If none of these seem like the perfect gift for the special people in your life, and you’re thinking of maybe even staying away from mass-produced items entirely, here’s another suggestion: Give the gift of homemade food.

Everybody eats. And while there are lots of delicious items you can buy in stores, there’s really nothing that compares to food made with love and care. And it’s even better when that food was created with you in mind.

Now, let’s put the oven mitt on the other hand and consider how cool it would be for you to make delicious homemade treats for the special people on your “nice” list. Whether for holidays, birthdays, or — my personal favorite reason for gift giving — “just because,”  there’s a unique joy in both giving and receiving something homemade, especially when it’s edible!

Unlike mass-produced food items, food gifts are not just about what’s inside the package but also about the love, effort, and care that you pour into the final product.

In this article, we’ll explore the art of giving homemade food gifts with seven delicious recipes that you can easily give any time of year. And in keeping with our mission here at Food Revolution Network, they all pass our triple test of “healthy, ethical, and sustainable” — in addition to being totally delicious and festive!

Why Homemade Food Makes a Great Gift

Gifting something homemade rather than store-bought is great for you, the recipient, and the planet.

1. Save Money on Gifts

For one thing, you can save money by making gifts in bulk for multiple recipients. For example, the toasted spice blend recipe below includes sunflower and sesame seeds, as well as small amounts of several spices. You might pay up to $15 for just one spice blend from the store — or you can spend $20 on ingredients and get up to a dozen homemade batches that you can gift to others.

2. Reduce Plastic Waste

The planet benefits when you avoid the plastic waste that often serves as packaging for store-bought food and gifts. (I hereby declare that you get bonus points for gifting the food in a reusable container like these stainless steel food storage containers or even wide mouth mason jars.

3. Practical and Useable

The recipient of a food gift gets something usable and delicious, and, if you’ve done your homework, something they actually want. And — since it’s made with your love — they’ll get something unique. You and your recipient will also know the item was made and given with love (and received with love), which can strengthen and enrich your connection.

4. Controlled Ingredients

Speaking of homework, I’d recommend finding out about your recipients’ taste preferences, dietary restrictions, and allergies, so you can tailor your homemade food gifts to each person. Not only does this ensure a personal touch that store-bought gifts often lack, but it can also avoid the unfortunate situation where your holiday nut brittle sends your favorite aunt to the emergency room in anaphylactic shock.

Even without allergies to think about, when you make food gifts yourself, you get to control the ingredients. You can choose high-quality, whole-food ingredients without any refined sugar or questionable additives.

5. It’s Fun!

Homemade food gifting can also be fun for kids and adults, both as givers and receivers. Let your creativity go wild and create something you’re proud of!

Tips for Choosing a Food to Gift

When choosing a food item to gift, do so with the recipient’s likes and dislikes in mind. The easiest way to gather this information is also the most straightforward: Ask them.

A high-probability strategy to avoid seriously bad outcomes — especially if kids are involved — is to make something that does not contain any of the nine major allergens (milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, wheat, soy, and sesame seeds). If you stick to 100% plant-based treats, you automatically avoid four of them, so you just have to be cognizant of the nuts and seeds, wheat, and soy.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the benefits of food gifting is the chance to cook in bulk, saving both time and money. If you’re unfamiliar with the practice of batch cooking, our meal prep guide has you covered.

Since you’re not FedEx, you may also want to consider making food gifts that are small or at least portable and easy to transport. If you’re going to gift wrap them, think about a form that’s easy to wrap, or at least to stick a bow on.

Some ideas of small and conveniently transported food gifts include the following:

• Baked goods
• Homemade canned goods, quick pickles, preserves, etc. (here’s where mason jars come in very handy)
• Dried herbs, spice mixes, and loose-leaf teas (also a good use of mason jars — look for fancy ones often sold as wedding favors for that extra dash of class)
• Spiced nuts and seeds or granola
• Fire cider or kombucha
• Sauces, soups, dressings, spreads (and DIY kits to make them)
• Fruits, vegetables, and herbs from your garden

Unless you know that your recipient will want to consume the gift right away, it’s typically more convenient for them if the food is shelf-stable and doesn’t require refrigeration.

Alternatively, you can always gift a coupon for an item that the recipient can redeem at your mutual convenience (and you can have fun and use all your artistic creativity creating the coupon).

Where to Get Food Gift Ideas From

To get ideas for food gifts, peruse your favorite cookbooks, or think about cherished family recipes. At the risk of immodesty, this feels like a good time to mention the very first Food Revolution Network hardcover recipe book, Real Superfoods: Everyday Ingredients to Elevate Your Health.

Some of the recipes in that book that might qualify as excellent gifts include Golden Glow Lemonade (an awesome and delicious healing tonic), Crispy Miso Onion Chickpeas, Super Seedy Granola (seedy in a good way, I assure you), Velvety Chocolate Berry Dessert Cups (yes, healthy, although your recipient may not believe it after taking a bite), and Sublime Sweet Potato Mini Drop Biscuits. To whet your appetite, I’ve included two giftalicious recipes from Real Superfoods below: Sweet and Savory Spiced Pecans and FRN’s Fuel the Fire Cider.

You can also find candidates for food gifts in many other wonderful health-focused, plant-based cookbooks that we love. Check out the cookbook roundup on our blog for additional inspiration.

Practice Food Safety

Since you probably aren’t going to be preparing these food gifts in a commercial kitchen that has to undergo regular safety inspections, it’s really important that you practice fundamental food safety protocols. You do not want to share a side of salmonella with that jam because you did a slapdash job of washing a cutting board.

For kicks, let’s take a minute to review the basics:

1. Keep things clean: wash your hands and food prep surfaces often.
2. Separate: don’t cross-contaminate. Don’t chop veggies, for example, on a cutting board where you prepared a block of tofu (or meat if you eat it).
3. Cook: heat all foods to proper temperatures to kill any pathogens, checking with a food thermometer to be on the safe side.
4. Chill: refrigerate promptly to prevent bacteria from colonizing foods left for too long at room temperature.

If you will be canning items, be sure to also follow recommended food preservation guidelines to prevent spoilage.

What to Store or Wrap Your Gift In

While the food inside is the main attraction, the food gift packaging can also add fun, sparkle, and class to the experience. You won’t care how great your friend’s homemade applesauce is if they just ladle a pint of it into your lap — which I realize is an extreme example. But this is what my mind sometimes does when I’m a bit hungry while writing about food.

As we’ve seen, another great thing about homemade food gifts is the opportunity for sustainable or zero-waste packaging. And you can decorate this packaging with love and the help of your cleverness and creativity.

Mason jars — and here are a pair of very fancy ones that just scream “vintage” — or upcycled glass containers work well because they’re see-through, so a beautiful spice mix or granola can serve as its own decoration. You can also paint on the glass, or adorn it with ribbons (which I realized just moments ago is an anagram of my last name) and other accents.

You can wrap baked goods in a classy tea towel, a pretty fabric scrap left over from a project, or a reusable food wrap. Then you can deliver them in a basket, tin, or decorated produce bag.

Cereals and mixes can go in reusable silicone bags, which themselves make lovely and thoughtful gifts for someone who likes cooking. If you enjoy secondhand shops and garage sales, you might be able to amass a collection of vintage cookware that would make excellent containers for your homemade food gifts.

Recipes to Give as Food Gifts

Giving can be just as fun as receiving, especially when you tap into your creative talents as an expression of thoughtfulness, care, and gratitude. Giving the gift of scrumptious food not only provides an exciting and rewarding experience for you, it makes sharing delicious plant-based foods even more fun. We hope you enjoy creating and giving these wholesome gifts from the heart with the help of these nourishing recipes!

1. FRN’s Fuel the Fire Cider

Give the gift of warmth this holiday season with Food Revolution’s Fire Cider. Warming and immune-supporting ginger, turmeric, onion, garlic, and horseradish root create an invigorating, nourishing, and healing tonic that is the perfect gift to give those who could use a little plant magic. What’s more, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. When the vinegar runs out, simply refill and steep again!

2. Toasted Spice Blend

Creating your own homemade spice blend as a gift is a thoughtful and tasty way to express your love and appreciation any time of year. This easy-to-make blend is bursting with flavor from the variety of healthy seeds and spices and can transform any meh meal into a fantastic one in a snap. Plus, it’s guaranteed to put a huge smile on the receiver’s face!

3. Pickled Beets

Vibrant jewel-colored beets set the tone for a merry and bright gift that is as delicious as it is festive! These sweet and tangy beauties are quick to make and don’t require complicated canning. Just stick them in the fridge overnight and enjoy! Pickled beets are an affordable, sustainable, and unique gift that the receiver can enjoy again and again on their own or as an ingredient in a variety of plant-based recipes.

4. Sweet and Savory Pecans

When giving the gift of Sweet and Savory Pecans, be prepared for many thank-yous and compliments. What may seem like a rather complex and elegant gift actually couldn’t be more simple to create. These easy-to-make pecans are perfectly sweet, a little savory, and plenty crunchy. To gift them, add them to a mason jar, reusable box, or storage container. In fact, you may spend more time considering how you’d like to present the gift than making the gift itself!

Editor’s Note: Obviously, this is not a recipe for those with nut allergies. If you or your recipient is allergic to nuts, you could make a variation of this with sunflower and pumpkin seeds or try our Super Seedy Granola instead.

5. Balsamic Fig Jam

This jam is sweet, savory, and just a little bit tangy. A delightful fusion of caramel figs, tart-yet-sweet balsamic, and minty thyme, Balsamic Fig Jam makes a great hostess gift to bring to your next gathering or to contribute to a celebratory vegan charcuterie board! We highly encourage you to whip up a few batches to gift to those on your list who love a sweet and sentimental gift made from whole fruit.

6. Crispy Rosemary Cracker Thins

Cracker-making in your own kitchen?! It’s not only a fun activity for you and your family to do together, but it can also make gift-giving even more exciting! These homemade crispy cracker thins are a simple way to express your thoughtfulness and care. Best of all there are no natural or artificial flavorings needed. Thanks to the addition of rosemary, you’re left with a festive and delightfully herby flavor that’s perfect for the gift-giving season!

7. Pecan Cranberry Snowball Cookies

Show your appreciation to friends, family, and neighbors this year with the gift of these tasty snowball cookies. You can gift them in a recyclable container or large mason jar. And don’t forget to include a handwritten note about how much you appreciate them (the recipient, that is, not the cookies). Once they try these snowballs, however, they’ll likely send some appreciation right back to you. (P.S. Double the batch so you have some to keep for yourself!)

Editor’s Note: For a nut-free version of this recipe, replace the almond meal with another cup of oat flour and use seeds in place of the pecans.

The Gift of Food Is the Gift of Health

Homemade gifts can be incredibly special both for the giver and receiver. And food, in particular, makes a great gift. You know it’ll get used, and it won’t take up space the way many consumer goods do.

There are many different ways to give food as a gift. But you can start by unleashing your creativity in the kitchen. And then keep that creativity going by using reusable or upcycled items for packaging and containers. Because with homemade food gifts, you’re also giving a piece of your heart, time, and effort, which is a beautiful way to express your love and care for the recipient.

Tell us in the comments:

• Have you ever received a homemade food gift? What was your favorite thing about the experience?
• What are some dishes you make that might make great gifts?
• Who are three people you can think of who would be grateful recipients of the gift of homemade food?

Featured Image: iStock.com/Daisy-Daisy

Read Next:

• Healthy Crunchy Snacks to Beat Those Potato Chip Cravings
• Food Revolution Network’s Holiday Gift Guide — 37 Healthy, Ethical, & Sustainable Wellness Gifts

The post From the Heart: Homemade Food Gifts That Speak Volumes appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

In the 1944 hit song “Swinging on a Star,” Bing Crosby croons, “If you don’t care a feather or a fig, you might grow up to be a pig.” While the lyric seems nonsensical at first, the concept originates from the Spanish phrase “non darsele un higo,” which means “not to care a fig.” It’s sometimes illustrated by an obscene hand gesture called The Fig of Spain, which isn’t far off from an obscene Italian gesture called “the Mano Fico” (or fig hand).

Although I could continue on into the historical, cultural, and etymological origins of one of the world’s great fruits (Adam and Eve wore fig leaves, after all), instead, I want to point out how fabulous figs are (risqué or not) and give you some inspiration for how to use them in recipes.

There are so many reasons to think figgy when you’re cooking. Incorporating figs into recipes not only adds sweetness but a depth of flavor as well. Figs can be used both fresh and dried. And they can be used to enhance both sweet and savory dishes.

So let’s dive into the world of figs, exploring their nutritional value, health benefits, availability, storage methods, and creative ways to incorporate them into your culinary repertoire. When we’re done, I’m sure you’ll “care a fig” about these amazing fruits!

Why Eat Figs?

Because they’re delicious and nutritious, that’s why!

Nutritionally speaking, figs are a rich source of bioactive compounds and phytochemicals, including antioxidants, phenolic compounds, polyunsaturated fatty acids, phytosterols, and vitamins. They also deliver essential minerals such as potassium, calcium, phosphorus, copper, manganese, and the much-needed magnesium (some researchers consider magnesium deficiency to be a global public health crisis). And figs, as proud members of the plant food family, deliver fiber as well.

As part of a balanced diet, figs can play a role in preventing and managing various diseases and conditions, including cancer, diabetes, constipation, cardiovascular disease, and disorders of the gastrointestinal tract.

And thanks to their natural sweetness, they can “healthify” recipes that might otherwise require refined sugar or other highly processed sweeteners.

When and Where to Buy Figs

Figs originated in the Middle East and Mediterranean regions and are primarily grown in warm climates. Top producers of figs globally include Turkey, Greece, Spain, Iran, and Syria. The US is no slouch, either, with the vast majority of commercially grown US figs coming from California, even though the trees were introduced there only within the last two centuries.

If you’re looking for fresh figs, you’ll find them in season during the summer and fall months in the northern hemisphere, and in the winter and spring months in the southern hemisphere.

Dried figs are available year-round and can be found in the produce section or snacking aisle of grocery stores, or the dried fruit section of Middle Eastern markets. You may also score figs at farmers markets, CSAs, and in produce boxes. Residents of California are particularly fortunate fig-wise since the state boasts a wide variety of figs, both fresh and dried.

How to Choose a Ripe Fig

Fresh figs can be anywhere from round to slightly oblong in shape, wider at the flower end, and tapering to a point where they were joined to the tree. Depending on the variety, the interior flesh of figs may be purple, yellow, or green. Fig skin darkens as they ripen.

Look for figs that are plump and soft to the touch, with slightly wrinkled skin. You’ll also want to sniff them; ripe figs have a sweet, earthy scent. If you get a whiff of sour (or the sickly sweet pong of red wine that’s been sitting in the heat too long), keep walking. Those figs are starting to ferment, and will not be fun to eat or cook with.

When selecting dried figs, look for ones that are plump and moist, with a slightly sticky texture. Avoid figs that are hard, dried out, or shriveled, unless you’re in the mood for some high-intensity chewing practice.

How to Store Figs

Fresh figs are best when stored in the refrigerator. They’ll typically last 5–7 days there, but if you buy ones that aren’t completely ripe, they can last up to two weeks. Fortunately, the recipes below will make it easy to move those figs from the fridge to the table in plenty of time.

Dried figs will last for six months to a full year if stored in a cotton produce bag in your pantry. If you’re concerned about insect infestations, you can add wild fennel, bay leaves, and/or anise seeds to the bag to disguise the smell of the figs and deter bugs. You can also keep dried figs in an airtight container on a shelf in your fridge, where they’ll be good for up to a year, or even freeze them, which can extend their edible life span to a year and a half.

How to Use Figs in Recipes

Different varieties of figs have different flavor profiles, which chefs broadly classify in one of three ways: sugar, honey/agave, and berry.

Sugar figs typically feature an inner flesh that varies in color from amber to brown, and their outer skin can exhibit a spectrum of dark hues.

Honey and agave figs, on the other hand, display a golden to yellow inner pulp that can sometimes take on a caramel tone. Their outer casing usually presents in shades of yellow.

And you can identify berry figs by their red to purple inner flesh. Their skin can be either light or dark in color.

For a discussion of the different flavors and uses of figs that should have earned someone a PhD for comprehensiveness and complexity, check out this primer, courtesy of Mountain Figs.

If you’re looking for foods to pair with figs, some common choices include nuts, seeds, cheese analogues, citrus fruits, herbs like thyme or rosemary, and spices like cinnamon or cardamom.

Figs work well in a variety of desserts. Yes, figgy pudding may spring to mind, as well as baked fig bars (think “Newtons,” but homemade and minus corn syrup and sodium benzoate), but you can also deploy figs to great effect in tarts, cakes, and “nice cream” (plant-based frozen dairy analogues).

Figs can also raise the game of non-dessert baked goods such as muffins, pancakes, and breads. And you can make delicious fig spreads, jams, and jellies, and blend figs into sauces and salad dressings.

In terms of savory recipes, figs go well in salads, sliced as hors d’oeuvre toppings, and in savory Mediterranean stews.

Fig Recipes to Try at Home

Step into a world of natural sweetness and wholesome nourishment with the enchanting allure of figs. These delectable fruits, with their unique and captivating flavor, offer a delightful array of health benefits and culinary possibilities that promise to leave your taste buds dancing with joy. If you have been a fig lover for a long time, or you’re just now discovering their culinary potential, there’s something for everyone with these sweet and savory fig recipes!

1. Fig and Hazelnut Smoothie Bowl

If you find yourself in the same smoothie routine, break the mold and give this Fig and Hazelnut Smoothie Bowl a try! Fresh figs have a sweet honey-like taste with a light floral note, giving this nutritious bowl a unique flavor profile. Combined with sweet and nutty hazelnuts and creamy bananas, this creamy smoothie bowl is not only satisfying but also packed with essential nutrients (especially calcium) to kick-start your day on a healthy note.

2. Crumbly Oat and Fig Bars

Crumbly Oat and Fig Bars are a delicious and nutritious treat that combines the wholesome goodness of oats with the natural sweetness of figs. These bars are easy to make and packed with fiber, too — making them a nutritious snack or dessert that delivers that classic Fig Newton flavor with a soft and chewy cookie-like texture. After just one bite, you may find yourself taking a trip down memory lane!

3. Balsamic Fig Jam

Balsamic Fig Jam is a versatile condiment that combines the sweetness of ripe figs, the tanginess of balsamic vinegar, and the savory, umami flavor of caramelized shallots. This flavorful jam is the perfect way to enjoy the flavor of figs (plus benefit from their fiber and other nutrients). Try it as part of a delicious, sweet and savory breakfast toast or on top of your favorite roasted dishes.

4. Almond Ricotta Pear Toast with Balsamic Fig Jam

Almond Ricotta Pear Toast with Balsamic Fig Jam is a delightful union of the tangy, sweet, and fruity (from the fig jam) with the creamy and savory (from the almond ricotta). Topped with buttery pear slices, you have a toast that skillfully represents the sweet and savory pairing of fruit and “cheese.”

5. Nutty Harissa Cauliflower and Figs

Our Nutty Harissa Cauliflower and Figs is a delightful combination of bold flavors and craveable textures. Despite so many wholesome ingredients, figs manage to steal the show in this recipe. Thanks to their natural sweetness and toffee-like flavor, they are a scrumptious pairing with warm roasted cauliflower and savory pistachios. With just a touch of spice, this spectacular side dish is a one-of-a-kind recipe that will ignite your inner fig enthusiast!

6. Roasted Fig and Walnut Arugula Salad with Wheat Berries and Vegan Feta

Spicy arugula paired with earthy radish, sweet figs, crunchy walnuts, and a tangy dressing makes for a perfectly balanced salad, both in flavor and nutrition. If you’re a fan of figs, get ready to experience them in a delightful way that just might become your new favorite. If you’re not usually a fan of figs, then this is an opportunity to try this sweet and jammy fruit as part of a flavorful, texture-rich, and nourishing meal.

7. Sweet and Savory Moroccan Vegetable Stew

In this Sweet and Savory Moroccan Vegetable Stew, you can explore the flavors of Moroccan cuisine through the rich fruitiness of figs! Figs are commonly found in many sweet and savory Moroccan dishes, which makes them a natural fit for the blend of warm, robust, and soothing spices like turmeric, cinnamon, cardamom, and cumin.

As the stew simmers, the figs soften and infuse their sweetness into the dish, creating a thick and luscious stew base. Together with protein-packed chickpeas and nourishing vitamin- and mineral-rich veggies — like sweet potato, carrots, zucchini, and green beans — this dish is packed with delightful flavors and textures that are sure to tantalize your taste buds.

Get Figgy With It!

Figs are nutritious and versatile fruits that can level up a wide array of recipes. Whether enjoyed fresh or dried, their nutrition and potential health benefits make them a valuable food, especially as a natural sweetener. Now that you understand how to choose, store, and use figs, you can fully take advantage of the rich properties that figs bring to the table.

Tell us in the comments:

• Are you a fan of figs? Where did you first encounter them?

• Have you cooked with figs? What have you made?

• Which fig recipe will you try next?

Featured Image: iStock.com/Elena Sapegina

Read Next:

• Summer Fruits You’ll Love for Their Incredible Health Benefits and Tempting Tastes (Including 3 That Are Surprisingly Healthy!)
• Discover the Top Tips for Selecting and Using Papayas in Recipes

The post How to Use Figs in Your Culinary Creations appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Since then, more and more fruits have become available as juices. But it wasn’t until the 1960s that home juicing became a “thing” — as companies started manufacturing juicers small enough to fit on a kitchen counter. Soon citrus wasn’t the only kind of fruit that could be juiced; even vegetables could now be consumed in liquid form.

These days, juicing predictably pops up as a health craze every few years (the most recent phenomenon was the celery juice fervor promoted by “Medical Medium,” Anthony William). And with the juice extractor market size estimated at $2–3 billion, there’s a lot of marketing of those homemade juices as a quick, easy, delicious, and convenient way to harness the nutritional benefits of fruits and vegetables.

While I’m as gung-ho as anyone about getting more fruits and veggies into our diets, there is one issue with juicing that few people are talking about: food waste.

Juicing, by definition, extracts juice from fruits and vegetables, which means there’s always some stuff left over, typically referred to as pulp. If you’ve ever juiced, you’re familiar with this residue. It can feel weird to just throw it away — after all, it was a super nutritious carrot or celery stalk or apple wedge just seconds earlier.

The good news is, you don’t have to discard the pulp. There are several ways to reuse it and give it a second life — keeping it out of the waste stream.

In this article, we’ll explore the art of repurposing juicer pulp. And some of those methods even involve recipes!

What Is the Pulp from Your Juicer?

If juicing is about removing juice from produce, what’s left when the juice is gone? While different types and brands of juicers do slightly different things — aficionados can talk for hours about the relative merits and downsides of cold press (aka masticating), auger, centrifugal, and other types — they all break down plant cell walls and separate the juice from, well, the stuff that’s left over.

The fancy name for that leftover stuff is “pomace,” which the Messrs Merriam and Webster define as “the dry or pulpy residue of material (such as fruit, seeds, or fish) from which a liquid (such as juice or oil) has been pressed or extracted.” Essentially, it’s the remaining solids — that is, fiber — plus whatever juice hasn’t been fully extracted.

The reason juicing works is that lots of fruits and veggies consist mostly of water. But the leftover fiber is also very good for you. And while most people have heard about drinking enough water (although roughly half of all US adults aren’t heeding the message), the necessity of sufficient dietary fiber hasn’t yet made it to prime time (unless you’re a reader of this or similar websites!).

I’d even go so far as to say that fiber is the nutrient most severely lacking in the modern industrial diet — upwards of 94% of all Americans are deficient — with catastrophic results for individual and public health. Fiber delivers many profound health benefits, including feeding the beneficial gut bacteria, supporting blood sugar control, and helping to prevent cancer.

Find out more about fiber — including the different kinds and the best sources.

So Then, Is Juicing Bad for You?

If fiber is so important, and most of us are sorely deficient, doesn’t that mean that juicing — which removes the fiber from perfectly innocent fruits and vegetables — is a bad idea?

Well, not necessarily; it depends on what you’re juicing, what the rest of your diet looks like, and what you’re replacing with the juice.

Since the fiber, which slows down the absorption of sugar, is gone, juicing high-sugar fruits (and some vegetables, like carrots) can lead to unhealthy spikes in blood sugar in some individuals. That’s not to say that sweet produce has no place anywhere near a juicer’s food chute — a bit of apple and citrus can flavor an otherwise bland veggie juice. But a glass of straight grape or apple juice could challenge your blood sugar level in ways that turn out to be problematic.

At the same time, juicing can give you a concentrated and rapidly absorbed source of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that are easy and enjoyable to consume. For folks who “hate fruits and veggies” and wouldn’t eat a whole apple unless it was the only food left on Earth, juicing may be the most agreeable and beneficial way to get those wonderful plant nutrients into their bodies. A single cup of veggie or fruit juice can go a long way toward fulfilling the 5-a-day recommendation for fruits and vegetables.

So as we look at the various ways to give juice pulp a second chance to be useful, especially if you’re someone who’s falling short on fiber intake, you may also want to prioritize ways that involve eating it (you’ll find those in the recipe section, below).

Juicer Pulp Ideas and Uses

Let’s look at four ways to reuse juicer pulp, with the value that you can extract from the pulp increasing along the way.

1. Compost

The simplest way to reuse juicer pulp is to compost it. Honoring the composting principle that “anything that once lived can live again,” you can keep juicer pulp out of the waste stream.

If you have an outdoor compost pile, you can add the pulp to the “green” (high-nitrogen) layer and then cover it with “brown” (high-carbon) plant matter to keep down the smell and deter scavenging critters.

Check out our beginner’s guide to home composting here.

If you don’t have an outdoor composting setup, a countertop composting bin might be just the ticket. In just four hours, these compact composters process food scraps to create fertile soil for your garden — all while cutting down on your landfill impact and making your kitchen garbage bin smell a whole lot less funky.

If you live in a city with a food scrap or curbside composting program, you can include juicer pulp with the rest of your food scraps.

2. Create DIY Beauty Products

Have you ever seen those stock photos of luxurious spa treatments that feature cucumber slices over the eyes? Well, you don’t need to sacrifice perfectly good cucumbers to beautify your peepers, hair, or skin. Just use juicer pulp instead!

Fruits and vegetables are loaded with antioxidants, many of which can help fight free radicals (i.e., the nasty buggers that accelerate aging) externally as well as inside your body. Depending on what fruits and vegetables you use, using them as beauty products may help you to achieve different results.

Thanks to its texture (rougher than whole or cut produce), juice pulp can also make an exquisitely excellent exfoliant. Pulp can create face masks, lip and body scrubs, and hair masks.

For example, here’s a face mask that uses cucumber and strawberry pulp mixed with lemon and bentonite clay.

3. Create Pet Treats

You can also mix juicer pulp with your cat or dog’s wet food, or create DIY pet treats — provided the pulp only has foods in it that are safe for them. (It’s not just chocolate that dogs should avoid; you should probably also keep them away from tomatoes, avocados, grapes, cherries, and a few other plant foods, as well).

Help keep your fur baby safe by getting a full list of which fruits and vegetables are safe for cats and dogs: Here’s one from the American Kennel Club, and another from a veterinary hospital.

To make pet treats, try mixing juicer pulp with ground flax and sunflower seeds, flavoring the mixture with some soy sauce, and dehydrating them into crispy crackers. (These sound kind of yummy, and I’m a human!)

Or you can also make these green dog “bones” featuring juicer pulp, peanut butter, and rolled oats.

4. Use Juicer Pulp in Recipes

Finally, you can make recipes for humans with leftover juicer pulp. It’s still totally edible, after all. You can dehydrate juice pulp and use the “flour” in crackers or fruit leathers. Add savory (i.e., not sweet) juicer pulp to soups, stews, and chilis. And use sweet pulp from fruit juices to add bulk, flavor, and nutrition to baked goods like muffins.

One word of advice from a friend: Do not assume that you can use juicer pulp as an exact substitute for the same vegetables, grated. The carrot cake he made for his son’s 5th birthday ended up with the name “compost cake” — nearly ruining an otherwise fun party.

Juicer Pulp Recipes

It’s time to get crafty in the kitchen with these delicious and creative juicer pulp recipes. Juicing can be a great way to get potent nutrients quickly, but there’s no need to toss out your pulp after enjoying your favorite fruit and veggie juice blend. Juicer pulp has lots of fiber and plenty of nutrients left behind, so take full advantage of all that nature has to offer. Good things come to those who think outside of the box (or should we say juicer?), so prepare to have some wholesome fun with these nourishing recipes!

1. Juice Pulp Carrot Cake Muffins

Turn your fresh veggie pulp into deliciously moist, naturally sweet, and nutrient-dense Juice Pulp Carrot Cake Muffins! Sweet and warming spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves blend harmoniously with any custom veggie pulp mix. Along with bananas, shredded carrots, and nutty walnuts, this recipe is a delicious veggie-packed treat to enjoy any time of day!

2. Veggie Scrap Bouillon

Veggie Scrap Bouillon is a tasty way to repurpose your juicer pulp scraps into a savory base for your favorite soups and stews! This easy-to-make recipe requires just a handful of ingredients and a food processor to transform juicer pulp scraps into a whole-food veggie paste that’s ideal for adding concentrated and robust veggie flavor (plus plenty of fiber!) to any dish where you’d use vegetable broth.

3. Dehydrated Juice Pulp Crackers

Curious about what to do with all that leftover veggie pulp after making a big, delicious batch of fresh vegetable juice? Our suggestion: Make crunchy and tasty Dehydrated Juice Pulp Crackers! Complete with wholesome plant-based nutrition, lots of fiber, and a savory umami flavor, these crackers are the perfect solution to your food scrap conundrum. Plus, they make a fun (and nourishing) vehicle to scoop up a variety of scrumptious plant-based dips!

4. Watermelon Poke

Watermelon Poke is an absolutely delicious and exciting way to repurpose your fruit pulp into a sweet and savory plant-based creation. What makes this recipe special is the texture watermelon pulp creates as it melds with rice vinegar, kelp, and sesame seeds. It’s truly amazing to see (and taste!) the delicious creations you can enjoy when you reuse leftover juicer pulp.

5. Veggie Pulp Seedy Salad Topper

After sprinkling a hearty serving of Veggie Pulp Seedy Salad Topper on your favorite salad or grain bowl creations, you’ll fall in love with this innovative way to reuse juicer pulp. What’s great about this recipe is that, due to the dehydration of the veggie pulp and the savory seed and spice mix, this salad topper’s subtle veggie flavor mixed with fragrant aromatics makes it simply irresistible!

Don’t Throw Away Your Pulp

Juicer pulp doesn’t have to go to waste; you can reuse it in a number of creative ways. Not only can you save money and keep organic matter out of garbage dumps, you can also feel good knowing you’ve extracted every ounce of goodness from your fruits and vegetables, embracing their full potential as health and nutrition superstars.

This nutrient-rich residue can have a second life — as compost, in DIY beauty products or pet treats, and in many different types of recipes. The possibilities are endless and limited only by your imagination.

Tell us in the comments:

• Do you juice? If so, what have you been doing with your pulp until now?

• Do you compost? If so, what method(s) do you use?

• What recipes from this article will you try?

Featured Image: iStock.com/simpson33

Read Next:

• Blenders vs Juicers: Pros & Cons of Blending and Juicing
• How to Make Healthy Smoothie Recipes That Are Nutritious & Delicious!

The post What to Do with Juicer Pulp: Recipes and Creative Uses appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Many toast recipes are quick, easy, and straightforward — another bonus! They can be enjoyed any time of day — breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a snack. And while not all toast recipes may score high on the “good for you” chart (looking at you, French toast), many toast recipes can be healthy and nutritious if they include minimally processed bread and are topped with whole food ingredients — like our version of French toast!

Bread generally has a mild flavor, so it pairs well with many different foods and flavors. For example, if you’re craving a savory breakfast, smashed avocado with veggies, mashed chickpea salad (or even a combo!), or homemade nut cheese with cucumbers all pair perfectly with toasty bread. Or, satisfy your sweet tooth with a healthy afternoon snack by spreading your favorite nut butter on toast then topping it with sliced bananas and berries, or spreading a homemade raspberry and chia seed jam on top (are you salivating yet?).

Before we tend to your tastebuds with our recipes, though, we’ll give you pointers on what to look for when choosing bread, share our favorite types of bread for making tantalizing toast, and offer up some alternatives to toast if you prefer to go breadless. Then, we’ll share seven delicious and nutritionally-balanced toast recipes you can enjoy as a healthy snack or full meal any time of day.

What to Look for in a Healthy Bread

Choosing healthy bread at the grocery store can be overwhelming when so many options are available. White bread, whole wheat, multigrain, sourdough, rye, sprouted grain, flatbread, cornbread, baguettes, ciabatta — you get the point. While you’re bound to find bread you love, not all bread is created equal when it comes to nutrition. For example, refined grains, like the type of grain that makes up white bread, are highly processed and stripped of nutritional value (e.g., fiber, vitamins, and minerals). Refined grain bread may also contain unnatural additives, added sugar, and other unhealthy ingredients. Regularly consuming these ultra-processed, harmful ingredients can elevate your risk of chronic health conditions, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure.

One trick in avoiding ultra-processed bread is to look for a low carbohydrate-to-fiber ratio to ensure adequate fiber, lower the glycemic index (GI), and increase satiety, all of which help to manage blood sugar and keep you fuller longer. The experts at NutritionFacts.org recommend a maximum “5-to-1 fiber rule,” meaning the ratio of carbohydrates to fiber should be five to one or less. For example, one piece of Ezekiel bread contains 14 grams of carbohydrates and 4 grams of fiber for a 3.5:1 carb-to-fiber ratio. Hooray! In comparison, one slice of white bread (like Wonder Bread) contains 26 grams of carbs and 1 gram of fiber for a 26:1 ratio. In case you’re wonder-ing — that’s the bread to put back on the shelf.

Now that you know how to differentiate between minimally and ultra-processed bread, what should you choose during your next grocery haul? Your best bet is to select a nutrient-rich, plant-based bread high in fiber, vitamins, and minerals to support good health. These include sprouted whole grain, whole wheat, sourdough, rye, and gluten-free bread made with legumes, nuts, and seeds.

Bread to Make Your Toast-y Meal Healthy

Sprouted Bread

If you’re going for ultimate health, sprouted bread is your BFF. That’s because sprouted whole grains contain higher quantities of essential amino acids, the building blocks of protein. In addition, sprouted grains have more available nutrients than unsprouted grains, including folate, iron, vitamin C, zinc, magnesium, and protein. This is because sprouting reduces phytates, which are compounds that can bind to certain essential nutrients. Sprouted grains may also be easier to digest than regular grains.

Sprouted whole grains also have a lower GI, meaning they won’t spike your blood sugar like processed grains. Plus, their antioxidant, anticancer, and antidiabetic properties support good long-term health. Ideally, opt for a sprouted, whole grain bread that’s high in fiber and protein and low in or free from added sweeteners, preservatives, and other additives.

Fermented Bread

Fermented bread, such as sourdough, may pack more nutritional value than other types of bread, depending on the type of flour used. Sourdough is the oldest form of leavened bread, used as early as 2000 BC by the ancient Egyptians. Sourdough bread starter may support the growth of more than 50 species of lactic acid bacteria and 20 species of yeast that become a part of fermentation — a process that helps create beneficial changes in the nutrients, gluten, and other compounds found in sourdough. Similar to sprouting, fermenting bread can help make essential nutrients in the bread more bioavailable to you.

If you’re asking if sourdough bread is probiotic-rich because of the bacteria used in the fermentation process, unfortunately, the answer is no — the heat from baking destroys the bacteria. However, sourdough can still be a fantastic choice since it’s more digestible and the nutrients are more bioavailable. Like other bread, look for sourdough made with minimally processed whole-grain flour.

Gluten-free Bread

If you want to enjoy tasty toast recipes but have celiac disease or gluten sensitivity, look for gluten-free bread that contains flour from gluten-free grains such as quinoa, brown rice, buckwheat, and sorghum. Some gluten-free bread options might contain fewer nutrients — such as protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals — than sprouted or whole wheat bread. If you have a condition preventing you from eating gluten and are wary of store-bought gluten-free bread, consider making your gluten-free bread at home for a more nutritious and healthier option than you would find in the freezer case.

A Note About Burnt Toast

Next time you accidentally overdo it with the toaster or forget about your bread in the oven, avoid salvaging the burnt toast in fear of wasting food. While we don’t encourage food waste, burnt toast isn’t ideal for your health because it contains acrylamide, a potentially harmful compound that can form in starchy foods during high-heat cooking methods like roasting, baking, and frying. Concerningly, acrylamide has been linked to increased cancer risk and may be carcinogenic. Compost your burnt toast if you can!

Alternatives to Toast

If you avoid flour altogether, like our BLE (Bright Line Eating) friends — we have good news. You can enjoy plenty of gluten- and flour-free healthy toast alternatives that deliver lots of nutritional value and health benefits while providing a similar toast texture and flavor experience. Examples include:

• Whole grain rice cakes
• Grain-free wraps made with leafy green vegetables such as collard greens, iceberg lettuce, and cabbage
• Sweet potato “toast” (see our recipe below, or slice ¼” thick pieces of sweet potato and toast for 15 minutes or until soft)
• Cauliflower bread
• Portobello buns (for savory “toast”)

Healthy Plant-Based Toast Recipes

Get ready to do a happy dance because it’s love at first bite with these unique plant-centric toast recipes! Whether you have a sweet tooth or are more of a savory person, we’ve got a nourishing toast to delight your discerning palate. Enjoy them as a wholesome breakfast, vibrant lunch, or seemingly sinful snack. No matter which way you slice it, these recipes are truly toast-rific!

1. Almond Ricotta Pear Toast with Balsamic Fig Jam

Nothing can com-pear to the sweet and savory experience of this fanciful (or seemingly so) offering. Whether you want to enjoy something new and exciting for breakfast or are looking forward to a sweet and savory snack in between meals, our Almond Ricotta Pear Toast with Balsamic Fig Jam will tantalize your taste buds and ignite your passion for aesthetically pleasing plant-based toast!

2. Everything Bagel Avocado Toast

Similar in taste to a toasted everything bagel, but sans the bagel and with lots of colorful extra veggies on top! The toast is layered with tangy vegan cream cheese, luscious avocado, everything bagel seasoning, and LOTS of wholesome veggies. You’ll love how easy this avocado toast is to prepare for breakfast, lunch, or anytime snack!

3. Breakfast Chanterelle Avocado Toast

It’s time to uplevel your everyday avocado toast with some umami flavor, antioxidant power, and fiber-filled goodness — enter delicious (and exotic!) chanterelle mushrooms. Delicate in flavor and sometimes described as “mildly peppery,” chanterelles are a perfect complement to avocado toast for a morning pick-me-up and sustainable breakfast.

4. Avocado Sweet Potato Toast

A thick slice of toasted sweet potato makes an excellent superfood swap on days you’re in the mood to mix things up or go gluten- or flour-free. Piled high with avocado, radish, onion, arugula, broccoli sprouts, lemon, and oregano, this sweet and savory toast checks all the boxes for what a nourishing slice of toast should be! Tip: Make the sweet potatoes ahead of time so they can easily be warmed up and ready to eat all week long.

5. Sunflower Butter Banana Toast

A delicious alternative to the classic peanut butter and banana toast, creamy sunflower butter, yummy strawberry chia jam, and sweet banana are all you need to enjoy a seemingly decadent toast any time of day. Plus, if you spread the sunflower butter across the toast while it is still warm, it turns slightly gooey, which makes it even more delicious!

6. Mediterranean Breakfast Toast

We’ll just say it — this Mediterranean Breakfast Toast is the hummus toast to rival all hummus toasts! Creamy hummus, crunchy veggies, and tangy vegan feta adorn this savory breakfast delight. What makes this toast extra special is the homemade vegan feta. Enjoy it as a hearty breakfast or a light lunch; either way, it’s a wonderfully healthy addition to your day!

7. Smashed Edamame Avocado Toast

Creamy and dreamy Smashed Edamame Avocado Toast is one of the easiest ways to enjoy a refreshingly light yet satisfying, vegetable-centric breakfast. Bright and slightly sweet edamame is mashed together with creamy avocado and topped with vibrant vegetables, herbs, and spices to create a satisfying and highly craveable (and toasty) meal any day of the week!

Enjoy Toast-Based Recipes at Any Meal

Toast is a beloved, versatile, and widely used food that can be enjoyed as a quick snack or nourishing meal, whether for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Avoid prepackaged white bread, however, which provides little nutritional value, spikes blood sugar, and contributes to chronic disease risk, including obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Instead, when looking for bread, use the 5:1 carbohydrate-to-fiber rule to choose healthy, plant-based, nutritious options like sprouted whole grain, whole grain sourdough, and 100% whole wheat. Healthy toast alternatives also exist for flour- and/or gluten-free eating. Try these tasty toast recipes that you can enjoy morning, noon, or night.

Tell us in the comments:

• Which toast recipe will you try first?
• What’s your go-to type of healthy bread?
• When is your favorite time of day to eat toast?

Featured Image: iStock.com/Rouzes

Read Next:

• How to Make Your Own Gluten-Free Whole Grain Breads
• Is Flour Healthy? Sifting Through 24 of the Most Popular Types of Flour
• 9 Healthy Breakfast Ideas from Food Revolution Summit Speakers

The post 7 Tasty Toast Recipes to Enjoy Anytime, Anywhere appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

No one wants to bring back the killers of yore. No one wants to see outbreaks of cholera, tuberculosis, or bacterial meningitis. But an immune system that doesn’t get up close and personal with enough germs early on is ill-equipped to deal with problems when they inevitably happen. And a sanitized, germophobic world can lead to compromised microbial diversity.

It turns out that our efforts to kill and avoid germs have compromised our gut microbiomes, setting us up for a host of chronic conditions.

Gut Health Starts in Childhood

It appears there’s a window of time necessary to establish a healthy gut microbiome early in life. After this window closes, there are still things we can do, of course, but the project of cultivating a vibrant microbiome becomes much more difficult.

Sadly, the gut health of modern humans (children included) has been severely compromised. More than 40% of people worldwide suffer from functional gastrointestinal disorders, and that may include 23% of children.

Up to one-quarter of all children and adolescents suffer from chronic gastrointestinal disorders, such as Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and celiac disease, as well as issues that may seem unrelated to gut health but have their roots in a dysfunctional microbiome. These include migraines, headaches, and anxiety and depression disorders, as well as autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), asthma, and allergies. Children with developmental disorders have especially high rates of gut issues.

So given the connection between the microbiome and the immune system, it’s not surprising that as gut issues become more prevalent, so, too, do the incidences of food allergies and autoimmune diseases. Both may have associations with a misguided and/or overzealous immune system going haywire and attacking either benign triggers or the body tissue itself.

So what’s the cause of all this gut dysfunction? And considering how important gut health is, especially among kids, what can you do to encourage and nourish healthy guts in children?

What Affects Childhood Gut Health?

Let’s start this discussion by noting that there is no single cause or blanket explanation for disrupted gut health, even in children. There’s still a lot of mystery we haven’t yet unpacked in the microbial universe.

In a perfect world, though, children would develop biodiverse and healthy gut microbiomes through everyday exposure to benign sources of bacteria (also known as the “hygiene hypothesis”). Throughout human history, bacteria have had a number of ways of colonizing infants as they grew, including natural birth, breastfeeding, family member interactions, and playing in healthy soil.

Ideally, as children got older, they’d also be given a wide variety of unprocessed fermented foods, and ample opportunity to play in vibrant ecosystems (like gardens, creeks, and forests). Bonus points for a companion animal in the home.

But the reality today is far from this ideal. Children are spending more time indoors; there’s an overemphasis on cleanliness, with widespread use of sanitizers and antibiotics. And modern industrialized diets are much less diverse than traditional ones and include an abundance of processed rather than whole foods.

All is not lost, however. You can encourage healthier gut health for kids in many ways, which will set them up for better health throughout their lifetimes.

How to Raise Healthier Guts

1. Encourage Outdoor Play

Food Revolution Summit guest Dr. Robynne Chutkan offers the following simple and memorable advice to support the health and diversity of our microbiomes: “Live dirty, eat clean.” And part of living dirty means encouraging our kids to actually get dirty by playing outside — in actual dirt.

Even city dwellers can encounter microbial diversity by spending time in green spaces, such as playgrounds, public parks, and schoolyards. Daily contact with diverse vegetation and dirt might improve children’s health by activating the immune system and teaching it to respond appropriately to benign and even more pathogenic bugs.

We know that the guts of rural dwellers display greater microbial richness and diversity than denizens of modern industrialized cities (what researchers call “built environments”). One study found that adding sod, peat blocks, planters for growing annuals, and cut-out segments of forest floors to the environments of urban children increased the health and diversity of their gut microbiota.

The 2020 Play&Grow study also showed that these changes translate into observable and meaningful improvements in children’s lives. Preschool children who were exposed to nature over 10 weeks experienced increased diversity of their gut microbiomes and higher serotonin levels, and they ate more vegetables. They also showed more prosocial behavior and less frequent outbursts of anger.

So look for ways to get the kids in your life outdoors, especially in natural environments. And start early — kids who experience nature tend to love nature. Kids who don’t may be more likely to grow up afraid of it.

You can also try involving them in gardening projects. If you don’t have an outdoor space in which to garden, even bringing some pots of dirt and planting seeds or seedlings indoors can expose kids to a diversity of microbes that can wake up and help to train their immune systems.

2. Help Them Get Enough Sleep

Many parents have horror stories of being painfully sleep-deprived during the first year or two of their children’s lives. Some kids wake up at night as if they’re on a mission to let you know that another 45 minutes have passed since their last outburst. Some kids are great nappers during the day but have trouble falling asleep at night. It turns out that one of the factors determining sleep patterns during the first year of life is the gut microbiome.

Studies out of Switzerland have shown that babies with low microbial diversity sleep more during the day, and less at night. And the effects were bidirectional — the quality, quantity, and timing of sleep also impact the gut microbiome.

The association between sleep and gut microbiota holds in preschool-aged children as well. A group of 143 four-year-olds participated in a study that measured their sleep patterns and their gut microbial populations. Certain bacterial strains were associated with total nighttime sleep, sleep efficiency, and wakefulness after sleep onset (when you get up to pee at 2:00 am and don’t fall asleep until 4:30 am, your wakefulness after sleep onset is 2.5 hours). The researchers theorize that the “good” bacteria may actually regulate sleep via neurotransmitters and the immune system.

And children with obstructive sleep apnea showed decreased microbial diversity compared with children who didn’t have the condition, as well as more inflammation and potential for leaky gut.

So if you want your kids to sleep better — so you can sleep better, too — one takeaway is to nourish their gut microbiomes. A second takeaway is to enforce regular sleep patterns and bedtime rules, which may positively impact their gut health in a virtuous cycle.

3. Ditch Sugar, Flavorings, and Dyes

If you’ve ever pushed a shopping cart down the cereal or candy aisle, you know that the industrialized food supply loves to add sugar, artificial and “natural” flavorings, and synthetic dyes to foods targeted at kids. And while no parent wants to experience a toddler meltdown when you refuse to toss the Lucky Charms or Skittles into your cart, the effects of feeding kids these ingredients may cause a lot more grief in the long run, both in terms of health and behavior.

Remember that anything that harms the gut also harms the brain, and that’s especially true for children. While you might be able to get away with an occasional junk food item, children are more susceptible to the effects of chemical compounds for a few reasons.

First, kids are smaller, which means their relative exposure (per pound of body weight) is greater than that of adults. Second, their body’s ability to metabolize (which in the case of unhealthy ingredients, means “detoxify”) is immature. Third, their key organ systems are still changing and developing, making them highly vulnerable to disruptions.

Excess sugar feeds certain microbial populations, which can turn on genes that code for sugar metabolism and transport, increasing the risk of type 2 diabetes and obesity. “Real” sugar is bad enough. But high fructose corn syrup and other corn-derived food additives found in many processed foods come from GMO corn, which is sprayed with glyphosate, aka RoundUp. This chemical may disrupt and kill beneficial bacteria in the gut, leading to impaired immune function.

Artificial food colorings have also been shown to disrupt the gut microbiome in children. And there’s increasing evidence that kids who consume synthetic food dyes on a regular basis are more prone to ADHD and other neurobehavioral issues. The FDA’s estimates of how much is safe appear to be way too lenient, according to research conducted in 2021 and 2022 by the California EPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

4. Eat Prebiotic and Probiotic Foods

So if candy corn and Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts are off the menu, what foods do protect and improve children’s gut health? Two categories emerge as clear winners: prebiotic and probiotic foods.

Probiotic foods help with digestion and eliminative health (kids prefer to call this “pooping”) — and they’re good for both avoiding constipation and diarrhea. While children may not appreciate the intense flavors of popular probiotic foods like sauerkraut and kimchi, they may enjoy fermented pickles and plant-based yogurt (maybe not on the same spoon), or a teaspoon of Inner-Eco fermented coconut water.

However, you can eat all the probiotic foods in the world and take massive doses of probiotics in supplement form, but unless you provide these beneficial bacteria with the food they love, they won’t live long enough to do much good. That’s where prebiotics come in; they feed the probiotics.

And the main prebiotic is a nutrient sorely lacking in most people’s modern industrialized diets: fiber. Not enough fiber is associated with a number of gastrointestinal issues, including discomfort after eating, constipation, and obesity.

Prebiotic fiber may support gut health for kids by modifying the composition of the microbiome in the large intestines. Think of it this way: if you scatter nuts in your yard, you’ll attract squirrels. Put out a salt lick, and the deer will come. Set out a giant bowl of leafy greens, avocado, sweet potato, and quinoa in a peanut sauce, and you might find me.

If your kid eats a sufficient and diverse quantity of prebiotic fiber, the good bacteria will stick around and reproduce, creating a healthy and resilient gut microbiome.

Some of the best “good” gut bacteria include Bifidobacteria and Lactobacillus. By serving as nutrition for probiotics, they support gut health, metabolic health, and immune function. Some kid-friendly prebiotic-rich foods include leafy greens, legumes, jicama, Jerusalem artichokes, and bananas.

It’s good to know that in a world that poses so many dangers to microbial diversity, nutritional strategies — which can be largely in our control — are among the best ways to repopulate children’s guts with beneficial bacteria.

5. Use Antibiotics Mindfully

If the opposite of “pro” is “anti,” then the opposite of probiotic is antibiotic. Yes, those miracle drugs that have done more to reduce human mortality than perhaps any other medical advancement in history have a problematic side.

When used appropriately, antibiotics are a blessing and can cure a wide variety of infections. But the etymology of the word should give us pause — antibiotic literally means “against life.” And the broad-spectrum antibiotics that science has developed in the past 90 years don’t discriminate; they kill (or attempt to, anyway) all bacteria, not just the pathogenic (disease-causing) ones.

When a child takes antibiotics, their microbiome can become severely depleted, creating a vacuum that often gets filled by harmful bacteria (especially if their diet isn’t that great — see point #4 above). Infants who receive antibiotics display microbiomes that are immature compared to similarly-aged babies who have not been exposed to the drugs. And these immature microbiomes predispose their owners to a variety of health conditions, including asthma, allergies, and growth dysregulation (which can include both obesity and stunted growth).

As a parent, how do you protect your child’s gut from antibiotics? First, make sure the drugs are truly needed. Many health professionals prescribe antibiotics without performing due diligence, like not assessing whether the drug will effectively target the germ of concern or even confirming that the infection is bacterial in origin. (Antibiotics do nothing for viral infections.)

If your child is sick, ask your doctor if the illness is bacterial or viral. If it’s bacterial, ask about the risks and benefits of antibiotics vs other treatment options. Humans have dealt with infections for millennia before pharmaceutical antibiotics were discovered, so we often have ways of recovering naturally, or with the help of other effective treatments such as herbs.

If your child truly requires a course of antibiotics, then providing them with plenty of prebiotic- and probiotic-rich foods is important, both during the treatment and especially for a month or more afterward. This can help replenish and support their microbiome to pre-drug levels. And, if your child develops acute GI issues related to antibiotic use, consider asking their health care provider if a supplement such as Complement Gut Nurture could be age-appropriate and helpful to resolve them.

Kid-Friendly, Gut-Healthy Recipes

Feeding the healthy bacteria in your child’s gut is as easy as (plant-based) pie when they eat a plentiful variety of fiber-rich plant foods! While children might be picky eaters, these tasty recipes will help to expand their palates, as well as their microbiomes, through foods, flavors, and textures they love. These recipes are also designed for children to be your sous-chef in the kitchen! The more they help out with their own food preparation, the more likely they’ll be to try new foods. This is great for everyone — you, them, and everyone’s gut health — so get ready for some win-win-win family fun!

1. Fluffy Buckwheat Chia Pancakes

If there is anything that will put a smile on your child’s face at breakfast time, these Fluffy Buckwheat Chia Pancakes are pretty much guaranteed to do the trick! Their light texture, nutty flavor, and nutritious ingredients redefine pancakes as you know them. Each bite is filled with fiber-fueled nutrition and a natural sweetness that makes them irresistible! Plus, these fluffy pancakes are giving your child everything they need to fuel a happy, healthy, and diverse gut!

2. Mixed Berry and Banana Fruit Leather

Fruit snacks can be fun and nutritious, especially in the form of this deliciously fruity Mixed Berry and Banana Fruit Leather. And these particular fruit snacks are also great for your youngsters’ gut health. The combination of berries provides a super dose of fiber, vitamin C, and antioxidant-fighting power, while the banana provides prebiotic fiber to help keep kids’ guts healthy in our germy world. Making your own fruit leather at home is not only healthier, but it’s lots of fun! We hope you gather the family and give this sweet treat a try.

3. Oatmeal Banana Bites

Packed with prebiotic-rich fiber from the oats and banana, these muffin-like bites are a tasty snack that your kiddos will be running home with excitement to devour! Plus, they are easy-peasy to make and great for gut health, too! Make sure to save some for the adults in the family who will also love these bites as a tasty snack or breakfast on the run!

4. Green Superhero Dressing

Fiber-rich greens and avocado are a superhero pairing that delivers a range of nutrients and helps the good bugs thrive in your kid’s belly. Even the pickiest of eaters can’t help but fall in love with the idea of a green superfood that gives them superpowers. Play it up as a superhero dressing, full of all the vitamins and good stuff that superheroes are made of — we bet they’ll love it!

5. Pumpkin Chia Pudding

Looking for a healthy dessert your kids will actually be excited to eat? Look no further than Pumpkin Chia Pudding, which is just as tasty and creamy — but with many more health benefits — as the beloved seasonal dessert. Chia seeds help to build and maintain healthy gut flora, thanks to their rich fiber and antioxidant content. Bonus that making this pudding can be a fun family activity to enjoy together by having your little ones get in the kitchen to help out with this recipe. Kids become mesmerized when they watch the chia seeds expand in size!

Here’s to Raising Healthy Guts!

Gut health is an important predictor of health, especially in children. Early intervention to encourage good gut health is paramount for health into adulthood, especially in the prevention of autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, asthma, allergies, and chronic lifestyle diseases. By focusing on improving their lifestyle, environment, and dietary factors, you can set children up for healthy microbiomes, and in turn a healthier brain, lungs, nervous system, and growth.

And for all the big kids reading this, here’s another tip: most of what’s good for little guts is good for your gut, too.

Tell us in the comments:

• What did you find most surprising about protecting children’s gut health?
• If you take care of children, which strategy do you already embrace?
• What’s one gut health strategy you can employ, either for your children or for yourself?

Featured Image: iStock.com/ThitareeSarmkasat

Read Next:

• How to Eat More Vegetables (and Like It!)
• Plant-Based Families: How to Navigate Healthy Eating in a Household
• Why Your Gut Health Is More Important Than You Probably Think

The post 5 Simple Ways to Improve Kids’ Gut Health Using Diet & Lifestyle appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Focus groups offered a clue to the widespread disinterest. The key question was, “If raisins were people, what sort of people would they be?” The answer, “nerdy, wimpy, negative, unhip,” pointed to the need for a radical new advertising effort. And so the rhythm and blues playing California Raisins were born.

With dark sunglasses and moves worthy of The Temptations, the claymation raisins sang and danced to Buddy Miles singing lyrics adapted from the 1968 Marvin Gaye hit, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine.” Commercials featuring the California Raisins won fans immediately, catapulting the animated dried fruit performers into pop stardom. Capitalizing on their popularity, The Raisin Board produced an album, Meet the Raisins, that sold over 600,000 copies. The Raisins got a TV special of the same name, and even starred in a Saturday morning cartoon show in 1989.

But the real win was how the public’s perception of raisins shifted from stodgy to hip. In focus groups, consumers expressed newfound admiration for raisins. And sales quickly shot up, providing an estimated $6 return for every dollar spent on advertising.

These days, there’s no need to don shades, do the step-slide, or croon to get you excited about most dried fruits and veggies. Instead, let’s talk about the flavor, convenience, savings, and fun that comes with dehydrating food.

What is Food Dehydration?

A process of reducing the moisture in food, food dehydration concentrates flavors and allows for longer shelf life. It’s probably the oldest method of food preservation; with a history that might go something like this: One Tuesday, around 14,000 years ago, Ugg and Una absent-mindedly left a piece of fruit on a rock on a breezy, sunny day, and returned on Friday to find that it had dried out instead of growing mold. When they were still nibbling bites of the fruit the following Monday, they knew they had discovered something really useful.

Many cultures throughout history have used dehydration to preserve large amounts of food for later use. Especially in places where food is abundant in summer and hard to find in winter, having stores of dried goods could be the difference between survival and starvation.

Even in the modern world, where food ships globally, and you can find strawberries in Toronto in January and tomatoes in Buenos Aires in July, dehydrating food still has its place. It’s a convenient way to store food — especially large quantities — for a long period of time. It concentrates flavors, and can create chewy textures in plant-based foods that can mimic the mouthfeel of meat (hello, mushroom jerky!). And it makes food lighter and more economical to transport. While a dedicated dehydrator can make the process easier, it’s not a requirement.

This article will introduce you to different methods for dehydrating food, the types of food you can dehydrate, and share some delicious recipes that feature dehydrated foods.

Why Dehydrate Your Food?

There are several compelling reasons to consider dehydrating some of your food.

1. Save money

For one, you can save money. If you grow your own fruits or vegetables, you may experience the end-of-summer “I can’t look at another zucchini” blues. When you get tired of ratatouille and zucchini bread, and your friends and neighbors start running when they see you headed their way, green squash in hand, you may have the urge to let them rot on the vine, or just chuck them straight into the compost. And that’s the same stuff you’ll pay four dollars a pound for six months later.

When you dehydrate those zucchinis (or tomatoes, or okra, or corn, or berries, or apples, etc.), you’re essentially putting those free or low-cost calories, nutrients, and deliciousness into a bank account that you can withdraw from for the rest of the year.

You don’t even need your own garden to save money with dehydration. You can buy produce in bulk when it’s at the peak of ripeness and at its lowest cost (i.e., from farm stands, farmers markets, or grocery stores that stock local produce), and preserve it for the off-season. It’s the kitchen variety of that old stock market adage, “buy low, sell high.” Except, in this case, you’re not selling, but eating.

2. Cut down on food waste

Another good reason to dehydrate food is to cut down on food waste. Whether you’re using purchased food or food you’ve grown yourself, you can “upcycle” those calories rather than let them go bad and end up in the compost, or even worse, the trash. Whenever you have more produce than you know what to do with, you may want to consider dehydrating the excess. Doing so significantly prolongs the shelf life of fruits and veggies, so you can use them when you’re ready for them. (Pro tip: Plan ahead on this, and dehydrate produce while it’s still at its peak rather than waiting for it to be halfway rotten, at which point a lot of cleanup may be necessary.)

3. Save space

Dehydrating foods also saves space. Many fruits and vegetables are mostly water, and dehydrating them removes that water, which can reduce their size by half or more, depending on the water content of the original food. If you bring in your harvest of apples and don’t have a root cellar or large enough refrigerator, you can dehydrate them and store them in much less space than they would require fresh. Also, dehydrated apples are a lot less picky about where they need to be stored, so you don’t have to devote valuable counter or fridge space to them.

4. Provide non-perishable options

Finally, dehydrated foods are essentially non-perishable. They’re useful as part of your emergency preparedness, since they last so long and don’t require electricity or refrigeration to remain safe and edible. There’s a reason that the instructions that come with a year’s worth of ReadyWise emergency food supply consist of just three words, “Just add water.”

Even if you aren’t preparing for a year’s worth of dining in the absence of supermarkets, farms, or gardens, dehydrated foods are also great for camping, and taking on long hikes or trips where you don’t have access to cooking equipment. Some avid campers dehydrate entire meals, since they’re lightweight and won’t spoil, and then rehydrate and eat them when they have access to water and heat.

Common Dehydrating Methods

Since humans have been dehydrating food for thousands of years, we clearly don’t need expensive, cutting-edge machines and appliances to accomplish the task. A range of methods, from the very natural to the very technological, are available to us. If you’ve ever forgotten greens in the fridge until they wilted and dried up, you’ve already proven that you’re a natural at dehydration!

Sun Drying

Sun drying is just what it sounds like: exposing food to direct sunlight during the day. It requires several conditions, though: long days, high heat, and low humidity. Places like the southwestern US in summertime are the best options for sun drying. If a location is too humid, or doesn’t reach average temperatures of 85° F or higher, the produce will probably mold before it dries sufficiently.

Even under favorable arid and hot conditions, it’s wise to restrict sun drying to fruit, not vegetables. Food dried in the sun can take three to four days to dehydrate fully. Fruit, with its high sugar and acid content, can resist mold formation during that time, and therefore, remain safe to eat after dehydration. Since most vegetables are low in sugar and acid, don’t dehydrate them in the sun, as they will likely spoil.

What’s the relationship between dehydration and spoilage? It turns out that drying out food doesn’t actually kill the microbes that can spoil food and make it unsafe to eat. Instead, the lack of water inhibits the growth of those microorganisms — bacteria, mold, and yeast — so they remain dormant and unable to colonize the food.

Sun drying requires more than just the ideal climate and day length, however. You also need to create airflow around the food, by proper spacing and by placing the pieces on mats, racks, or screens that allow air to circulate from all directions. Metal racks increase the drying temperature, so the best screens are stainless steel, Teflon-coated fiberglass, and plastic. Don’t use hardware cloth (it’s coated in zinc or cadmium), copper, or aluminum to avoid heavy metal contamination.

Air Drying

Air drying can be done indoors or outdoors. The key requirements are airflow, low humidity, and no direct sunlight. Air drying usually takes place indoors, in a well-ventilated attic, room, or screened-in porch, or outdoors under an overhang that blocks the sun. Common air-dried foods include herbs, mushrooms, and hot peppers.

Herbs are perhaps the easiest items to air dry. If you lay them out on a rack, herbs can dry fully in two to three days. To save space, you can tie herbs together in bundles and hang them from hooks or rafters. This method can take two to three weeks, and has the added benefit of making the space smell wonderful during that time.

A variation on air drying is “curing,” which is done to onions and garlic after harvest, to help them store well. To do this, after harvesting, leave onions or garlic in a warm, dry, well-ventilated location, such as a shed or garage. Spread them out in a single layer on a clean, dry surface, or hang them from the rafters. After a couple of weeks, the tops and necks should be thoroughly dry, and the outer bulb peel should begin to rustle. Cut off the dry foliage above the bulbs, and trim off any roots before using.

Freeze Drying

In freeze drying, food is frozen and then placed inside a vacuum. The water frozen within the food then sublimates, which means that it turns directly from ice into vapor, skipping the liquid stage entirely. This process allows the food to retain much of its original texture, flavor, and nutrition when rehydrated.

Freeze drying is generally just done commercially, but you can experiment with it using your home freezer, as long as you can get the temperature below 0° F. (If you’re really keen and have a few thousand dollars to spend, and a fair amount of space, you can pick up a consumer model freeze dryer and go wild.)

Assuming you’re going to try freeze drying in the freezer compartment of your kitchen refrigerator, or a standalone chest freezer, here’s what you do: cut fruit or veggies in very thin slices and place them on a rack in your freezer. After a week or so (depending on how cold your freezer is and how thick the slices are), the slices will completely dry out. Remove them from the freezer and store them in airtight containers (glass, stainless steel, or ceramic) in your pantry or freezer.

Oven Drying

If your kitchen has a standard oven, you can use it to dehydrate some foods. The downsides include high energy costs, as ovens are inefficient at drying, and compromised quality (darker, more brittle, and less flavorful foods), since the minimum temperature of most ovens is above the ideal temperature for drying.

If you’re going to use your oven, set it to no higher than 140° F, or the “warm” setting if it has one. Leave the door ajar so moisture can escape. If you have a convection setting (which turns on a fan to move the air around), use it. If not, place a fan on the outside of the oven and point the air into the gap left by the open oven door. Expect that oven drying will take two to three times longer than using a dedicated electric dehydrator (see below). And limit the capacity of the oven to four to six pounds of produce at a time.

Electric Drying

Dedicated electric food dehydrators produce a higher quality and more consistent dried product than any other method that’s available to most of us (freeze drying may be the very best, but the cost puts it out of reach for most home chefs and gardeners). Since they are self-contained units that include an adjustable heat source, ventilation system, and trays that allow airflow, you can dry your food at the right temperature for optimal results.

There are two basic types of electric dehydrator. Vertical dehydrators have their heat source and fan either at the top or the bottom, and blow that air vertically. With this type, you stack the trays on top of each other, and you can add more trays as needed.

Horizontal dehydrators send warm air from the back to the front. These units are generally better insulated than the vertical ones, which increases energy efficiency, improves the uniformity of heat distribution, and dries food faster. The horizontal airflow also reduces mixing of flavors when you dry different foods on different racks. Horizontal dehydrators are more expensive than vertical ones.

Both can handle pretty much any simple type of food you’d like to dehydrate, such as fruits, vegetables, and even soaked nuts. Horizontal units, however, tend to be preferred for things like making your own crackers or kale chips, because they are square instead of round, and you can leave more space between trays, just like oven racks.

When it comes to counter space, vertical models will take up about as much room as an Instant Pot, while the horizontal ones can be as big as a large microwave oven, depending on how many trays they have.

What Foods Can You Dehydrate?

Technically, you can dehydrate any food that contains water. Heck, you can probably toss soggy tennis shoes in your dehydrator, and they’ll come out drier, too. But let’s stick to things you should dehydrate, like foods you’ll actually eat, are healthy for you, and are good for the planet.

Fruit

Fruits are perfect dehydrator material. You can slice some fruits thinly or cut them into small pieces, like apples, bananas, strawberries, pineapples, pears, peaches, and kiwis, for example. Berries can be left whole — raspberries and blueberries end up with a wonderfully concentrated flavor when dried. You can also blend some fruits with a little water and dry the puree on sheets, making fruit leathers. (This is one kind of leather that even ethical vegans can get behind.)

Dried fruit goes great over granola and oatmeal, in salads, and as a standalone snack.

Vegetables

Most vegetables should be cut into small pieces or thinly sliced (roughly ⅛” thick) — a mandoline or food processor with a thin blade will work; just make sure to protect your fingers. Some veggies like corn and peas don’t need to be cut at all if they are loose and not on the cob or in the pod.

You can dehydrate leafy greens like spinach and kale just as they are. Simply wash them, remove any thick stems, and then cut or tear them into pieces that will fit on your dehydrating sheets or in your dehydrator. Because they’re so high in water, greens will reduce in volume significantly. (If you’ve ever sauteed a giant heaping mound of spinach into a tiny lump the size of a kitchen sponge, you know how much water can be removed from greens.) You can store them as whole leaves, or turn them into a nutrient-dense and flavor-packed powder using a blender or food processor.

You can also make kale or collard chips by chopping the leaves to a consistent size, and then coating them in a seasoning mix before dehydration.

Add dehydrated veggies to soups, stews, and portable dehydrated meals. Some veggies also dehydrate in ways that resemble meat, so you can make mushroom jerky, carrot bacon, and so on by marinating the sliced vegetables prior to dehydrating.

Nuts, Seeds, & Grains

Nuts and seeds are easy to dehydrate. But they’re also easy not to dehydrate, and they last a long time anyway, so why would you even want to go to the trouble? The answer is, soaking nuts and seeds before dehydrating them makes them easier to digest and can provide more nutrients. But once they’re soaked, they can go bad quickly. You can have the best of both worlds by first soaking your nuts and seeds until they begin to sprout, then dehydrating them to make them last.

You can use the same principle to store sprouted grains, which you can also use in breakfast cereal and dehydrated meals.

Legumes

You might not think about dehydrating legumes, but if you have bags of dried beans or split peas or lentils, those are legumes that were probably sun dried on the vine. Canned beans work best for dehydrating, though you can also dehydrate beans that you’ve cooked in a home pressure cooker.

You can cook lentils on the stovetop until tender, or use canned lentils. You’ll want to rehydrate your legumes by cooking them a second time before eating them. Not only will the double cooking make the legumes more digestible, but you can use the dried beans or lentils in dehydrated meals, as they’ll cook much faster than regular dried legumes.

Herbs

Herbs are great for dehydrating in an electric unit. And making your own dried herbs gives you a huge culinary leg up compared to store-bought dried herbs, which will rarely be as fresh or flavorful as those you dry yourself. Whether you grow your own, or pick up fresh herbs at a supermarket or farmers market, you can enjoy dried herbs in teas, for cooking and baking, and even in crafts like sachets and eye pillows.

Downsides to Dehydrating Food

Dehydrating food can save money, energy, and time. It can concentrate flavors and prevent spoilage and waste. And it’s free and easy to do, if you’re willing and able to use sun or air-drying techniques. At this point, you might be thinking, let’s dehydrate everything! Why not?

Sugar Concentration in Dried Fruit

Well, there are a couple of downsides to dehydrating foods as well. The first is specific to fruits: the sugar concentration and glycemic index go up with a lack of moisture. This means that the sugar found in fruit can absorb more rapidly in your body and cause a spike in blood sugar, especially if you eat that dried fruit by itself.

It’s nothing personal, just math. If fruit is mostly water, and that water is removed, there’s now a lot more sugar per unit of weight.

And speaking of weight, since there are four calories per gram of sugar, you are now dealing with a much more calorically dense food. Which means it’s easy to overdo it if you’re concerned about overall caloric consumption, or are sensitive to large quantities of fruit sugar. It’s way easier to snack through a one-pound bag of banana chips than it is to eat 21 medium bananas, but you’ll get the same number of calories (about 2,300) either way.

If you’re getting your dried fruit from the store, check the label to see if there’s added sugar on top of the naturally occurring variety. You generally won’t see sugar added to raisins or apple rings; more commonly, manufacturers enhance sour or tart fruit, such as cranberries and cherries, with sugar.

Destruction of Nutrients

A second concern is there may be destruction of certain nutrients in the dehydration process. Vitamin A is destroyed by exposure to light, and vitamin C is destroyed by heat. Treating fruit with sulfite before dehydrating can mitigate these losses, but has the side effect of destroying thiamin and can also trigger allergies for some people. Blanching, or briefly boiling vegetables prior to dehydration, can also result in some loss of vitamin C and B-complex vitamins and minerals, as all these nutrients are water-soluble.

It’s not all bad news, though. It turns out that dehydrating is comparatively one of the gentlest methods of preserving food, as it protects more nutrients than alternate methods such as canning or pickling.

Can Take a While

And third, dehydrating food takes much longer than eating it raw, or cooking it. Although prepping food for dehydration doesn’t take much more time than prepping it for cooking, the drying process is lengthy, depending on the drying method used and the size and amount of moisture in food pieces. Most drying methods take at least four hours, and often much more. Sun drying requires the most time. And using an electric dehydrator is quickest.

Energy Usage

And finally, certain methods of dehydration, such as freeze drying, electric drying, and oven drying, use energy, which incurs additional costs and causes environmental impact.

How to Prepare Food for Dehydration

Select fresh, high-quality produce — awesome fruits and veggies at their height of ripeness — for dehydrating. Trim away any undesirable seeds, core, or damaged portions.

In general, cut produce into halves, strips, or slices ranging in thickness from ⅛-inch to ¼-inch thick. Regardless of cut, the principle is that they can dry readily. Consistency of size is important, too, so the pieces all dry in the same amount of time.

For vegetables, blanch by immersing in boiling water. You do this both to preserve the vegetables’ vibrant color and flavor and to neutralize any enzymes that might otherwise lead to spoilage.

You can also pretreat most fruits by dipping them in an antioxidant solution to slow down browning. Make the solution by mixing in ½ teaspoon of Vitamin C (ascorbic acid), lemon juice, or other acidic liquid per quart of cold water. Dip the fruit for one minute, then drain and put directly on the rack to begin drying. Here’s a comprehensive guide to prep and blanching times for both fruits and vegetables.

Dehydrating Tools to Have On Hand

You can get started dehydrating food with common kitchen tools. You’ll want a sharp knife and cutting board, or if you’re adventurous and willing to wear cut-resistant kitchen gloves, a sharp mandoline.

If you are drying vegetables, you’ll also need a large pot with a steamer basket to blanch them before dehydrating. Blanching involves dunking the veggies in boiling water for a short time and then cooling them rapidly, so the steamer basket will help you get the veggies out of the boiling water in a hurry without having to pour the water out. If you want to make fruit leather (or fruit roll-ups, if you prefer the more vegan-sounding name), you will want a blender or food processor.

And if you’d like your garden greens and veggies to come out of the dehydrator bug- and dirt-free, then a rinse should be followed by a trip through a salad spinner, which can be your best friend, or at least an amiable companion. For best results, play carousel music while you spin the veggies, or at least go “wheee” a couple of times while they revolve.

If you’re serious about dehydrating, you’re probably going to get an electric dehydrator at some point — either a vertical or horizontal model. Here are several to consider:

Horizontal dehydrator units:

• Excalibur 9-Tray Dehydrator
• Magic Mill 7-Tray Dehydrator

Vertical dehydrator units:

• VIVOHOME 5-Tray Dehydrator
• Nesco Snackmaster Pro Dehydrator

Storing Dehydrated Food

Once the food is thoroughly dried, allow it to cool, and make sure it’s completely free of moisture before storing. A good rule of thumb to test dryness is to lightly pack the product into a tightly sealed jar and check for condensation on the lid. If you find condensation, you need to dry it more – otherwise, it won’t keep – or store it in the freezer or refrigerator.

Even if there are no obvious signs of moisture, it’s a good idea to keep the dried food pieces in an airtight container for about a week, a practice known as “conditioning.” Shake the jar daily to make sure any moisture is spread out evenly among all the pieces.

Once you’re ready to store your dehydrated food, you have a few options. You can pack it tightly into clean and dry glass jars, freezer-safe containers with tight-fitting lids, or nontoxic freezer bags. If you have a vacuum packing machine, that’s also a good option — just realize that once you break the seal, moisture can find its way in again.

Whatever method you use, store dried foods in a cool, dry, dark place for maximum shelf life. Recommended storage times for dried foods range from four months to a year, depending on the ambient temperature. Because food quality is degraded by heat, the higher the temperature, the shorter the storage time. For example, most dried fruits can last for a full year at 60ºF, and just six months at 80º F. Vegetables have about half the shelf-life of fruits.

Dried herbs will retain their potency for up to a year, as will cooked or soaked and then dehydrated beans and grains.

Recipes for Dehydrated Foods

If you’re new to dehydrating foods, we have a fun challenge for you — try one of the recipes below! We think you’re going to fall in love with this way of preserving food and creating amazing cuisine. If you’re already a dehydrating enthusiast, we hope you find some new inspiration below!

The Mushroom Bacon is tasty and satisfying on salads, in grain bowls, or as a topping on a plant-based burger. The “Cheesy” Chickpea Croutons are irresistible as a snack and also add delicious flavor and crunch to soups and salads. Swap out fried potato chips with the Lemon Garlic Dill Squash Chips. And create countless combinations of fruit leather using Mixed Berry and Banana Fruit Leather as your guide. You can even get the kids or grandkids involved in granola bar making by dehydrating Pumpkin Pecan Granola Bars into a crunchy and healthy snack-on-the-go. Once you’re done, make sure to share your dehydrating experience with us!

1. Mushroom Bacon

The beauty of mushroom bacon (besides being healthier than traditional bacon since it’s dried and not cured — and is from a plant and not an animal) is that you can use just about any mushroom you like. We chose button mushrooms, but you could try this recipe with shiitake, portobello, or cremini instead. They’ll all be savory and scrumptious!

2. Cheesy Chickpea Croutons

Dehydrating chickpeas simply changes the texture from soft to crunchy, creating a unique experience and new use for chickpeas! Cheesy chickpeas can serve as a fun and crunchy snack, as a topper for your kale caesar salad, or on top of vegan broccoli cheddar soup.

3. Lemon Garlic Dill Squash Chips

Are you a crunchy snack lover? Make thinly sliced squash your best friend by combining it with any spice blend you love, and then dehydrate it for a healthy crispy treat. Try the lemon garlic dill chip if you’re looking for something bright and refreshing that’s packed with nutrition like fiber, carotenes, and vitamin C!

4. Mixed Berry and Banana Fruit Leather

Store-bought fruit snacks can include processed sugar — sometimes more sugar than fruit! Making your own fruit leather at home is not only healthier, but it’s also lots of fun! Plus, it gives you an opportunity to use and preserve any fruit you think might go bad before it’s eaten. Options for creating fun fruit snacks are endless, from pineapple mango to apple kiwi to berry banana. Use this recipe as a guide for all of your fruit leather creations to come!

5. Pumpkin Pecan Granola Bars

Need a snack on the run or something healthy and energizing the kids can bring to school? Unlike store-bought bars, our dehydrated Pumpkin Pecan Granola Bars are made with 100% whole food ingredients using dates as a sweetener, healing spices (not flavoring!), and whole pumpkin and pecan. Customize them by adding your favorite flavors, like vegan chocolate chips, dried apricot, or apples.

Give Dehydrating a Try

Dehydrating food can save money, space, and cut down on food waste, along with being a convenient method of food preservation that’s beneficial for hiking and emergency preparedness.

There are many ways to dehydrate food, from free, seasonal, and time-consuming (sun drying or air drying) to moderately priced and convenient (an electric dehydrator).

And you can dehydrate many different kinds of foods, including some of the healthiest foods on the planet (fruits, veggies, soaked nuts and seeds, and even pre-cooked legumes).

As long as you consume dehydrated foods in moderation, drink plenty of water, and keep eating plenty of fresh produce as well, this method of preserving food is a great way to keep a variety of plant-based foods for long periods of time while retaining much of their nutrient density, and sometimes, even enhancing their flavor.

Tell us in the comments:

• What kinds of dried foods have you tried?
• Have you ever dried your own herbs or greens?
• What’s one food that you’d like to try dehydrating so you can enjoy it year-round?

Featured Image: iStock.com/Shironosov

Read Next:

• Food Storage and Preservation: Why it Matters and How to Do it Properly

The post Guide to Dehydrating Food: Methods, Foods to Try, and Recipes appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

If you know my story, you might think I can’t relate. After all, I grew up eating a whole foods, plant-powered diet in the home of one of the world’s best-known proponents of healthy, plant-based eating (my dad is Food Revolution Network co-founder and president John Robbins, author of many books on health, nutrition, and social and environmental justice, including the 1987 bestseller Diet for a New America.) How could I possibly have any idea what family conflict around food is like?

Hear me out.

When I was a kid, we had our fair share of food conflicts in our extended family. My grandpa Irv, the co-founder of Baskin-Robbins, wanted nothing to do with our “hippie” eating style. He ate the standard American diet with gusto — including, of course, lots and lots of his favorite ice cream.

When my mom, dad, and I would visit my dad’s parents, we sometimes stayed in a rented condo because sharing meals could become such a point of friction. At one point, my grandma Irma famously declared, “You will NOT cook tofu in my kitchen!” She was clear who was in charge in her domain, adding: “When you’re in my house, you will eat what I serve.”

Since my grandma wasn’t exactly a black belt in flexibility, we did not try to convince her to let us cook our simple, plant-based meals in her kitchen. Instead, we prepared most of our meals separately in our condo kitchen.

We didn’t want differences over food to keep us from being a family. But because those differences were based in very different realities and values systems, we struggled with the conflicts and separations they caused.

Blood Can Be Thicker Than Ice Cream

Eventually, my grandpa faced the consequences of his dietary pattern in the form of a health crisis. Suffering from diabetes, heart disease, and weight problems, he was told by his cardiologist that unless he changed his diet, he didn’t have long to live. And in one of life’s great ironies, his cardiologist handed Irv Robbins a copy of the book Diet for a New America, by one John Robbins.

To his great credit, grandpa Irv swallowed his pride and read the book, changed his diet radically, and things became infinitely more amicable during our times together. Before long, tofu was even sighted in my grandma’s kitchen. It turned out that, in our case at least, blood was thicker, even, than ice cream. But that change was a long time in coming — and if we had made more of a fuss about diet during our years of conflict, it might not have come at all.

Leaving a Better World for Future Generations

A lot has changed in the world since I was a child. These days, it’s harder to ignore the practical and ethical reasons to reduce animal consumption. As global climate chaos threatens to turn our planet into a living (or dying!) hell, and environmental crises threaten ecosystems and our own health, more and more people are understanding how dependent we are on the well-being of the whole Earth community.

Survey results on sustainability often show that each generation has become progressively more aware of the importance of living sustainably. In a 2019 study out of Southern Cross University, for example, over three-quarters of survey respondents said that they wanted to learn how to live more sustainably, so they can leave a better planet for future generations.

Increasingly, people are making the connection between living sustainably and eating lower on the food chain — that is, eating fewer animals and animal products, and more plants. This is driven by environmental worries, and also by concerns about human health and animal welfare.

More and more people are motivated by the discovery that if the world switched to a largely plant-based diet, we would cut the greenhouse gas emissions caused by food production by 70%.

The Future is Plant-Based

Another way to live sustainably, of course, is not to die prematurely from preventable chronic conditions. One ambitious study looked at diet and health status in over 400,000 Americans over the age of 50. The researchers found, to their amazement, that those who swapped out just 3% of the animal protein in their diet for plant protein were 10% less likely to die over the 16 years under study.

According to a report from GlobalData, an analytics company that works with 4,000 of the world’s largest companies, a rapidly growing share of the world population is either reducing meat consumption or leaving meat off the table altogether.

The plant-based movement is gaining traction in the US as well. A 2020 study from Nielsen reveals that 40% of Americans are now making an effort to eat more plant-based foods.

But even though there is more awareness around the benefits of plant-based eating, when it comes to healthy eating as a family, obstacles can continue to confront us.

Obstacles to Plant-Based Eating

You may not be dealing, as my family was, with a patriarch whose very identity was tied to dairy and sugar, but there are plenty of other issues that can get in the way of healthy transitions, and indeed, of respectful conversations.

You may not be on the same page as others in your family who are used to eating a certain way or can’t imagine “giving up” certain dishes.

Or you may have picky eaters (both adults and kids) who’ve grown up thinking they don’t like vegetables or that veggie-based cuisine is “rabbit food.”

Since most of us get our nutritional knowledge from industry-sponsored school curricula or straight-up industry marketing and PR masquerading as legitimate science, many people have huge, unacknowledged gaps in knowledge on nutrition, on where their food actually comes from, and the impact of their food choices on health, animal welfare, and the environment.

And you may have people in your household who have read books or articles that said that they should base their diet around animal products (or been told this by health professionals), or that eating certain fruits, vegetables, or legumes is dangerous. Many of these books and articles champion fad diets that become popular whether or not they are based on scientific fact.

Given those multiple obstacles and minefields, how can you encourage your family to eat more plant-based? Below, we’ll look at why eating plant-based as a family is valuable, offer tips to encourage your family to participate in this way of eating, and share some tasty recipes to make it easier and — gasp! — more fun.

Starting a Dialogue Around Plant-Based Eating

If you want to encourage your family to shift to a plant-based way of eating or take their plant-based eating further, you’ll probably want to get clear about your — and their — motivations before launching a discussion.

Start by answering the following questions:

Why is eating this way important to you? And why might it be important to your family members?

Are you or they concerned about what’s in food? Do your children or other family members suffer from health or behavioral problems that could be improved with a healthier diet? Might they be more motivated to eat plant-based in order to help reverse climate change and promote sustainability? And are you or they interested in animal welfare, and potentially motivated to not want to participate in the cruelty inherent in factory farming?

Before diving right into big changes that could send ripples through the household, communicate your reasoning — what matters to you, and why. It might be good to be open-hearted here, and vulnerable. Share how much this means to you, and let them know if you’re willing to change some long-standing patterns in support of your values.

Do you expect to be healthier? Have more energy? Be in less pain? Be more upbeat and cheerful? One powerful way to get buy-in is to ask them how those improvements might make their lives better.

Share your fears and misgivings as well. What foods will you miss? What worries you about making this change? Where might you struggle? What help would you like from them?

You’ll be in a much stronger position to lead if you’re out in front, demonstrating not only the behaviors and choices but also the consequences and benefits of a more plant-based diet. You may have to go it alone for a while, but that will also speak to your commitment and seriousness and may help to convince skeptical family members that this isn’t another fad.

Empathize with Family Members

Another powerful communication strategy at this point is to empathize with family members proactively. After all, when you change, you might threaten the status quo. Your family members might worry about what this will do to your shared social life, or whether you’ll still see them as a good cook, or about the loss of intimacy that shared meals can provide. If you go ahead and get healthy, and become more active, does that mean you might leave them behind if they don’t immediately follow?

Children may worry about not being able to go to their favorite restaurants or have their favorite meals at home anymore. They may worry about being singled out at school for being different, or for coming from a home where family members eat so differently from the mainstream.

Ask about their concerns, and don’t try to convince them that they’re silly, overblown, or irrelevant. Instead, acknowledge that their feelings are valid and ask questions that show you care about how they feel. That can go a long way to helping them feel more open to upcoming changes.

Of course, it can also help to troubleshoot and explore solutions to their concerns. And you may want to make sure that they have an opportunity to feel heard before you try to fix everything.

Look for Openings

Once you’ve begun the plant-based transition yourself, you can start looking for openings to talk to other family members. But remember to meet them where they are, and come from a place of humility. If you come across as overbearing or a know-it-all, you’ll just feed their resistance to change. If you ask about their desires and goals, and tie plant-based eating to the outcomes they want, you can have respectful conversations in which they have the autonomy and space to make their own decisions.

For example: Are they concerned about their health or their weight? About increasing athletic performance? About preventing Alzheimer’s or other aging-related ailments? Are they concerned with ethical, environmental, or social issues? Do they love fresh and tasty food?

Children may not relate to preventing chronic disease, but they may be interested in the climate impact of plant-based eating, in animal welfare, or in being healthy and strong like their heroes. Many kids today look up to Greta Thunberg, for example, and might be intrigued to know that she eats an entirely plant-based diet.

Having these conversations in a respectful way will help you determine whether your family is willing to go plant-based all at once, if it’s something you can move toward over time, or if you need to go “solo,” at least at the outset.

How to Involve Your Family in Going Plant-Based

If your family has expressed any interest — either in going all-in or in making incremental changes — you can employ a range of activities to make it a fun and rewarding experience and to increase the likelihood that the changes will stick.

Grow Food Together

One of the most reliably successful ways to encourage kids (especially) to eat fruits and vegetables is to grow your own as a family. Take inspiration from school gardens, which show us that children love to eat what they grow, and can learn about food and nutrition in the process.

If you have gardening space in your yard, give your kids their own garden bed and let them choose what to plant. Going through seed catalogs in the winter can be a fun activity (just ask any adult gardener who squeals with excitement, and salivates incessantly, when doing so), as they circle the colorful photos of delicious produce and discover whether those plants can thrive in their garden zone, soil, and sunlight conditions. (Here’s information on how to decide what to plant when.)

Gardens are not only fun sources of delicious produce that are far superior to supermarket fare, but they can also alleviate some anxiety about the security of our food supply. If you have family members who are concerned about pesticides, GMOs, or future disruptions to crops or distribution such as those caused by supply chain breakdowns or extreme weather events, a garden may help them feel more in control.

If you don’t have outdoor space, consider starting an indoor garden. Even in limited space, with limited sunlight, you and your family can still participate and wonder at the miracle of seeds growing into plants that can both feed you and flavor your meals.

Another option is to get involved in a local community garden. This offers several advantages, including having good soil already prepared and ready to go, getting advice and guidance from experienced gardeners, and the social benefits of lots of neighbors working together for a common goal.

Educate Yourselves Together

When my dad published Diet for a New America, there was almost no publicly available information on the benefits and how-tos of a plant-based diet. The information he shared about the impact of plant and animal foods on health and the environment was eye-opening to almost everyone.

These days, there are so many books, websites, YouTube channels, Instagram accounts, and full-length documentaries explaining the whys and hows of going plant-based, you could practically spend a whole year entertained and educated by this new genre.

You can watch wonderful plant-based food documentaries as a family. Some are totally upbeat, focusing on the health and performance benefits of the diet, such as Game Changers. This film has had an impact on a generation of influencers thanks to its portrayals of some of the world’s best athletes thriving on a plant-based diet.

Others are heavy on the science, such as Forks Over Knives. Still others focus on environmental impacts, like PlanEat and Food, Inc. Some documentaries show grisly scenes of cruelty to animals (Earthlings comes to mind) and may not be appropriate to show to young children or those who are highly sensitive. Others, like Supersize Me, are lighter and even funny, while still conveying an important message.

Pick Out Recipes Together

One of the best ways to encourage people to change, according to Peter Bregman and Howie Jacobson’s book, You Can Change Other People, is to give them as much control and autonomy as possible. That way, they don’t feel like you’re trying to change them, and therefore don’t resist being changed. Involving kids and other family members in picking out meals will make them more curious about the end result and more willing to try the foods they’ve selected.

Get some plant-based cookbooks and ask family members to go through them and choose recipes to make and taste. Here’s a list of some of my favorites.

Shop Together

In a world of irresponsible marketing claims and rampant “food label illiteracy,” shopping together and exploring the real nutritional values of different foods can be very empowering for kids and adults alike. Paying attention to food labels will allow you to focus on family nutrition and tell truth from fiction when reading the nutrition facts on a box of cereal or bottle of juice. In other words, you’ll avoid being fooled by industry “greenwashing.”

Of course, some of the healthiest foods — fruits and veggies — don’t have labels at all (nor do whole grains and legumes, when you buy them in bulk). When you go shopping as a family, prioritize collecting groceries from the outer aisles where the healthiest food often is. Empower kids by letting them pick out a produce item of their choice. Some smaller stores and farmers markets even encourage kids to choose and eat a piece of produce at the store for free! Or turn shopping into a game by asking kids to go on a “treasure hunt” (within your view) to help find ingredients on a shopping list. This might add some time to your shopping trip, but it can be well worth it.

Prep and Cook Meals Together

Finally, keep the motivation high by encouraging ownership and participation when it comes to making food. Involve your family members in the kitchen as much as possible. Give each person a task. Young kids can stir, destring green beans, or use measuring spoons and cups. Not only does a group effort make cooking more fun and give everyone a sense of accomplishment, but everyone can learn cooking and kitchen skills in the process — skills that will serve you well for your whole life.

Tips for Introducing More Plant Foods to Family

You can boost family nutrition and encourage your family members to eat more plants in a variety of fun, creative ways.

1. Try Out New Cuisines

If you live with adventurous foodies, you can harness their love of novelty and international flavors by creating a cuisine-centric meal or theme night. This way, you get to introduce them to new dishes, spices, and even vegetables in an enjoyable way. They may not be crazy about cauliflower on its own, but wait until they experience Food Revolution Network’s take on Indian samosas.

Many cuisines highlight vegetarian or vegan dishes and don’t require a lot of adjustments or substitutions. These include Asian, South Asian, Indian, Ethiopian, Mediterranean, and Mexican. In fact, pretty much any cuisine’s “peasant” roots will be largely plant-based, with no processed food and minimal amounts of animal products that you can easily remove or replace.

For extra credit, go all out, and create a restaurant dining experience at home. No, I don’t mean making them wait 20 minutes with a buzzer, or giving them a bill afterward. Rather, decorate your house appropriately, and play music from that part of the world. You can even pair dinner with a culturally relevant movie. Follow Mexican enchiladas with a screening of Nikté or Coco, or snack on those samosas and some potato onion bhajis while enjoying Lion or Slumdog Millionaire.

Here’s a resource if you’re looking to get some international cuisine ideas: Plant-Based Recipes from Around the World – Let Your Tastebuds Travel!

2. Cut or Arrange Food in Fun Ways

Aesthetics are a big part of our enjoyment of food, as anyone who’s spent over 10 seconds on Instagram can attest. To get young kids excited about eating plant foods, you can cut up fruits and vegetables into kid-friendly shapes or arrange them in a fun way. Classic food art often depicts faces, but feel free to draw inspiration from multiple sources: “Look, Danny, I made the Death Star out of carrots and jicama!”

Arrangements by shape and color are also always in vogue. You can place fruits and veggies in a rainbow design to emphasize the benefits of eating the rainbow (that is, a wide variety of colorful plant foods to get the whole spectrum of colorful phytonutrients) for your family’s nutrition.

Bento boxes are another way of arranging food in fun ways; if your little ones like orderly setups, the geometric possibilities of lego stacking of cut fruits and veggies will appeal. (Plastic-free bento boxes are available here.)

3. Hide Them

Sometimes drawing attention to the plants we want our picky eaters to try backfires. In those situations, some sneakiness might be called for. For the healthy-food adverse, you may need to hide veggies and other plant foods in a way that they’re not recognizable. For example, blended into smoothies, dips, sauces, etc. The fact that umpteen (I counted) recipes exist for “black bean brownies” proves that you can hide healthy food pretty much anywhere.

4. Use Sauces & Dips

You can also create delicious sauces and dips so that the plants you want to push will serve as delivery mechanisms. Who doesn’t love cut broccoli, apple slices, and tofu cubes when used to get a yummy sweet or savory sauce from bowl to mouth? And as an added bonus, you can hide more plant foods in the dips, as mentioned above.

5. Try Vegan Substitutions

If your family is used to meat- and dairy-heavy meals, you can substitute vegan ingredients for the animal products in many recipes. A hearty stew that usually calls for sausage can either use a plant-based sausage or do without. You can also often substitute whole food options, like chewy and savory mushrooms, for meat. As long as you maintain the same or similar flavor, which comes more from herbs and spices (and sometimes, salt) than meat, your family may not even notice much of a difference — or complain if they do.

6. Encourage “One Bite”

Lots of research shows that we end up liking familiar foods. That makes sense from an evolutionary perspective; in a world full of strange and potentially toxic plants, eating what you’ve already eaten and haven’t become ill from is a useful shortcut to trying every variety until eventually something sickens or kills you. What this means for picky eaters is, the more they are exposed to particular foods, the more they will come to tolerate and eventually enjoy them.

So as gently and playfully as you can, encourage your picky eaters to just “try one bite.” This works with both children and adults, as our taste buds are constantly regenerating. After a few encounters with a new food, we can grow to like it.

7. Find Out What Their Heroes Are Eating

Finally, you can exploit the natural tendency to copy the behaviors of others by exploring what their heroes are eating. These days, with so many influencers discovering and promoting the benefits of a plant-based diet, you might be surprised that your favorite superhero actor, pop star, or wide receiver is rocking kale for breakfast. Here’s a fun list of vegan celebrities, including Venus Williams, Beyoncé, and Formula One racing champion, Lewis Hamilton.

You can also help your kids or grandkids find inspiration from cartoon, comic book, and TV show characters who may be vegan, vegetarian, or even talk about eating fruits and vegetables. From Popeye to Spiderman (“Work out, get plenty of rest, you know, eat your green vegetables”), there are more and more positive, plant-based role models in the world of popular culture.

Speaking of Spiderman, did you know that Spiderman star Tobey Maguire is a whole foods vegan, as are Arnold Schwarzenegger (99% anyway), Stevie Wonder, Ariana Grande, and Jared Leto? And that Michelle Pfeiffer says that veganism is her fountain of youth and what keeps her skin glowing into her 60s? Sharing these tidbits with your family members might just pique their interest enough to give plant-based eating a try.

5 Family-Friendly Plant-Based Recipes

For added inspiration, try these kid-friendly, plant-based recipes. They may become your family’s new favorites and can open hearts, minds, and mouths to a whole new world of healthy, kind, and sustainable eating.

1. Fluffy Buckwheat Chia Pancakes

These buckwheat chia pancakes will swoon family flapjack aficionados and convert those who typically shun pancakes for breakfast. Their light texture, nutty flavor, and nutritious ingredients redefine pancakes as you know them. Bonus: they also make a delicious snack in the afternoon!

2. Peanut Butter and Jelly Snack Bites

Calling all kids, big and small — how about a good old-fashioned PB&J, but without the white bread, processed nut butter, and sugar-filled jelly? Instead, you’ll enjoy similar, nostalgic flavors made with energizing oats, satisfying nut butter, and antioxidant-rich strawberry chia spread. This protein-packed, fiber-filled snack can help to keep you and your family fueled throughout the day!

3. Loaded Potato Nachos

Who doesn’t love a loaded potato? Forget dairy-laden versions — this one is packed with ingredients that are going to keep your family healthy and thriving. Plus, it’s an opportunity to bring kids into the kitchen and have them load on the toppings they love most. Bonus: it can be enjoyed as a snack or main meal!

4. Broccoli Mac ‘N Cheese

What if you were able to recreate the fond mac ‘n cheese memories you may recall as a kid, but with plant-based ingredients to keep your family healthy and happy? With our Broccoli Mac ‘n Cheese, you can! Made with whole food ingredients like cashews, nutritional yeast, and miso, it is as creamy and satisfying as the version from your childhood. Plus, it’s a good opportunity to sneak in those green veggies for better family nutrition!

5. Mushroom Ziti Bake

Bakes just might be the ultimate family-friendly dish — they feed lots of people and can bring the entire family together with their aroma alone. Plus, they can please even the pickiest eaters! This creamy and comforting Mushroom Ziti Bake might just become a household fave.

Small Steps to Better Health

It’s not always easy to help your family eat healthier, especially when it comes to children and veggie-adverse adults. But there are many ways to meet them where they are and find an opening. It can help to involve family members in planning, shopping, and cooking, and get them excited to discover how food gets from the farm (or garden) to their plate.

You may need to get creative with the ways you introduce more plants into your family’s diet. And remember to stay flexible; don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And (unless you have very small children who will eat whatever you give them) don’t insist that they change on a timeline. Because any steps toward a more plant-based way of eating can be steps in the right direction for the health of your family, animals, and our world.

Tell us in the comments:

• If you have a picky eater at home, what’s their favorite plant-based food?
• What’s a healthy plant-based food that you grew to like?
• What strategies will you use to help your family nutritiont?

Feature image: iStock.com/pixelfit

Read Next:

• Three Loving Ways to Stick to Your Diet at Social Gatherings
• A Plant-Based Diet for Beginners: What to Eat, Benefits, & How to Succeed

The post Plant-Based Families: How to Navigate Healthy Eating in a Household appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Elvis sure could sing, but he was not what most people would consider a connoisseur of wholesome food. According to biographers, he was extremely fond of a sandwich consisting of two large slices of bread, sliced banana, peanut butter, and bacon, all fried in bacon grease — an oversized sandwich that comes in at around 8,000 calories. This is not, needless to say, a recipe that you would ever find on the Food Revolution Network website.

But that doesn’t mean we need to throw out the whole idea of nut and seed butters. Done right, they can be a delicious and versatile part of a healthy diet. After all, nuts and seeds provide myriad health benefits, as we’ll see below. And for many people, the main way to enjoy these benefits is through nut butters or seed butters. The spreadable pastes are used as sandwich fillings, sauce thickeners, baking ingredients, and in countless other ways.

While peanut butter has been touted as an inexpensive protein source the world over, some nut butters can be quite expensive. And some commercial varieties contain additional ingredients that, like Elvis’s bacon, may be questionable for your health.

Another strike against commercial nut and seed butters is that once they are ground, the fats begin to degrade and can go rancid. Fresh is best, but with store-bought butters, that may not be an option.

If you want fresh, delicious, affordable, and clean nut and seed butters, your best bet is probably to make your own. In this article, you’ll discover exactly how — and get some amazing recipes for homemade butters that can add health to your life and deliciousity (yes, spellcheck, that really is a word!) to your kitchen.

Types of Nut and Seeds

You can make nut butter or seed butter out of pretty much any food that’s eaten like a nut or seed. The most common, of course, is peanut butter, which isn’t a nut at all, but a legume.

I’ve known this for years, but only in writing this article did I realize that I wasn’t actually sure about the difference. It turns out that a nut is a fruit with a single seed, while legumes are fruits with multiple seeds. So almonds, walnuts, and hazelnuts are all single inside their hulls, while peanuts typically occur in pairs or even trios inside their shells, more like their legume siblings peas, beans, and lentils.

Nuts

Now you know why peanuts aren’t botanically considered to be nuts. But along with peanuts, almost any nut can be turned into a nut butter, including almonds, cashews, pecans, hazelnuts, pistachios, Brazil nuts, walnuts, and macadamia nuts. 

Seeds

What about seeds? Nuts have seeds, but aren’t seeds? Oh dear, more taxonomic confusion. While not getting deep into the biology of plant reproduction (this is a family-friendly website, after all), we can keep it simple by saying that nuts have hard shells (called pericarps) that we have to work to crack open, while seeds are encased in seed coats that are relatively easy to remove. Sunflowers blur the line, but in many cultures, (including American baseball) popping handfuls of sunflower seeds in the mouth and expertly spitting out the shells is a fine art. No nutcracker required.

There are a bunch of seeds that are commonly made into seed butters, like sunflower, pumpkin, sesame (it even has its own special name: tahini), poppy, watermelon, hemp, and flax. One seed hasn’t yet made the cut, but is often included whole in seed butter mixtures: chia.

Seed butters tend to have stronger flavors than nut butters and often benefit from being blended with other seeds or nuts, rather than remaining as a single seed variety. And seed-only butters are often popular alternatives for people with nut allergies.

Nut & Seed Butter Nutrition

Perhaps unsurprisingly, nut and seed butters have a similar nutritional profile to their whole food forms. Nuts and seeds are good sources of plant-based protein, which is one reason that Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, 19th-century health food proponent and plant-based advocate, pushed for the commercial processing of peanuts into peanut butter to replace cow butter in the American diet.

Nuts and seeds are also high in fat, which from their perspective provides food for the growing plant embryo, and from our perspective, makes them creamy and delicious. The majority of the fats are what are commonly considered the “good kinds,” poly- and monounsaturated — although some do contain small amounts of problematic saturated fats. A few kinds of seeds, such as chia and flax, are also rich sources of omega-3 fatty acids.

Nuts and seeds, like many whole plant foods, are high in fiber and rich in minerals like magnesium and manganese. They’re also phytonutrient powerhouses, containing tocopherols, phytosterols, vitamin E, vitamin B6, folate, and phenolic compounds. And Brazil nuts are fantastically high in selenium.

Some nuts are more nutritionally dense than others, as you can see in this nutritional comparison table of some of the most popular nut and seed butters. All nuts (other than chestnuts) are high in fat and calories. On the upside, their high fat and calorie content makes them a good substitute for dairy in some recipes. And they can be a replacement for butter, or used in place of bottled oils, for baked goods. On the upside of that upside, most nuts and seed butters are much lower in saturated fat than dairy. For example, an ounce of peanut butter contains 2.9 grams of saturated fat, which is less than half the amount in an ounce of cheddar cheese.

The downside of all that fat is, that’s a lot of fat. And since fats are more than twice the caloric density of carbohydrates and proteins, that translates into a high-calorie content. If you’re trying to keep off excess weight, or wanting to follow a low-fat diet, you may want to watch the serving sizes of your nuts, seeds, and seed and nut butters.

Why Make Your Own Nut or Seed Butter

With all those convenient commercial jars of seed or nut butters available in stores, why bother making your own?

 1. Control the ingredients

One big reason is to keep out ingredients that can harm your health and the environment. The mainstream brands of peanut butter, like Skippy and Jif, for example, contain added sugar and salt, as well as GMO oils.

The most popular added oil, palm oil, keeps the natural peanut oil from separating, so you don’t have to stir the jar’s contents before spreading. That’s a nice feature, but the palm oil industry is responsible for some of the world’s worst environmental damage, as well as racial and economic injustices, since it developed into an international power in the late 19th century. (If you want motivation to stop eating foods containing palm oil, check out the book Planet Palm: How Palm Oil Ended Up in Everything — and Endangered the World, by Jocelyn Zuckerman.)

2. Cut down on plastic

Another reason to make your own is that many commercial nut butters are sold in plastic jars. There is concern that the plasticizers and chemicals like BPA (in the plastic jars and lids) could leach into the food.

3. Save money

Another consideration is price. With the exception of peanut butter, most other commercial nut and seed butters can get expensive. Peanuts are the cheapest option because they require less water and are less expensive to grow than tree nuts. According to the National Peanut Board, admittedly not the most neutral source, growing an ounce of peanuts requires 4.7 gallons of water, compared to 80.4 and 73.5 gallons for shelled almonds and walnuts, respectively. Being legumes, peanuts also replenish soil nitrogen, thus restoring fertility without the need for large quantities of fertilizer. So farmers can pass along all these savings to you.

Whatever the nuts or seeds cost, commercial butters add manufacturing and marketing costs (not to mention profit) on top. So no matter what nut or seed (or legume) you use, making your own butter will probably end up being cheaper than buying it.

One blogger calculated the savings of homemade vs. commercial almond butter over the course of a year, and found that a family consuming three pounds of almond butter a week (which is an awful lot of almond butter, unless you’re the Duggars) could save precisely $954.72 by grinding their own.

4. Get creative

Another reason to go the homemade route is to indulge your inner chef. You can get creative with taste and texture and produce the seed butter or nut butter mix that you and yours prefer. Of course, your own nut and seed butter ingredient lists will be simpler and healthier than store-bought (unless you add things like rapeseed oil or mono and diglycerides, which, to be fair, you’ll be hard-pressed to find at your local natural foods store). But that leaves room for some cool added flavors. Here’s a shortlist to get you inspired:

• Cocoa powder
• Natural sweeteners like stevia, monk fruit, and date sugar
• Spices like chile powder, cinnamon, and cardamom
• Vanilla extract
• Lemon zest
• Additional nuts or seeds to boost nutrition or add a different flavor

And since your hand is on the food processor or blender button, you get to determine exactly how smooth or crunchy the texture will be.

How to Make Nut or Seed Butter

Your first decision is whether to roast your nuts and seeds, or go the raw route. If raw, will you grind the nuts and seeds as they are, or soak or sprout them first? Soaking them in water for a few hours, or overnight, will help you remove any paper skins, like those on peanuts and almonds, and give your finished butter a creamier texture. And sprouting nuts and seeds provides added nutritional benefits.

On the other hand, even lightly roasting helps to release the natural oils in nuts and seeds, which makes them easier to blend — and can bring out their natural flavor. It also makes your home smell like a made-for-television Thanksgiving movie, especially the ones where a jaded, burned-out ad agency executive moves to New Hampshire to take care of her convalescing mother and discovers the joys of family, romance, and wood-burning stoves.

Then comes the easy part: toss the nuts or seeds into a food processor or blender (it’s a bit like the scenic route versus the autobahn, but both will get you there) along with any additional ingredients (salt is always optional).

Blend until the mixture reaches your desired consistency, and then store your butter in an airtight container in the refrigerator. You can use a mason jar, or any other glass container. Avoid plastic, especially if the friction from blending or processing has heated up the butter. Refrigerated, the natural nut and seed butter can stay fresh for three to four weeks.

How to Use Nut and Seed Butters

Once you’ve got your jar of seed butter or nut butter lounging comfortably in the fridge, what then? I’d recommend that, most of the time, you avoid the strategy of eating all of it directly from the jar with a spoon (or worse, your fingers). That leaves several perfectly good options for how to use your seed and nut butters:

• Spread it on whole-grain or sprouted toast — and even crudités like carrots and celery.
• Follow the hallowed PB&J template by spreading it on your favorite bread along with natural fruit preserves or fresh fruit. Elvis may not have known when to stop, but his use of sliced bananas was truly inspired.
• Add oomph to smoothie bowls, açaí bowls, and oatmeal by drizzling your nut butter on top.
• Mix it into smoothies for more creaminess and flavor.
• Drizzle some sweet nut or seed butter over Apple Nachos Supreme, or use it as a dip for other fresh fruit.
• Use it in homemade baked goods.
• Make an Asian stir-fry or plant-based pasta sauce (cashew butter, in particular, makes a good base for a cream sauce).

5 Nut and Seed Butter Recipes

You’ll find a variety of nut and seed butter blends below, starting with the basics like Creamy Almond Butter and Naturally Sweet Sunflower Butter. Then moving on to fancier, yet still easy-to-make, Chocolate Hazelnut Spread and Omega-3 Seedy Nut Butter. And, if you’re looking for an essential mineral boost (hello, selenium, magnesium, and zinc!) delivered in a spoonful of creamy deliciousness, then jump straight to the Brazil Cashew Nut Butter blend. Or, create your own blends using some of the recipe guidance below. The only thing we ask is that you consider sharing your nut butter blending experience with us!

1. Creamy Almond Butter

Almonds deliver an impressive amount of nutrition, including calcium, magnesium, vitamin E, and heart-healthy fats. Making your own almond butter is cost-effective and simple. It just requires a little bit of patience to get those almonds to the creamy consistency you know and love. But, trust us, it’s worth it in the end!

2. Naturally Sweet Sunflower Butter

Seeds can create the same heavenly creamy butter as nuts, thanks to their high-fat content. Seed butters are a great option if you’re allergic to nuts or simply want to add a little variety to your diet. You can make sunflower seed butter with raw sunflower seeds, but we decided to roast them. This allows their natural oils to release, which contributes to the creamy texture.

3. Chocolate Hazelnut Spread

Get ready for a delightfully sweet and nutty aroma that will permeate your home as you roast the hazelnuts for this blend. It might bring the store-bought version — full of processed sugar, palm oil, and milk powder — to mind, but this spread won’t harm your health or the environment. Wholesome ingredients like hazelnuts, date paste, and organic cacao powder create a delicious treat that’s kind to your body and the planet.

4. Omega-3 Seedy Nut Butter

This omega-powered creamy treat contains walnuts, hemp seeds, chia seeds, and flax seeds — four plant-based ingredients that provide plenty of omega-3 fatty acids as well as phytonutrients, fiber, calcium, iron, and protein. Enjoy it as a dip with your favorite fruit or veggies — apples and carrots would both make tasty, crisp companions.

5. Brazil Cashew Nut Butter

The mild, buttery flavor of Brazil nuts makes them an excellent choice for delicious nut butter. And since they’re exceptionally high in selenium (more than any other nut), a little bit goes a long way in terms of nutrition. We’ve blended in some creamy cashew butter to help balance it out with other essential nutrients like magnesium and zinc.

Get Spreading!

Nut and seed butters are delicious and nutritious foods that serve many functions in a healthy diet. Making your own can protect you from harmful ingredients, save you money, and encourage creativity. There are so many different nuts and seeds to experiment with, in various combinations, and with various added flavors, that you may find yourself with a new hobby: DIYing a popular pantry staple in your own kitchen.

And as long as you leave out the bacon and the frying, you may find that, like Elvis, you “can’t help falling in love” with homemade nut butters and seed butters.

Tell us in the comments:

• Do you eat nuts and seeds? Why or why not?
• If you use nut or seed butters, which are your favorites?
• What kind of nut or seed butter would you like to make at home?

Read Next:

• Is Peanut Butter Good for You? Everything You Need to Know
• You Won’t Believe How Healthy Nuts Are for You

The post How to Make Nut & Seed Butters appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Things can get pretty crazy out there in our commercial culture. Did you know you can get an “Automatic Mini Donut Factory”? For only $136, you too can have one cluttering up your kitchen counter. Does anyone really need a soft pretzel maker with a cheese dip warmer? Or a chocolate fondue fountain?

At first, the air fryer seemed to be heir to that tradition: another hunk of plastic that does one single thing and is quickly relegated to the pile of “purchases I regret.” But so many plant-based chefs and bloggers started talking about how the thing changed their lives, that I finally relented and opened my mind.

And I’m glad I did. The air fryer isn’t another single-use gadget. Instead, it’s a way to enjoy a wide variety of crispy, crunchy comfort foods without added oil. Many people who own one report using it multiple times a day, and creating dishes that entice even the pickiest fast food eaters to gobble down plant-based and oil-free chips, wedges, fries, and wings.

And the market agrees: two million more air fryers were purchased in the second quarter of 2020 than during the same period the year before. And the trend appears to be “heating up,” as it were (pun fully intended).

So what’s the deal with air fryers? What are they good for? Which one might be best for you? Is there a proper way to use them? And what can you make in them that might justify their cost and footprint on your kitchen counter?

Introduction to the Air Fryer

The air fryer’s technology was invented by Dutch entrepreneur Fred van der Weij, and made its first public appearance at the Berlin IFA consumer electronics fair in 2010, where it created a lot of buzz. Philips, the company that presented the air fryer, had been working on a way to fry food with less fat for several years using a combination of heat from halogen bulbs and strong airflow inside the device. The form factor (essentially the size, shape, and other physical specifications), in the shape of a large egg, made the new product friendly and approachable, and also facilitated ease of cleaning. (One of the big advantages of air frying, especially for people who aren’t concerned about their consumption of fried, oily foods, is that it makes so little mess and is so easy to clean compared to traditional frying).

In the intervening decade, the air fryer has come to rival the Instant Pot as the new, super popular appliance changing how we do things in the kitchen. Despite the name, these appliances have proved extremely versatile. Far from being a single purpose appliance for frying food, air fryers (and other shapes, including that of a traditional toaster oven) can cook pretty much anything without the need for oil.

It makes sense — no one likes soggy food, especially when the texture should be crispy. Crunchy food appears to appeal to some deeply held instinct — perhaps the sense that fresh fruits and vegetables are at their best when they’re at their crunchiest, and so some part of our brains identify crunch as a good proxy for “healthy.”

What Is an Air Fryer?

OK, so let’s get specific. An air fryer is a small household kitchen appliance that can fit on your countertop. It has a fan that circulates hot air to cook food quickly in a mesh basket (or tray) from the outside in. The small size — most range in capacity from two to six quarts — has two advantages: they cook food fast to allow for crisping without burning or drying out. And they take up relatively little counter space. If you have room for a coffee maker, you have room for an air fryer.

Some models retail for as little as $40, while others will set you back $300 or more, depending on the brand and features. If you’re interested, keep your eyes peeled for sales, especially during the holidays, as they’re currently a very popular gift.

Now, to be clear, humans have been browning and crisping food for millennia, long before the air fryer was invented. The advantage of this new appliance is that it takes a shorter time and often doesn’t require preheating. And in addition to frying, most models can also bake, grill, and roast — all without any added oil.

I don’t know what this says about us, but despite the versatility of air fryers most people still use them for just one primary purpose: air fried potatoes.

Pros and Cons of Air Fryers

Like most things in life, air fryers are not perfect. So let’s look at the good, the bad, and the concerning when it comes to these popular appliances.

Pros of Air Fryers

1. Little to no oil is needed

The big selling point of the air fryer is frying with little or no oil. It’s possible to get crispy fries and other favorite appetizers (wings, mozzarella sticks, croquettes, dumplings, and so on) either with just a fraction of the oil to coat the food, or with none at all. That way, you can consume far less bottled oils, and total calories, which can aid weight loss.

A quick health note here: while a tablespoon of oil is clearly preferable to a quart, it’s much better for your health to avoid cooking with bottled oils as much as possible.

For example, heated vegetable oil can increase the risk of heart disease, especially when that oil is reheated repeatedly, as in commercial fryers found in restaurants. To avoid these risks, it’s preferable to air fry with no added oil.

2. Food cooks quickly

Air frying is also quick and easy compared with deep frying, and indeed compared to just about any other type of cooking other than microwaving (for more on the pros and cons of microwave ovens, click here).

Because many models don’t require preheating like convection or traditional ovens, they cut down on cooking time. This is especially true when you’re cooking frozen items, like pre-cut fries and veggies. You can just chop up vegetables and other foods, or throw the frozen veggies straight in. A bag of frozen broccoli or cauliflower can turn into a delicious roasted side dish in just a few minutes.

3. Good for reheating leftovers

Air fryers are also great for reheating leftovers, which can reduce food waste. When you reheat leftovers in the microwave, it often changes the texture of the food. But with an air fryer, you can restore the heat, firmness, and crispiness to your meal. And as they get fancier, many air fryer models include pre-programmed settings for cooking specific foods (typically they are set for things like fries, fish, etc).

4. Versatile in their usage

As mentioned, air fryers are far more versatile than their name suggests. Some can dehydrate food as well as crisp it. Some models, especially those shaped like large toaster ovens, are also multi-use, and can bake, roast, and reheat, too. Still others boast multiple baskets, so you can cook different foods at the same time.

5. Great for cooking plant-based foods

Air fryers are excellent for cooking vegetables and other plant-based foods, too. Consumer Reports found that air-fried asparagus, cauliflower, kale chips, and corn on the cob received rave reviews from their child testers. And adults appreciated the roasted Brussels sprouts and potatoes. NBC News’ air fryer guide also recommends air frying mushrooms, eggplant, okra, green beans, and chickpeas.

The nice thing about air fryer veggies is how crisp they get, especially compared to cooking methods like microwaving that are famous for producing a soggier texture. Using an air fryer, then, can help get kids, or other picky eaters, to consume more vegetables. 

Cons of Air Fryers

Of course, all is not perfect in air fryer land.

1. Generate acrylamides

Some tests have found that air fryers actually generate more acrylamides than deep frying, especially in starchy foods like potatoes. That’s concerning because while acrylamides are found in many natural foods, and are impossible to avoid completely, when they are excessive, they can cause mutations in humans that may lead to cancer. Fortunately, there are ways you can reduce acrylamide levels when using an air fryer.

For example, if you’re going to cook potatoes, avoid cooking at very high heat. To reduce acrylamide levels, potatoes should be cooked at or below 180 degrees Celsius (356 degrees Fahrenheit). You’re looking for a golden brown texture. If they’re too brown, that’s a sign that higher levels of acrylamides could be developing in the crust. Plus, if you soak your potatoes before you cook them, and if you don’t store them in the fridge before cooking, that will reduce the acrylamide levels significantly.

2. Can be hard to clean

While some air fryers are easy to clean, others demand  a lot of time, attention, and elbow grease. While the closed basket may feel like “out of sight, out of mind,” you do need to clean it regularly to prevent it from becoming, well, a gross health hazard. If you do use any amount of oil, the basket can become sticky and greasy. And even oil-free food particles can get stuck on surfaces. Baskets with lots of nooks and crannies can be especially hard to clean. Here’s a useful article with instructions for keeping your air fryer clean and ready for action.

3. Small capacity

Another problem with air fryers, especially if you’re feeding a lot of mouths, is their relatively small capacity. Basically, the larger the volume, the less the food will seem “fried” and the longer it will take to cook. So there’s a tradeoff between the taste and the amount you can cook.

Air fryers will make batches that can feed a family of four or fewer. And depending how hungry everyone is, even four people may need a couple of batches to satisfy. Different models advertise their capacity, but the actual capacity is often smaller than claimed.

You may be tempted to fit more food in by crowding the basket, but this defeats the purpose of air frying. The food may not cook evenly, and may not come out crispy.

4. Teflon coatings

Most models of air fryer use Teflon or a similar non-stick coating, since convenience and ease of cleaning are hot selling points. The baskets themselves — the parts that come in contact with food — may have chemical coatings that contain PTFE (aka Teflon) and PFOA (a compound used to manufacture PTFE). Look out for these non-stick coatings, or any model where plastic touches the food, as they can release chemicals that may be toxic.

5. Not a set-it-and-forget-it appliance

If you’ve joined the Instant Pot revolution, one of the nicest features is that you can “set it and forget it.” You don’t need to babysit the appliance, as it will cook on a timer and then keep it warm until you’re ready to eat. Air fryers are different, however. You often need to flip food, just as in a regular oven, to keep it from burning on one side. And since few air fryers have transparent windows, you may need to keep opening the basket to check on the cooking status.

Some poorly made models are even reported to be fire hazards. One viral video from June 2021 shows a short-circuited air fryer throwing off flames as a four-year-old girl in a tutu frets, then runs to alert her father that their house is in danger. Yikes!

6. May encourage junk food eating

Finally, any cookware is only as healthy as the food you put in it. Given the easy and cheap availability of packaged frozen fried foods like potato fries, chicken wings, mozzarella sticks, and so on, you may need to set some boundaries so that an air fryer doesn’t turn your kitchen into a home-based, fast food restaurant.

Air Fryer Recommendations

OK, enough beating around the basket. If you want an air fryer, which one should you get?

The answer, as with most things in life, is “it depends.”

Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro

If you have a large family and a few hundred dollars of discretionary income on hand, I’d look at the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro. It’s got the largest form factor of any air fryer, and resembles the offspring of a toaster oven and a Hummer. One advantage of this is that the Breville can replace, rather than sit next to, your current toaster. So if your Black and Decker is on its last legs, this might be a reasonable purchase even from an economic perspective.

The Breville also rocks from a health perspective — no plastic in sight, except for the exterior handles. Your food will be in contact only with a metal mesh fryer tray, a coated metal cookie tray, or a pizza rack.

And in terms of volume, it can’t be beat. You can get a lot of stuff on a single mesh fryer tray. And you can buy extra ones, to stack up to four at a time.

The downside of the Breville is that it doesn’t give you the same air fried experience that you’ll get from a smaller basket-type appliance. Food will turn out similarly cooked to those in a regular convection oven than one of the other air fryer models described below.

Ninja AF101 or 161

The Ninja AF101 or 161 models come in at a little over $100 or $150, depending on size. With the classic basket design and a simple keypad, these air fryers are both on the larger side: four and five and a half quarts, respectively. The baskets are non-stick, and coated in ceramic, so they don’t contain the chemicals in some non-stick surfaces that can off-gas and cause health problems. They’re also easy to clean, as all food-touching parts are dishwasher safe.

Yedi Evolution Air Fryer

Another healthy option is the Yedi Evolution Air Fryer. It’s a beast at 6.8 quarts, and also includes a ceramic non-stick coating, which is advertised as lead- and cadmium-free. Currently priced at under $150, it’s a good option if you have a large family and don’t want to go with the Breville described above. It also comes with a lot of accessories, including a muffin pan, pizza pan, steaming sheets, and grill rack.

Sahomwell Air Fryer

If you like watching your food cook, the Sahomwell Air Fryer may be the appliance for you. Unlike other models housed in (typically black) plastic, the Sahomwell is mostly see-through, featuring an 18-quart glass bowl into which you can place the fryer basket and other accessories. At under $100, it’s also the least expensive option on our recommended list. The glass and stainless steel construction guarantees that no nasty chemicals will off-gas or rub off on your food.

What to Do with Your Air Fryer

If you choose to get an air fryer— now what? What can you do with it, aside from preparing frozen french fried potatoes?

Once you get the hang of it, you could be using an air fryer for a variety of foods and types of meals: snacks, appetizers, full meals, sides, and even desserts. 

First, it’s good for potatoes and sweet potatoes. But, to save money and your health, cut them up yourself instead of buying frozen fries, tots, and so on. That way, you’ll avoid unhealthy oils, sweeteners, excess sodium, and other potentially problematic ingredients.

Second, you can air fry other frozen and fresh veggies that you’d normally bake or roast. Veggie and tofu nuggets come out crispy and chewy, and can sub-in for meat in bowls, stews, and soups.

Another favorite is crispy chickpeas. You can just open a can, drain the liquid, and coat the chickpeas with your favorite spices. Then, air fry them until they crunch just how you like them. You can snack on them as is, or add them to salads in place of croutons.

Nuts roast well in the air fryer, too, without the constant stirring and shaking required to keep them from burning in a stovetop pan — and in far less time than in a conventional oven.

You can also reheat leftovers quickly, with little mess. And don’t get me started on the deliciousness of air-fryed plant-based pizzas, with a crispy crust and bubbling layer of tomato sauce and roasted veggies.

How to Use an Air Fryer

In terms of specific how-tos (what buttons to press; how to arrange the food in the basket; how long to cook), instructions will vary by model. But there are some basic principles that seem to apply to all or most air fryer models, including:

1. Use the appropriate accessory depending on how you want to cook your food: rack, crisper plate, multilayer rack, or other accessory.
2. Put the food in the basket, making sure not to overcrowd. Basically, the individual items in your basket do not want to touch each other. Having space between pieces of food ensures that their entire surface browns fully.
3. Preheat according to the instruction manual — if your unit has a preheat feature.
4. Set the time and temperature, or choose a preset setting. Many models come with a chart of cooking temps and times, depending on food, volume, and your preference for doneness.
5. Push the start button (or whatever button initiates cooking on your unit). You’ll know it’s working because you can hear the fan.
6. Shake, toss, or flip the food halfway through to cook it evenly and prevent burning or sticking. Check the basket or accessory frequently to prevent overcooking, and to see if it’s at your preferred “done point.”

Healthy Air Fryer Recipes

To make sure you and your air fryer get off to a good start, here are some “made from scratch” air fryer recipes to show you how easy, delicious, and healthy life can be with an air fryer. Put these on your table, raise a glass to Fred van der Weij, and enjoy!

1. Sweet Potato Kale Bites

Not only are you omitting the oil that’s traditionally used to make snacks and apps crispy, but you’re also including nutrient-dense rock stars like sweet potato, kale, and chickpeas. These protein-packed, fiber-rich bites make a satisfying and sustainable snack for one, crunchy, colorful appetizer for party guests, or a tasty, healthy treat for kids!

2. Crunchy Curried Chickpeas

If you’re a crunchy snacker, and you have an air fryer, then add this recipe to the top of your list. Crunchy chickpeas are all the rage and for good reason. They’re a great source of plant-powered protein, are packed with fiber, and can help keep you full in between meals. Plus, that crunch, especially when made in an air fryer, is irresistible! Add different seasonings throughout the week for variety, though we won’t be surprised if this Crunchy Curried Chickpea recipe is your favorite!

3. Crispy Cajun Tofu Bites with Cajun Remoulade

One challenge we sometimes hear about cooking tofu is that making it restaurant-style crispy can be difficult without deep frying it. Enter the air fryer! Tofu turns into crispy goodness, oil-free, with the help of this kitchen appliance. Snacking on crispy bites or adding them to salads, bowls, and stir-fries are just a few tasty and nutritious ways to enjoy nutrient-dense tofu.

4. Air Fryer Cauliflower Chickpea Tacos

Cauliflower and chickpeas cook together in the air fryer, in a fraction of the time you would need in a traditional oven, and turn into crunchy deliciousness! Add them to your favorite whole-grain tortillas or lettuce wraps to create a scrumptious and hearty dinner that the whole family will love. We provided a couple of options for fun and creamy sauces to complement the crunch, but feel free to improvise by adding your favorite.

5. Chocolate Walnut Brownies for Two

We’re here to tell you that air fryer brownies are a thing and for good reason. The result is crispy perfection on the outside and a moist, dense texture on the inside. Yum! The only downside is that space prevents making a large batch of brownies. Thankfully, they only take 15 minutes to bake. Meaning that, in just one hour, you can easily manifest several batches of brownie goodness!

Air Fryers Can Be a Creative Addition to Your Kitchen

Air fryers are a popular kitchen appliance that have taken the culinary world by storm since their introduction in the past decade. They can help people enjoy the mouthfeel and taste of fried foods without the oil, and are versatile enough to replace toasters, microwaves, ranges, and ovens, depending on the type of food and the way you like it.

But they are not an essential kitchen appliance. Humans can live very well without air fryers. So if you don’t have room on your counter, or don’t want to spend the money, don’t feel like you’re missing out.

They come with both pros and cons, including concerns about overdoing the frying and exposure to toxic chemicals. But if you get the right model, and use healthy recipes like the ones in this article, an air fryer can be a lovely addition to your kitchen and lifestyle. Once you experience the joys of air frying, you may even be willing to donate your chocolate fondue fountain and hot dog cooker to the thrift store.

Tell us in the comments:

• Do you have an air fryer? If so, what’s your favorite thing to make?
• Are you thinking of getting an air fryer? What would you use it for?
• What’s one healthy food that you’d eat more of if you could “fry” it without oil?

Feature image: iStock.com/CASEZY

Read Next:

• Healthy Starters and Appetizers for All Occasions
• The Joys and Benefits of Slow Cooking: Plus 5 Easy & Nutritious Plant-based Slow Cooker Recipes
• 27 Useful Kitchen Tools (+3 Bonus Tools) to Make Cooking Easier

The post Are Air Fryers Worth It? + 5 Healthy Air Fryer Recipes to Consider appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

All you have to do is open the can and eat the chips, one at a time. As you do so, you tell the researcher if you can perceive any difference in crispness from one chip to another.

You bite, and crunch. Bite, and crunch. And yes, come to think of it, some of the Pringles are considerably fresher and crispier than others. How fascinating!

Here’s something you need to know about Pringles: they’re identical. Formed from a uniform slurry and cooked under strictly controlled conditions, these chips are as close to clones of one another as any entities can be. So there’s no way some of them are fresher or crisper than their fellows. Something else is going on.

What’s going on, you discover months later when you reach into your mailbox for volume 19 issue 5 of the Journal of Sensory Studies, is that the researchers were messing with you by adjusting the volume of your headset, which was broadcasting the sound from the microphone in front of your chip-eating mouth. The lower they turned the volume, the soggier and staler the chips seemed to be. The higher the volume, the crunchier and fresher. And the crunchier you thought the chips were, it turns out, the more you wanted to eat.

A Preference for Crunch

Food manufacturers and marketers have known about the importance of crunchiness for consumer pleasure — and addictiveness — for decades. In the 1960s, Lay’s potato chips slogan was, “Bet you can’t eat just one.” And they almost always won that bet.

Even lab rats prefer crunchy potato chips to the standard rat chow scientifically formulated to meet their every nutritional need. Like us, rodents can get addicted to the sensation of chomping on something crispy, leading to what the German food chemistry researchers alliteratively termed “hedonic hyperphagia,” or what you and I might call “stuffing our faces.”

This stuff has huge economic consequences for the food industry, too. So much so that in the 1980s, Frito Lay was spending upwards of $30 million a year on research into food palatability at its Dallas, Texas facility. That included a $40,000 machine that simulated the human mouth and provided a definitive answer to the question, “What is the ideal breakpoint, in pounds of pressure per square inch, for a potato chip?” (According to Michael Moss, author of Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, it’s four pounds.)

My Potato Chip Story

I’m no stranger to the allure of a good potato chip. When my twins were nine years old, the older one (by six minutes) was a potato chip fiend. When I brought out a bag of organic Kettle chips, I’d try to limit him to five chips. Instead, he’d grab 10 or 20, or rouse himself to full tantrum mode if I intervened. Sometimes, this ended with him in his room, door locked, as he consumed the entire bag in defiance.

At the supermarket, he’d maneuver us to aisle four and engage in a Defcon 5 meltdown if I refused to allow the bag into the cart.

When I turned to my wife for advice, she told me the one thing I didn’t want to hear. If I didn’t want to fight our son about potato chips, maybe I should stop bringing them into the house.

Like any addict, I went through a period of mental agony and soul-searching, and eventually admitted to myself that my wife was right; to help my son, I was going to have to help myself first. And that’s what I did. I stopped buying potato chips. And within a short while, the issue was resolved. No arguments. No negotiations. No tantrums. And miraculously, no more visits to aisle four.

But I admit it wasn’t easy for me. Which showed me what the Pringles researchers learned: crispy, crunchy (or “crinchy” as they’re sometimes referred to) foods can exert a powerful hold over us. And the food industry engineers the “crunch factor” in its products to trigger cravings and addictions to extremely unhealthy foods.

So what’s the deal? Why is crunchy food so appealing? And what are some crunchy, healthy alternatives to potato chips, Cheetos, pretzels, and other staples of the crunch-iverse?

Why Do We Crave Crunchy Food?

As I sat down to write this article, I looked at the title and instantly wanted to eat something crunchy. Given my breakup with potato chips, I opened the fridge’s crisper drawer and withdrew a firm, cold carrot, and took a satisfying bite. The pressure of my teeth against the root and the sound and satisfying violence of the bite confirmed to my evolutionary brain that I had found a healthy source of nutrition. Had the carrot been old and limp, that would have signified a root of lesser nutritional value.

Through much of our history, our species survived on fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and probably insects as well. For all these foods, crispness is a reliable signifier of freshness and a better nutritional profile. And a likelihood that the food is free from harmful pathogens like molds and bacteria. So it makes sense that our brains still rely on crackle and crunch as shorthand for “good for us.”

We like foods with all different textures, of course. Variety is appealing in and of itself. But crunchy foods can provide a level of satisfaction that encompasses all our senses. The sound is a key part of our enjoyment, as that Pringles experiment demonstrated. Our language to describe such foods is also auditorily satisfying: “crunchy” and “crispy” are onomatopoeic words, sounding like what they describe.

Even outside of our mouths, sounds can attract us to foods. Think of the three Rice Krispies mascots, named for the noise the cereal makes when served with milk: Snap, Crackle, and Pop. (Wacky trivia tidbit I picked up while researching this article: the voice of Pop in TV and radio ads is currently performed by Tom Kenny, who was also the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants.) And those Frito-Lay scientists also figured out how the ideal bag of chips sounds when lifted off the shelf and placed in your shopping cart (especially when it’s not being drowned out by a tantrum!).

Our crunch cravings may even be psychological. Some Freudians go so far as to insist that crunching, along with the ripping and tearing required of meats and some meat substitutes, actually helps us sublimate our natural aggression and tempers our more violent impulses.

The Problem with Many Crunchy Snacks

If crunchiness was a reliable signal of healthy food back in the day, in the modern world, it’s pretty much the opposite. Unlike our ancestors, most of our consumption of crispy foods is of the processed variety. Chips and other crisps are the most popular snacks in the US, followed by cheese, nuts, and cookies. In addition to potato chips, other biggies in the crunchy category include tortilla chips, pretzels, crackers, and puffs.

1. They’re highly processed.

Not to belabor the point, but these are not whole and fresh plant foods anymore. Most snacks like potato chips are highly processed, with pretty much all fiber removed. They’re loaded with excess sodium, unhealthy fats, flavorings, and sometimes added sugars.

2. They’re addictive.

In fact, they’re engineered to be addictive. We have an inherited preference for energy-rich foods since our ancestors who sought out and pigged out on foods high in sugar and fat were more likely to survive famines and thus pass their genes (and preferences) on to us.

In terms of addiction, puffed snacks like Cheetos may be the perfect storm. Not only are they calorically dense, but because they “melt” so quickly and completely in our mouths, our brains register them as non-caloric and don’t send out any satiety signals.

3. They’re high in inflammatory oils.

Most crunchy snacks are high in corn oil, soybean oil, or canola oil as well. These oils are used because they’re the cheapest; however, they’re often GMO, loaded with inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids, and vulnerable to oxidation and the production of free radicals in our bodies.

4. They’re high in refined sugar and flour.

Many crunchy snacks like cereals, cookies, and crackers are also high in refined sugars, like high fructose corn syrup, or sugar made from GMO beets. Add in refined flours, and these snacks hit our brains like a drug, generating powerful dopamine releases that keep us craving and addicted.

5. They’re high in sodium.

Excess sodium is another means of getting us addicted to crunchy foods. A little salt adds flavor, but the sodium content in many crunchy snacks is off the charts. A two-ounce bag of Cheetos contains 500 mg of sodium, which is about ⅓ of the American Heart Association’s recommended daily limit. Too much sodium is implicated in hypertension, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and many other conditions.

6. They’re full of additives.

Oh, and let’s not forget the additives that render these snacks shelf-stable for geologic timeframes. Preservatives, colorings, and other additives of questionable safety are turning many of our snacks into time capsules — if we can keep our hands off them, that is. Even so-called “natural” additives may never have been tested for safety, and there’s plenty of reason to suspect they may not be great for us.

And although many processed crunchy snacks are originally made with plant-based foods (mainly potatoes, corn, and wheat), they lose most of their nutritional value during processing. In general, the further a food product is from its natural form, the less it retains its healthful nutritional properties.

Manufacturers may try to “healthwash” their products by touting the nutrients returned to them via fortification and enrichment, but these processes add back only a small number of nutrients. And they certainly don’t make up for all the nutrition that’s been lost by hyper-processing.

7. Ingredients are often low-quality

To maximize profits, manufacturers will source the cheapest ingredients for their products — many of which are low in quality and nutritional value. Thanks to government food subsidies, the price of processed foods in the US has decreased by a whopping 20-30% over the last four decades. (An additional tragedy here is that millions of people who live in poverty and have access only to convenience store food in their “food deserts,” have come to depend on these cheap, unhealthy calories in order to survive.)

Healthy Foods That Are Crunchy

Remember the notion that we like crunchy foods because crunch once signified “good for us”? Well, there are still plenty of opportunities for healthy crunch in the modern world. Here’s a short list of raw and minimally processed foods to turn to when you need a snap, crackle, or crunch in your mouth:

• Apples
• Celery
• Carrots
• Jicama
• Peppers
• Cabbage & kimchi
• Brussels sprouts
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Radishes
• Water Chestnuts
• Cucumbers & pickles
• Snap peas
• Nuts
• Seeds
• Popcorn (only healthy if you don’t put unhealthy things on it!)
• Rice Cakes

How to Make Crunchy Snacks

You can also “crunchify” some foods and snacks by how you cook them. Baking, roasting, broiling, and air-frying are common methods, although any heat that removes moisture without burning can do the trick.

To add flavor to your crunch, you can use spice mixes and seasonings. For example, bake kale and other veggies into chips in your oven without oil. Sprinkle garlic powder, smoked paprika, and/or nutritional yeast on top for an umami and cheesy taste.

You can also remove the water from fruits and vegetables by dehydrating them at low temperatures for a longer time, using your oven or a dedicated dehydrator (This is one of our favorites).

You can make your own crackers, too, giving you full control over the kinds and quality of ingredients: whole grain, nut flours, and high-quality oils (if you choose to use them at all), and zesty seasonings in place of excessive salt.

You may not think of cooked beans as crunchy, but it’s easy and quick and inexpensive to toss your chickpeas or white beans with spices and bake them until crispy. They make great snacks on their own, or as a mouth-pleasing addition to salads.

And if you’re a fan of crunchy breakfast cereals, without the processed ingredients, there’s always homemade granola, with dried oats, nuts, fruit, and seeds coated in a sweet date paste and baked until crunchy.

5 Recipes for Healthy Crunchy Snacks

Making crunchy snacks at home can be quick, tasty, and packed with nutrition. Start with the Moroccan Baked Chickpeas that are bursting with flavor. They’ll provide you with a satisfying crunch, and satisfy the belly with their protein and fiber.

If you like a little creamy along with your crunchy then look no further than The Best Creamy and Crunchy Snack. And for anyone who has a challenge consuming leafy greens on the daily, consider your challenge conquered when you try the Chili Lime Kale Chips.

Like a little sweetness with your crunch? Super Seedy Granola provides all that and more. And if you’re a fan of crackers, but not a fan of most store-bought cracker ingredient labels, then it’s time to try making crackers at home. It’s simpler than you may think, and they have all the flavor and none of the unhealthy ingredients found in many traditional cracker brands.

1. Moroccan Baked Chickpeas

Looking for a high fiber, high (plant) protein nibble to replace those high fat, high salt chips? Chickpeas get perfectly crunchy in the oven (with a little tossing in between). All you have to do is add your favorite seasonings. This flavorful, Moroccan-style baked chickpea snack will get you going.

2. The Best Creamy and Crunchy Snack

A big bonus comes with this snack as it satisfies both crunchy- and creamy-loving palates. It’s one of our favorite go-to snacks that literally makes us hum with happiness because of its flavor, texture, AND nutrition. You also get probiotic goodness with each bite, plus leafy greens and whole grains (or seeds, depending on the cracker) to boot!

3. Chili Lime Kale Chips

The snack that gives back with every bite — Chili Lime Kale Chips. Not only are these veggie chips satisfying with their light, crispy crunch, but they’re one of our favorite ways to get in our daily dose of leafy greens. Kale is truly a superfood that’s abundant in calcium, carotenoids, vitamin K, and fiber. Pro tip: Double the recipe if you’re sharing because these veggie chips disappear quickly!

4. Super Seedy Granola

Are you a sweet and crunchy snacker? We hear you, and we’ve got you covered with this slightly sweet and seedy granola. While seeds are high in calories and may be similar in caloric content to conventional chips, the type of calories matters! With each bite, you’re getting plant-based protein, healthy fats, and lots of fiber.

5. Easy Cheesy Herbed Crackers

Where are the cracker lovers? Many store-bought brands have too much sodium, added oils, and are made with refined flours and sugar. Easy Cheesy Herbed Crackers are different! They provide the flavor and crunch you love, but are made with whole grain flour, healing spices, and phytonutrient-rich miso. We can’t wait for you to try them!

Get Crunching!

Crunchy snacks can be tasty and convenient. But most store-bought options can be addicting and loaded with concerning ingredients, and lack nutrition. You can still get a satisfying crunch and crispiness without the negative effects on your health by eating a variety of whole foods, either raw or in some cases by baking or other preparation methods. Next time that crunch craving hits, reach for one of these healthy, crunchy snacks.

Tell us in the comments:

• What are your favorite healthy crunchy foods?
• Is there a crunchy food you’re trying to cut back on or eliminate from your diet?
• What are a couple of healthy crunchy snacks you want to try?

Read Next:

• The Top 3 Healthiest Snacks You Should Be Eating
• How to Make a Healthy, Vegan Charcuterie Board

The post Healthy Crunchy Snacks to Beat Those Potato Chip Cravings appeared first on Food Revolution Network.