Disease Proof

• Now, I don’t have kids, but evidently getting them to eat their veggies can be difficult. How do you do it? Does it involve a funnel and a roll of duct tape? How about chopping up carrots, spinach, and broccoli—and then drowning them in cheese sauce! I don’t think Dr. Fuhrman would agree (remember, health = nutrition / calories) with this strategy from Momcast:

Chop it up fine, including some of the stalk, and put broccoli into anything that's got cheese or cream sauce. Mac & Cheese (homemade is best, but you can make improvements to boxed), Stroganoff Hamburger Helper and any kind of rice or noodles and sauce. If you don't do dairy based stuff, you could put it into a rice dish or any Asian-style meal.

• Halloween might be over, but some horrors still linger. Check out these mutant veggies courtesy of You Grow Girl:

A friend and I attended The Royal, Toronto’s big city attempt at a country fall fair. I was unable to make it over the last few years and forgot how good it is. Fall fairs are like cultural anthropology that happens close to home. There’s just something wholesome, quaint, and yet slightly off about neatly displayed jars of preserves, big piles of prize-winning sheared wool, and butter sculptures. I love it!

• Just in case you don’t understand the intricacies of applying heat to food, Health Recipes shares some healthy ways to cook vegetables. Now, I don’t know about using all that salt and oil, but for those of you that use the smoke alarm as a timer, these tips might still be useful:

Steaming is fast, preserves nutrients, and it works best for fresh and frozen vegetables such as carrots, broccoli, spinach and roots like beets, parsnips, peas and beans. If you don't have a steaming basket, you can fill a pot with mixed vegetables and add about 1 1/2 inches of unsalted water and cover. Simmer until the vegetables are tender. Check often to make sure that the water doesn't evaporate. If it gets too low, just add a little more water. Don't forget to keep the remaining broth for soup or do what I do, pour it in a nice mug and enjoy the warm flavorful broth.

• As someone who doesn't like consuming a lot of meat, I totally identify with this post from The Torn Veil. Joseph Onesta explains why he became a reluctant vegetarian:

His diagnosis was that my body was rather intolerant of meat and that I should drastically reduce the meat I consumed. Well, with the nutritionist, I was eating at the most 4 oz of meat a day. I gradually cut back my meat consumption and eventually cut it out all together because the difference in the quality of my life was markedly better when I didn’t eat meat. I remained cognizant of the need for protein but just learned we else I could get it.

• Broccoli is one of those veggies I just can’t get enough of. I probably eat it a couple times a week at least—usually more if my farmer’s market has good broccoli raab! But, I’ve never had broccoli sprouts before. Have you? The Body Deluxe drops a little sprout knowledge us:

Broccoli sprouts are easy to grow and maintain even if you don’t have a large vegetable garden on your property you can be enjoying homegrown sprouts in a matter of days. They are tasty and can be added to a sandwich or to a salad. Broccoli sprouts contain all of the same nutrients as the traditional heads of broccoli we are all used to.

• Fruit & Vegetable is certainly a veggie advocate, and well read too! Get ready for this one, a lot reading to do:

"Eat your fruits and vegetables" is one of the tried and true recommendations for a healthy diet. And for good reason. Eating plenty of fruits and vegetables can help you ward off heart disease and stroke, control blood pressure and cholesterol, prevent some types of cancer, avoid a painful intestinal ailment called diverticulitis, and guard against cataract and macular degeneration, two common causes of vision loss.