Guest Post by By Yuri Elkaim, BPHE, RHN
Did you know that the food industry has been feeding you “addictive” lies for years? I bet you do. And I’m not talking about the ones where they chemically engineer food with sugar, fat, and salt so that your brain is flooded with “pleasure” signals upon eating them, making them more addictive than you’re aware of.
You know as well as I do that these processed and packaged foods are metabolism death foods. But have you ever considered why real foods like vegetables and fruit never have any of those “health check” symbols on them while sodium-loaded canned soups do? Have you ever wondered why you never see any commercials about broccoli or kale?
The answer is simple. There’s no MONEY in produce – at least not for the big food companies that are corrupting our food supply and ruining your body. Yet, produce (and other real foods) are the key to helping you lose weight and boost your energy and health.
However, right here on this page, I want to begin a mini-revolution by showing you 5 delicious ways to eat more vegetables so that you can enjoy better health, faster weight loss, and limit the amount of junk we buy from these companies.
My name is Yuri Elkaim. I’m a NY Times bestselling author, holistic nutritionist, and sought-after health expert. You may have seen me on Dr. Oz or The Doctors and over the past 15 years I’ve helped more than 500,000 people to radiant health, including thousands of clients who never thought real food (let alone vegetables) could taste better than take-out food.
I’m on a mission to help 10 million people enjoy vibrant health by 2018 and, for that reason, every day I relentlessly research, analyze studies, and create quick and delicious health-boosting recipes for my family of five that you too can enjoy – guilt free!
And if you’ve been falsely duped into believing that packaged foods are faster, easier, more delicious, and more “convenient” than fresh fruits and vegetables, then what you’re about to discover on this page will shock you. Try any of these delicious veggie-glorifying recipes and your taste buds and waistline will thank you.
The real TRUTH is that there are 5 simple ways to make vegetables taste so good you’ll literally crave them!
As a busy entrepreneur, devoted husband, and father of three rambunctious little toddlers, I know how busy life can be. My wife Amy and I often find ourselves looking at each other over the dinner table with our 3 young boys, laughing at how chaotic and crazy life is. We are constantly running crazy, crunched for time, and juggling a multitude of responsibilities.
Yet, we refuse to compromise our health or forego delicious foods. Here, I’ll show you 5 simple things that we do that you can try as well that are more interesting than simply making another salad or smoothie.
Warning: Once you discover how simple it is to eat nourishing foods, you will start losing weight, looking and feeling more youthful than ever, and any cravings you have for processed foods will be a thing of the past! These five tips are so simple, you can start adding them to your very next meal—and most of them you can prep in less than five minutes!! Take that, 15-minute frozen pizza. Take that.
1. Stop Eating Soup from a Can
Canned soup gets a bad rap for being high in sodium. But few people know that the high temperatures and pressures required during processing the soup basically renders the final product nutritionless. The lengthy cooking and packaging process has does so much denaturing of the vegetables–there’s barely anything left to digest!
Try this instead: Make soup with raw organic vegtables in the blender, instead. The blades of a blender (especially a Vitamix) move so quickly they heat the soup. You can have a piping hot, one-dish meal ready in less time than it takes to find the can opener! Here’s one of my favorites:
Fire Roasted Red Pepper Soup
Serves 2
2 large organic tomatoes, halved
4 fire-roasted red peppers
1 cup coconut milk
4 leaves fresh basil
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons pumpkin seeds
Blend tomatoes, red peppers, coconut milk, fresh basil and garlic powder in a hi-speed blender. If using a Vitamix, blend until hot (about 5-6 minutes). Top with pepitas, fresh basil, and a splash of coconut cream, if desired.
2. Stop Wrapping Your Tacos in GMOs
Those corn shell tortillas you’ve been wrapped around your tacos aren’t just fried and high in rancid vegetable fats, they’re also made with genetically modified corn. Today, corn crops are sprayed with more pesticide than ever before. These monstrously toxic chemicals don’t just kill weeds around the crop—they actually kill the nutritional density of the soil as well, zapping the nutrition from the corn used in most processed products.
Try this instead: Swapping in organic lettuce for taco shells is a great way to boost your leafy green intake. They’re even easier to prepare than taco shells—simply wash and top with your favorite fillings like sweet potatoes, black beans, and avocados in this 100% vegan dish. Give this a shot…
Sweet Potato & Black Bean Lettuce Wraps
1 sweet potato
1/3 cup coconut cream
juice of 1 lime
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon cumin
2 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon liquid coconut oil
1 (15 ounce) can black beans
1/4 cup purple onions, finely chopped
1 avocado, diced
1 tomato, diced
1/4 cup fresh cilantro
12 romaine lettuce leaves
salt and pepper
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pierce the sweet potato and place it in the oven, baking for 25-30 minutes, or until crisp-tender. Remove, cool, peel, and dice.
Prepare the chili cream sauce by stirring together coconut cream, lime juice, chili powder, and a pinch of salt. Mix together. Set aside.
In a bowl, mix together diced sweet potatoes, apple cider vinegar, coconut oil, black beans, onions, avocado, tomato, and cilantro. Salt and pepper lightly.
Spread coconut cream on romaine leaves. Top with sweet potato and black bean mixture. Enjoy taco-style!
3. Avoid Cardboard Pizza Like the Plague
Consider a box of frozen pizza, emblazoned with bright red words “Ready in Less Than 15 Minutes!” The truth is, once you buy it and bring it home, you still have to preheat the oven for 10 minutes. You have to hunt down a pair of scissors. You have to peel a shrinkwrapped mummy bag from the top of the pizza, spilling cheese shreds all over the countertop and onto the floor.
The whole prep process takes at least 15 minutes–and you haven’t even gotten to the part where you cook the pizza yet!! Once you do cook it, you get a tasteless hunk of crust topped with a thin, soggy sauce and “cheese like” shreds.
Let’s be honest. It’s not amazing. Worse yet, premade pizza crust too often tastes like the box is came in. High in inflammatory vegetable oil and chemically induced ingredients, these pizzas have no business in your body.
Even the “veggie” versions of frozen pizza are have such miniscule toppings, you’d be hard-pressed to get a single serving in for a whole pizza (which would cost you a whole day’s worth of calories!) Not worth it.
Try this instead: Swap out that cardboard crust for a plant-based crust, and suddenly the nutritional factor skyrockets–so does the flavor! It’s easy to make pizza crusts from cauliflower or sweet potatoes, but this simple plantain crust may be the best pizza you’ve ever eaten.
Plantain Pizza
Serves 2
1 green plantain
¼ cup almond flour
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon sea salt
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups baby tomatoes, halved
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
¼ cup fresh basil
Salt and pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
In a hi-speed blender, puree plantain, almond flour, egg, baking powder, sea salt, and 1 tablespoon of vinegar together until smooth and creamy. Pour this mixture onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Spread out with a spatula until the mixture is an even ½” thick.
Bake for 15-18 minutes, or just until the crust turns a light golden brown. Remove and cool slightly.
In a large bowl, toss together the remaining olive oil, tomatoes, garlic, apple cider vinegar, and basil. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve tomato mixture on top of warm pizza slices. Enjoy!
4. Bring Back Your Passion for Pasta
High in carbs and generally full of gluten, pasta has gotten a bad rap for its low nutritional content. Made with refined white flour, pasta seems filling when you first eat it, but can actually kick off uncontrollable cravings, which contribute to increased appetite and weight gain.
Even the gluten-free pastas aren’t as healthy as they seem. Gluten-free products are typically more adulterated and significantly higher in modified vegetable fats that their “normal” equivalents. To make up for the lack of gluten in the original recipes, manufacturers add extra sugar, heart-clogging oils, and potentially irritating additives like hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose or GMO-originated cornstarch. None of these ingredients are known to offer any added health benefit, and in fact, many are linked to detrimental health concerns.
Try This Instead: Spiralizers make it easy to turn vegetables into raw, whole food pasta noodles. Zucchini is commonly used to make ‘zoodles’, but dozens of vegetables make delicious options for no-pasta noodles! Apples, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, beets, cucumbers, cabbages, even kohlrabi make delicious veggie ‘pasta’ for all your favorite sauces.
Sweet Curry Noodles
Serves 2
1 large zucchini
1/2 small navel orange, peeled
1 cup of orange cherry tomatoes
2-3 tablespoons tahini
6 leaves fresh basil
1/4 tablespoons turmeric
1/2 tablespoon curry powder
Pinch of cumin
Fresh sea salt to taste
1 avocado, peeled and diced
2 tablespoons chopped peanuts (or sliced almonds)
Directions:
Cut zucchini into noodles with a spiralizer. Place orange, cherry tomatoes, tahini, 3 leaves fresh basil, turmeric, curry powder, and cumin in a hi-speed blender. Blend until pureed. Pour over noodles. Salt to taste. Top with avocado and peanuts, if desired. Enjoy!
5. Think Outside the Bun
Take a look at the ingredient list for “fresh” bread once served at Subway and you’d discover the chemical azodicarbonamide—a controversial chemical used in the manufacturing of yoga mats and shoe soles. The food chain has since removed azodicarbonamide from their bread recipe, but this sort of concern is all too common.
At the end of the day, food companies have the bottom line in mind—not your health. Their products aren’t just high in carbs and gut-irritating gluten, they’re also made with unnecessary chemicals and potentially dangerous additives.
Try this instead: Cut the carbs (and chemicals) completely and swap in a delicious bun made by mother nature, instead! Tender slices of organic sweet potatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, and eggplant make a perfect swap for slider buns. Portobello mushrooms are the perfect size for patties. Or go bunless and serve your favorite burgers on beds of marinated kale salad or crispy romaine. You’ll boost both the flavor and health benefits at the same time!
Sweet Potato Burgers
1 large sweet potato
4 tablespoons coconut oil
1 pound grassfed ground beef or bison
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon fresh-ground pepper
4 tablespoons coconut cream
1/2 teaspoon Braggs aminos
2 tomatoes, sliced
2 cups arugula
Instructions
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Slice your sweet potato into eight 1/2 inch slices (don’t worry about peeling it first). Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet and drizzle with 2 tablespoons coconut oil. Salt and pepper. Roast for 20 minutes, or just until the sweet potato slices can be easily pierced with a fork. Remove and cool. In a large bowl, mix together ground beef, salt, and pepper. Form into 2 1/2-3″ sliders. Fry in a bit of coconut oil or grill until desired doneness is achieved.
In a small bowl, whisk together coconut cream and Braggs. To assemble burgers, spoon the coconut cream sauce on top of a sweet potato slice. Top with tomato, arugula, and a cooked burger. Finish it all off with a second sweet potato slice. Serve and enjoy!
WARNING: Relying on Boring Salads and Steamed Veggies Isn’t The Only Way to Boost Your Health and Lose Weight Faster…
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