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Barilla Plus Pasta | Healthy Food of the Day

Barilla Plus Pasta is higher in protein, Omega-3s and fiber than regular pasta. The question is: How does this healthier version of Barilla pasta hold up in the taste department? 

Nearly everyone loves a good plate of pasta. And provided you don’t smother it with Fettuccine Alfredo sauce or heap on the Italian sausage, pasta can actually be a tasty and filling addition to a healthy diet … in moderation.

The issue with most traditional pastas made with semolina flour is that they are relatively low in fiber and protein, and aren’t made with whole grains.

While a plate of spaghetti can make a pretty solid post-workout meal (your body uses the carbohydrates more efficiently after weight or resistance training), many a spare tire was built on top of too many bowls of penne. And the fact that most people overestimate what a serving of pasta really is (sometimes eating as much as three servings in a single setting), the extra calories can start to add up quickly.

One option is to switch to one of the 100% whole wheat versions of pasta out there, for example Hodgson Mills Whole Wheat pasta. However, some people find the flavor of whole wheat pastas to be a bit strong. The texture sometimes also suffers because of the presence of wheat bran.

Barilla Plus Pasta To The Rescue

Enter Barilla Plus Pasta – a multigrain pasta that is not only higher in protein than your average semolina pasta, but also higher in fiber and Omega-3 fatty acids, a class of healthy fats that has been associated with lowered risk of heart disease.

The first thing to understand about Barilla Plus Pasta is that while Barilla labels it “multi-grain” you shouldn’t confuse it with “whole-grain.” Barilla Plus Pasta is still made with semolina and durum flour — the basis of all traditional pastas — and these flours have been refined to remove the bran and germ. So it’s not 100% whole grain.

What Barilla has doneis enrich their Plus Pastas with the addition of a grain and legume flour blend made from lentils, chickpeas, spelt, barley, flaxseed, oat fiber, oats and egg whites.

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Muesli Recipes: Make Your Own Homemade Muesli!

Muesli is an inexpensive and flavorful way to get your daily grains. Learn how to make homemade Muesli with these five easy recipes.

Okay, it has a funny sounding name. But if you are looking for a high-energy, whole-grain food that will also help you get your daily dose of healthy fats and soluble fiber, and fuel your training and workouts, you have to try a bowl of Muesli … or two bowls.

Store-bought Muesli can be expensive (a 1 lb, 18-serving bag, for instance, can cost nearly $5 dollars) so it really pays off to make it yourself. Also, making your own Muesli allows you to customize the recipe based on your own particular preferences. 

And making homemade muesli is also easier than making homemade granola, since you don’t have to bake the mixture in the oven. Basically, you take the Meusli recipe ingredients, toss them together in a bowl and bag it. That’s it. It’s really that simple.

But before we actually get to the Meusli recipes, let’s take a look at the history of this cereal, as well as the health benefits that make this a great fitness food.

The Muesli Story

Muesli (pronounced muse-lee) is a breakfast cereal that has been popular in Europe — especially Switzerland — for over 100 years. It’s made from raw, rolled whole grains like oats, barley, rye, triticale, and wheat and typically contains nuts and dried or fresh fruit.

Muesli was developed by the Swiss physician Maximilian Bircher-Benner around 1900 to serve to patients in his hospital in Zurich. The diet that Bircher-Benner prescribed to his patients was heavy on whole-grains and fresh fruits and vegetables, and Bircher-Benner came up with idea of Muesli after being served a similar dish during a hike in the Swiss Alps.

While popular in Switzerland and parts of Europe for decades, it wasn’t until the health food movement of the 1960s that this tasty and uber-nutritious cereal started to gain fans in the United States. Since then, Muesli has become much more widely available not only in health food stores, but also in mainstream markets and grocery stores.

In the late-80s, Kellogg even tried to cash-in on the healthy reputation of Muesli by developing a boxed, cold cereal version of muesli called Mueslix. Unfortunately, the cereal shared very little in common with the traditional Muesli recipe, and instead had more in common with Corn Flakes than with the whole-grain masterpiece from Switzerland. Kellogg still markets Mueslix in the US and Canada, although their version is a pale-imitation of the real deal.

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Baked Blue Corn Chips with Flaxseed from Garden of Eatin | Healthy Snack of the Day

Looking for a healthy alternative to traditional corn chips? Check out these tasty organic blue corn tortilla chips that include … flaxseed! 

Okay, despite trying to stay away from processed grains, it’s hard to resist eating tortilla chips every now and then.

In the past,  most health-conscious people reserved corn chips for ”cheat days” or special occasions. Loaded with high-glycemic carbs, fat and sodium, corn chips generally aren’t considered a “health food.”

However, with the new crop of baked chips that have hit the market over the past few years, it’s become possible to find corn chips that not only taste good, but can be part of a healthy diet.

That doesn’t mean all baked corn chips are created equal, or even taste particularly good. I’ve had plenty of baked corn and potato chips that ranked only slightly above paperboard on the taste and texture scale. And many baked chips are simply too fragile to hold up to a thick dip.

Garden of Eatin Baked Blue Corn Chips: Finally A Healthy Corn Chip!

So imagine my surprise when I took a chance on a new brand of baked corn chips and discovered probably the tastiest non-fried tortilla chip that ever found its way to a bowl of fresh salsa: Garden of Eatin Baked Blue Corn Chips Tortilla Chips.

There are a couple of things I really like about these corn chips.

First, they are certified USDA organic. While that alone wouldn’t make up for a bad tasting baked chip, it’s definitely a plus (I especially like the fact that they are made without any genetically-engineered grains.)

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Fish Oil | Benefits and Side Effects from Answer Fitness

Hooked on The Idea of Taking Fish Oil Supplements? Before You Start, Learn About the Benefits and Potential Side Effects.

Fish oil is on a roll.

It’s difficult to open up a health or fitness magazine, browse the Internet or turn on the TV without seeing yet another piece on this “wonder” supplement. The health claims made in the media and online are often as amazing as the idea that we can distill down the oil of hundreds of fish into a single capsule: Reduce heart disease! Prevent cancer! Stave off depression! Stop arthritis! Improve your mood!

Not since Linus Pauling published his work on the benefits of Vitamin C (which has come under increased scrutiny by scientists in the past few decades), has there been so much buzz around a single supplement.

So before we dig into some of the possible benefits (and the potential side effects) of fish oil, let’s take a look at how we got here in the first place.

A Brief History of Fish Oil

The whole fish oil story started with a simple observation: People who had diets high in certain types of fatty, cold-water fish appeared to have lower rates of heart disease than other populations who ate less fish. The traditional Japanese diet, for example, contains large amounts of fish, as do certain Norwegian and arctic populations (like the Inuit.)

Scientists were intrigued enough with this correlation that they started to conduct studies to see if whether including more cold-water fish in the diets of people who don’t normally eat fish, could produce a similar benefit. Their results, while not conclusive, did find a strong correlation between the consumption of certain fats contained in fish, and decreased risk for certain form of heart disease. 

So what’s so great about fish?

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