Add to a saucepan:
- Several cups of water
- One small can of Tomato Paste
- 3 Bay Leaves
- Salt and Pepper to Taste
- Several tomatoes cut in large or small chunkes, or pureed in a blender
Boil until tomatoes are soft. You can then continue boiling the soup for hours, adding water as you go, for best results. Or if you are in a hurry you can eat it sooner.
Garnishes:
- I like this soup with a spoonful of liquid yogurt on top
- Or add shredded or broken-up cheese. Use something that melts well in liquid, such as Gouda or Cheddar.
- Croutons are another option.
Variations:
- Try adding other vegetables and herbs to the soup, such as a sliced onion, garlic, oregano, basil, etc.
- You can also add some mini noodles (put them in toward the end so they don’t overcook), rice, barley, or small meatballs.
Cravings and Health
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When you find yourself craving a certain food, your body may be trying to tell you something. If you are craving something unhealthy, this does not necessarily mean that you should go out and eat lots of that unhealthy substance. But you might have a look at a few other factors.
1. You might be craving something which contains certain nutrients which your body is deficient in. A recent example for me was incessant cravings for canned ravioli. I eventually realized that I was also craving Tomato Soup. I began making tomato soup, using fresh tomatoes and herbs, and found that it fully handled by ravioli cravings!
What I assumed was that the tomatoes contained some nutrient(s) that I was definient in - perhaps Vitamin C or Iron - and that this was what was behind the craving for ravioli (with all its tomato sauce). But instead of eating tons of unhealthy and fattening ravioli, I was able to pacify myself with fresh tomato soup - doing only good and no harm to my body.
2. Your craving might be a side-effect of another deficiency.
My mother always told me that when I craved sugar, this was usually a sign of a lack of protein. I have also read that when you continuously feel like you want to eat something but you don’t know what it is, that’s a need for Vitamin C.
Of course I’m no doctor. But in my personal experience, whenever I did find the correct and healthful item to fulfill my craving, it sort of “felt right” in the end.
Keep this in mind the next time you have a funny craving and you may be able to use it as an indicator for better health, instead of an impetus to indulgence.
I just read the findings of a survey done by the USDA, and I was surprised at what I saw. I am sorry if I have to vent a little in this article, but it disturbed me some. I am trying to see the logic.
The survey was on food labels. To be more specific, on how many people actually still read them or used them. The survey was for the years 1995 to 2006. This report was a 33 page PDF report that I found very interesting. It went into the history of the label and how the survey was done and covered a lot of how to use it and why it is on our foods among other things about the label. It was very informative.
The results of the survey are what surprised me though. Less people are taking the time to read them or look at them. What they found was that it decreased for most label components. It declined approximately 3 percentage points for the Nutrition Facts panel, 11 percentage points for the ingredient list, and 10 percentage points for the panel’s information about calories, fat, cholesterol, and sodium. Only the information about fiber and sugars did not decline over the 10 year period. The use of fiber information increased by 2 percentage points and for sugar stayed the same.
It went on you break down the study by age and race. They believe the fiber increase was due to the people over 30. They said the increase in use may be the result of the increasing popularity of low-carb diets, the interest in identifying whole grain foods, or an aging population that is more aware of dietary fiber’s health benefits.
My thinking was that more people would be reading the labels. I thought people cared about their health more now. I guess I am wrong.
I find it funny, I guess it isn’t really funny, but if someone lights up a cigarette people get all upset about how that person is killing themselves and the second hand smoke will kill them too while they are eating a bacon cheese burger with fries and a coke. Which one is more deadly? You have tons of saturated fat in processed white bread. I think that the hamburger meal is more deadly.
I read another article the other day about a study on the kids meals served. 93 percent of the meals failed. The most calories a child 4 through 8 is supposed to have are 430 per meal. These meals were loaded with fat and sodium and some of them exceeded 1000 calories. This was done in 13 popular restaurants. I think people should start caring more about their kids. They are slowly killing them with the foods they feed them.
I am starting to think that most people don’t care about their health as much as they should. Sure, right now that processed food and those fast meals taste great, and are fine to eat every now and then, but it is killing us slowly. Sooner or later that is going to catch up with a lot of people, just like smoking cigarettes does. I am not saying that people can not sit and eat some pizza every now and then, I do, but not very often because it is not a good healthy food. I try to eat 90 percent good healthy food, and treat myself with the other 10 percent. I am not a saint and I don’t expect everyone else to be.
Our body needs a well balanced diet to work properly. It needs some fats, not the kind we get from the fast food chains, it needs protein, not the fatty kind, but the lean kind, and it needs carbohydrates. A lot of this information is right on the food products that we buy, on the nutritional label that less people are reading. People should be keeping up with the food news too. There are new studies they are doing all the time, and some of it is good news, and some of it is not so good news, but people need to know, and should be aware of the health risks and benefits of what we are eating.
For more information on this article and information on weight loss and good health including, news, tips, tools, guides and much more visit http://www.truellybetter.com
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