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Healthy Diet

How to Make Homemade Ketchup (with unrefined sweeteners, antioxidant-rich)

February 10, 2014 by KimiHarris 9 Comments

How to make homemade ketchup
Sweetened with coconut sugar and maple syrup, this simple homemade ketchup is flavorful, gently sweetened, and a beautiful condiment to be served to kids and adults alike. Unlike most ketchup on the grocery store shelf, healthy, homemade versions of this popular condiment can actually be a beautiful part of your diet!

How much sugar we consume in a year (on average)

As part of our 21 steps to a nourishing diet, I’d love to challenge you to ditch highly sweetened ketchup (and other similar processed foods) and enjoy  healthy versions instead. While sugars in their natural forms can definitely be part of a traditional diet in moderation, many don’t realize how bombarded they are with sugar everyday. We’ve gone from consuming an average of 2 pounds of sugar a year, 200 years ago, to 152 pounds of sugar a year. That’s equal to 3 pounds per person every week!

One highly sweetened and popular condiment in the U.S. is tomato ketchup. It is delicious, but unfortunately is full of excess sugar, and most often, corn syrup as well. Thankfully, it’s very easy to make your own ketchup at home. The grand thing about making your own ketchup is that you can make it as sweet as you like! We feel this recipe is pretty sweet with only 4 tablespoons of unrefined sugar for the whole recipe. It’s also fun to make as you can vary the spices and the amounts of spices to taste with great results. It’s easily adaptable and forgiving to change.

My kids have been asking for ketchup to dip their homemade French fries and hamburgers in, and I was glad to whip this up for them.

Health Benefits of Tomato Paste

I make this using really high quality tomato paste, which actually has many health benefits (sources listed below).

  • It’s a concentrated source of the powerful antioxidant lycopene.
  • Tomato paste has been shown to have cardio health benefits
  • It helps prevent sunburn and is anti-aging. It’s a skin booster! (Antioxidants are amazing for preventing sunburn!).
  • It has multiple anticancer properties- especially against prostate cancer

All in all, I find this simple condiment a beautiful addition to a healthy diet, and just another example of how making your own versions of popular food items can turn unhealthy choices, into healthy ones!

Just a quick note about brands: I use Bionaturae’s organic tomato paste. It’s delicious and I appreciate that it’s in glass jars (no “tinny” taste). If you can’t find it locally, you can find it here at my affiliates Amazon and Vitacost. Truthfully, I’ve found it cheaper to buy online most of the time.

How to Make Homemade Ketchup (unrefined sweeteners, antioxidant-rich)
 
Author:
Kimi @ The Nourishing Gourmet
Prep time: 5 mins
Total time: 5 mins
Print
 
This is delicious as is, however, if you are missing a spice or two, don’t worry! Just play around with the ones you have on hand until it’s spiced to taste. You can also thin to desire. The ½ cup called for produces thick ketchup, so feel free to thin a little more, if you’d like. Makes 2 cups.
Ingredients
  • 2 tomato paste jars (7 ounces each)
  • 2 tablespoons each of pure maple syrup and coconut sugar
  • 1 ¼ teaspoon unrefined salt
  • ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • Generous pinch or two of each of ginger, allspice, cloves, nutmeg, cayenne pepper
  • 1 large garlic clove, peeled and put through a garlic press
  • ½ cup water
  • 2 tablespoons raw apple cider vinegar
  • 2-4 teaspoons yellow mustard (prepared or powder)
Instructions
  1. Combine all of the ingredients in a bowl and whisk well. Scrap into a jar, and cover tightly, Should keep 10-21 days refrigerated (based on other recipe recommendations). If you’d like to keep it for longer, freeze it!
3.2.2265

Sources:

  • http://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/Research/Antioxidant-rich-tomato-paste-shows-cardio-benefits-Study
  • http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2155595/Tomatoes-help-skin-young-protect-sunburn.html
  • http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323844804578531313972915362

Filed Under: Dairy Free, Gluten Free, Nutrient Dense Foods, Sides, Vegan, Vegetarian Tagged With: A Healthy Diet, Antioxidant Rich, Healthy, Healthy Diet, Ketchup, Make Ketchup, Tomato

What Difference Can a Healthy Diet Make?

January 8, 2014 by KimiHarris 16 Comments

Discussing what a healthy diet can and cannot do for you!

I am completely fascinated with the healing natural world around us. I think that it is crazy that we find cancer preventing elements in funny shaped roots such as turmeric, and tree shapes vegetables such as broccoli. I’ve been impressed with the relationship apparent between food swarming with bacteria (like yogurt and sauerkraut) and the health of our own digestive tract. Or how coconut oil can do so many body building things, yet is only one food substance.

And as someone impressed with these sorts of things, I often encounter two reactions to eating a nourishing, healthy diet. One is the voice of skepticism. This type of person (and I’ve been there myself) has a sort of fatalistic viewpoint on life. The viewpoint that says bad things will happen no matter what I eat, so I might as well eat whatever is most convenient. Studies showing this or that benefit, personal stories of dramatic recovery, or even their own experience is often not enough to make an impression or real change in eating habits. It’s good to be skeptical, and if I wasn’t a skeptical person on at least some levels, this blog would have never been born ( that’s another story for another day), but it can also lead us to ignore the realities of how we reap what we sow.

The other voice I hear often is the voice of a fanatic. This is the person who feels that a good diet will literally make the world a perfect place, or at least, almost perfect. This is the person whose whole world view would be crushed to smithereens if they, or a close friend who also ate well, ever had to deal with cancer, or any other serious health issue. Because, after all, that friend had regularly eaten broccoli, and shouldn’t they have escaped the curse of cancer?

I thought it would be helpful to share at the start of our series, 21 days to a nourishing diet, what I personally think the benefits of eating a healthy diet are. It may be different than you think.

What a healthy diet can do for you

A nourishing diet can nourish you. I know, profound. But stay with me here.

Dr. Price’s research into a nourishing diet was based on the concept that our diet can have a direct effect on our dental health, our overall health, and our mental health. Those are big promises.

He found that when a diet was high in vitamins such as A, D, and K2, and in minerals such as calcium and magnesium, that the diet was better able to support healthy teeth. He even found that he was able to halt the quickly decaying teeth of malnourished children of his time by giving them a generously nourishing midday meal.

That’s pretty promising research.

He also found that those who ate traditional diets had general better health, had healthier babies, easier labors, and he became convinced that our nourishment also had a relationship with our mental health.

More modern research has backed some of those claims, such as linking certain vitamin deficiencies to birth defects. They’ve even found that the traditional view that men’s health could have effect on their children also to be true. Being well nourished before conception shows promise of better chances of having healthy children. That’s enough to influence how I eat!

A growing body of research supports the idea that proper nutrition could also help protect us from depression and something as simple as Vitamin D could be helpful to look into when dealing with psychiatric illnesses. Dr. Price was ahead of his time in many ways.

Whether it’s about growing babies, recovering from depression, or having enough energy to enjoy life, food holds promise to be helpful to us in many, many ways.

But it can’t take away the fact that we live in an imperfect world.

What a healthy diet can’t always do for you

I think that it would be naive to think that eating well will mean that we will never deal with any health issues. I know loads of lovely people who have had their lives changed in amazing, life saving ways through diet and supplements. Their stories inspire me. But not all of them can say that they live trouble-free, health perfect lives. Their lives are greatly improved, but not always perfect. Some of my friends who have worked through terrible depression with natural methods, have not been able to solve other pressing health issues. Some of those who ate lots of cancer-preventing foods, still got cancer in the end. It does happen (And one should always be aware of the fact that cancer-preventing diets are about getting better chances of not getting cancer – it’s not a guarantee. Plus, there are other factors in play as well – some of which we can’t control.).

As someone who has lost a baby to a birth defect, I’m well aware of the hope that a nutrient dense diet has for helping nourishing our unborn baby, but also the need to acknowledge that our world is imperfect and that diet doesn’t control everything, or guarantee anything. Pre-modern days may have seen birth defects less common, but they were not absolutely unknown. Dr. Price may have seen dramatic improvements with dental health, but that doesn’t mean he thought that no tribal person had ever suffered from dental decay.

I think about the Native Americans and how entire tribes were decimated by the common colds and viruses Europeans brought over with them. Think of how much purer their diets were in comparison to our diet (or the Europeans of the time, for that matter),  and how nutrient-rich their food was, and how much physical activity was part of their norm.  They probably had really healthy babies, little cancer, and perfect blood sugar, but a common cold may have killed them in the end. Were their lives absolutely better because of their excellent diets? Of course. Would have a junk food diet improved their chances? Absolutely not. But their nutrient dense diet didn’t prevent them from ever getting seriously sick from viruses that hadn’t had the chance to be built through their tribe’s immune systems.

So, if a nutrient-rich diet holds such hope, but guarantees so little, should we bother?

In my opinion, absolutely yes. My personal experience has been that eating well has life changing, daily benefits. If I were to die of cancer, I’d be thankful that so many of my pre-cancer days were spent with better energy, better mental clarify, less low spirits, and better ability to enjoy the days I had. (And just to clarify, I find the amazing world of disease fighting research fascinating and helpful, and think that there is real help with expert alternative health care practitioners who treat as well as help prevent cancer, heart disease and diabetes through natural means).

Can a diet control all of the other toxins in our world that we were even daily exposed too? No, but it can give our body an edge in dealing with them. Can we guarantee ourselves healthy long lives with healthy long living children? No, but we can certainly give ourselves a fighting chance for those things. Why not fight for health with the many tools we know and have already? It would be silly to not try just because we have no guarantees or because we don’t know everything.

There is a tension we need to find. A good tension that allows us to balance between the real hope a good diet gives us, and the reality that it may not solve everything every time. If we don’t have realistic expectations, we could grow discouraged. But if we find peace living in an imperfect world, while still being able to fight for a better understanding of how we can grow healthier, I think we can find a happy medium to stay in.

A find that happy medium by enjoying beautiful foods that also just happen to be body-building. In case you were wondering, the pictures above are of local organic strawberries from summer served with chocolate coconut milk whipped cream. With food like this, why not enjoy healthy foods as well as their benefits?

Filed Under: Health, Nourishing Practices, Nutrient Dense Foods Tagged With: A Healthy Diet, Diet, Eating A Healthy Diet, Healthy, Healthy Babies, Healthy Diet, Healthy Teeth, Nutrient Diet

21 Steps to a Nourishing Diet (A New Series )

January 7, 2014 by KimiHarris 6 Comments

221 steps to a nourishing diet

It’s a beautiful (and cold) new year, and I find my mind brewing new ideas and goals about getting ourselves back on track with eating the best, healthiest diet we can. I know a lot of you are doing the same thing as well, with many questioning how they can eat a healthy diet while balancing the rest of life. Eating a healthy, nourishing diet is one of the most common New Year’s resolutions people make, and also one of the most failed resolutions.

But it doesn’t have to be, and I would love for my blog to help make a healthy diet a practical, doable goal for more of my readers. So, in light of that goal, I’ve decided to take the next two months to sharing tips and recipes for getting on track with a nourishing diet as part of this series. I’m excited this year to have my contributing writers also involved in the series, allowing you to get more than one perspective on this important topic!

I am really excited about this series as it allows us to focus on not just the basics, but also the practical recipes and thoughts that make our eating habits realistic and delicious. It’s going to be a good two months. This series, as we will go more into soon, is based on a traditional diet using traditional ingredients. Like my blog as a whole, it is inspired by Sally Fallon’s book, Nourishing Traditions (affiliate links) and Dr. Price’s book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. To get more information quickly, get them from the library or buy them! They are life-changing books, for sure.

Since I am still mapping out next month’s posts for this series, I’d love to hear any suggestions or questions you’d like answered! Let me know in the comments below.

Meanwhile, you may find the following past posts helpful: 

  • How NOT to save money on a healthy diet 
  • Easy Gluten-free Pizza (pictured above) 🙂
  • Are you really eating a nourishing diet? 
  • The diet that heals cavities 

 

Filed Under: For the Love of Food and Books, Health, Nourishing Practices, Nutrient Dense Foods Tagged With: A Healthy Diet, Diet, Healthy, Healthy Diet, How To Eat Healthy, Meet Your Goals, Nourish

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The information you find here at The Nourishing Gourmet is meant to help you become a better cook! This site is primarily for sharing family friendly recipes. It's not meant to give medical advice or to make any health claims on the prevention or curing of diseases.This site is only for informational and educational purposes. Please discuss with your own, qualified health care provider before adding in supplements or making any changes in your diet. Also, any links to sponsors or affiliates (including Amazon) may give me a percentage of the sale or a pay per click. Thank you for supporting this site.

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