If you’re looking to eat healthier, lose a bit of weight, or enhance your physical and mental abilities, you’re probably looking where to start. Before anything else, it’s important that your diet is loaded with fibre, protein, antioxidants, essential minerals, vitamins – and a whole wealth of other healthy properties.
The phrase that we are what we eat has never been truer, but how about being 10 certain foods? Although it’s difficult to maintain a rigorous diet centred around the same foods, it’s important to remember that some of the foods contained in our list can be eaten as snacks, of used to bulk out your meals. Let’s take a look!
Garlic
A clove or two of garlic can be finely chopped and placed in a wide number of dishes that you cook for dinner. It improves the taste and texture of a meal, and it’s really inexpensive.
Garlic is on this list because of its anti fungal, antiviral, and antibacterial properties. But it also finds its strength through its sulphur compounds, which play the role of antioxidants. A handful of garlic each week can reduce your risk of developing heart disease, as well as a number of cancers, including stomach and prostrate.
Olive Oil
Olive oil is tipped gently into a frying pan before being heated up. Essentially, we use olive oil to cook certain foods with.
Olive oil is actually one of the healthiest fats in the world, and comes from the olive vegetable. Olive oil reduces bad cholesterol, while raising good cholesterol. This is down to its mono saturated fats, as well as its antioxidants which have been found to protect our arterial walls from cholesterol buildup.
Coffee
Starting your morning off with a cup of coffee is an easy way of bringing one of these 10 foods into play. Many of us already drink a cup of Joe to help us kick start the day, and if you’re not one of the converts, you might want to think about the health benefits that coffee has.
A single cup of coffee each day can reduce your risk of skin cancer by around 10%. Considering that skin cancer is now one of the more widely developed cancers around, 10% is considerable and improves your odds reassuringly.
The more you drink, the more you reduce your risk. Careful not to crash, though, and always avoid Decaf if you’re on the lookout for health boosts.
Tomatoes
People seem to have a love or hate relationship with the shiny red fruit, but we at Beauty & Tips absolutely love tomatoes. They’re tasty, versatile, and super healthy.
Tomatoes contain a carotenoid known as lycopene, which is responsible for their red colour. This carotenoid has been found to protect your skin from sunburn, which in turn reduces your risk of developing skin cancer.
Green Tea
If you find coffee unappealing, and weigh its negatives (such as discolouring your teeth and making you feel fuzzy) against its positives, green tea could be the healthy, daily drink for you.
Green tea certainly benefits your immune system more than coffee does. Moreover, it’s also richer in antioxidants, and can boost fat metabolism.
The biggest complaint people tend to have with green tea is that it just doesn’t taste of anything. If this is also your complaint, you could opt for a flavoured variety.
Walnuts
Pretty much all nuts are healthy for you, but walnuts are certainly the cream of the crop. Walnuts have a super long chain of polyunsaturated fats, and indeed have more of these fats than any other nuts.
Just a handful of 30g of walnuts to snack on each day is enough to enhance cell wall composition, and can lower cholesterol level. You can snack on them by themselves, or include in a salad or cake.
Spinach
Spinach may well be green and leafy, and look as weedy as a … well, as aweed, but spinach is no shirker. Indeed, why on earth do you think Popeye ate so much of it?!
Spinach is an established muscle-builder, and is a great source of omega-3 fatty acids, and folate, the latter of which can reduce your risk of stroke, osteoporosis and heart disease. Spinach is also loaded with an antioxidant called lutein, which slows down macular degeneration.
Or, you could try spinach’s stronger brother, kale, another leafy green which has been called the new beef.
Grapefruit
Grapefruit, otherwise known as The New You, is a super healthy fruit that cannot be ignored any longer.
Grapefruit can help you trim belly fat, and it can also reduce your insulin levels, thereby improving your body’s ability to metabolise sugar. This is great news for diabetes patients in particular.
The biggest problem you might have with grapefruit is stomaching one every single day. It has a rich, zesty flavour that can often be overpowering.
For this reason, we suggest that you find a way to incorporate it into your daily diet. Perhaps you could drink a glass of grapefruit juice, or squeeze a pinch onto your meals to give them a punch.
Source: Beauty and Tips
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