preparation consisting of ground flaxseed for horses should be given two to three times a week. However, you should adjust the feeding depending on the conditions of your horse. If the horse is being subjected to activities that will make them more prone to being dehydrated, it is recommended that you increase the frequency of feeding the mash preparation. According to experts, feeding mash without water or flaxseed for horses is useless because it does not offer the same nutritional quality that is good for the digestive system.

Christmas is a very exciting time for nearly all of the community, not only can it be costly financially, but it can also be costly lifestyle wise, as people can gain up to 7 pounds (half a stone). This article will explain how we can enjoy Christmas without gaining excess weight. The first and the most important part of Christmas is planning as it can support any possibility of problems, but also it can save money in the long term. An example of this is purchasing the Christmas Turkey. Make sure when purchasing them that there is at least 70% breast in them, as turkey contains less fat than goose and duck. Don’t forget the vegetables, including Brussels sprouts, carrots, cauliflower, as these not only can be counted towards the five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, but vegetables are high in Non Starch Polysaccharides (also called Fibre), and are a great source of vitamins and minerals. The food has been purchased, presents have been wrapped, and the wait is now over and Christmas has arrived.

Start the day with a healthy breakfast. People tend not to bother with breakfast, as they feel that they can composite this with extra portions during the Christmas dinner. It is very important to have breakfast as it kicks starts the metabolism but also there is a less chance of unhealthy snacking during the rest of the day. Start the day with a bowl of low sugar cereal, or maybe get in the festive mood with a mixture of unsalted nuts including Brazils, walnuts, and almonds, with semi skimmed milk. Why not have a light snack beforehand? i.e. making low fat dips with low fat yoghurt or hummus? This can also reduce the chances of over eating during the Christmas dinner. Christmas dinner is serving so what should we do to try not to over indulge? Here are more tips that may be useful Eat slowly, as this can help the brain signal you that the body is full.

Take a break before the next mouthful .

Why not go for a walk afterwards to burn off the calories after the Christmas dinner?

Play with the children, after the dinner as this can help burn of the excess calories as well.

It is now time for Christmas desert so what can we do to keep up with the healthy eating? Maybe serve a platter of different types of fruit .

Fruit salad with fromage frais or a low fat yoghurt.

Serve the food on smaller plates rather than large plates, as this can reduce the amount of calories. Don’t forget that any food that is leftover can be used another time, as long as:

The food is consumed within two days.

The food is cooled quickly and kept in the fridge.

The food is reheated properly Overall we can have a healthy and tasty Christmas, so eat, drink and be merry Have a good Christmas.

Francesca is a registered associate nutritionist. She can advice on healthy eating, portion control, weight loss, and other healthy lifestyle issues. She has created the programme called livelongrocks, which advises groups and individuals on weight management. The programme has a blog, and a website, which you can follow below:

What are saturated fats?

Fat that we consume through our diet, and the fat stored in our body in the form of body fat, is in a form called triglycerides, which are 3 fatty acids linked to a glycerol molecule. Saturated fatty acids have carbon-carbon double bonds, and are therefore saturated with hydrogen while the unsaturated ones aren’t and contain double bonds. Polyunsaturated fatty acids contain multiple double bonds.

It is much better to cook with saturated fats than any unsaturated ones, because the lack of double bonds makes the molecules very tolerant to heat, reducing the chances of them becoming damaged by oxidation while cooking. Saturated fatty acids are found in such things as coconuts, high-fat dairy, meat and eggs. They can be in several forms, including short-chain, medium-chain and long-chain.

These fats have for a long time been considered unhealthy, but recent research has shown this to be completely false and largely based on conventional wisdom rather than true science. This new research is showing that there do clearly exist healthy saturated fats.

Are saturated fats harmful?

The main studies that have in the past been quoted to prove that saturated fatty acids cause harm, have been largely discredited in recent times. The reason why people still believe they’re unhealthy is because this myth has been kept alive by conventional wisdom. The truth is, that there is plenty of evidence showing how saturated fatty acids have no effect on heart disease, and other studies showing how a diet low in carbohydrates and high in fat can have a really good influence on health, and this includes lipid profiles.

Other types of fatty acids

Polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats are believed to be healthy, but it is not a good idea to consume too much Omega-6 fatty acids since the ratio of Omega-6/Omega-3 is important. The lower the ratio the better, with about 2:1 to 3:1 being considered optimal. If you don’t eat a lot of processed vegetable oils then the ratio should be good automatically.

It is a good idea to try to eat some fish, omega-3 enriched eggs or grass-fed meat. If you don’t eat any of those foods then taking a fish oil supplement to increase your Omega-3 intake would be a good idea. Trans fats should be avoided at all costs, they are extremely unhealthy.

Hydrogenated fats (trans fats) should be avoided, these are extremely unhealthy. In fact some of the studies who have shown saturated fats to be harmful in the past were really using hydrogenated fats, which are chemically modified to behave like saturated fats.

Who to believe, me or nutritionists and doctors?

If you would ask a nutritionist or a doctor about healthy saturated fats then a lot of them would tell you that they are bad for you. But the fact is, doctors don’t know much about healthy eating (diseases are their expertise) and nutritionists don’t seem to keep up with the latest research studies, they still keep repeating the same old knowledge that they learned in school. The saturated fat phobia has also been kept alive by people repeating it to each other, a form of “common knowledge” that has no scientific basis.

Saturated fats are often claimed to cause a rise in LDL (the bad) cholesterol, but this is not the whole story. There are several forms of LDL, including the large, fluffy kind and the small, dense kind. The small, dense kind is harmful and does in fact increase heart disease risk, but the large, fluffy kind is completely benign. Healthy saturated fats cause an increase in the large, fluffy, benign type.

Healthy saturated fats also cause an increase in HDL (the good) cholesterol, and they massively lower triglycerides. HDL and Triglycerides are considered a much better indicator of heart disease risk than LDL or total cholesterol. A diet low in carbohydrate and high in saturated fat has been shown in scientific research to greatly improve blood lipid profiles and therefore heart disease risk.

Banishing healthy saturated fats doesn’t make any evolutionary sense either, since human beings evolved eating a diet high in meat, which is rich in saturated fats. What is important is to eat real meat, since processed meat has in some studies been shown to be harmful.

So my tip to you is to not limit healthy saturated fats in your diet, rather try to cut down on all junk foods and processed foods, and try to eat food in the form that nature provided us with. This is the key to good health.