Potent Foods You Need To Know Part I

It would be unre­al­is­tic to think you could suc­cess­fully lose weight and enjoy what you’re eat­ing with a mere hand­ful of foods, no mat­ter how deli­cious, nutri­tious and sat­is­fy­ing they may be. So I’m going to add an extra ros­ter of fat-fighting foods you can eat along with the great foods men­tioned in my pre­view post Fat Burn­ing Food 1 and Fat Burn­ing Food 2.

Those potent foods will lend dif­fer­ent tastes and tex­tures to every meal and pro­vide a wide range of vit­a­mins, min­er­als, pro­teins and other vital nutri­ents. Nat­u­rally, each one is high in fiber, low in fat and safe when it comes to sodium con­tent, too.

Many have crunch­i­ness and fla­vor we’ve come to desire in snack and nib­bling foods. If you’re like most of us, you may have a real junk food snack­ing habit – a habit you’re going to have to change in order to slim down. Many of the foods in this sec­tion may be wor­thy substitutes.

Bar­ley

This fill­ing grain stacks up favor­ably to rice and pota­toes. It has 170 calo­ries per cooked cup, respectable lev­els of pro­tein and fiber and rel­a­tively low fat. Roman glad­i­a­tors ate this grain reg­u­larly for strength and actu­ally com­plained when they had to eat meat.

Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin show that bar­ley effec­tively low­ers cho­les­terol by up to 15 per­cent and has pow­er­ful anti-cancer agents. Israeli sci­en­tists say it cures con­sti­pa­tion bet­ter than lax­a­tives — and that can pro­mote weight loss, too.

Use it as a sub­sti­tute for rice in sal­ads, pilaf or stuff­ing, or add to soups and stews. You can also mix it with rice for an inter­est­ing tex­ture. Ground into flour, it makes excel­lent breads and muffins.

Beans

Beans are one of the best sources of plant pro­tein. Peas, beans and chick­peas are col­lec­tively known as legumes. Most com­mon beans have 215 calo­ries per cooked cup (lima beans go up to 260). They have the most pro­tein with the least fat of any food, and they’re high in potas­sium but low in sodium.

Plant pro­tein is incom­plete, which means that you need to add some­thing to make it com­plete. Com­bine beans with a whole grain – rice, bar­ley, wheat, corn – to pro­vide the amino acids nec­es­sary to form a com­plete pro­tein. Then you get the same top-quality pro­tein as in meat with just a frac­tion of the fat.

Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­sity of Ken­tucky and in the Nether­lands show that eat­ing beans reg­u­larly can lower cho­les­terol levels.

The most com­mon com­plaint about beans is that they cause gas. Here’s how to con­tain that prob­lem, accord­ing to the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture (USDA): Before cook­ing, rinse the beans and remove for­eign par­ti­cles, put in a ket­tle and cover with boil­ing water, soak for four hours or longer, remove any beans that float to the top, then cook the beans in fresh water.

Berries

This is the per­fect weight-loss food. Berries have nat­ural fruc­tose sugar that sat­is­fies your long­ing for sweets and enough fiber so you absorb fewer calo­ries that you eat. British researchers found that the high con­tent of insol­u­ble fiber in fruits, veg­eta­bles and whole grains reduces the absorp­tion of calo­ries from foods enough to pro­mote width loss with­out ham­per­ing nutrition.

Berries are a great source of potas­sium that can assist you in blood pres­sure con­trol. Black­ber­ries have 74 calo­ries per cup, blue­ber­ries 81, rasp­ber­ries 60 and straw­ber­ries 45. So use your imag­i­na­tion and enjoy the berry of your choice.

Broc­coli

Broc­coli is America’s favorite veg­etable, accord­ing to a recent poll. No won­der. A cup of cooked broc­coli has a mere 44 calo­ries. It deliv­ers a stag­ger­ing nutri­tional pay­load and is con­sid­ered the num­ber one cancer-fighting veg­etable. It has no fat, loads of fiber, can­cer fight­ing chem­i­cals called indoles, carotene, 21 times the RDA of vit­a­min C and calcium.

When you’re buy­ing broc­coli, pay atten­tion to the color. The tiny flo­rets should be rich green and free of yel­low­ing. Stems should be firm.

Buck­wheat

It’s great for pan­cakes, breads, cereal, soups or alone as a grain dish com­monly called kasha. It has 155 calo­ries per cooked cup. Research at the All India Insti­tute of Med­ical Sci­ences shows diets includ­ing buck­wheat lead to excel­lent blood sugar reg­u­la­tion, resis­tance to dia­betes and low­ered cho­les­terol lev­els. You cook buck­wheat the same way you would rice or bar­ley. Bring two to three cups of water to a boil, add the grain, cover the pan, turn down the heat and sim­mer for 20 min­utes or until the water is absorbed.

Cab­bage

This East­ern Europe sta­ple is a true won­der food. There are only 33 calo­ries in a cup of cooked shred­ded cab­bage, and it retains all its nutri­tional good­ness no mat­ter how long you cook it. Eat­ing cab­bage raw (18 calo­ries per shred­ded cup), cooked, as sauer­kraut (27 calo­ries per drained cup) or coleslaw (calo­ries depend on dress­ing) only once a week is enough to pro­tect against colon can­cer. And it may be a longevity-enhancing food. Sur­veys in the United States, Greece and Japan show that peo­ple who eat a lot of it have the least colon can­cer and the low­est death rates overall.

Car­rots

What list of health-promoting, fat-fighting foods would be com­plete with­out Bugs Bunny’s favorite? A medium-sized car­rot car­ries about 55 calo­ries and is a nutri­tional pow­er­house. The orange color comes from beta carotene, a pow­er­ful cancer-preventing nutri­ent (provi­t­a­min A).

Chop and toss them with pasta, grate them into rice or add them to a stir-fry. Com­bine them with parsnips, oranges, raisins, lemon juice, chicken, pota­toes, broc­coli or lamb to cre­ate fla­vor­ful dishes. Spice them with tar­ragon, dill, cin­na­mon or nut­meg. Add finely chopped car­rots to soups and spaghetti sauce – they impart a nat­ural sweet­ness with­out adding sugar.

Chicken

White meat con­tains 245 calo­ries per four ounce serv­ing and dark meat, 285. It’s an excel­lent source of pro­tein, iron, niacin and zinc. Skinned chicken is health­i­est, but most experts rec­om­mend wait­ing until after cook­ing to remove it because the skin keeps the meat moist dur­ing cooking.

Corn

It’s really a grain – not a veg­etable – and is another food that’s got­ten a bum rap. Peo­ple think it has lit­tle to offer nutri­tion­ally and that just isn’t so. There are 178 calo­ries in a cup of cooked ker­nels. It con­tains good amounts of iron, zinc and potas­sium, and Uni­ver­sity of Nebraska researchers say it deliv­ers a high-quality of pro­tein, too.

The Tarahu­mara Indi­ans of Mex­ico eat corn, beans and hardly any­thing else. Vir­gil Brown, M.D., of Mount Sinai School of Med­i­cine in New York, points out that high blood cho­les­terol and car­dio­vas­cu­lar heart dis­ease are almost nonex­is­tent among them.

Cot­tage Cheese

As long as we’re talk­ing about los­ing weight and fat-fighting foods, we had to men­tion cot­tage cheese.

Low-fat (2%) cot­tage cheese has 205 calo­ries per cup and is admirably low in fat, while pro­vid­ing respectable amounts of cal­cium and the B vit­a­min riboflavin. Sea­son with spices such a dill, or gar­den fresh veg­etable such a scal­lions and chives for extra zip.

To make it sweeter, add raisins or one of the fruit spreads with no sugar added. You can also use cot­tage cheese in cook­ing, bak­ing, fill­ings and dips where you would oth­er­wise use sour cream or cream cheese.