A Healthier PB&J

 

Organic crunchy peanut butter on a
100% whole wheat English Muffin
topped with Fresh Mango

A peanut butter and jelly sandwich is a go-to lunch. It's quick, it's inexpensive and who doesn't love them? Even people allergic to peanuts indulge by easily substituting the peanut butter with any nut or seed butter. 

Sadly, growing up in an Italian household, I wasn't introduced to the PB&J until I went off to college. But now I eat them regularly, usually at breakfast time. 

The question remains, is it healthy? As a nutritionist, I would say that the typical peanut butter and jelly sandwich is not a healthy choice. First, it's typically made with white bread. Second, many peanut butters come in plastic containers and contain sugar, hydrogenated oils, and salt. And if you've ever made jelly, you know the most popular recipes contain more sugar than fruit.

Here are 4 easy things to do to make this iconic sandwich healthier:

#1 Start with a bread that is made from whole grains. It's easier to find a whole grain bread that contains wheat so if you are gluten free, you will have to carefully read the labels. There are some good ones out there but many of them are full of overly processed starches and gums to hold them together. So if you aren't allergic to wheat, a bread like Dave's Killer Bread with 21 Whole Grains and Seeds OrganicBread is a winner. Check out www.daveskillerbread.com/products for more of their healthy breads. 

#2 Pick an organic nut butter that only contains the nuts and seeds. Just peanuts -  no oil, no sugar. Little or no salt. I like organic MaraNatha or Santa Cruz peanut butters.

#3 Only buy nut butters that are in glass jars. Peanut butter has a high fat content and the oils in the nut butter can absorb chemicals fro the plastic and become contaminated. The above peanut butters are both in glass jars.

#4 Substitute the jelly with fresh fruit! This will save you empty calories and needless sugar as well as adding healthful fiber to your sandwich. My favorite fruits to add are:

    *Sliced mangos, peaches, nectarines

    * Raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries

    * Sliced bananas, apples

     

Raw Vegan Blueberry Banana Fruit Leather - A Healthy Snack For School Lunch Boxes! And They Are Naturally Gluten Free!

A perfect snack for school lunch boxes!

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My First Try at Fruit Leather
When I bought my Excalibur dehydrator, it came with "Preserve it Naturally II, The Complete Guide to Food Dehydration" . The book has lots of ideas on how to dehydrate fruits and vegetables and many other recipes for things I'd never make, like beef jerky. It also dehydrates most things at higher temperatures than what raw foodists would normally use. But it did inspire me to make something that I have never tried and that's fruit leather. So last night, before I went to bed, I whipped up some blueberries and a banana in my Vitamix, poured 4 little pancake-like puddles of the mixture on a dehydrator sheet, popped it in my Excalibur and woke up to 4 little fruit leathers! It was that easy!


Perfect Time of the Year
This is the time of year when we are buried in fruit from our trees or from the farmers' markets. It's also the time of year when the kids are going back to school and we struggle to think of healthy things to put into their lunch boxes. This is the perfect solution! 


Endless Combinations
Mix apples with peaches and a touch of cinnamon. Try using strained blackberry pulp with a banana. Mix apples and pears with some ginger or vanilla extract. Just experiment with the fruit you have at hand! To prevent darkening of light colored fruit, add 2 teaspoons of lemon juice or 1/8 teaspoon ascorbic acid to each 2 cups of fruit.  WRITE A COMMENT AT THE END OF THIS POST IF YOU HAVE ANY GOOD FRUIT LEATHER RECIPES TO SHARE!
To make your snack even more nutritious, spread some peanut or almond butter on the leather and roll it up. You can even drop some chopped walnuts or coconut onto the mixture before it goes into the dehydrator. These are some of the ideas from this book and I'm sure we can come up with lots more!


Healthy Snack
Many of the fruit leathers at the store add sugar and corn syrup to the mixture. Fruit is sweet by itself so there really is no need. By making these yourself, you can be in control of what your child is eating. You can use organic fruit, leave out the sweeteners and food coloring and be certain that your family is getting the most healthful snack possible! 

Some people spread the leather over the entire sheet and make one large leather. I like having little 4 inch pancakes.

Roll the little pancakes up or fold them over.

Wrap tightly in plastic and drop in the lunchbox or store.
Each fruit leather is only 51 calories and has 2 g of fiber!

Blueberry Banana Fruit Leathers
Raw Vegan, Gluten Free
[makes 8 (4 1/2 inch round) fruit leathers]
2 cups blueberries ,cleaned (if you use frozen, thaw first)
2 large bananas, peeled and cut up


Place fruit in a Vitamix or other high speed blender and blend until smooth.
Pour out 8 pancakes (about 1/4 cup each) onto 2 large Teflex dehydrator sheets (4 pancakes per sheet).
With the back of a spoon, gently spread pancake so that it is about 4 to 4 1/2 inches round. The mixture should be 1/8 inch in the center and 1/4 inch thick at the edges. Don't make them too thin.
Dehydrate at 105 degrees F until leathery and pliable and the center is no longer sticky. Mine took 9 1/2 hours but this will vary depending on the amount of moisture in your blended fruit mixture.
Peel leather off the Teflex sheets. Roll up or fold in half and then in quarters.
To store, wrap tightly in plastic wrap and store in airtight containers in a cool, dark place.
According to the National Center for Home Food Preservation, the leathers will keep one month at room temperature or for 1 year if the tightly wrapped leathers are put in the freezer.


Per fruit serving: 51.3 calories, 0.1 g fat, 0 g saturated fat, 55 mg omega-3 and 84 mg omega-6 fatty acids, 0 mg cholesterol, 0.5 g protein, 13 g carbohydrates, 2 g dietary fiber and 0.7 mg sodium.

Encourage Your School To Adopt The 5-2-1-0 Program To Stop Childhood Obesity! Practice These Health Strategies This Summer!

My grandson Matisse loves to run and play and eat his veggies! He doesn't watch TV or drink soda. This will help keep him trim and healthy throughout his life.

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Childhood Obesity
With one third of Americans being obese, it's not a surprise that childhood obesity is also on the rise. After all, it's the adults that feed these children and set the rules. In fact, childhood obesity has more than tripled since 1980! Whether or not your own children are overweight, this statistic effects everyone. Obesity in this country, despite the age, leads to cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other degenerative disorders. It's what's causing our healthcare costs to skyrocket. Most importantly, it's one of the main reasons that this generation may not live as long as their parents. I recently read about a program that promotes good habits in children and I would like to share it with you.


5-2-1-0 Program and the Let's Go! Initiative
The state of Maine, trying to address this problem, began the "Let's Go!" initiative which is being adopted in many of their schools, childcare centers and after-school programs.  The program promotes the 5-2-1-0 Message which is:
5 or more fruits and vegetables 
2 hours or less recreational screen time
1 hour or more of physical activity
0 sugary drinks - more water and low fat milk (I suggest non-dairy)


5 or more fruits and vegetables
There are several challenges here:
The first is the child's personal preferences. Although many children eat some fruit, many avoid vegetables all together. But these habits are often brought on by the parents. Kids eat what you offer them and what they see you enjoy. No one was born craving happy meals. My grandsons love veggies. Why, because that's what they are fed. They help their mom garden and often pick the veggies off the vine and pop them in their mouths. My daughter-in-law helps run a school garden program where they are teaching the students to plant various vegetables and eat the bounty! Much to the parents surprise, the kids are going home and asking for salads!
The second issue is accessibility. Schools are beginning to get some pressure to offer more healthful meals (and no, ketchup shouldn't count as a serving of vegetables!). You should encourage your own schools to adopt healthy programs offering fresh salads, whole grains, vegetables and fruits while discouraging cheese drenched pizza and high calorie fried foods with little nutritional value.
Another issue is cost. You can feed a family of four at Taco bell for what it costs for a few pounds of organic apples. It's sad but true. But as long as farmers are subsidized to grow corn instead of fruits and vegetables, this fact will remain. However, it you factor the cost of health care into the equation, paying for food that eventually prevents expensive medical bills is a good financial decision.


2 hour or less recreational screen time
TV's and video games seem like a great invention for parents. It's just so darn convenient to plop the kids in front of their favorite show or to allow them to play a game. Then you're able to prepare dinner or just take a break. But sometimes this gets out of hand and kids end up spending most of their free time doing this. There are a few good reasons why this should be curtailed:
First, if they are watching TV or playing video games, they are NOT reading, drawing, playing a musical instrument, learning to play chess or doing something physical. Hence the term, "couch potato". 
Second, they are getting exposed to advertising! Marketing junk food to children is big business. In my post, "Fast Food Facts", I showed that the fast food industry spent over $4 billion on fast food marketing resulting in 40% of children asking to go to McD's once a week and 15% of PRESCHOOLERS asking to go EVERY DAY! 
Another problem with watching too much TV, especially at a young age, is the effect it could have on the brain. A 2004 study by Dr. Christakis showed that 2.2 to 3.6 hours of TV viewing by children from 1 to 3 was associated with ADHD when the children reached the age of 7. Earlier research suggested that the rapid sounds and images that the child experiences from TV is what causes the neurological system of a young child to mimic that frenetic pace and exhibit ADHD behavior. (Add fast forwarding from Tivo and your head can explode!)


1 Hour of Physical Activity
If you are old enough to remember when kids could safely go outside, you probably are thinking that 1 hour of physical activity is ridiculously small. Your school probably had a physical education program and when you got home, you probably played outside for hours. Then after dinner, you most likely begged to go back out until dark. I grew up in New York City and even I played outside more than one hour a day. But today, for many reasons, kids aren't getting even a minimum of physical exercise. 
Get your kids in sports or set up play dates in the park, not at the movies. Go for a family hike or bike ride. Put up a hoop and buy a basketball. Just get the kids out of the house and moving!
Junk food plus little or no physical activity spells obesity!


0 sugary drinks, more water and low fat (non-dairy) milk
Foodbeast reported the "7-11 double big gulp holds 200% the average human stomach's capacity". This 44 ounce sugary drink supplies 800 nutrient-free calories! According to Robert Lustig, a UCSF pediatric neuroendocrinologist, "sugar is poison!" - especially the high-fructose corn syrup found in soft drinks. He believes that fructose generates increased insulin resistance. Chronically elevated insulin blocks leptin (a brain hormone) from signaling the body that it is full. So even though a child or an adult is drinking hundreds or thousands of calories from soft drinks, the body thinks it's starving! Bottom line, don't let the kids drink soda.
Now, what should they drink? Water is a good substitute for sure. This program also promotes low fat milk but I'm not a big fan of dairy for children. In Dr. Schmidt's book,  "Childhood Ear Infections", recurrent ear infections can be virtually eliminated by removing dairy from the child's diet. The book, "Beyond Antibiotics", talks about an ear nose and throat specialist named Dr. Pullen who practices in Miami, Florida. Whenever patients come to him to have tubes surgically implanted in their eardrums (a common operation for children who have chronic ear infections), he puts them on a dairy-free diet for one month. After one month, 75% of the children no longer need the surgery! I wish I knew this when my son was 18 months old and had these tubes put into his ears. There are many dairy free beverages like soy milk, almond milk, hemp milk and rice milk that your children can enjoy. Many juices are also high in sugar and should be avoided.


School's Almost Over. Why Bring this up Now?
Even though school is about to end, I think the summer would be a great time to try and drum up support for a similar program in your local school. To get some ideas on how to do this, check out Let'sGo!
Summer is also a good time to practice these principles. Talk to some other parents and see what they think about the program. I like the simplicity of it. It provides structure and a few rules on how you and your children deal with food, TV, exercise and sugary drinks. It's easier to say, "you haven't had your 5 fruits and vegetables" than just to say, "you need to eat more vegetables". It's more definitive to say, "you've already watched your 2 hours of TV" than to say, "shut that darn thing off, you've been watching it all day!" And once they get into the habit of running around and playing for an hour a day, you won't be able to get them to stop! They'll be begging to play outside until dark - just like you did! 

A Healthy Mac and Cheese Recipe with 2 Servings of Veggies and 9 Grams of Fiber

Butternut squash.

Cheese sauce from blended cheese and cooked butternut squash.

A Favorite Among America Children (And Their Parents Too!)

I would venture to guess most kids in America eat lots of mac and cheese. I know mine did when they were young. It's one of the greatest comfort foods of all times. Unfortunately it doesn't provide the fiber and nutrients that we all need nor does it contribute to the 5 required servings of vegetables per day. I am extremely excited about this recipe because after much experimentation, I figured out a way to make a delicious mac and cheese that provides lots of fiber, protein, vitamin A, calcium AND 2 servings of veggies that your kids will happily eat!

Making a Healthy Mac and Cheese- Step 1

Regular macaroni and cheese is basically pasta made from white processed wheat covered with lots of high fat cheese, butter and cream. It's extremely high in fat and has almost no fiber content or beneficial plant chemicals. The first thing you can do to make it healthier is to use whole grain pasta. Today, there are more and more whole grain brands and shapes to choose from on the market. For this dish, I use whole grain Fusilli but you can use the traditional elbow, shells or whatever whole grain product appeals to you or your children. A serving of whole grain pasta typically provides 5 grams of fiber.

How to Get Your Kids to Eat Veggies and Not Know It - Step 2

The next thing you can do to make mac and cheese healthier is to reduce the cheese while still maintaining a creamy, cheesy sauce. This can be achieved by blending a single ounce of a good quality, full fat, sharp cheddar with some low fat cottage cheese and 2 cups of cooked butternut squash. Adding the squash provides 2 full servings of veggies and 3 times the daily requirement of vitamin A per serving. Its bright orange color, an indication of its high carotenoid content, blends well with the color of the cheddar making it a great way to “slip” this important veggie into your kids’ favorite dish!

You Can Go One Step Further

If you are really trying to restrict your fat intake, you can lower the fat content even more by using fat reduced cheddar and 1% low fat cottage cheese. This only reduces the calorie content by 4% but it decreases the total fat an additional 22%, saturated fat by 39% and cholesterol by 33%. But even if you use full fat cheddar and 2% cottage cheese, the recipe still only has a total of 3.8 g of saturated fat and only 20 mg of cholesterol. A small price to pay and it tastes like “the real thing”.

***

Healthy Mac and Cheese [2 large servings]

4 oz. dry whole wheat Fusilli or other shaped pasta

1/2 small onion, diced (about 1/2 cup)

2 cups butternut squash, peeled, seeded and diced

1/4 cup reserved cooking water from butternut squash

1 oz. sharp cheddar cheese, coarsely grated

1/2 cup low fat 2% organic cottage cheese

1/2 teaspoon sea salt plus salt for pasta water

fresh ground black pepper to taste (optional)

If you are going to bake the final dish before serving, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cover the butternut squash with an inch and a half of water and gently boil it, covered, until soft - about 10 minutes. While the squash is cooking, prepare the pasta according to directions. In a small pan, sauté the onion in olive oil until soft, about 5 minutes. Drain the squash reserving 1/4 cup of the cooking water. Put the drained squash and reserved cooking water in a blender with the cheddar cheese, cottage cheese and salt and blend until smooth. In a large bowl, combine the drained pasta, the cheese sauce and the cooked onions and gently mix until the pasta is evenly coated with the sauce. If warm enough, you may serve it now. Or, you can put it in a lightly greased casserole dish and warm it in the oven for 15 minutes. Serve with freshly ground black pepper if desired.

Per serving using whole fat cheddar cheese and 2% low fat cottage cheese: 404 calories, 9.3 g fat, 3.8 g saturated fat, 20 mg cholesterol, 18.5 g protein, 63.8 g carbohydrates, 8.8 g of fiber and 250 mg of calcium.

Per serving using reduced fat cheddar cheese and 1% low fat cottage cheese: 387 calories, 7.3 g fat, 2.3 g saturated fat, 13.5 mg cholesterol, 19 g of protein, 64.3 g carbohydrates, 8.8 g fiber and 258 mg of calcium.