Food with a Function

Food…glorious food! We love to eat, and so we should. It’s one of life’s lovely little pleasures!

Healthy foods nourish, support, and enable your body to function properly. That’s why we call them functional foods. They are real, whole, and grown in healthy soil. Providing not just vitamins and minerals, but also antioxidants, pre- and probiotics, liver support, immune fuel, healthy fats, and a myriad of trace elements your body requires. Functional foods lay the foundation for restoration, balance, and energy production. Differences you can feel!

Your food talks to your cells. It tells your cells how to function, how to communicate cell to cell, what hormones to produce and use, what to build and restore, what to eliminate. Everything you have consumed today, and will consume, is informing and influencing the way your body operates. Your food runs your body’s chemistry! When we understand this basic fact of food as healer, we begin to look at food differently: food creates balance, brings harmony to this amazing body of ours. Food must be not only pleasure, but also nourishment.

It’s surprising what food can do, how far it can take you. How it can ignite your energy, improve your mood, create satiety and a deep knowing that you are healing and restoring your life, reclaiming the well-oiled, tuned-up machine that your body is meant to be.

Put it to the test! You will be surprised, even amazed as you experience this
new you!

The Power of Fresh, Organic Ginger!

Perhaps one of the best examples of a functional food is fresh organic ginger. It’s a powerful anti-inflammatory food, and perhaps you’ve heard experts explain that inflammation is at the root of most diseases. The wrong foods fuel the flames, but the good news is this: nature has many tools for extinguishing the fires of inflammation, and functional foods such as ginger are key among them.

In addition to its work as an anti-inflammatory, ginger tackles ‘digestion, congestion, and rejection’. It’s beneficial for digestion, which is central to unlocking all the goodness food provides. And for congestion, when your immune system needs a little help. Plus, it’s an important liver herb, helping with the liver’s vital role in detoxifying the many toxins that come from within as well as from air, water, and our environment.

I use fresh ginger freely and often. Mince it finely and add it to a stir fry; it marries well with curry or tamari, garlic or sesame. Slice ⅓ cup or more into your teapot, add a splash of fresh lemon, pour boiling water over, and enjoy fresh ginger-lemon tea. Mince or grate fresh ginger and add it to a soup along with curry and/or a can of coconut milk.

Can’t Beet It!

Beets are excellent for your liver, supporting this hard-working, essential, but often-forgotten organ with their natural liver-cleansing power. They stimulate bile flow and boost enzymatic activity. Beets help break down toxic wastes so they can be excreted efficiently, cleansing the blood.

I love Ready Beets cooked, peeled, shelf-stable organic beets from France! Just slice them up and add them to your salad or dinner plate. Or make a bowl of delicious pickled beets by adding garlic, onion, AC vinegar, mustard, and basil (you’ll find a great recipe in my book, Discover the Power of Food, available at Goodness Me!). Serve them as is, or over fresh spinach with crumbled feta. Yum! Peeling beets is time consuming, so when using fresh beets, I scrub them, slice thinly, and add them to a stir fry, skins and all. I also love Salus lacto-fermented organic beet juice. All the benefits of beets, plus the gut-enhancing benefits of fermented foods... and it tastes amazing!

Give a Big Hurrah for Organic Oatstraw!

This simple herb, also called green flowering oats, has the special ability to take up minerals from the rich organic soils in which it is grown. I love it for many reasons, especially because of its abundant trace minerals which are essential to fuel every enzyme activity in the body. It is also a nerve tonic, calming and nourishing for the nervous system, and helpful as an antidote to our stressful lifestyles. And, it tastes good – a gentle, neutral flavour that suits mostly everyone!

I make a pot of oatstraw tea whenever my grandkids come to visit, and it usually disappears quickly. Leftover oatstraw tea is perfect to add to your smoothie or soup pot instead of water. I add a big handful to the broth pot (NOT the soup pot as that would be straw-like in texture) to add nourishment and flavour, and to keep us all as happy and calm as we can be.

Nothing Fishy About It!

Raincoast’s wild-caught salmon is a perfect example of the extra benefits you get from doing things right, and of a functional food that serves many purposes. Line-caught in the right season in the purest waters off the northern BC coast, hand cut and packed raw into cans with no water added, it is cooked just once so all the anti-inflammatory goodness of the essential fatty acids remains. It’s an easy-to-digest protein that is heart healthy, stress-reducing, and immune-supportive. I choose the SKU with skin, bones and salt to get all the EFAs, calcium, minerals, and fat-soluble vitamins that are essential for mineral absorption. And, we mustn’t throw out the ‘water’ in the can, because it isn’t water at all – it’s broth, and full of nourishment.

One of my favourite ways to use Raincoast salmon is to make salmon patties. For these, I use pink salmon and include the broth too. Or, I break it into chunks and pour the whole can, ‘water’ and all, onto our salad to make it a main dish. Sometimes, I mash it up with minced celery and onion, a little mustard or mayo, and stuff it into celery stalks for a tasty, satisfying crunch.