Hope you had a beautiful holiday season and a happy new years eve. These past few weeks have been crazy, hence the lack of posts, but I had a lovely time with my family and friends and hope you did too. Today I wanted to share the recipe for this delicious chocolate raspberry cheesecake recipe with you all.
Chocolate Crust:
1 cups of pecans
1 cups of macadamia nuts
1 and 1/2 cups of pitted dates
1/4 cup raw cacao powder
3 tablespoons of coconut oil
1 teaspoon ground vanilla
1/2 tablespoon of himalayan sea salt
Cheesecake Layer:
3 cups of raw cashews
1 and 1/2 cups of pitted dates
1 cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice
5 tbsp coconut oil
Raspberry Layer:
2 cups of raspberries
2 bananas
5 dates
5 tablespoons of coconut oil
Optional: Raw cacao nibs as a topping
Throw the ingridients of the individual layers into the food processor and blend. Then layer everything and store in the fridge for at least 1 hour. Serve and enjoy!
I have decided to start this new series called Debunking the health myth; DTHM where I bust some common healthy myths and explain what’s actually going on.
Saturated fat:
And the first one is all about saturated fat. I’m sure you have all had someone tell you before that saturated fat is bad for you and causes heart disease. Well truth is, it’s actually extremely important for our health and wellbeing and necessary for humans to thrive!
Saturated fats are essential for proper energy function, cellular membranes, organ padding and hormone function. They give our cells the necessary stiffness, are essential for calcium absorption, have antimicrobial function, are needed for the proper utilization of the essential fatty acids and so much more!
When you actually take a look at the scientific evidence it does not support the claim that saturated fat causes heart disease in the slightest.
If saturated fat caused heat disease none of us would be here right now. Our ancestors relied on saturated fats to survive and evolve and had a huge amount of saturated fats in their diet.
It’s important to make the distinction between saturated fats and polyunsaturated fats! The majority of the polyunsaturated fats come from pressing nuts and seeds, such as corn, sunflower and soy, under thousands and thousand of pounds. From an evolution standpoint this is a predominantly new invention. We couldn’t do this 10’000 or even a 1000 years ago. The huge escalation of heart disease, cancer and diabetes all started after we stopped eating so many of the normal fats, the way nature provides them for us and started eating more of these polyunsaturated fats in form of hydrogenated vegetable oils and margarine. So no, margarine is not a better choice for you than butter.
I personally love to use saturated fats especially when baking and cooking and prefer using my extra-virgin olive oil (wich is a monounsaturated fat btw, not a polyunsaturated fat!) in raw recipes or as a salad dressing. The reason why being: that when you heat oils, it causes the oil to go rancid wich creates free radicals. Free radicals are linked to a bunch of things like inflammation, premature aging and even cancer!
Take away:
Incorporate healthy sources of saturated fats like coconut and coconut oil, grass-fed (preferably raw and organic) butter and healthy sources of red meat coming from grass-fed, organic animals.
When cooking always make sure to use a saturated fat such as coconut oil and only use the monounsaturated fats such as olive oil in raw recipes.
Stay away from hydrogenated vegetable oils such as soybean, corn and sunflower oil.
PS: Also just found this short funny video whilst searching online, that I wanted to share with you, explaining how this whole myth started. It’s from the movie fat head. Really like this guys humor 🙂
My newest breakfast obsession! I have been making these pretty much every day for the last couple of weeks now and absolutely love them! Super delicious and nutritious! I have gotten several requests for the recipe, but to be honest with you all no two powerbowls I’ve made so fare have been the same. And that’s the beauty of it..you can easily change it up every single day to fit your needs and likings. You can make a chocolate powerbowl, a berry powerbowl, a banana powerbowl, a tropical powerbowl,…the options are endless! Depending on what you use you can easily get a different outcome every single time. I have posted a video on my instagram account before on how I make these but after getting multiple requests to do a blog post finally have decided to write a blog post on these powerbowls aswell.
Step 1: basically you want to start of with some kind of fruit.
You could use anything, a banana, berries, apple, nectarine, pineapple….anything! The choices are endless! Keep the final product you want to create in the back of your head. So for instance if you want to make a chocolate powerbowl your best options are probably a banana or dates. However if you’re opting for a tropical powerbowl, you might want to stick to more of the tropical fruits like pineapple or mango.
Step 2: Add the liquid
You could use anything ranging from raw cows milk, to coconut milk, coconut water or even just plain water. Whatever you have around that day, are in the mood for and floats your boat.
Step 3: Add the protein powder
I personally like using the protein blend form sunwarrior, a clean, healthy, raw and vegan protein powder. But you could use whatever protein powder you have/like. Depending on the powerbowl I’m making I’ll either use vanilla, chocolate or neutral. (If you’d like you could also go ahead and add some oats at this point).
Step 4 (Optional): Add that nutritional punch
Now this is where the fun part begins. I personally like to throw a bunch of superfoods and/or greens into my powerbowls for that added nutritional punch and benefits. if you don’t add too much you usually can’t taste it and still get all the benefits. Win win situation. You definitely don’t need any of these items to make a powerbowl thought and can very well also make it without.
Examples of superfoods I like to throw into my bowl:
Handful of spinach
Avocado
Raw cacao powder (if making a chocolate powerbowl)
Spirulina
Aloe Vera
Mesquite
Lucuma
Maca
Physillium husk
Cinammon
Barleygrass
Wheatgrass
Reishi mushroom powder
Step 5: Blend
Now just blend everything together until you’re left with a thick smoothie like consistency.
Step 6: Add topping
You could use anything you like. Here are a few examples and the items I personally love topping my powerbowls with. This gives it that nice crunch and makes the whole thing interesting.
Raw Cacao Nibs
Shredded Coconut
Bee Pollen
Fruit
Cruhsed nuts
Nut Butter
Buckwheat
Oats
And you’re done 🙂 Enjoy! If you end up making one and would like to share, I would love to see all the wonderful creation you all come up with! So feel free to tag me in your pictures or send me your wonderful creations.
So on my trip to Amsterdam last week I got to stop at (more like I forced my family to go there with me haha) at this health food store called unlimited health. I bought multiple items and one of my favourite purchases would have had to be a tub of CoYo (Coconutmilk yogurt).
Breakfast in Amsterdam 🙂 CoYo mixed with sunwarrior chocolate protein powder, fruit and a green smoothie
I liked it so much I finished it all in the same day and had to go back for more the next day. I wish I could have bought an unlimited supply to take back home with me but sadly due to it being a refrigerated item that obviously wasn’t an option. (Also not sure the airplane crew would have like me bringing back home a massive amount of CoYo haha). So I decided I would just have to make my own. The first time round making this I was very skeptical and was expecting the outcome to be a massive failure. But to my surprise it actually turned out really great and I was left with a delicious creamy and thick greek yogurt type consistency. Due to this being a fermented products it is amazing for your health and can help replenish that important gut bacteria of yours. You can read more about that here: How probiotics and cultured food can drastically improve your health and apperance
You will need:
1.5 Litres of full fat Coconut Milk
4 Probiotic Capsulses or yogurt starter of your choice (they should state on the directions the amount you need to use)
2 tbsp xanathan gum; this will work as a thickening agent
4 tbsp coconut flour
An oven or any other device that can produce a heat of 40 degrees celsius for a long period of time
Step 1: Heat up the coconut milk
Heat up the coconut milk in a pan until it’s hot but not boiling yet. This will kill any of the leftover bad bacteria that you don’t want in your yogurt.
Step 2: Let the Coconut Milk cool down and then add the probiotics
Let the coconut milk cool back down to room temperature. Mix in the probiotics, coconut flour and xanathan gum.
Step 3: Let the fermentation process begin
Place your coconut milk in an oven that heated up to 40 degrees celsius and leave it there for 20-24 hours. This will give the bacteria time to grow and ferment the milk. During this process your coconut milk should start to thicken up and turn into yogurt.
Step 5: The final step
Remove the coconut milk yogurt from the oven and place in the fridge for at least 6 hours before consuming. This will stop the growing process of the bacteria and further thicken the yogurt
And that’s it. Feel free to mix berries, raw cacao or anything your heart desires into your yogurt to turn it into flavoured yogurt.
Homemade healthy chocolate protein frozen yogurt made using my coconut milk yogurt-recipe coming soon 🙂
About a year ago I started hearing and reading about probiotics, convinced by all the studies I read I started taking a probiotic capsule daily and was blown away by how much better I felt and how the problems I had with my digestion decreased immensely.
Health Benefits
The list of health benefits from probiotic is immense and seems never-ending. But here are a few of the things it helps improve:
Diarrhea
Acne
Chronic Fatigue
Urinary tract infections
Bloating
Eczema
Food allergies and intolerances
Cancer
Headaches
Cravings
Depression
Irritable bowel syndrome
Inflammatory bowel disease
Chronic Fatigue
Ulcerative colitis
Immunity
So what are probiotics and fermented foods?
Probiotics are the heathy and beneficial bacteria that live in the human digestive system, they aid our body in digesting the food and absorbing all of the nutrients and vitamins, detoxification aswell as controlling our digestion and overall wellbeing. Fun Fact: Did you know that we humans carry 10 times more bacteria cells then human cells?
Cultured foods are often also refered to as fermented foodsand are foods that have undergone a process where the healthy bacteria is added to these foods so that when consuming them you are able to replenish your gut with the healthy bacteria and rep all the benefits. The process of fermentation isn’t a new one and has been practiced by our ancestors all around the world for centuries.
Lack of healthy gut flora in today’s society
In todays over sanitary world where most of the people are eating processed conventional food and consuming antibiotics most of us are lacking these beneficial healthy and important bacterias.
Antibiotics are being fed to the animal products we consume and prescribed daily and sadly antibiotics don’t distinct between good and bad bacteria and just kill it all.
It’s also important to realize that the lifestyle choices we make daily affect our gut flora (bacteria). The bad flora in our gut feeds of off processed foods, refined grains and sugar. With time the bad flora will combat and outgrow the good flora if we keep on feeding our bodies with these highly processed foods.
How to replenish our healthy gut flora
The best way to replenish your gut flora is to consume fermented foods on a regular basis and supplement with a probiotic.
Examples of fermented foods are:
Fermented Veggies; such as Sauerkraut, Pickles, Kimchi or you can even go ahead and ferment your own choice of vegetables for a fermented salad!
Kambucha; A fermented tea
Fermented and grass-fed organic raw dairy products such as Kefir, Yogurt and Cheese (make sure it is raw as conventional dairy products nowadays do not have live cultures (and if only very few) and are loaded with sugar that feeds the bad gut flora. The pasteurizing process that most dairy products undergo these days destroy the naturally occurring probiotics).
Tempeh; Fermented soybeans
Miso; A traditional fermented japanese Seasoning
Homemade fermented products; I recently fermented my own coconut milk to make raw, vegan coconut milk yogurt. I will be sharing the recipe very soon 🙂
You can also take a probiotic supplement. Just make sure it is a high quality and efficient probiotic. It must contain strands that are able to survive the harsh human stomach acid to ensure that the bacteria reaches your intestines alive.
Hope this helps, have a lovely and healthy day guys ♥
Chia seeds are a great source of fiber and help cleanse and detoxify your digestive system. They are loaded with heart healthy omega 3 fatty acids, can help regulate appetite and are able to absorb 10 times their weight in water making them all around a great addition to anyones diet. This pudding is completely free of any flours or refined sugar, making this an all around great and healthy treat you can indulge in guilt free.
You will need (serves 2):
1 cup coconut milk (or any other type of milk)
3 tbsp chia seeds
Zest of half an orange
Zest of half a lime
Pinch of vanilla and cinammon
Optional: stevia or sweetener of your choice to taste
Combine the milk, the chia seeds and the stevia and mix throughly. Let sit in the refrigerator for about an hour or so and stir again. Then let rest in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours or preferably over night. In the morning add the orange and lime zest and the pinch of vanilla and cinammon. Serve with fruit of your choice and enjoy! ♥
Lately I have been getting a ton of messages asking for books/movies I can recommend. I know times are hard and busy, so if you don’t necessarily have the time to read an entire book, one thing I can defiantly recommend is this movie.
I watched it about a year ago, and absolutely loved it! If you can spare 90min in your day I highly recommend watching this movie and if you can’t find the time make time 😉
The movie’s called Hungry for Change here’s a link to the trailer for anyone that’s interested.
You can even watch the first 20min online for free here:
The other day I was at my local health food store and saw acai powder for the first time. Having heard so much about it I just had to go ahead and try it. Today I wanted to share some of the amazing benefits of acai berries with you all and let you know how I made the acai bowls. There won’t be a specific recipe, because I honestly think it can be changed up so many ways and I really recommend just using what you have on hand and playing around with it :).
Acai berries are commonly found in the Amazon. They are purple in colour and an exotic relative of blueberries. They have been associated with many health benefits, some of wich I’d like to share with you today. Acai berries have been shown to lower our risk of various heart diseases, promote skin health and aid in weight loss/maintain a healthy weight. They are high in dietary fiber and great for detoxifying the body. Due to their high level of antioxidants they help prevent aging and can help lower your risk of cancer. Studies have shown an increase in energy and mental function linked to acai berries.
The morning after having purchased the acai berries I decided to try to go ahead and make myself an acai bowl for breakfast, a dish that seems to be pretty popular in Brasil. Basicly I just blended a banana, with 2 large handfuls of strawberries, fresh coconut water, some gluten-free oats and the acai berries. I also added some fresh aloe vera, wheatgrass, spirulina, maca, lucuma, brahmi, guarana, raw vegan protein powder and cinnamon for that extra nutritional punch but you could easily just skip that aswell. Then I topped it all of with crushed walnuts, raw cacao nibs, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, banana and oats. It was so so delicious and full of flavour. The acai berries gave it such a unique, and incredible flavour. I loved and cherished ever single bite and felt so energized and amazing the whole day.
I kept on raving about my breakfast to my mum, so by the time the next day rolled around she really wanted to try one too. So I made one for each of us and again, it was just a blend of banana, strawberries, coconut water, oats and the acai berries but this time I also added some fresh raspberries and blueberries. For extra nutritional benefits I also added aloe vera, wheatgrass, spirulina, maca, lucuma, brahami, guarana, gluten-free oats, raw vegan protein powder and cinammon (all of this can easily be skipped, as it dosn’t change the taste). And topped the mixture with raw cacao nibs, blueberries, strawberries, oats and crushed walnuts. It turned out amazing and she absolutely loved it. So much that we just ordered a bunch online, because my health food store has been sold out these past couple of weeks and we don’t want to/can’t wait any longer. Hahaha 🙂
Drinking enough water is so so important! I always make sure to constantly have a glass of water or tea for me to sip on throughout the day. Ever since upping my water intake I have noticed that my skin, hair and nails have improved, I’m less bloated throughout the day and over all just feel a lot more energized and can think more clearly. Water also realy helped me in my weightlossjourney.
Here are 12 reasons why you should all go drink some water 😉
Improves radiance and condition of your skin
Aids in weight loss
Suppresses appetite
Can help reduce the appearance of cellulite
Helps brain function
Gives us more energy
Removes toxins and waste
Helps boost metabolism
If your drinking enough water your body won’t feel the need to store access water weight
Fights disease
Helps energize muscles
Prevents constipation
So how much should you drink? This all depends on how active you are and how much fluid you’re getting through your food. A good rule of thumb is to drink until you’re pee looks almost clear or a bit like lemonade, that’s how you know your body is hydrated and you’re drinking enough water. If your pee looks like apple juice you are dehydrated and should defiantly try to up your water intake.
healthyyfood 