Notes Make it as a Loaf - Line a loaf pan with parchment paper and bake it as a loaf instead of muffins. Ingredients 1/4 cup Maple Syrup 4 Egg (separated) 1/4 cup Coconut Oil (melted) 1 tbsp Vanilla Extract 1 cup Almond Flour 1/4 cup Coconut Flour 1 1/2 tsps Baking Powder 1 tbsp Ground Flax Seed 1 tbsp Hemp Seeds 1/4 tsp Sea Salt 1 Carrot (grated) 1 Zucchini (grated) Directions Preheat oven to 350. Grease a muffin tin or line 1. with muffin cups. In a bowl, whisk together maple syrup, egg yolks, melted coconut oil and vanilla extract. Add dry ingredients to the wet mixture and combine thoroughly. Add grated carrot and zucchini. (Note: If too wet, add more coconut flour. If too dry, add 1 tbsp of warm water at a time.) Using a handheld or stand mixer, whisk egg whites until stiff peaks form. Gently fold egg whites into batter. Scoop batter into muffin cups and bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool before serving.  

A little bit of sweet can be good for you I am sure you have heard it before - sugar is sugar is sugar. Whether you are eating honey or maple syrup it is as bad for you as spooning table sugar into your mouth. Fortunately, that is not exactly true What is true is that all sweeteners will cause your blood sugar to spike. This is why I always recommend using even the good ones very sparingly. If you need to lose weight or are battling any major health conditions, I recommend avoiding sweeteners altogether. When healing is your primary goal, reducing your carbohydrate load is always a great idea. However, if you have no weight concerns, are healthy and feel like indulging, I am a fan of limited quantities of a few special sweeteners which can be mindfully (and sparingly) consumed with a totally clear conscience. These few make up for their effects on your blood sugar by healing your body in powerful ways. Take a closer look at my favourites and discover why they can be better for you than table sugar. Honey Ancient healers considered honey a medicinal food, and modern science has proven this. Honey has been shown to: Inhibit inflammation. Help fight cancer. Have powerful antibacterial properties. Be a rich source of antioxidants. Help heal your gut. One study even found that honey promotes the growth of good gut bacteria and helps protect against damage caused by dangerous mycotoxins. Honey can heal you on the outside as well as the inside. Hospitals are starting to use one type of honey, Manuka honey, to treat everything from diabetic ulcers to the super-bug MRSA. A few cautions: Never give honey to a baby. It can contain botulinum spores that are harmless to older people but can endanger infants. Much of what’s labeled as honey is in fact not. Shop for honey at your local farmers’ markets, contact beekeepers directly, or order raw honey online. Maple Syrup Maple syrup contains 54 different beneficial compounds, five of which apparently are exclusive to maple syrup and do not exist in any other foods, Researcher Navindra Seeram, whose team discovered the wealth of nutrients in this yummy sweetener, says that the “sheer quantity and variety of identified compounds with documented health benefits qualifies maple syrup as a champion food.” I personally am not apt to make such gargantuan claims, but if you are going to reach for a sweetener, maple syrup is a good source to satisfy your sweet desires. Blackstrap Molasses Molasses is the by-product left over from the sugar cane refining process. Eating the dregs is far better than eating the sugar! Molasses contain the nutrients stripped out of the sugar cane. It is rich in copper, iron, calcium, vitamin B6, and magnesium. In addition, molasses has a significantly lesser effect on blood glucose levels than sugar. When buying molasses, source out blackstrap molasses. This form contains more nutrients than the other forms. Prunes, dates, bananas, pumpkin, and unsweetened applesauce [...]

Navigating the numerous food isles at the grocery store is always a challenge. We are continuously bombarded with the newest research regarding health and nutrition and processed goods with labels screaming the latest health buzzwords embellish the shelves. These are everywhere - insidious, proliferous, life sucking pretend foods that we are brainwashed into believing we ‘need’ to consume for our health and longevity. Here are a few of my worst offenders: Margarine Processed, hydrogenated, chemically treated and I can believe it’s not butter. Butter is better, and tastier, always!!! Low fat ‘foods’ Fat tastes good (along with many other benefits). When manufacturers take out the fat, they need to replace all that good taste with something equally as enticing, and more stimulating to the addictive centers in the brain. The yogurts, salad dressings, cookies and condiments labelled low fat are just high sugar items in disguise Yogurts Highly processed, devoid of nutrients, low fat and loaded with sugar (see above), most ‘yogurt’ bears no resemblance to the cultured, fermented, slightly sour tasting milk product they are supposedly based on. The wonderful pro-biotic bacteria that create and live in real yogurt are an ineffective, added afterthought in commercially manufactured brands Agave nectar The stuff has an incredible amount of fructose in it, which apparently can trigger fructose malabsorption. I once switched to agave in my morning coffee as well, just to try it out, and I ended up getting awful stomach pains every day that lasted for at least an hour. Using a little organic, minimally processed, non-GMO CANE sugar in your morning beverage will do WAY less harm, and it tastes better too. I am not saying just eat sugar, but in this context there are way worse additives you are probably consuming. Nutella We really need to pay more attention to the ingredient list and nutrition label and less attention to a flashy television commercial. Nutella was actually sued for its health claims. Unfortunately, by the time you get to gym class, you will have such a sugar crash from your Nutella filled breakfast that climbing the rope will be next to impossible! Nutritious bars Individually wrapped snacks, protein and ‘energy’ bars are high priced (high profit) candy bars. Compare the ingredients and sugar content. These bars deserve as much space in your child’s lunch box as a chocolate bar or cookies. They are not a replacement for a real-food meal. Wheat/Multigrain/Wholegrain bread Multi-grain or wheat bread that makes you think they are manufactured from whole wheat, but actually use refined grains. Always check your ingredients, or better yet, ditch the wheat and related products altogether!   Smoothies from the local juice bar These are often packed with way too much fruit and thus fructose for one to be consuming at any one time. This is not even counting the ‘yogurt’ and sorbets which are just sugar bombs in disguise. I prefer calling them what they truly are – fancy, over-priced milkshakes. Make your [...]

We've all been told for decades that red meat causes heart disease and increases mortality because it contains saturated fat. This is a fallacy created by poor research, incorrect reporting and media fear-mongering. Many have paid a dear price in their health as a result. Red meat is essential for optimum health. A large group of people express fears about red meat or boast about their vegetarian achievements. Book after book is quoted telling the public about how red meat causes disease, verifying fears. Red meat is unhealthy, even toxic! Over the past few decades, red meat has been increasingly blamed for everything from heart disease to cancer and certain early death. Newspapers and magazines incessantly post headlines about the negative health ramifications of eating red meat, fueling consumer fears. These front page claims could not be further from the truth. Studies that differentiate between processed and fresh red meat have failed to find a link between unprocessed red meat consumption and heart disease. A major Harvard University study of meat eaters found that only processed meat had an adverse risk in relation to coronary heart disease. As a species, humans have eaten red meat for millions of years. How could red meat have become deadly in the last 50 years? We have been fed inaccuracies fuelled by faulty research. It is vitally important to reveal the truth about red meat. An impartial review of the research indicates that red meat is one of the healthiest foods you can eat. Many of the health benefits discussed are not unique to red meat, but apply to animal flesh in general. Muscle meats are the most nutritious food (after organ meats) based upon our biological needs, according to the Kraken Index of Nutrients that rate the nutrient density of food (developed by Dr.Mat LaLonde). Dr LaLonde, a biochemist and Harvard researcher, ranked foods according to essential nutrients that we must eat from the diet because the body cannot make them itself. Vegetables come in after muscle meat. Please keep in mind that the graphic below represents food groups as a whole. Some plant foods (including kale and blueberries) rate as high as muscle meats. Below is a breakdown of the most nutritious foods to the least nutritious according to the Kraken Index of Nutrients: Organ Meats Muscle Meats Vegetables Fruits Grains Refined sugars Red meat is one of the healthiest foods one can eat. To qualify, red meat needs to be grass fed (or pastured) and organic to confer the most nutrition to the animal. Cows, bison, lamb and other ruminants that eat only grass (their natural diet) produce meat that is much more nutritious. Most people eat red meat that is only fed grains, at best, and GMO corn and soy at worst. This has an effect on the fatty acid profile present in the muscle. Red meat is one of the most nutritious foods you can eat, containing one of the most abundant dietary sources of vitamins [...]

Although we tend to associate calories with food the actual definition of a calorie is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. The obvious question is why would we measure the potential energy in food? Scientists measure the energy content of food by combusting the food in a machine known as a bomb calorimeter. When using a bomb calorimeter, food is placed in the device and electrical energy is used to ignite the food. As the food burns it heats up the surrounding air, which expands and escapes through a copper tube that leads the air out of the device. As the air escapes through the tube it also heats up the water outside the tube. The temperature of the water allows observers to calculate calorie content of food. So being that you are measuring food energy in this way it only makes sense to report food energy in terms of heat units. This is how the following caloric contents were derived: Fat contains 9 calories/gram Carbohydrate contains 4 calories/gram Protein contains 4 calories/gram Alcohol contains 7 calories/gram Calorie counting has its place, although, in my opinion, this is rare. Focusing on these numbers can be a good indicator under certain circumstances, BUT here are some of the reasons counting calories will never be accurate, even if your body does use them as a machine burns fuel – which, trust me, it does NOT. Dates on foods can be out of date and inaccurate, and this throws energy and nutrient calculation on the label or in the nutrient databases off. Different batches of both natural and processed foods vary in their exact contents. Using a single test at a single point in to describe all batches into the future will be full of obvious errors. Produce grown in nutrient rich soil is different from produce grown in nutrient depleted soil. Ripeness at the time of harvest can have an effect on nutrition and caloric content as some produce is picked out of season, again throwing off these values. What an animal ate can have an effect on the nutrients in the actual food so think about what we get from animals. This is going to affect nutrient counts in milk, meat and eggs. The length of storage can also have an effect on nutrient count. If a food is harvested this morning it will have significantly different nutrient content from something you buy at a grocery store that was harvested 3 weeks ago in another country. Preparation method and cooking time can change nutrition and caloric values. Raw produce is much different than eating cooked produce. The amount of cooking and processing affects the amount of energy and the nutrients we are able to assimilate and absorb from that food. Cooking the food USUALLY makes more energy available to us. The above factors are what can cause an approximate 20% error when you consider calories. Some will be [...]