Deborah Marks - Chocolate, Wine, Coffee, Tea, and Carob: Weight Loss Superfoods: Recipes to Help You Lose Weight Without Calorie Counting or Exercise

Weight Loss Superfoods

Recipes to Help You Lose Weight Without Calorie Counting or Exercise

Volume 9: Chocolate, Wine, Tea, Coffee, and Carob

by Deborah Marks

Table of contents

Wine and Chocolate: Nutrient Rich Superfoods

This book began as a kind of wild card weight loss book in terms of ingredients. These are neither spices, herbs, nor specifically the type of ingredients that you normally associate with weight loss, and yet, these all have tremendously healthful properties that will not only help you with weight loss but will contribute to your overall health. Throughout this series we look at foods in dishes that are high in fiber and low in sugar except where sugar is unavoidable such as berry jams. Chocolate without sugar is practically a different substance than the nearly-cocoa free milk chocolate we are used to from the local supermarket. That is largely milk, sugar, and a variety of chemicals. Cocoa on the other hand was once so prized that the beans were used as currency by the ancient Mayans. Coffee, like cocoa, is a bean that has inspired near religious fervor through the centuries. The legend is that the coffee bean was discovered by a goat shepherd observing his goats near the Ethiopian town of Harrar centuries ago. Wine of course is famously associated with the ancient Greeks, Dionysus (god of grape harvest, wine, as well as madness and ecstasy), although even in ancient times it had already been cultivated and prepared for thousands of years. Carob comes from an evergreen tree that grows at the intersection of Asia and Europe and features in the rituals of Mesopotamia and early Christian religions and was reported to have many healing properties. Green tea, from China, has also been prepared for thousands of years, features in ritual, and has been ascribed many health benefits.

These superfoods are then at the interesting margin between drugs (caffeine, alcohol, and an ready endorphin source for chocoholics), herbs, and other types of food. These foods do not provide a source of macronutrients but can be used in moderation to increase the health of your dishes, provide access to unique properties, and help you lose weight.

Moderate use of these foods will provide you with a superfood rich diet that will cut your cravings for over consuming coffee, chocolate, or wine. This is such a popular concept in fact there is a diet called The Wine and Dark Chocolate diet.

This book contains recipes to help you lose weight for five food types

What Are Superfoods

Hunters and gatherers had a relationship with their environment that grew over tens of thousands of years. They understood that certain sources of food contained more than just the calories that they needed to walk long distances, hunt, and keep warm. They discovered berries, herbs, and meats that provided an extraordinarily dense mix of nutrients that humans could not manufacture on their own. In some cases, access to these nutrients had a profound effect on the ability of our brains to function. For instance, the development of fresh-water fishing thousands of years ago provided sudden access to the omega-three fatty acids, which increased the efficiency of the cognitive function in the brains of our ancestors. Unlike other foods, superfoods contain powerful properties that can help you become healthier.

Superfoods themselves are not mysterious or rare. They can be found everywhere. Likely you already include some superfoods in your daily diet now. While some of the most well-known superfoods are exotic, such as goji berry, many superfoods are abundant and easily found at your local farmers market, fruit stand, or butcher.

Deliberately infusing your recipes and your diet with superfoods and making them a regular part of your diet will provide you with access to the benefits from the nutritional and health properties of these foods. Common food such as kale, sweet potatoes, berries, garbanzo beans, and quinoa are likely foods you are already familiar with. This series of cookbooks will introduce you to less common foods such as ocean greens like seaweed and goji berry.

Some elements of superfoods:

• Raw

  Cooking destroys many properties in food when it is heated above 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Raw food retains the structures and nutrients that pack some of the nutritional density of superfoods.

• Enzyme rich

  Food rich in enzymes helps with digestion and accessing the nutritional properties of the food. Some enzymes aid in accessing the energy in the food. Other enzymes help your body synthesize substances that are not otherwise available in your diet.

• Organic

  Organic food is food that is grown without industrial chemicals such as pesticides and herbicides and petroleum-based fertilizer. Organic meat comes from animals that have not been exposed to hormones and other chemicals.

• Local

  Foods that have not been transported a great distance have been alive and synthesizing the properties that make them superfoods longer than food that was canned, frozen, or dried on the other side of the planet. While local food is important, in many cases it is MORE important to just include these superfoods in your diet, and locally-sourced foods are subject to many natural limitations that can make them difficult to include regularly in your diet. For instance, you are limited by the growing season of your region. But understanding the origin of the food that you are going to put into your recipes and your bodies is part of caring about the nutritional value of your food.

How to Select your Superfoods

Find food with an array of color, variable surface textures, a variety of flavor, and different shapes. Antioxidants are associated with the color of the food. Natural food is often rich in fiber. Unlike manufactured food, natural food does not come in uniform packages.

Focus on the nutritional qualities of the food over the calories of the food. The properties of a superfood, such as vitamins, minerals, enzymes, antioxidants, flavonoids, and other micronutrients, do not contain calories. Calories themselves are a poor measure of the quality of the food. It is important for your diet to focus on the quality of food rather than a crude measurement such as calories.