Brownrice is a great, natural alternative to white rice. It is a whole, natural grain and is much more nutritious then white rice as it has only had its outer husk removed. By only removing the outer husk the bran and germ layer are left in place and because of this it retains many more vitamins and dietary minerals when compared to white rice. It is also much higher in magnesium then white rice and is relatively low in sodium.
Traditionally in most parts of Asia, because of its nutritional benefits it was given to the sick and elderly and was also commonly used as a cure for constipation. It wasn’t eaten much by the general population as it was considered a food for times of poverty and war time shortages. Today it is a replacement for white rice in the diets of many health conscious people around the world.
Buying Brown Rice
English: Par cooked brown rice. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It can be purchased in most if not all supermarkets around the globe. It is slightly more expensive then standard rice because of its relatively low supply and can be quite difficult for distributors to store. As with all foods you should always opt for the organic option if one can be found in your local supermarket.
Storing Brown Rice
It can be stored at room temperature under normal procedures for around 6 months but by placing it in an air tight storage medium and putting it the fridge or even freezing it you will extend its shelf life dramatically.
Cooking Brown Rice
Before cooking your rice it should be soaked for 24 hours in warm water and rinsed, however If your under time constraints just a thorough rinse under warm water will be fine.
It takes a little longer to cook then white rice, it can take from 30 to 45 minuets to be ready. 1 cup of brown rice requires around 2-3 cups of water. You can replace the water with chicken or vegetable stock to add some extra flavor.
It works well with anything white rice does. It’s quite chewy compared to white rice and has a mild nutty flavor that goes very well with chicken. Brown rice is slow to digest and because of this people often include it in their breakfast to give them a slow release of energy during the day.
Farming has been around for a long time, ten thousand years according to many experts. And ever since the first humans learned how to plant and harvest crops, they’ve steadily been improvements over the years. These improvements helped them to get more food out the same piece of land. And as the world’s population has grown, farming has helped out by continuously increasing the capacity of a finite piece of land. The latest technological developments in farming include genetic engineering, which promises to not only increase the amount of food grown, but to increase it’s nutritional value as well. But is this a good thing? In this article I’ll go over the advantages and disadvantages, so that you can decide for yourself.
First of all, farmers have been genetically engineering crops for centuries. Whenever they mix seeds together to produce different plants, that is genetic engineering. One of the benefits of genetically engineered crops is to increase the nutrition of today’s food. It’s no secret that by eating a diet rich in carbohydrates can lead to diabetes, heart disease, and other ailments.
However, with genetic engineering, it may be possible to alter the carbohydrate/protein ratio, giving allowing for grain based foods that don’t contain an overabundance of carbohydrates. Modern plant oils are another problem. Most modern plant oils don’t contain the proper balance of fatty acids, which can lead to high cholesterol. However, with genetically altered foods, these modern plant oils can contain a much better blend of fatty acids, which can lead to better cardiovascular health.
The genetic engineering of today is much different than it was in the past. In the past, it took several years to make small changes. One small change per year, and then it took farmers several years after that to include the altered food in their crops, just to make sure there wasn’t any hidden dangers. However, today, genetic changes are made much quicker, and some feel that this might make it much harder to see any negative effects.
The benefits of genetically altering plants historically was a much slower process. The changes were easier to see, as well as their effects. By dramatically changing a plants genetic makeup with radiation, these changes might be hidden for some time, and might cause diseases that we don’t even know about yet.
To be sure, there are, and there have been, plenty of benefits to growing genetically altered food. However, scientists must be careful not to make changes too quickly, or else unfortunate, and unintended consequences may result.
Of course, most people will say that they really want to be healthy, but what are you willing to DO to be healthy? And what are you willing to NOT DO to be healthy? In other words, what is more important to you than being healthy?
Is more important to:
• Eat fast food, or packaged, frozen and processed food, than take the time to cook healthy meals with fresh, organic healthy ingredients?
• Spend money on clothes and toys and other “stuff” than on fresh, organic, healthy food?
• Go along with what others say about what creates health rather than take the time to do your own learning?
• Sleep in, watch TV, play video games, gamble, work, stay on the phone, constantly text, or do other addictive activities rather than get exercise?
• Take drugs for anxiety, depression or insomnia rather than learn how to take responsibility for your feelings?
• Turn to substance addictions rather than take responsibility for your feelings? Continue to act out addictively with alcohol, cigarettes, sugar, caffeine, or drugs rather than learn to take loving care of yourself?
• Neglect your spiritual practice rather than take the time to create inner peace?
• Be “one of the gang” and eat like everyone else is eating, drink like everyone else, or take drugs like everyone else, rather than support your own health?
How are you rationalizing your unhealthy choices?
• I don’t have the time.
• I don’t believe that food has much to do with health.
• So and so smoked his whole life and never got lung cancer.
• Why bother? My genes are against me.
• I’ll get around to it when I have some time.
• Food is the only reward I have. I’m not giving up sweets and other so called “junk food”.
• I’m still young. I don’t have to worry about it for years.
• I have too much pain in my life, and I won’t be able to handle it if I get off drugs or give up my addictions.
• What’s the point in living if I can’t do what I want?
• I won’t have any friends if I don’t do what they do.
The question to ask yourself is: “How do I want to live my later years? Do I want to be vital, clear-headed and energetic as long as I live, or do I want to be suffering with cancer, heart disease, arthritis, and other degenerative diseases?”
While there are many factors that influence our health, such as genetics, the environment, accidents, and trauma from childhood, we each have much power to create health when it is important to us.
If health is very important to you, then I encourage you to start to take responsibility for yourself in three major areas:
• Food
• Exercise
• State of mind
All three are equally important and affect each other. If you are judging yourself and ignoring your own feelings, then your self-abandonment will be creating stress in your body. When we go into stress, the body goes into fight or flight, which means that the blood leaves the brain and organs and goes into the arms and legs for fighting or fleeing. When this happens often, the immune system is compromised, leaving you open for illness. In addition, the stress may lead you to act out addictively in an effort to relieve it, further fostering poor health. Exercise not only helps your state of mind, it helps your body function well. Poor food affects your state of mind and your energy, making it more difficult to exercise and create inner peace.
Today, ask yourself, “How important is my health to me?” Then be honest with yourself. If you are not willing to take loving care of yourself in all three areas, then you need to accept that your health is not that important to you.
New research provides solid evidence that a low carb diet is VERY effective. Study after study shows the impact that a low carb diet has not only on weight loss, but also blood sugar and cholesterol. But before we examine this evidence, let’s first discuss carbs and their impact on weight.
What are “good” carbs and what are “bad” carbs?
When I talk about carbohydrates, I’m referring to the starchy carbs like grains (flour, bread, cereal, oatmeal, pasta), potatoes, corn, and any kind of sugar (including fruit). Vegetables are also a type of carbohydrates, but most vegetables are GOOD carbs, and we all need to eat more of this type of carb.
If you are at a healthy weight, and have no disease (diabetes, heart disease, cancer, high cholesterol, etc.) it is probably OK for you to consume the “bad” carbohydrates in small amounts. But most of us do not fall into this category, and until we do, we need to strictly limit the amount of carbs that we eat. Doing this will help most people to achieve a healthy weight and vastly improve their overall health. (Many people have even reported being “cured” of their diseases through a high-vegetable, low carb diet.)
Why do we gain weight when we eat too many carbohydrates?
Here’s a view into how the body handles carbohydrates:
Our bodies cannot store large amounts of carbohydrates; we are only built to store very small amounts. We are meant to use the glucose in the carbohydrates for burning through activity. But our diet (especially the “standard American diet“) is VERY high in carbs. Because we cannot possibly burn off all that glucose, it gets converted by insulin into fat. Then that fat is stored in our stomachs, hips, thighs, and chins.
When we eat something that’s high in carbohydrates, it causes a rapid rise in blood glucose (or “blood sugar”). This signals the pancreas to secrete the hormone insulin into the bloodstream. The insulin lowers the blood sugar, and makes this sugar available to our cells for energy. Any excess blood sugar that is not used for energy (activity, exercise) must be stored for future use. Unfortunately, the way this is stored is in our fat tissue.
It gets worse. When we consistently eat foods that are high in carbs, our insulin levels become chronically high. High insulin levels suppress two other important hormones (glucagons and growth hormones) that burn fat and sugar and promote muscle development. So eating excess carbohydrates not only promotes fat, it also makes it harder to lose that fat, and creates a vicious cycle.
Dr. Atkins would be proud. More research supports the use of a low carb diet, and its long-lasting effect on weight loss.
In a June 2006 article published in Nutrition and Metabolism, researchers studied the effect of a low-carb diet on obese type 2 diabetic patients vs a higher-carbohydrate diet. More specifically, the low carb group eliminated pasta, potatoes, rice, and breakfast cereals and instead of ordinary bread, consumed crisp/hard bread (probably similar to the Bran-A-Crisp recommended in the Atkins Diet) that contained 4-8 grams of carbs. The low carb group consumed 80-90 grams of carbohydrates a day, all of which were from vegetables and salad (no fruit). The study was conducted over the course of six months (a small amount of time considering that it probably took these people years to become obese).
The group that ate a higher-carbohydrate diet obtained the majority of their carbohydrates from whole grain products and fruit (they also consumed generous helpings of vegetables). The two group’s caloric intake was about the same.
The results? The low carb group lost an average of 25 pounds! Even more significant was that this group kept the weight off: after 2 years, the average weight loss was still 20 pounds. As an added benefit, almost half of the patients who were on antidiabetes drugs and insulin were able to stop taking the drugs altogether.
The researchers’ conclusion: “a low-carbohydrate diet…has lasting benefits on body weight”.
So what are you waiting for? It’s time to finally break the addiction to grains, potatoes, and sugar. Go through your kitchen and TOSS everything that’s a grain, potato, or sugar (or made with any of those things). Not having the “bad” stuff in the house makes a HUGE difference in your weight loss success.
The TRUTH about Low Carb Foods
The downside to the low carb diet is that most packaged low carb foods are filled with junk and can make you sick. Most low carb diets emphasize hormone, nitrate, and pesticide-laden meats, fats, and dairy products that you should never consume in large quantities. Then, the “sweet treats” that people use as part of their low carb diet are filled with artificial sweeteners that have a cloudy and questionable safety history. Most low carb foods are a far cry from healthy food.
Other unhealthy ingredients that are frequently seen in low carb food products include soy flour and modified food starch–these products do more harm than good. People turn to these packaged products seeking an easy, convenient way to eat “low carb” with a busy schedule and on a budget. But there are much healthier low carb alternatives that are still quick and easy.
The Bottom Line
The low carb diet is here to stay. It works, plain and simple. But there can be damaging effects of eating poor quality low carb foods. There are healthy ways to eat low carb, and it means eating WHOLE, high quality foods, not packaged products. (Although there certainly ARE some healthy low carb packaged products, but you have to read ingredients carefully.) Finding sources of natural meats and dairy products is also important. It can be an effort, but it’s well worth it, especially considering the huge health impact of being overweight.
Learn more about a healthy low carb diet that provides LASTING weight loss at http://ift.tt/1llhPGr This site provides unique and holistic weight loss solutions that WORK. Also includes the SECRET to weight loss–it’s a pleasant surprise!
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