How To Make Smoothie Making Fun

Those who are conscious about what they eat and drink often recommend drinking smoothies to maintain good health and fitness. But just because you have decided that you will lead a healthy lifestyle does not mean making smoothies has to be an ordeal! You can have an incredible amount of fun making smoothies. Smoothies are a great way to maintain your levels of nutrition and keep a watch on your weight.

Smoothies retain the goodness of fruits and vegetables unlike juices that discard the pulp. This means you can indeed have a wide variety of fruits of vegetables and get their full benefits without wastage. The first reason why smoothies can be good fun is there are no hard and fast rules! You can try blending different categories of fruits and vegetables and make interesting smoothies that will make your taste buds sing. Here are some interesting tips that will help you with your smoothie making efforts a real pleasure.

Chose your liquid wisely

First up, decide upon the liquid you will use. The liquid is the first that that should go into your blender, as the liquid must surround the blade for your smoothie making process to be smooth and easy. The traditional choice for a smoothie has always been milk or fruit juices. Dairy milk or even soy milk can be used while making smoothies. You can also use a variety of fruit juices, but in that case beware of the added sugar content. If you are looking at breaking the mould and want to use some interesting liquids you could try things like almond milk or coconut milk. Fat free yogurt can also be a good choice if you want your smoothie to be creamy.

Go wild with ingredients and toppings

As we mentioned earlier, you can go wild with the choice of the fruits and veggies. The more colourful your choices, the better it is for your nutritional value. The more fruits and veggies you use the lesser liquid you will need to use. Also if you keep your fruits and vegetables frozen, you will not have to use too much of ice. As for the toppings or extras, you have a wide variety of choice as well. For a dessert style smoothie, the choice of a topping is usually ice cream. But if you are watching your weight, you cannot obviously opt for this sinful dessert topping! But that does not mean your smoothie will not taste good.

You can use protein powders, which come in a variety of flavours that can really give your smoothie a wonderful taste. If you are not keen on such powders, you can use a lot of natural flavourings such as honey, cinnamon, brown sugar, vanilla and nutmeg that will lend a wonderful taste to your smoothie.

Lastly, you will make sure you have a high power, easy to use blender that will liquidate your ingredients easily. Also ensure that you are not overloading your blender too much. Ideally, once you have your ingredients ready, your smoothie should be ready in less than a minute! Once you master these smoothie making tips, you will see that making smoothies is an incredible amount of fun.



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Salt: the facts

Many of us in the UK eat too much salt. Too much salt can raise your blood pressure, which puts you at increased risk of health problems such as heart disease and stroke. But a few simple steps can help you to cut your salt intake.

Your salt survival guide

An infographic (PDF, 6.03Mb) showing the amount of salt in our diet, the damage being done to our health and tips for cutting down

You don't have to add salt to food to be eating too much – 75% of the salt we eat is already in everyday foods such as bread, breakfast cereal and ready meals.

A diet that is high in salt can cause raised blood pressure, which currently affects around one third of adults in the UK.

High blood pressure often has no symptoms. But if you have it, you are more likely to develop heart disease or have a stroke.

Cutting down on salt lowers blood pressure, which means that your risk of having a stroke or developing heart disease is reduced.

For tips on how to cut down on salt, read Tips for a lower-salt diet.

Foods that contain salt

Use nutrition labels on food packaging to help you cut down on salt:

• high is more than 1.5g salt per 100g (or 0.6g sodium)
• low is 0.3g salt or less per 100g (or 0.1g sodium)

Some foods are almost always high in salt because of the way they are made.

Other foods, such as bread and breakfast cereals, can contribute a lot of salt to our diet. But that’s not because these foods are always high in salt – it’s because we eat a lot of them.

High-salt foods

The following foods are almost always high in salt. To cut down on salt, eat them less often or have smaller amounts:

• anchovies
• bacon
• cheese
• gravy granules
• ham
• olives
• pickles
• prawns
• salami
• salted and dry roasted nuts
• salt fish
• smoked meat and fish
• soy sauce
• stock cubes
• yeast extract

Foods that can be high in salt

In the following foods, the salt content can vary widely between different brands or varieties. That means you can cut down on salt by comparing brands and choosing the one that is lower in salt. Nutrition labels can help you do this.

These foods include:

• bread products such as crumpets, bagels and ciabatta
• pasta sauces
• crisps
• pizza
• ready meals
• soup
• sandwiches
• sausages
• tomato ketchup, mayonnaise and other sauces
• breakfast cereals

Soluble vitamin supplements or painkillers

If you routinely take an effervescent (dissolvable) vitamin supplement, or take effervescent painkillers when necessary, it's worth remembering that these can contain up to 1g salt per tablet. You may therefore wish to consider changing to a non-effervescent tablet, particularly if you have been advised to watch or reduce your salt intake.

How much salt for adults?

Adults should eat no more than 6g of salt a day – that's around one full teaspoon. Children should eat less (see below for recommendations for babies and children).

Of course, one easy way to eat less salt is to stop adding salt to your food during cooking and at the dinner table. If you regularly add salt to food when cooking, try cutting it out or adding less. You’ll rediscover the real tastes of your favourite foods. And when you sit down to eat, taste your food first to see if it needs salt.

Use nutrition labels to check salt levels

Cutting back on added salt is only a small part of the solution. To really cut down, you need to become aware of the salt that is already in the everyday foods you buy, and choose lower-salt options.

Fortunately, nutrition labels on food packaging now make this a lot easier. Most pre-packed foods have a nutrition label on the back or side of the packaging.

Many foods also display information about the salt content on the front of the packaging. This may show the salt content as a percentage of your reference intake (RI), or have colour-coded nutrition information to show whether the food is low, medium or high in salt. Where colour-coding is used, red means high. Eat these foods as an occasional treat, and aim to eat mainly foods that are green (low) or amber (medium).

Look at the figure for salt per 100g:

• High is more than 1.5g salt per 100g (0.6g sodium). These foods may be colour-coded red.
• Low is 0.3g salt or less per 100g (or 0.1g sodium). These foods may be colour-coded green.

If the amount of salt per 100g is between 0.3g and 1.5g, that is a medium level of salt, and the packaging may be colour-coded amber.

As a rule, aim for foods that have a low or medium salt content. Leave high-salt foods for occasional use.

For more tips to help you choose foods that are lower in salt, seeA lower-salt diet.

Salt and sodium in your food 

Salt is also called sodium chloride.

Sometimes, food labels only give the figure for sodium. But there is a simple way to work out how much salt you are eating from the sodium figure:

• Salt = sodium x 2.5

Babies, children and salt

Babies and children under 11 should have less salt than adults.

Babies under a year old need less than 1g of salt a day, as their kidneys can’t cope with more. If a baby is breastfed, they will get the right amount of salt from breast milk. Formula milk contains a similar amount.

Don't add salt to your baby’s milk or food and don't use stock cubes or gravy as they're often high in salt. Remember this when you’re cooking for the family if you plan to give the same food to your baby.

Avoid giving your baby processed foods such as ready meals as these are often high in salt. However, food manufactured specifically for babies should meet the recommended levels. If in doubt, always check the label.

The daily recommended maximum amount of salt children should eat depends on age:

• 1 to 3 years – 2g salt a day (0.8g sodium)
• 4 to 6 years – 3g salt a day (1.2g sodium)
• 7 to 10 years – 5g salt a day (2g sodium)
• 11 years and over – 6g salt a day (2.4g sodium)

Making sure your child doesn’t eat too much salt means you’re also helping to ensure that they don’t develop a taste for salty food, which makes them less likely to eat too much salt as anadult.

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Goodfood/Pages/salt.aspx

The Fight To Get Fit

Have you had many struggles over the years losing weight and getting into shape? Let's face it, losing 30, 50, 80, 100+ pounds may be terribly difficult to accomplish especially if you have trouble controlling what you eat and getting a regular form of exercise.

This entire process can be thought of as a fight to get fit.

When you're just starting out, it can seem like an enormous task that will never be achieved which is one reason why so many people quit within days of beginning. To lose substantial amount of weight takes focus and dedication cause let's face it, 50 pounds isn't going to simply fall off our body in a week or two.

Realistically, you can expect to lose anywhere between 4-10 pounds per month depending on how well you maintain healthy eating habits and how often you exercise. Therefore to shed 50 pounds of fat off your body in a healthy manner, that will take a minimum of 5 months of focus. The less focus you maintain, the longer it will take to lose your target amount.

It's going to be a fight, a battle testing your will power and dedication on a daily basis. The process will be especially difficult if you are used to eating fast food, drinking soda, and eating unhealthy snacks on a regular basis. It is these types of choices that will have to be changed if you are going to have any chance of coming out of this fight the winner.

But don't feel as though you must fight the perfect fight in order to win for this is not the case whatsoever.

As in any boxing match, even the winning fighter will have been hit quite a number of times, especially if the match goes the entire 12 rounds. The same goes for your weight loss efforts. You may take a hit every now and then in this weight loss fight, but it's how you respond to those hits that will determine how well you rebound from the blow.

In other words, on the random day when you give in to the temptation to order a double bacon cheeseburger combo with french fries and a soda that's definitely a big upper cut punch since that particular meal is well over 1,800 calories by itself. The fighter who is determined to win the weight loss battle will deal with this uppercut blow, but quickly get back to what they know is going to help them win this fight - healthy eating habits along with exercising 4-6 days per week.

You can consider each round of this fight as one month. Keep track of home many "hits" you take that month. Three to five hits are OK per round (month), but if you're taking 10-20 hits each round then most likely this fight to get fit will be short-lived and the end results will be no weight loss.

If you truly want to win this fight, then you must take it upon yourself to make healthy choices not only at breakfast or dinner but throughout the day. When you are able to grasp a stranglehold on your daily nutritional intake, then you will no longer be in a fight to get fit contest since you will already be the winner.

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