I was in the nail salon the other day, and the food channel was on the TV screen. You simply can’t get away from it even if you try. Two other women were watching intently while Jada whipped up her Italian magic. As I was eavesdropping on the conversation, (what else could I do in such a small space?),  one woman says to the other…”Oh my, what a simple idea, I never thought of doing that”. I started to judge this comment, thinking to myself, how in the world could they not have known such a simple concept. Jada took some left over bread and put it in her blender and made bread crumbs. These 2 women where literally blown away by the idea of how great that would be when they were in the kitchen and out of the store bought stuff.

Not that I am bragging, but I have always made my own breadcrumbs, because the ingredients added in the store bought kind have no business in my body.

I simply take some Ezekiel (sprouted grain bread) bread, tear it up and put it in the blender and “instant nutrient rich” breadcrumbs emerge. I just assumed everyone did this. I guess I was wrong about that.

Sometimes when things are so obvious and simple to us, they simply get discarded as unimportant or don’t register in our minds as something we could do.

For me, it seems like, the more ingredients in a recipe, the less I want to cook it. The more choices when shopping, the less I want to buy. The more choices on a buffet, the more confused I get, and the less I want to eat.

What if you could keep it simple and really nail this “Nutrient Rich Eating” way of eating?

I am going to help you out with this.

Everyday I am going to post a SIMPLE TIP. If you take these simple tips, you can put the basic concepts together and form a mountain of knowledge that will change the way you eat for the better forever.

Can I state it anymore simply that that?

Coming up in the next post…KEEP IT SIMPLE TIP #1 – Beets

How many bananas is too many bananas?

I don’t know but your body knows.

You can overdo and overeat the GOOD stuff too.  My partner, John Allen, and I talk about this concept all the time. Contrary to that popular belief that “eating healthy doesn’t taste good and is boring” reason/excuse that many people give for eating poorly, we’ve discovered that, actually the opposite is true. Nutrient Rich foods that include green vegetables, juicy fruit, nuts, seeds, beans are satisfying and delicious. They make you feel good too even after you eat them because you are getting the nutrients your body needs and wants.

We buy bunches of ripe bananas, peel ‘em and freeze ‘em. That way we can dump them in smoothies. They are so sweet and creamy that we make ice cream out of them.

Using our beloved Vitamix high powered blender, we add bananas, dates, natural unsweetened cacao powder, and walnuts and whip up a creamy delectable ice cream. It’s so good you can finish it off in one sitting. And if you don’t listen and stop, you can eat this ice cream until the whole thing is finished off and you bust!

The actual challenge we discovered is that nutrient rich “healthy” food is so good ~ you want to keep eating. And justification for this overeating comes easy – you can simply convince yourself that since it is healthy you can keep it coming.

Over the past two years as I started to eat more and more nutrient rich foods, I found myself gaining some unwanted pounds, and I didn’t do it by eating potato chips.  Nope. I ate too much of good things. Grant it there were emotional eating situations going on as well, however, I figured I was eating healthy foods so it didn’t matter.  But it does matter. Too many bananas is too many bananas. I was certainly eating for health but overeating even healthy foods is not a healthy idea.

Nutrient rich food is truly yummy. I can’t say enough about Dr. Fuhrman’s EAT FOR HEALTH 2 book set. Book 2 is full of amazing recipes. I started to experiment and cook up these recipes and was truly wowed by the ease it took and the taste that exploded. You should try a recipe or two. I recommend the healthy chocolate cake on page 262. It’s literally made with vegetables but you wouldn’t know it unless I spilled the beans. I guarantee if you have the “healthy food doesn’t taste good” mentality – eating this cake will flip that switch off immediately.
When you start eating nutrient rich, amazing things happen to your health. You give your body the true nutrients it needs to function and perform well. You feel really good and energetic. You’ll want to eat this way and your body will start craving the good stuff.

But how do you know when enough is enough, when you’ve had enough and when you should stop?  There is no complicated answer here. It’s actually the simplest concept you probably ever heard.  LISTEN. Listen to the signs and eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full.

These “simple” rules are key to nutrient rich living and eating and natural weight loss – eat only when you hungry and stop when you are full. That will be the sure fire way of not overdosing on one too many bananas. Your body doesn’t want one too many bananas and it will give you signals to stop. Your body knows best – when it has had enough – it lets you know – you just need to LISTEN.

Can you spend today just taking the time to notice how you feel before a meal?  If you are not really hungry, wait a bit longer to eat.  As you are eating notice how your stomach feels. Do you feel satisfied? Can you stop now? It takes practice to hear and notice your body’s signals but once you connect and the more you listen, the more you will hear and you will naturally lose weight.

Nutrient Density is a critical concept in devising and recommending dietary and nutritional advice to patients and to the public. Not merely vitamins and minerals, but adequate consumption of phytochemicals is essential for proper functioning of the immune system and to enable our body’s detoxification and cellular repair mechanisms that protect us from chronic diseases

Nutritional science in the last twenty years has demonstrated that colorful plant foods contain a huge assortment of protective compounds, mostly of which still remain unnamed. Only by eating an assortment of nutrient-rich natural whole foods can we access these protective compounds and prevent the common diseases that afflict Americans. Our modern, low-nutrient eating style has led to an overweight population, the majority of whom develop diseases of nutritional ignorance, causing our medical costs to spiral out of control - Joel Fuhrman M.D.

Nutrient Density – The ratio of the amount of a nutrient in foods to the energy (calories) provided by these same foods.

Nutrient-Rich – The latest buzzword in healthful eating. It’s not low-calorie, low-carb or low-fat: It’s nutrient-rich. A term developed through consumer research to describe the concept of nutrient density. Research shows that people respond well to this term and to the positive approach to food choices it represents.

Nutrient-Dense Foods – Foods that provide substantial amounts of phytochemicals (micro nutrients), vitamins, minerals and other nutritional factors relative to calories (appropriate in calories).

Low Nutrient-Dense or “Nutrient Poor” Foods – Foods that supply calories but relatively small amounts of micronutrients or phytochemicals vitamins, minerals, water, fiber, (sometimes none at all) health promoting protein, real food carbohydrate  and essential fat and contain substances your body does not need.

Nutrient-Rich Foods – A consumer-friendly way to describe nutrient-dense foods including those from the five basic food groups, such as:

• Vegetables
• Fruits
• Beans
• Raw Nuts Seeds
• Whole Unrefined Grains
• The Unlimited Meals and Menus You Can Create From These First Class Food Categories

Nutrition Profiling – The science of ranking or classifying foods based on their nutrient composition.

ANDI – Aggregate Nutrient Density Index for Nutrient Rich Foods.

To guide people toward the most nutrient dense foods, Joel Fuhrman M.D. developed a scoring system called ANDI (Aggregate Nutrient Density Index), which ranks foods based on their ratio of nutrients to calories.

Because phytochemicals are largely unnamed and unmeasured, these rankings underestimate the healthful properties of colorful natural plant foods compared to processed foods and animal products. One thing we do know is that the foods that contain the highest amount of known nutrients are the same foods that contain the most unknown nutrients too. So even though these rankings may not consider the phytochemical number sufficiently they are still a reasonable measurement of their content.

Keep in mind that nutrient density scoring is not the only factor that determines good health. For example, if we only ate foods with a high nutrient density score our diet would be too low in fat. So we have to pick some foods with lower nutrient density scores (but preferably the healthier ones) to include in our high nutrient diet. Additionally, if a slim  or highly physically active individual ate only the highest nutrient foods they would become so full from all of the fiber and nutrients that would keep them from meeting their caloric needs and they would eventually become too thin. This of course gives you a hint at the secret to permanent weight control – to eat the greatest quantity of the foods with the highest ANDI scores, and lesser amounts of foods with lower ANDI scores. For further information, read chapter 3 of Eat for Health, in which I discuss nutrient density and the importance of phytochemicals in detail.

The Nutrient Rich Foods Way – The Nutrient Rich way is a positive, healthy eating plan that considers the complete nutrient package of foods( what foods have that you need and want, and what they contain that you don’t need from dietary sources) as a way to help people build the healthiest eating plans and encourages the selection of nutrient-rich whole foods always, or as best as possible.

The latest buzzword in healthful eating is not low-calorie, low-sodium or low-fat: It’s “nutrient-rich.”

What’s nutrient-rich eating? Just consider a 100 Calorie Pack of Hostess Twinkie Bites. Sure, it only contains 100 calories, 2.5 grams fat, 1 gram saturated fat and 160 milligrams of sodium in three tiny cakes, but what kind of nutritional reward do you get for that 100-calorie investment?

Check out the ingredient list and you’ll find a string of processed, refined ingredients, cuing you to the fact that those 100 calories are basically empty ones.
Compare that to a 100-calorie bowl of fresh strawberries, containing two cups of strawberry halves packed with fiber, vitamin C, folate, potassium and manganese, along with a cache of other minerals and vitamins and health-protective plant compounds. See the nutrient-rich difference?

Nutrient-rich foods have a high nutrient-to-calorie ratio, making them nutrition bargains, rather than only calorie, fat or sodium bargains.
While it’s good to keep your intake of calories, fat and sodium under control, you can do that the nutrient-rich way or the nutrient-poor way…

What the heck is that anyway?

Yet, it is in a lot of our refined, processed, American food items and most of us are not even aware of what we are eating.

Look at this list:

whole grain rolled oats, high fructose corn syrup, oat bran concentrate, brown sugar, oat flour, dried fruit treated with sulfur dioxide to promote color retention, margarine (partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, salt, mono and diclycerides, soy lecithin, EDTA, annatto color, artificial flavor, vitamin A, mopalmitate), malodextrin, glycerin, modified food starch, corn syrup, rice flour, dried whole eggs, malted barley extract, calcium bicarbonate, water, salt, cinnamon, artificial flavors, sorbitol, corn cereal, partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, wheat flour, sodium bicarbonate, corn flour, malic acid, malt barley, soy, sodium alginate, enzyme modified soy protein, tumeric color, natural mixed tocopherols, yellow 6, calcuim phosphate, sodium hexametaphosphate, artificial color, niacinimide, vitamin A palmitate, potassium sorbate, BHT, reduced iron, soduim phosphate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin, thiamin mononitrate, folic acid !

Yes. This is all one product’s ingredients. It’s a very popular, very refined and processed oat bar. Can you even imagine eating all of these ingredients? I have no idea what some of them even are. I don’t ever want to put any fake crap in my body.  But that’s what you get if you are unaware. I haven’t even begun to tell you what that stuff does to your body.

If you want an oat bar ~ you CAN have one.  How about taking 5 minutes and mixing up  a banana,  applesauce, walnuts, oats, and raisins. Can’t get much simpler or more nutrient rich than that.  Tomorrow I will be sharing a video with you and showing you just how easy it is to prepare Nutrient Rich oat bars.

Simplicity RULES.

TIP: Think of this simple rule when choosing to eat. If it doesn’t have a label, its probably nutrient rich. THERE ARE NO LABELS ON AN APPLE and in all Nutrient Rich Recipes the ingredients are all whole foods.

They “give in” for good reasons and are forced to endure the holidays, starting with Thanksgiving and eventually start the New Year with yet another resolution to eat better, or go on a diet and deal with the uncomfortable reality of cleaning their body from all that junk.

There is Good news!

It doesn’t have to be that way.

The holidays don’t have to be synonymous with refined sugar, saturated fat and excess calories, especially now, when you can enjoy Nutrient Rich Holidays! Yes, Nutrient Rich Holidays filled with great tasting foods that are rich in the nutrients you and your family need to be both happy and healthy!

You do not have to give up your favorite foods to maintain a healthy diet during the holidays; what you want to do is eat Nutrient Rich versions of the foods you love!

There is a “nutrient rich” version of just about every food you are eating right now if you know how to shop, prepare, organize and eat out and eat  over the holidays.

Just this week, I was craving something chocolaty and I was surprised when I got an email from my friend by Rosie Battista, Healthy Living Coach, www.amatteroffit.com, which said said “go to your front door, there is a surprise”.

What I found to my delite was a bag, with a box of fudge brownies in it!

Now, as you can imagine, I don’t want to eat just any brownie, I want to eat a Nutrient Rich brownie when I’m going to eat brownies.

This fudge (It’s actually food that’s nutrient rich) was made and shared with LOVE .

• 1 cup coconut oil
• 1 cup coconut butter
• 5 tbs raw cacao*
• 5 tbs agave nectar
• 2 tbs revitaphi*
• 2 tbs maca*
• 2 tbs cacao nibs*
• 3 tbsp hemp seeds
• 2 tbs goji berries*
• ½ tbs cordyceps*

Warm up oil and butter. Add all ingredients to a large bowl, mix until fluffy and creamy

(I use a vitamix blender and just throw everything in together and pour into a cake pan) It’s as simple as mix and pour!  (Put in freezer for 3-5 minutes and cut the fudge into bite size pieces.  Store in freezer container.

***ENJOY and try not to eat it all in one sitting!!!!

*** to buy the unusual ingredients for this recipe, go to https://www.noblelifeelements.com/rosiebattista

Now, if you’re going to eat a brownie, eat a nutrient rich brownie. Every ingredient is not perfect, but this is one great recipe.

Discover how to shop, prepare and eat out, the Nutrient Rich way; it will make a big difference in the way you look and feel throughout the holidays and start the New Year.

This week, we have Thanksgiving. Good news again! It’s one of THE most nutrient rich holidays we have; what, with all the focus on vegetables and fruits… You will overeat, no doubt. Technically we’re overeating most of the time when we eat nutrient rich foods every day, so have no illusion you’ll likely do so on Thanksgiving. – Enjoy it!

John Allen Mollenhauer