Low Carb Diet Food

You’re probably already aware of the many health benefits of eating the low carb diet food flax seed. In this post we are going to examine 4 different ways to incorporate it into our eating regime: as a low carb substitute for flour in baking, as a nutritional enhancer of other foods, as a low carb porridge (when mixed with water), and as an edible oil.

If you have whole flax seeds, you will of course need to put them through a coffee or spice grinder before attempting to use them as illustrated in the first 3 examples in this article.

A Low Carb Substitute For Wheat Flour In Baking

Because flax seeds are a low carb diet food, you can make lower carb versions of many of your favorite baked goods by replacing up to 25% of the flour in your recipe with flax seed meal. Depending on the recipe, you may be able to use a proportion of flax seed meal higher than 25% (see this flax seed muffin recipe), but this tends to make the finished product dry and dense, and you’ll need to add additional water to your recipe to compensate for the higher fiber content of the flax seed. Be aware too that baked goods containing flax seed meal tend to brown more quickly than regular baking, so you may have to reduce the temperature in your oven slightly.

Flax seed meal is also a component of many low carb flour mixes, which comprise a variety of low carb flours (flax seed, soy, almond etc.). These mixes can replace regular flour cup for cup so produce even lower carb baking than the more basic mixture of flax seed meal and regular flour.

A Nutritional Enhancer Of Other Foods

Adding flax seed meal to other low carb diet food is a great way to increase the overall fiber content of your diet. If you eat a lot of processed foods and few fruits and vegetables you are probably not consuming enough fiber. Fiber is essential for a healthily functioning gastrointestinal tract, and is particularly useful for dieters because it expands in the body and helps provide a bulky, full feeling which helps to reduce food cravings.

Among flax seed’s other health benefits is its high concentration of alpha-linoleic acid, an omega 3 fatty acid which is a precursor to the healthy fatty acid in fish oil.

It is best to add freshly ground flax seed to other low carb diet food, rather than store-bought flax seed meal, to gain the maximum benefits. This is because flax seed is very volatile and unless stored properly the meal quickly goes rancid and loses much of its nutritional value.

Popular ways of enhancing food with flax seed meal include sprinkling it on yogurt or cottage cheese, and adding it to protein smoothies. Sprinkling roasted, coarsely ground seeds onto salads also makes a nice touch.

A Low Carb Porridge

You can make a sort of low carb porridge by stirring boiling water into a bowl of flax seed meal and letting it thicken for a couple of minutes as the seeds absorb the water. You can then mix in your choice of other low carb diet food such as peanut butter, coconut, berries, artificial sweetener, and so on. In the morning this porridge can make a nice change from eggs or fruit for breakfast.

An Edible Oil

Because of its volatility flax seed oil should not used in place of cooking/frying oil, but it can be substituted for oils in preparations like vinaigrette. This is a good way of increasing your omega-3 fatty acid intake, as flax seed oil has higher concentrations than flax seed meal (though it doesn’t contain the fiber). 

As you can see, there are at least 4 different ways you can use this low carb diet food in your meals. Can you think of anymore? Please share in the comments box below!

If you’ve read the Low Carb Diet Food blog post on cranberries, you’ll know that this super fruit is extremely good for you. What you might want some information on is how to actually include cranberries in your diet. Here are my thoughts on how to include this incredibly healthy low carb diet food into your diet plan.

Eat Them Fresh

As with any other fruit, cranberries are most nutritious when eaten fresh. The reason most people don’t eat them this way is because of their tart flavor. Cranberries are naturally very acidic, and being a low sugar fruit there is nothing to offset that sharp taste.

The longer cranberries are allowed to ripen, the sweeter they become – you can tell how ripe a cranberry is from its shade of red, with darker reds pertaining to riper fruits – so if you’re going to eat them raw you obviously want the ripest fruit you can find. However if the flavor by itself doesn’t appeal to you, you can make things easier on yourself by combining cranberries with another low carb diet food.

Protein smoothies are one example of a low carb diet food to which you can add cranberries. Just as you would strawberries or blueberries, why not blend half a cup of chopped fresh cranberries into your next low carb protein smoothie and get the benefits of the antioxidant boost they provide? Think about the different ways you would use other fresh berries like raspberries or blueberries and experiment by substituting cranberries.

Drink The Juice

The second best way to get the goodness of cranberries into your body is by drinking cranberry juice. Most store bought cranberry juices however, are more like cranberry cocktails containing lots of sugar and bulked up by the juices of other fruits such as apples. These kinds of cranberry juices would not fall under the low carb diet food umbrella and should be avoided. Instead opt for 100% pure cranberry juice which you can either buy in health food stores or, if you’re up for a bit of work, make yourself – healthier and cheaper.

Keep in mind that because this juice contains no sugar it will be extremely tart – even more so than if you were to eat whole cranberries. Diluting with water and/or adding an artificial low carb sweetener is one way to make it more drinkable. Another way, per our example above, is to combine cranberry juice with other juices to dilute the tartness. The juices of other low carb berries spring to mind, but if you’re lucky enough to own a juicer, there’s no reason you can’t combine the juices from cranberries with low carb vegetable juices to make a refreshing health tonic.

Finally, because cranberries are so sour, how about substituting cranberry juice where you would normally use lemon juice? In vinaigrette for instance.

Sauce Them

Your first experience of cranberries was probably as the main ingredient in the festive favorite cranberry sauce. Homemade sugar-free cranberry sauce is simple and quick to prepare and is a better option for you than eating the gelatinous kind that comes out of a can, both because it contains no preservatives and because it isn’t loaded with carbs. In addition to its traditional role as side dish accompanying roast turkey, it makes a nice topping on low carb natural yogurt or cottage cheese.

As an alternative to cranberry sauce, why not try cranberry chutney?

Eat Them Dry

Snacking on dried cranberries or “craisins” is a tasty way to pack more vitamin c into your diet – unfortunately its also a great way to sneak in heaps of extra carbs. As is the case with most store-bought cranberry juices, the majority of craisins sold today are full of sugar and are most definitely not a low carb diet food. If you can’t find sweet yet sugarless craisins in the shops, you might want to check out this recipe for low carb craisins that uses an artificial sweetener.

Or you could simply eat unsweetened dried cranberries, which you can probably find in health food shops. Be creative and add these to dishes like low carb tuna or chicken salads – they go very well with white meats and fish – or to trail mixes, as a low carb substitute for raisins or dried apricots.

If you have a favorite low carb diet food that contains cranberries why not share it in the comments box? We’d love to hear it.

If celery is not already on your low carb diet food list please add it now! 

Most of us probably know that this relative of the carrot is good for us, simply by virtue of it being a green vegetable, and we’ve probably snacked on it now and then. But if you want to know why celery makes a great low carb diet food, here are 3 solid examples of celery’s important health benefits in a low carb diet.

Boosting the Immune System

Celery is very high in vitamin c which supports the immune system. A strong immune system means you’re better at warding away general illness than the rest of the population – you tend to get sick less often than everyone else. Vitamin C is especially well known as a cold fighter. It can help to prevent you from catching a cold in the first place, or if you already have a cold, can help to lesson the severity of it (especially if you consume it inmega-doses). 100 grams of chopped celery provides about 14% of your daily vitamin C requirements.

Because a lot of the low carb diet food we eat tends to be in the meat, cheese and eggs category, we can forget to eat enough vitamin c containing fruits and vegetables, so when we do eat them, we should be going for the ones that contain vitamin c in high doses.

Lowering Blood Pressure

This benefit is a little bit controversial. Celery is considered to be a high sodium food, and people with high blood pressure are supposed to restrict the intake of sodium in their diets. On the other hand celery contains active compounds called phthalides, which can help relax the muscles around blood vessels, allowing them to dilate and thereby create more room inside for blood to flow – reducing blood pressure.

Studies on lab animals have shown reduced blood pressure after being fed celery juice. Also, celery contains other nutrients that are supposed to be good for high blood pressure, such as potassium, calcium and magnesium. Finally, although celery is higher in sodium, than other vegetables, 1 cup of chopped celery still contains only 4% of our daily sodium dietary requirements, so you can easily include celery in your low carb diet food list, and then cut out some other high sodium food to keep you within your daily limit.

Reducing Inflammation

Celery has an anti-inflammatory effect in the body, providing relief to people suffering from arthritis, rheumatism, asthma and other diseases linked to inflammation. Through its diuretic (fluid expelling) effect on the body it helps to remove uric acid crystal build up from around the joints which eases joint pains and swelling.

If those 3 reasons aren’t compelling enough, how about the fact that celery is 95% water. You can eat tons of it and are practically guaranteed not to put on weight. There is even a myth that eating celery actually helps you to lose weight, because the calories you burn by trying to digest it, are greater than the calories contained in the celery itself. I don’t think this is scientifically accurate but it sounds good

So celery is an important low carb diet food we should all be eating more of but if you need some ways to make eating celery more exciting (it is mostly water after all) check out these 5 Low Carb Snacks Made With Celery for inspiration.

When it comes to healthy low carb diet food, it’s hard to beat the famously tart and refreshing cranberry. Unlike a lot of low carb diet food, it is both low in carbs AND in calories and like most other berries it is also high in fiber and loaded with nutrients – in this case vitamin c, manganese and antioxidants. I have seen Cranberries referred to as “superfruits” numerous times while doing research on the net – I think its because of cranberries’ huge antioxidant load and anti-bacterial properties which makes them potentially effective at treating conditions such as urinary tract infection and tooth decay.

Basic info on Cranberries

Cranberries are grown predominantly in the United States and Canada. They’re one of only a few fruits which are native to North America. According to Wikipedia, Wisconsin produces around half of all US-grown cranberries, followed by Massachusetts at around 28%. Dennis, Massachusetts was the site of the first recorded cranberry cultivation in 1816. Cranberries are grown on sandy bogs or marshes and because they float, the most common way to harvest the fruit is to flood the bog. Berries harvested this way (95% of them) are used in processed cranberry products like juices and sauces, while fruit harvested the other way (i.e dry) are sold as fresh produce.

Naturally, Native Americans were the first to use cranberries for food (they combined them with deer meat to make a sort of long lasting survival food), and they also used them for medicine and as a textile dye. The name cranberry actually comes from “craneberry“, a name coined by Dutch or German settlers (couldn’t ascertain which one) because to them the cranberry vine blossoms resembled the neck, head and bill of a crane.

How nutritious are they?

1/2 a cup of chopped cranberries contains 4 grams of effective carbohydrate plus 2.5 grams of fiber (1/3 of it soluble) and 25 calories. Wikipedia states that they contain moderate amounts of vitamin C, dietary fiber and manganese, and have an ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) score of 9,584 units per 100 g which means they contain more antioxidants than almost any other food we can buy on the market.

What does a high antioxidant count mean in terms of good health? Well, in the case of cranberries it seems to be responsible for various health benefits. For example, from what I’ve read on About.com, the antioxidants contribute to cranberries’ antibacterial nature in the bladder, intestines and mouth which makes them effective at preventing and treating urinary tract infections, food-borne illness and even tooth decay. 

They are also supposed to help regulate cholesterol levels, blood pressure and maybe even prevent cancer. Even though I’m not sure if these last three benefits are as credible as the antibacterial benefit, from what I’ve read, cranberries are one of the healthiest low carb diet foods around.

How to include them in your diet

Because fresh cranberries are so tart, they’re more often eaten in a processed form, or used in cooking, than eaten raw. If you happen to like fresh cranberries they are usually harvested between September and October in the US and are available till December. They’ll remain edible in a refrigerator for a few months. 

Cranberry juice and dried cranberries are two other ways to include cranberries in your diet, however because these versions will often have sugar added they are usually not viable low carb options. This is especially true of “craisins” which are only good as low carb snacks if made with artificial sweetener.

Using cranberries as a cooking ingredient (for example in sauces or chutneys) is probably the best way to go. If you freeze them they will keep for about a year. They come out a bit soft when thawed but are still fine for cooking with which means you can enjoy the health benefits of cranberries all year round. 

We will look at different cranberry recipes in a future post.