Eat Your Veggies

I've been doing a lot of reading lately about nutrition. My favorite is What to Eat by Marion Nestle. She goes through the whole supermarket and de-mystifies it all. Armed with her calculator she tells us what those nutrition labels really mean.

"Commercial bakers add back pieces of the wheat bran...to give white bread the appearanc of whole wheat, These "reconstituted" breads look natural nad healthy but are little more than white breads in disguise".

Sure enough I checked the label of the rye bread I had in my freezer and there was no rye flour in it at all but ingredient #4 was rye flakes.

"If you are looking for real whole grain breads, look for 100 percent on the label, whole wheat flour as the first ingredient, 2 grams of fiber per ounce, and the heart disease health claim."

Eat, Drink and Weigh Less by Mollie Katzen and Walter Willett has some good recipes (you might recognize Mollie as the author of the Moosewood cookbooks). But what I really likes was a 4 page checklist which gives you a body score. Instead of dieting per se you try and increase your body score. The checklist includes number of vegetables eaten etc but also includes where did you eat (ie while in front of the tv), why did you eat (ie bored), how much sleep did you get.

Food that Fight Cancer by Richard Beliveau and Denis Gingras has a ton of info and explanations about the science of how green tea is good for you. It is somewhat discouraging though as it ends up that to really get the benefit of green tea it should be Japanese, brewed 8-10 minutes and drank fresh and hot.

Chicken or Egg but I've been eating lots more vegetables. My easy vegetable lunch is to grab a bunch of frozen veggies, add peanut butter, soy sauce, some vinegar and microwave. It all melds together into a very passable lunch. What do you guys all do to feed veggies to your families? I need ideas!