Eating The Blues

Of all the colors in the spectrum, blue is an appetite suppressant. Weight loss plans suggest putting your food on a blue plate. Or even better than that, put a blue light in your refrigerator and watch your munchies disappear. Or here's another tip: Dye your food blue! A little black will make it a double whammy.

Blue food is a rare occurrence in nature. There are no leafy blue vegetables (blue lettuce?), no blue meats (blueburger, well-done please), and aside from blueberries and a few blue-purple potatoes from remote spots on the globe, blue just doesn't exist in any significant quantity as a natural food color.

Consequently, we don't have an automatic appetite response to blue. Furthermore, our primal nature avoids food that are poisonous. A million years ago, when our earliest ancestors were foraging for food, blue, purple and black were "color warning signs" of potentially lethal food.

And, now...you can use this new found knowledge to your advantage!

http://www.gearfuse.com/weight-loss-glasses-make-food-look-unappealing/

Vitamin A

I know this was supposed to be the 1st in a series of posts about herbs, but there just weren't any common A herbs that interested me. Alfalfa? Anise? Allspice?

I gave up.

And, that brings us to vitamin A.

Vitamin A is a fat soluable vitamin which means, unlike water soluable vitamins, the body stores extra for later instead of flushing it out. Extra vitamin A is mostly stored in the liver. So, too much of a good thing CAN be bad. The recommended dose for adults is around 800 mcg (it varies slightly depending on age and gender).

So...what does vitamin A actually DO for you??? Well, vitamin A is involved in immune function, vision, reproduction, cellular communication, and also supports cell growth and differentiation, playing a critical role in the normal formation and maintenance of the heart, lungs, kidneys, and other organs.

Top food sources of vitamin A in the U.S. diet include dairy products, liver, fish, fortified cereals, and COLORFUL fruits and veggies.

Here are my 10 top picks of Vitamin A food sources:
1. Carrots.
2. Sweet potatoes
3. Pumpkins
4. Spinach
5. Beef
6. Cantaloupe
7. Kale
8. Peppers
9. Mangos
10. Squash