MAGICAL BEANS AND OTHER (THINGS THAT GROW IN THE) DIRT!
I admit it. I love when I open up a mainstream fitness magazine like Men’s Health and find that most of the articles on the “Nutrition Bulletin” page are about eating more non-animal foods, and of course I have to share…
1) The Magic of Beans…According to a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, eating 1 cup of beans each day for 3 months can reduce blood pressure, heart rate and overall cardiovascular disease risk. The high amounts of potassium and magnesium in beans/legumes may play a role in regulating blood pressure naturally. That’s great health news and beans are an awesome way of helping to stay full and get more protein, so make like Jack and start loving your beans!
2) Mushrooms may have more magical properties than we already know! We may actually be fighting cancer with every serving that we consume. When scientists at the University of Pennsylvania fed dogs with cancer a compound derived from certain kids of mushrooms, they found the dogs given the highest amount of the compound lived longer than those that got less or none. Mushrooms contain the compound polysaccharopeptide, (wow, that’s a long one) which may suppress tumor growth. While more research on humans is needed, we already know that mushrooms have all sorts of nutritional and health benefits, and they come in such a vast variety, I say we make like Alice and include magic mushrooms in our own Wonderlands.
3) This last one is so simple it blew me away. 20,000 cases of cancer could be prevented annually if half of all Americans ate just one extra serving of produce daily. This stat would lead me to believe if we ALL ate just one more serving of produce daily, we could double that number.
So, on this Vegan (Feast) Thursday, I remind you that substituting just one meat meal for some veggies and beans might make a big difference in your own health and will certainly make a big difference in the world. It’s that simple…or magical.