Determining Healthy Foods For You #147

Maple syrup is one of natures healthy sweeteners.  It is an amber liquid with a sweet taste made from the sap of the maple tree.  It is higher in mineral content and lower in calories than honey.  You will benefit from the manganese in maple syrup  increasing your antioxidant defenses.   How healthy is maple syrup to you can be based on  how you perceive it's benefits.  It would be difficult for me to list very many antioxidants, minerals, or vitamins you would get from eating maple syrup.   Lets look at it this way.  Remember about determining what are healthy foods?   Another way to eat healthier is to eliminate the unhealthy foods.   That is where maple syrup is beneficial.   It is a natural sweetener with natural levels.   You can stop eating pastries, donuts, sugar coated cereal, or snack cakes for breakfast.  Put pure maple syrup on your oatmeal or pancakes rather than man made processed food corn syrup sweeteners.  Add honey or maple syrup to a snack of sunflower seeds, almonds, and walnuts rather than eating candy bars.  Yes it is a long process to changing to a more healthy foods lifestyle.  Much like exercise it is one step at a time.  Applying what works best for you.  Eliminating the not good for you foods first, then finding healthy foods to replace those.

That is a process a lot of us have gone through.  Finding healthy food replacements for foods we have given up.  It is not easy and it is not a fast process.  You will have to spend time educating yourself on foods.   It is a lot easier to find new healthy food choices than it is to give up your past food habits.  Once you do, you will gradually  lose weight simply because you are eliminating fat producing foods.  Your health over a long period will benefit as you eliminate foods that contain a multitude of unhealthy ingredients.  Vegetable and fruits are the healthy food choices that most of us did not include in our daily diet.   Sure we would sometimes occasionally eat an apple or maybe a banana, but fruit was not a basic part of our daily diet.  I do not know of anything in an edible fruit that is intended as a food our metabolism is not designed to process or is not considered good our health.   What did I just say you may ask?  I said eat a lot of fruit.   It is healthy for you, is filling, satisfying and readily available to be part of your normal daily diet.

The other natural choices are vegetables.   I will quickly admit to you that is an area I need to work a lot harder in doing more for my health.  I do not eat a lot of vegetables, especially cooked vegetables on a regular basis.   Salads are my main source of the nutrients and mineral benefits I get from vegetables.