Most of you know that my wife is an avid athlete. Growing up she always played sports and excelled at it. Since I have known her she has been someone to rise early in the morning to make sure she gets to the gym before her real day starts - and she does that 5 or more days a week. One would think with all of that exercise that when you look at her doctors records you would see everything perfect. Well it turns out that there are some things that have genetic control and for her one of them was cholesterol. We have not thought about it - we knew it was always high - and I do mean high - easily doubled mine. A couple of weeks back she had her annual physical and everything as always looks great and she was very nervous waiting for her blood work to come back - wondering how bad the cholesterol was. Well it came back and it was at a level that she had never seen before - It was almost half of what it had at one time been. Everything was a dramatic improvement.
So now the question .... why? We basically ate the same ... except we had taken dairy out of her diet (another story) and we replaced it with almond milk, olive oil and other dairy free substitutes. This presented some challenges in cooking but adaption was not hard and except for ice cream we have replaced most things with dairy free versions that we either have found or I make. Being the curious scientist Laura found out that Almond Milk is one of the 5 foods recommended for lower cholesterol. Yay for us. So if you are at a point where you do not want to take medicines to lower cholesterol try replacing your dairy with dairy free substitutes, use olive oil and drink almond milk. You may want to add in some extra vitamin D and calcium to make sure you get enough but outside of that it is fairly straight forward.
To help you along here is a recipe for Vanilla Pudding that is dairy free and easy to make. If you like your pudding firm you may want to up the cornstarch or add some gelatin - in the mean time - healthy eating :-)
Low-fat Vegan Vanilla Pudding Recipe
Ingredients:
Preparation:
Mix the sugar, cornstarch and salt in a large saucepan. Gradually blend in the soy milk, stirring constantly to avoid lumps.
Cook the mixture over low heat, stirring constantly until thickened. Cook for an additional 2 to 3 minutes, stirring now and then.
Remove the pudding from the heat and add the vanilla. Let cool for ten minutes, stirring now and then. Pour the pudding into a large serving dish or individual serving dishes and chill until firm, about 2 to 3 hours.
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