Updates from Leah Negrin

do people care about the superbowl? I mean I sometimes I care about football and other times I give zero f*cks. 

BUT I do know a lot of people that do care and end up struggling with what to eat on these big game days. The traditional food is often heavily processed, filled with GMOs and other inflammatory elements like dairy and gluten as well as hundreds of different additives that have been shown to cause major health issues. Dominos alone sells 11 million slices of pizza on Super Bowl Sunday!🍕

I could write pages and pages on the different additives and how that impacts our gut health or how it impacts our metabolism or even how it can impact our sleep!-but alas I will not (today), today I'm just going to share a recipe that I LOVE and helped me at the time when I cared more about football and felt 'left out' of not diving into some of the snacks that it just seemed like everyone else could eat and not worry about. 

🏈1 head of organic white cauliflower (whatever one looks the best in the store or at the farmers market but medium is what I used)

🏈1/4 cup of almond meal (you can also use a gf flower blend which can sometimes make it more crispy but I prefer the almond meal because of ingredients) 

🏈1 tsp garlic powder (some might want less than this so add at your discretion but I'm a garlic fiend) 

🏈3 tbsp plant milk (whatever you like, I use organic full fat Thrive market coconut milk, again ingredients)

🏈1/2 cup hot sauce (this is another one that can have some really interesting ingredients so grab the either most local or most organic one you can find, preferably without cane sugar but one thing at a time)

🏈1-4tsp of Miyoko's vegan butter (this is the best ingredient wise that I've found so far but I'm so open to finding other ones so if you know any let me know!) You can also use coconut oil or even olive oil as this isn't being fried at a high heat. 

Instructions: 

Preheat the oven to 425 F. 

Line a large baking dish with parchment paper (if you can use the non-bleached brands). 

Toss with a little oil. Place in a very large glass bowl. Toss with the almond meal and garlic powder until evenly coated. 

Add your plant milk. 

Arrange in one layer in the baking pan. Bake on the center rack 25 minutes. 

Combine the oil or melted butter with the hot sauce (because the fat helps the sauce adhere to the cauliflower). Dip cauliflower in sauce. Then bake another 15 minutes. 

At this point I switch to broil for a few minutes (with careful eyes on it to avoid burning) as this can help with the crispy factor. 

Serve with vegan ranch dressing. I use the recipe from Minimalist baker but you can also grab some from the store if that's just easier!

Have you ever made an awesome dish that really made you happy or feel more included at a superbowl party? 

Let’s help our bodies deal with stress! 

Antioxidants are substances that can prevent or slow damage to cells caused by free radicals (aka stress). 

A few to take a look at: 

Vitamin A (and provitamin A carotenoids) are involved in immune system regulation, reproduction, vision and communication between cells. These are found in liver, sweet potato, spinach, and carrots to name a few. 🥕 The two main forms of vitamin A in the human diet are preformed vitamin A (retinol, retinyl esters), and provitamin A carotenoids such as beta-carotene that are converted to retinol. Preformed vitamin A comes from animal products, fortified foods, and vitamin supplements. Carotenoids are found naturally in plant foods. There are other types of carotenoids found in food that are not converted to vitamin A but have health-promoting properties (especially when it comes to vision health); these include lycopene, lutein, and zeaxanthin.

Vitamin C assists with the biosynthesis of L-carnitine, collagen and some neurotransmitters and can help with the immune system, wound healing and regenerating other antioxidants like vitamin E. It is found in bell peppers, oranges, kiwis, broccoli, strawberries and Brussels sprouts. 🍊 By limiting the damaging effect of free radicals vitamin C may help prevent or delay the development of cancer, cardiovascular disease as well as other conditions in which stress can play a role (so many!). C also helps with the absorption of nonheme iron aka the iron in plant foods, this is why I always add a drop of lemon EO to my spinach.

 

Selenium is essential for humans and helps with reproduction, thyroid hormone metabolism, protection from oxidative stress and DNA synthesis. The selenoproteins are found in Brazil nuts (totally most left that autocorrect to buts😜), sardines, halibut and many other fortified foods.🌰 In our tissues most selenium is in the form of selenomethionine where it can be incorporated with methionine (which can help with detoxing and mRNA processing). There is a ton of information out there regarding all that we know about selenium and how it impacts our bodies in many different ways. This is just a tidbit of information. 

Manganese is a co-factor for many enzymes and related to bone formation, blood clotting, immune response and metabolizing glucose, carbohydrates, and cholesterol. It is present in mussels, hazelnuts, pecans, and oysters among others.🦪 

There are a lot of things I do to help with stress but this post was focusing on the food aspect and some of the nutrient profiles that can help our body heal! 

This is one of my favorite vegan parm recipes, I edited it from the awesome minimalist baker and sometimes just use hers as it can be good to rotate your nuts for their different nutrient profiles. 

16 servings (give or take)

3/4 cup organic sprouted almonds
3 Tbsp of a non-fortified nutritional yeast like this or this 
3/4 tsp organic pink Himalayan salt
1/4 tsp garlic powder

add the ingredients into a little food processor or blender and pulse until you have a fine meal-this can vary, sometimes I want it more chunky and other times I like it finer. 

Feel free to use this on a wide range of things including popcorn, veggies and even pasta!

You just opened your results and you feel the rush of anger. You read it again to make sure you read it right. And then you close the computer with a slam and walk away into the sunshine. Has this ever happened to you?

This is something that many people I work with have gone through, and it's something I've faced both in the past and more recently. You read these results- maybe they're an allergen test or a particular disease result for something you didn't think you had-and you have a reaction. Sometimes it's anger, sometimes it's sadness, or a combo or something else that maybe you can't quite identify.

For me then, I tend to ask myself...….

👉🏻Why didn't I do something about this sooner?

👉🏻Why didn't I change my health harming behaviors when I knew better?

So many thoughts running around your head that is can be hard to catch your breath.

So let's do that, let's take a moment to breathe.

1....2....3....4 in and 1....2....3....4 out and pop on your Believe oil.

Okay back to business 😅, now that you have calmed that nervous system a bit, let's talk.

When you're feeling some big emotions it can be hard to regulate your nervous system, meaning it can be hard to calm down.

When you are feeling some of those big emotions your body is going through different fluctuations of different hormones and physical feelings.

👉🏻Anger: this can cause the body to release adrenaline, your heart rate and blood pressure to increase and your muscles to tighten (short version)

👉🏻Anxiety: this can set off your flight-or-fight response which releases many different hormones including adrenaline

👉🏻Sadness: this can do different things to your body depending on how long you experience this emotion and to what depth but a recent study has shown that IL-18 (interleukin-18, an IL-1 family cytokine) is raised in depression and has been implicated in the pathophysiology of underlying comorbidities-basically it causes an uptake in inflammatory cytokines and has been linked to chronic health issues such as diabetes and other metabolic conditions.

This is just a little tidbit of how emotions can impact our health. There is a lot of information out there but we're not really taught to pay attention to our emotions and what they can be impacting, especially on a daily basis. Thursday night at 8pmEST we're going to be talking about some of these aspects and some tools to work through some of these emotions.

How do you deal with emotions? Or is this something you've not even really thought about?