The good news is this reaction does not degrade the potatoes or compromise their quality, making them perfectly safe to eat. In fact, these Polish gray dumplings are a great dish to whip up if your tubers aren't the color of your liking. However, if you're cooking for others and are concerned about the presentation, there are some tricks to preventing oxidation from occurring. According to Taste of Home, when deactivating the enzymes, you need to expose them to something cold or acidic.
Start by covering your peeled potatoes by about 1 inch in very cold water — this will slow the oxidation process down tremendously; however, if you want to prolong the browning of your potatoes for, say, up to overnight, adding acid such as a squeeze of lemon juice or distilled white vinegar in with the cold water will do a double whammy of protecting those spuds from discoloring. A good rule of thumb to do the trick without changing the flavor is adding 1 teaspoon of acid for every 1/2 gallon of water used.
The Spruce Eats also states that when peeling potatoes, dropping the ones you've already peeled into cold water until you're finished with your batch can reduce oxidation. Another fun trick if you're ever shredding potatoes for hash browns or latkes is to mix in a bit of ascorbic acid — this will magically brighten them up again by altering the pH.
Power-ultrarunning couple Kilian Jornet and Emelie Forsberg have it all–glorious mountain miles to run surrounding their home in Norway, the launch of athletic brand NNormal, and delectable home-cooked meals baked from their small family farm. While Jornet recently won both Hardrock 100 and UTMB, Forsberg is an accomplished athlete herself and details her running journey in her book Skyrunner.
Photo: Instagram/tinaemelie
Forsberg is also the co-founder of Moonvalley, a plant-based sports nutrition company, with fellow pro runners Ida Nilsson and Mimmi Kotka.Forsberg has a simple pizza recipe that is so easy and versatile you’ll want to have it on a weekly rotation.
Homemade pizza is a family favourite at my house. Since our kids were little, my husband and I have taken turns whipping up a batch of pizza dough, pulling out whatever vegetables we find in the fridge and letting everyone create their own masterpieces. The best part about pizza is that it’s easy to cater to everyone’s unique tastes–try a double batch of dough or split this recipe into four for individual pies.
Photo: Instagram/moonvalley_smallfarming
Emelie Forsberg’s ‘Fast Food’ Veggie Pizza
Ingredients (makes two pizzas)
Dough:
2 1/4 cups almond flour (since there is no yeast in this recipe, Forsberg suggests any type of flour without wheat, including corn, coconut, chickpea, or a combo)
3/4 cup water
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
Toppings:
assorted veggies of choice (mushrooms, beets, eggplant, tomato)
Mix all the dough ingredients together well. Roll out the dough on some parchment paper and pre-bake it for 5 mins at 225 C (440 F).
While the dough is pre-baking, start chopping your veggies. Forsberg says she throws in what she has at home, and if she’s in a hurry will simply use plain store-bought tomato sauce.
Add tomato sauce, veggies, and your choice of cheese, and pop back in the oven at 220 C for approx 10 more minutes. Top with arugula and enjoy.
To enjoy a healthy life, rabbits should be fed foods that are rich in fiber. Hay and pellets are excellent sources of nutrients and fiber and should make up the bulk of your rabbit’s diet. Meanwhile, fruits and vegetables can be OK for your rabbit, too, but should be viewed as more of a special treat.
If you’ve ever wondered if your rabbit can enjoy the juicy goodness of a tomato, you’ve come to the right place. Can rabbits eat tomatoes? And if so, how much is too much?
We reached out to Samantha Henson, a certified clinical pet nutritionist with Next Generation Pet Wellness, for more insight on whether tomatoes are a good choice for your pet rabbit.
Can rabbits eat tomatoes as an occasional treat?
Yes, but there are a couple things you should know first.
Tomatoes do have some health benefits (they’re a great source of vitamins A and C) — but they’re also high in sugar. As a result, as with all fruits and vegetables, a small amount is key.
“As a pet nutritionist, I must be honest that tomatoes are not my favorite choice of snack for rabbits due to their high sugar content and the parts of a tomato that can be toxic,” Henson told The Dodo. “I always look for the pros and cons of foods and make my decisions based on that.”
Risks of tomatoes for rabbits
First things first, there’s a risk of toxins and pesticides on all fruits and vegetables, so it’s important to wash them thoroughly before feeding them to your rabbit.
While the flesh of a tomato is not toxic, tomato leaves and seeds can be toxic when eaten in large doses. As a result, it’s important to carefully remove any leaves, stems and seeds before feeding to your rabbit.
“And before you introduce any new food to a rabbit, give him small amounts and monitor his behavior and poop for any negative reactions,” Henson said.
If your rabbit does ingest tomato seeds, leaves or stems, watch for signs of digestive distress like diarrhea, and bring your rabbit to the vet if this happens.
How many tomatoes can your rabbit have safely?
As mentioned above, when considering how much of a tomato to give him, it’s best to think of a tomato (or any fruits and vegetables) as a special treat for your rabbit. If you overdo a treat, tummy issues are very likely to occur.
“A small acorn-size amount of seedless tomato per day is perfectly fine for a rabbit older than 12 weeks of age,” Henson said.
So in general, tomatoes are an OK fruit to share with your rabbit, just as long as it’s a small amount and the flesh part of a seedless tomato only. Here’s to healthy foods so you and your rabbit can have lots of fun together!
It’s difficult to disagree with that cliché. Put a lot of garbage down your gullet — foods that are highly processed with loads of sugar and salt and devoid of fiber and nutrients — and you’ll likely find that, over time, your body will turn to trash as well.
The phrase does, however, lose its luster a bit when you consider who popularized it. Victor Lindlahr was a nutritionist, author, and practitioner of osteopathic medicine in the discipline’s pseudoscientific days. Considered one of the earliest proponents of fad diets, he wrote the bookYou Are What You Eat: How to win and keep health with diet, which was published in 1942. The book, which sold over half a million copies, asked odd questions like, “Can certain foods aid in correcting unpleasant breath?” and, “What foods are of value in relieving bleeding gums?”
Influential nutritionist Fredrick J. Stare, who founded the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health and advocated “prudence and moderation” as the key to healthy eating, called Lindlahr’s book “quackery.” Nevertheless, Lindlahr’s signature phrase, “You are what you eat,” became ingrained in the public consciousness.
You aren’t what you eat
Beyond its sketchy origins, “You are what you eat” takes a bigger hit when one considers the phrase more literally.
“What it suggests is that our health is rigidly determined by the specific foods and nutrients we put in our bodies. It says that if two people put the same foods in their body, they will have the same level of health,” sports nutritionist Matt Fitzgerald wrote in his 2014 book Diet Cults, in which he berated many popular diet trends for being unscientific and ultimately ineffective. “The healthy-diet cults unanimously subscribe to this principle… After all, the diet cults are in business to convince us that we can attain maximum health only if we eat what they tell us to eat.”
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Science has revealed a more nuanced truth, Fitzgerald says. “We are what our bodies do with what we eat,” he clarified.
The two great pillars of a healthy body are diet and exercise, and both affect physical functioning. “You are what you eat” ignores the fact that what we do with our bodies may be just as important as what we put in them.
“If the body’s basic metabolism zeroes out small to moderate differences in diet, exercise neutralizes moderate to large differences. It is like a great sculptor who can fashion the same beautiful form of various materials, including some of indifferent quality,” Fitzgerald wrote.
Fitzgerald cautions that one cannot simply eat whatever one wants. Candy for every meal will not provide the nutrients that the body needs. But one also doesn’t have to eat a perfect diet all the time to maximize health and longevity.
As the century-long Longevity Project, a study which followed long-lived individuals, has shown, there are numerous aspects of a person’s life equally or more important than diet that dictate health and lifespan. Simply being ambitious, productive, and engaged while avoiding destructive behaviors like smoking, drinking to excess, abusing drugs, or driving too fast prolongs life and keeps us in good shape.
From VOA Learning English, this is the Health & Lifestyle report.
When it comes to making lunch for their kids, moms and dads have usual favorites. For some parents in the United States, those favorites are peanut butter and jelly sandwiches — also known as PB&Js. Fruit like apples and bananas are also popular.
But one mother has an unusual go-toingredient for her children’s lunches. Jenny Mollen uses funny-looking candy eyes.
She has learned that her children will eat any healthy food if it has edible eyeballs attached. The “eyeballs” are really pieces of candy.
Her children laugh while they eat healthy foods like bell peppers, kiwis, or dates. The writer and actor says candy “eyes” make lunch more fun.
She wrote about her creative school lunches in a book, Dictator Lunches: Inspired Meals that Will Compel Even the Toughest of Children.
"Dictator Lunches: Inspired Meals That Will Compel Even the Toughest of Children" was written by Jenny Mollen. (Harvest via AP)
“Honestly, first of all, just buy yourself some candy googly eyes. They (are) tried-and-true,” she said. She admits that “you lose something nutritionally” by giving children candy. But she thinks that getting children to eat healthy food by putting candy on it is worth it.
Mollen’s lunch tricks bring together food and craft. She uses tricks because her two sons do not like to eat different kinds of foods. So, she decorates their food to look like animals or even their favorite Pokémon characters.
She makes edible “bugs” made from dates, pretzel sticks for the legs, and, of course, candy “eyes.” She also uses leftover Chinese food to make panda bears from rice and seaweed.
Mollen notes that she puts yogurt into fruit like strawberries and raspberries and then tops with some granola, a mixture of oats and nuts.
She says her lunch projects are easy to do. And her sons think they have won a big prize at their midday meal.
The edible art is not hard to make. To create it, she says you only need a few tools — a vegetable peeler, shaped containers and cutters, and some special knives.
She says she does not have to buy special ingredients. She uses leftovers from dinner the night before and everyday items from her food storage area. She likes using sunflower seed butter to stick her creations together.
An employee of an Internet company, paperboy&co., shows his homemade boxed lunch during a lunch break in Tokyo April 15, 2009. (REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao)
This idea of making food fun-looking is not new.
Some Japanese parents are known for creating artful lunches, called bento boxes. They often have cute, animal-shaped rice balls and flowers or other shapes made from vegetables.
Mollen says making fun-looking, artful lunches for her children helps ease her guilt.
She says, “I (am) a working mom and not the mom doing pick up and drop off. I’m not with them at the park after school every day. I (am) usually working.”
Her artful lunches are her way of reminding her children that she is thinking of them.
Mollen says she also wants to teach them healthy eating habits. She says that by getting kids to eat vegetables at a young age, they will grow up to eat healthy foods later in life. She also says it is a good way to get children to try foods from other cultures.
If they need to be “tricked” sometimes, that is okay.
And that’s the Health & Lifestyle report.
I’m Anna Matteo.
Mark Kennedy reported this story for the Associated Press. Anna Matteo adapted it for VOA Learning English.
Quiz - Fun Lunches Help School Kids Eat Healthy Foods
Lincoln, Neb. —Life is busy, especially for families. From late-night work meetings to school events and extracurriculars, families are on the go. This can often lead to rushed meals or meals on the go. With hectic schedules, it is important to plan relaxed family mealtimes into your schedule as often as possible. There are several benefits to relaxed family meals that include: the development of positive eating habits, creation of stronger parent-child bonds, and better school performance. The University of Nebraska’s EAT Family Style at Home website supports families with quick, easy, and fun ways to make mealtimes healthy, enjoyable, and less stressful for everyone.
You can find the EAT Family Style at Home’s website by going to https://child.unl.edu and looking under the Family Resources tab. The website is divided into six main areas: positive mealtimes, recipe stories, cooking with kids, spark conversations, activities by age group and family resources.
The Positive Mealtimes section offers tips for making mealtimes relaxed, appealing, and less stressful. A few highlights from this tab are seven tips to help picky eaters and tips on handling food refusal. The Recipe Stories section offers tried-and-tasted, easy family recipes that bring back memories of good times together. In addition to traditional recipes, there are tips on packing a cooler, and how to organize your pantry. The Cooking with Kids section offers simple age-appropriate activities for children to help with in the kitchen.
Some additional information in this section includes steps to helping children learn how to serve themselves and helping kids learn how to set the table. The Spark Conversations section offers ideas for conversation starters for talking around the dinner table. Additional information found in this section is supporting children’s self-regulation in eating and using praise effectively.
The Activities by age section is broken down into activities, recipes, and useful information for preschoolers, school-ages, adolescent, and all age groups. The Family Resources section has ideas and resources that help to make food fun for young children and families through additional helpful tips and recipes. Each of these six main sections offer important information and helpful tips though videos and downloadable handouts. EAT Family Style at Home hopes to help create memorable mealtimes for families through these useful resources.
