You don’t have to be Oprah Winfrey’s gourmet chef or spend a fortune on expensive cookware to prepare food in healthy ways. You can make your favorite dishes without large amounts of fat or salt using basic cooking techniques.

Baking isn’t just for breads and desserts. You can also bake poultry, lean meat, seafood, and vegetables. Baking usually doesn’t require adding fat to the food, although you may need to baste the food to keep it from drying out. Simply place your desired food in a pan or dish and cook either covered or uncovered.

Roasting is like baking, but usually at higher temperatures. You can place your food in a roasting pan or on a baking sheet. When roasting meat, poultry or seafood, put a rack inside the roasting pan which will allow the fat in the food to drip away during cooking.

Broiling and grilling are cooking methods which allow the fat to drip away from the food. Both methods expose the food to a direct heat source. To broil, place the food on a broiler rack in the oven below a heat element. To grill, place the food on a rack above either a bed of charcoal or you may want to use a gas grill. A grill basket is very useful when cooking smaller items such as vegetables or seafood.

Braising is a two step technique. The ingredient is first placed in a pan on top of the stove and browned. A small amount of liquid, usually water or broth, is added. Then, the ingredient and the liquid is covered and slowly cooked. The cooking liquid is sometimes used afterward to form a nutrient-rich sauce.

Poaching involves gently simmering ingredients in water until they are cooked through. You may also choose a more flavorful liquid such as broth, juice or vinegar. Be sure to use a covered pan that best fits your food which will enable you to use a minimal amount of liquid.

Steaming is one of the simplest cooking methods. Place the food in a perforated basket and suspend it above simmering liquid. You can use water with seasonings added, or you may choose a more flavorful liquid. Flavor the food as it cooks.

Stir- frying is a traditional Asian cooking method which requires only a small amount of oil or nonstick cooking spray. The food is cut into small, uniform-sized pieces and then rapidly stirred in a wok or large nonstick frying pan.

You can give your meal more appeal by adding color, aroma and taste to your food. An excellent way is through the use of herbs and spices. You can add dried herbs in the early cooking stages, or fresh herbs toward the end of cooking. Be sure to use fresh herbs that aren’t wilted and that have bright color. If you substitute dry herbs for fresh, only use one-third the amount.

Now that you’re armed with the proper cooking techniques, you can prepare your meals like the pros, making them healthier and more appealing.
(By: Madeline Ellis)

Diet Advice
A balanced diet coupled with regular exercise is still the best way to lose weight and reduce fat. The Belly Fat Diet is an excellent plan with lots of practical advice about dieting, exercise, diet-motivation and long term weight control. For more information, click Diet Preview

While many Americans believe that the lower the fat in your diet, the better the results that will be achieved, a new study has found that a low-carbohydrate or Mediterranean-type diet may actually be more effective and just as safe.

Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston conducted a study of 322 moderately obese employees of a research center in Israel, 86 percent of whom were men, and found that the low-carb and Mediterranean diets were more effective that the low-fat diet in both weight loss and health benefits. The new study can be found in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Study participants were randomly assigning to three diet groups and were provided with encouragement and instruction over a two-year period. The three diet regimens included a low-carb diet, a low-fat diet and a Mediterranean diet. Those on the low-carb diet lost an average of 12 pounds in two years while those on the Mediterranean diet lost about 10 pounds. However, participants on the low-fat diet lost only 6.4 pounds after two years.

Researchers also found that those participants on the Mediterranean diet showed the most improvement in blood sugar levels, noting that this diet would provide the most health benefits for those at risk for diabetes, with the low carb diet being the best choice for people with cholesterol problems as it showed the most improvement in cholesterol levels. Both the low-carb and the Mediterranean diets promoted better cardiovascular health with the low-fat diet offering the least health benefits of any of the diets.

Dr. Meir Stampfer, co-chair of Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Channing Laboratory, and lead study investigator said the study provides hard evidence that a low-fat diet is not necessarily the best diet. The main findings are that low-carb and Mediterranean diets are good (as long as the protein and fat sources are healthful), and even preferential diets for weight loss, as well as the fact that they are safe. Stampfer concludes, “The take-home message should be that we should abandon the idea that low fat diets are the number one way for people to lose weight - it wasn’t the best diet. It can be helpful for some people, but overall I think the first choice should be the Mediterranean or the low carb.”

Study participants met with dietitians periodically throughout the two years and usually ate lunch at the same cafeteria, where foods were color-coded with labels that corresponded to the diet type. The low-fat group participants were directed to eat low-fat grains, vegetables, fruits and legumes, and to avoid sweets. The low-carb group participants were advised to eat vegetarian sources of fat and protein and to limit intake of carbohydrates. It was recommended that the Mediterranean diet group eat a diet high in fish, poultry, olive oil and nuts. Calories were not limited for the low-carb diet, but for the two other diets, women were expected to eat a maximum of 1,500 calories daily with men consuming a maximum of 1,800 daily.

One of the great strengths of the study was that 95 percent of participants were still following the diet after one year, with 85 percent staying on it after 2 years which suggests that diets connected to the workplace may be particularly effective. Some businesses are now taking steps to write caloric limits or nutritional guidelines into their contracts with food service providers. Stampfer said “It’d be nice if employers institute this kind of thing more broadly. It’s really in the employer’s interest in having healthy employees and a modest investment in nutrition and support would benefit everyone.”
(By: Drucilla Dyess healthnews)

Diet Advice
A balanced diet coupled with regular exercise is still the best way to lose weight and reduce fat. The Belly Fat Diet is an excellent plan with lots of practical advice about dieting, exercise, diet-motivation and long term weight control. For more information, click Diet Preview

Here’s one that my 104 year old Sicilian great grandmother taught me. Sunday Gravy Never Tasted So Good.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Ingredients

1 large onion, sliced and diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/4-cup olive oil
1 28-ounce can tomato puree
1 18-ounce can tomato paste
1-teaspoon dried basil
1-teaspoon oregano
1-teaspoon salt
1/4-teaspoon crushed anise (or 1/2-teaspoon whole)
2 tomato paste cans of water (see note)

Sauté onions and garlic in oil in a large pot. Cook until golden. Add rest of ingredients. After sauce starts to boil, lower heat to a simmer. At this time add a pinch of baking soda which will cause sauce to foam. Remove foam with spoon. Cover pot and let cook for 2 to 2.5 hours. Recipe can be doubled and then frozen for future use. One half-hour BEFORE sauce is finished cooking -add meats such as meatballs, pork or Italian sausage for flavor. If using ground beef, cook separately and drain off fat and then add to cooking sauce.

NOTE: More water may be needed if sauce becomes too thick.

Looking for a Great Italian Meatball Recipe?

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Ingredients

1 pound combined beef, veal, pork (must be fresh)
3 large eggs
1 cup grated Romano Locatelli Cheese
1 cup bread crumbs
1 clove garlic - minced
1 tablespoon salt

Preparation

(All mixing is done be hand)
In a large bowl mix beef/veal/pork with eggs. Then add bread crumb, cheese, and salt. Finally add minced garlic in stages. Add a little then mix. Add some more, then mix. This way all the garlic does not end up in one meatball. Now, it’s time to roll up the balls. Average size is roughly 2 inches in diameter. I usually get around 18 to 20 meatballs per pound.

IMPORTANT! Do not cook meatballs in your pasta sauce! Meatballs cooked in sauce loose their flavor. The real key to a tasty meatball is cooking the them in an oven. So, heat oven to 375. Place meatballs on a rack - then on a cookie tray.

Bake for 12 minutes on one side then 10 minutes for the other.

I freeze the meatballs in bags and take out what I need per dinner. I just drop the meatballs into the sauce as if heats up.

Buon Appetito!

Paul Altobelli is an internet marketing specialist experienced in strategic planning, lead generation, website development, search engine optimization, internet sales and marketing program development. He also loves to cook. For more of Paul’s italian recipes visit http://www.paulaltobelli.com or email Paul directly at pda@paulaltobelli.com

Diet Advice
A balanced diet coupled with regular exercise is still the best way to lose weight and reduce fat. The Belly Fat Diet is an excellent plan with lots of practical advice about dieting, exercise, diet-motivation and long term weight control. For more information, click Diet Preview

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_Altobelli

When it comes to fat, trans fat is considered by some doctors to be the worst of them all because of its double-barreled impact on your cholesterol levels. Unlike other fats, trans fat — also called trans fatty acids — both raises your “bad” (LDL) cholesterol and lowers your “good” (HDL) cholesterol.

A high LDL cholesterol level in combination with a low HDL cholesterol level significantly increases your risk of heart disease, the leading killer of men and women. Learn more about trans fat and how to avoid it.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A regimen of supplements and lifestyle coaching is just as effective as statin medication for reducing levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or “bad” cholesterol, and more effective in helping people lose weight, new research shows.

People with high cholesterol who took red yeast rice and fish oil daily and received counseling on diet, exercise and relaxation techniques showed the same 40 percent drop in LDL cholesterol seen among people taking 40 milligrams of simvastatin daily, Dr. David J. Becker of the University of Pennsylvania Health System’s Chestnut Hill Hospital and colleagues found. And they pared off an average of 10 pounds over 12 weeks, compared to less than a pound for patients taking the statin.

Becker has run a lifestyle program for people at risk of heart disease for 13 years. “People had a uniform desire to get off statins, and when they did their cholesterol was only going down maybe 5 percent at most,” he told Reuters Health. The cardiologist decided to launch the current study after seeing many patients have success in lowering their cholesterol with red yeast rice and fish oil.

With a grant from the state of Pennsylvania, Becker and his team randomly assigned 74 patients to receive 40 milligrams of simvastatin (Zocor) daily along with printed information on lifestyle changes, or to three capsules of fish oil twice daily and 600 milligrams of red yeast rice daily along with the 12-week lifestyle program.

LDL cholesterol levels fell by 42.4 percent in the red yeast rice group and by 39.6 percent in the simvastatin group, not a statistically significant difference. Triglyceride levels didn’t change in the statin group, but fell 29 percent in the red yeast rice group, probably because they were taking fish oil, according to Becker and his team.

People in the red yeast rice group lost an average of 4.7 kilograms (just over 10 pounds), compared to 0.3 kilograms (less than a pound) in the statin group.

Red yeast rice comes from fermenting red yeast with rice. Known as hong ku, the substance has been used as a medicine and food garnish in parts of Asia for centuries, Becker said. It contains a substance called monacolin-K that is nearly identical to the cholesterol-lowering drug lovastatin (Mevacor), as well as several other monacolins that may also have cholesterol-lowering properties.


People in the red yeast rice arm of the study were taking the equivalent of 10 to 15 mg of lovastatin, Becker said. “This lovastatin dosage is quite small, yet the effects we saw with the red yeast rice were akin to those one would generally see with a much higher dose of lovastatin.”

“However, it is not risk-free, and it must be used carefully and in conjunction with your physician.”

If more studies bear out the current findings, he added, the supplement/lifestyle intervention he and his colleagues tested could offer an alternative to people with high cholesterol who don’t want to take statins, or who can’t tolerate the drugs. However, he added, people who actually have heart disease should stick with statins, because they have been shown to reduce mortality.

Becker noted that a recent analysis by ConsumerLab found red yeast rice products varied sharply in their potency, and some were contaminated with a toxic byproduct called citrinin. “This paper is a call for better regulation of this supplement as well so that we know consistently what’s in it,” he said.

Diet Advice
A balanced diet coupled with regular exercise is still the best way to lose weight and reduce fat. The Belly Fat Diet is an excellent plan with lots of practical advice about dieting, exercise, diet-motivation and long term weight control. For more information, click Diet Preview

(source: mayo clinic)

Eating foods with soy protein has been promoted as a way to lower cholesterol, but a new study finds it has no significant effect on cholesterol levels.

The findings “do not support the current health claims for soy protein in a general population,” said study author Peter R.C. Howe, director of the Nutritional Physiology Research Centre at the Sansom Institute for Health Research at the University of South Australia in Adelaide.

He’s referring to the health claims approved for soy foods in both the United States and the United Kingdom that link daily consumption of 25 grams of soy protein to a reduction in heart disease risk through a lowering of LDL, or “bad,” cholesterol.

Howe’s team studied 35 men and 58 women, average age 52, who had mildly high cholesterol levels. He assigned each participant to rotate through one of three diets for six weeks each. Each diet had varying amounts of soy protein and isoflavones, substances in soy that some experts say may have cholesterol-lowering powers.

One diet contributed 24 grams of soy protein and 71 milligrams of isoflavone equivalents, one had 12 grams of dairy protein and 12 of soy protein, with 76 milligrams of isoflavones. The dairy diet, which served as the control, had 24 grams of dairy protein without isoflavones.

Howe’s team measured each person’s blood cholesterol — LDL, HDL and trigylcerides — at the start of the study and after each six-week diet.

They found no significant effect of the diets with either 24 grams or 12 grams of soy protein on LDL levels.

In his research, Howe also looked closely at whether a person’s ability to maximize the body’s response to soy protein had a better cholesterol-lowering effect. These people are termed “equol producers” because of their above-average ability to make equol, a substance produced in the intestines as a metabolite of a potent soy isoflavone called daidzen. Equol is thought to inhibit LDL.

When Howe compared the cholesterol-lowering effects of those who were equol producers with those who were not, he found no differences.

Howe’s study was confined to those with mildly high cholesterol; he said it may have an effect on those with higher cholesterol levels. And the soy diets did lower triglycerides, a blood fat, by 4 percent.

The findings were published in the August issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Even though the study found no effect of the soy protein on LDL cholesterol, Dr. Frank Sacks, a professor of nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health, called the research interesting. One facet he finds especially intriguing, he said, is the finding that equol producers have no benefit either.

After a series of studies on soy and its effect on cholesterol, the American Heart Association’s Nutrition Committee, of which Sacks is vice-chairman, reviewed the evidence and issued an advisory, saying there is “nothing special” about soy or isoflavones for improving cholesterol and that the heart association doesn’t recommend isoflavone supplements.

However, “there are other benefits to soy foods,” Sacks said. They are healthy due to high levels of polyunsaturated fats, fiber, vitamins and minerals. But, he added, “forget soy protein for lowering LDL.”

source

Diet Advice
A balanced diet coupled with regular exercise is still the best way to lose weight and reduce fat. The Belly Fat Diet is an excellent plan with lots of practical advice about dieting, exercise, diet-motivation and long term weight control. For more information, click Diet Preview

In order to lose inches off your waist you need to control the urge to eat high calorie, convenient food. Our modern diets are full of highly processed foods which offer little nutritional value and fat intake exceeds recommendations. People are also on average getting less than twenty minutes of exercise each day, combine this with poor food choices and it’s no wonder that you want to lose inches off your waist!

One thing you must realize is that weight loss cannot be confined to just one area of the body and any expert who tells you otherwise is offering false promises. There is no magic pill, exercise, food or anything else that will help you lose inches off your waist and only off your waist. Fat loss will occur all over the body if you start doing the right things - regular exercise and changing your eating habits. Usually the first place you put on weight will be the last place you lose it from so keep on going even if at first you aren’t noticing the kind of results you are looking for. Perseverance is key in weight loss and if you are determined and stick to it you will lose inches off your waist!

I now want to offer you 3 nutritional tips to help you lose inches off your waist, feel better and look great! So lets get started…

1. Be sure you are eating enough fruit and vegetables - listen to the 5-a-day advice!
Fresh fruit and vegetables should be a staple of anyone’s diet, especially if you want to change your body shape and lose inches off your waist. They contain a whole host of different vitamins, minerals and plant chemicals that are known to provide health benefits and control weight. Fruit and veg are low in fat and calories and a good source of dietary fiber; helping provide you with extra energy and focus for the day. Because they are low in calories we can eat a lot without consuming excess energy and the fiber content helps to keep you full for longer meaning far less food needs to be eaten to feel satisfied helping you lose inches off your waist.

One other great benefit of eating regular portions of fruit and veg is the fact that they are naturally low in sodium - something that cannot be said about most of the processed foods a western diet often contains. This facet alone will help reduce weight, the average person may be holding as many as 5 pounds of excess water due to the high intake of sodium! So start eating more fruit and vegetables on a daily basis and you’ll be off to a great start, helping you to lose inches off your waist!

2. Cut out ALL the soda!
Fizzy drinks and sodas are one reason that waistlines have increased over the last few decades, they should be completely eliminated from your diet if you are serious about wanting to lose inches off your waist. A regular can of soda can contain 150-200 calories which quickly adds up. The recommended daily intake of calories is 2000 for women and 2500 for men so those cans of pop, in many cases, can be responsible for nearly half of your recommended calorie intake! Some of those ’super-sized’ drinks can contain as many as 410 calories and over 35 teaspoons of sugar - disaster if you want to lose inches off your waist! Sugar isn’t the only weight loss ‘culprit’ - sodas also contain high levels of sodium and we already know what that does to your weight

3. Boost your protein intake whilst cutting down on carbs.
The amount of protein western people consume is normally very low in comparison to the amount of carbs they eat. In order to lose inches off your waist you should start to curb the carbs and boost the protein intake, thus bringing the percentage of each closer together which can help fat loss. Protein is essential for building and maintaining muscle which in turn boosts your metabolic rate - protein is more difficult for your body to process that either carbohydrates or fat and so simply by eating it you are burning more calories. So choose lean cuts of meat such as chicken and turkey and try to have a portion of protein at every feeding opportunity in order to lose inches off your waist.

Well there you have it, utilize these 3 nutritional tips and you WILL lose inches off your waist quickly and easily. For more sensible, no nonsense information on weight loss, health and fitness visit Extreme Weight Loss - it’s completely free and is a superb resource for anyone looking to lose weight and feel great! I hope you enjoyed this article, good luck!

You now have some of the knowledge needed to lose inches off your waist but wait - there’s more! Discover the hidden fat loss secrets that the top fitness professionals want to keep for themselves by visiting Fat Burning Tips. By doing so you will be ready to create the body you have always dreamed about.

Diet Advice
A balanced diet coupled with regular exercise is still the best way to lose weight and reduce fat. The Belly Fat Diet is an excellent plan with lots of practical advice about dieting, exercise, diet-motivation and long term weight control. For more information, click Diet Preview

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Daniel_Depp