On nutrition: Foods provide colorful, healthy plate | Lifestyles

It’s June and our richest farming season is just around the corner. There are so many delicious and nutritious foods to choose from.

Let’s talk about building a colorful plate so you can enjoy New York’s most nutritious foods!

We see lots of greens including spinach, lettuce, kale, and Swiss chard. Leafy vegetables provide us with fiber, vitamin K, calcium, potassium and folic acid. Fiber is so important to good health – it helps “scrub” our intestines so that we get rid of waste on a regular basis. This is good for our intestines! Dietary fiber can absorb things that are less good for us, such as cholesterol or unhealthy fats, and transport them out of the body. It also helps us feel full longer so that we suffer less from unhealthy things. And fiber feeds the good bacteria that live in our intestines, which also helps us stay healthy.

Greens provide many other nutrients as well. Vitamin K helps our blood clots to clot properly. Calcium is important for strong bones and teeth, and potassium is good for heart health and muscle function. Folate is a B vitamin that is necessary for energy, brain development and growth. Like most vegetables, greens are also very low in calories, so you can fill them up with no guilty conscience.

Soon we will see plants like peppers, cucumbers, eggplants and tomatoes. We can extract a wide variety of nutrients from these foods. The best way to take advantage of this is to mix the colors! Each color offers a different assortment of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients like antioxidants. These help reduce our risk of chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes or heart disease. We encourage everyone to “eat the rainbow” – mixing different colors to maximize benefits. When putting together a healthy plate, we should try to make about half of it out of colorful fruits and vegetables.

Salads are great for this – you can use, for example, green lettuce, red tomatoes, yellow peppers, and blueberries. You will fill up with fiber and get plenty of nutrients too! To make a heartier meal, you can add protein like chicken, beans, or nuts. You can also add a little low-fat cheese or some avocado and a dressing of your choice.

Today I want to share a recipe for a simple but filling summer salad. This strawberry and cucumber salad recipe comes from Foodhero.org. Strawberries and cucumbers are both mainly made up of water, so they keep us hydrated in the warm summer months. They also provide fiber, vitamins C and K, and antioxidants. Poppy seeds are good sources of healthy vegetable fats, proteins, fiber, and minerals like manganese and copper. Among other things, these minerals help our body produce healthy red blood cells.

This dish is sweet and crunchy at the same time! Yogurt makes a creamy dressing that also provides some calcium and protein. This can easily be swapped for a dairy-free alternative if you prefer to avoid dairy products.

This recipe is best eaten after an hour or two of refrigeration and has a shelf life of around three days. Just note that the red color of the strawberries will fade over time and give the entire salad a pink tint!

We recommend making the recipe fresh if you want to present it to a crowd.

Strawberry and cucumber salad

2 tablespoons of fat-free or low-fat plain yogurt

4 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon honey or brown sugar (do not give honey to infants under one year old)

¼ teaspoon prepared mustard

¼ teaspoon salt (can be omitted if sodium is restricted)

2 cups of strawberries, sliced

2 ½ cups of cucumber, sliced

In a small bowl, mix the yogurt, vinegar, honey, onion powder, mustard, salt, lemon juice, oil and poppy seeds together. Mix well.

Gently mix the dressing with the strawberries and cucumber until it is evenly covered.

Chill leftovers within 2 hours.

Note: honey is not safe for children under one year of age. Instead, sweeten with sugar or maple syrup. 4

Nutritional Information: One ⅔cup serving of this recipe contains 50 calories, 1.5 g fat, 50 mg sodium, 10 g carbohydrates, and 1 g protein.

Try it at home; You will not be disappointed!

You can find more delicious and nutritious SNAP-Ed NY recipes, tips and tricks, and information on virtual or personal courses on the Internet at snapedny.org.

Sarah Martin is a senior nutritionist in the SNAP-Ed NY Northwestern region, which includes Genesee, Orleans, and Wyoming counties. SNAP-Ed NY is funded by SNAP and provided by Cornell Cooperative Extension.

If you want to learn more about healthy cooking that can save you money, visit us on Facebook @snapedny or send an email to skm99@cornell.edu.

The USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provides nutritional assistance to people on low incomes. It can help people buy nutritious foods for better nourishment. To find out more, call 1 (800) 352-8401.

source https://dailyhealthynews.ca/on-nutrition-foods-provide-colorful-healthy-plate-lifestyles/