For at least thirteen years, I have eaten yogurt at least 4 times a week. A lot of yogurts have been consumed by me but there is one that I must have, and that is Activia’s yogurt. I started eating yogurt as a teen when my mom would get them during her dieting stages. I would sneak one from the fridge and see what all the hype was about. It tasted good to me but that was all I really cared about at that age, it wasn’t until later that I realized yogurt had good protein content.
In my twenties, I started eating yogurt because of the protein content. It was a light snack or sometimes even a meal and I was happy to have had the protein consumption, then I discovered that yogurt also had a greater ingredient, active cultures of Lactobacillus acidophilus.
Lactibacillus acidophilus under a microscope.
Lactobacillus acidophilus is a probiotic, a “live microorganism which, when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit of the host.” (Defined by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations.) This is in Activia’s yogurt, a health benefit for every individual which helps to aid in their digestive system and prevent certain infections.
For the past seven years, I have stayed true to eating Activia’s yogurt. The live cultures in the yogurt help to keep my skin clear because my digestive track is able to function properly. A healthy, functioning digestive system, enables the waste to rid the body thus taking out the bad that could contribute to poor skin. Also, the protein within the yogurt helps with the collagen building blocks in the body to keep your skin looking supple and soft.
Next time you’re eating an Activia yogurt, think of all the good things it’s doing to your body and your skin.
There is one fruit that I eat daily and it is the GREEN APPLE. I love fruit, it can be sweet, bitter, juicy, and makes me feel good about what I’m putting in my body. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I started becoming more aware of the different benefits of certain fruit and I found that the green apple would be a must-have in my daily fruit intake.
Green apples are great for three things: healthy skin, healthy teeth and a healthy digestive system.
HEALTHY SKIN.
Green apples are rich with antioxidants, Vitamins A, B-6, C and E. These vitamins help to give the skin a glowing look and the high water content within the apple helps to keep the skin hydrated.
HEALTHY TEETH.
“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” This childhood saying exists because apples naturally contain a good amount of flouride within them. Flouride helps to reduce tooth decay.
HEALTHY DIGESTIVE SYSTEM.
Apples are considered a soluble fiber. Soluble fiber is fiber that dissolves in water and helps to promote the movement of material through the digestive system.
Because of these three benefits for the body, the green apple is my chosen fruit trifecta.
How well do you know your food? Do you know where the food you eat comes from? Do you know what feeds the food you are eating? Since the rise of fast food, food has incrementally become modified through out the years. According to Michael Pollan from the documentary film, FOOD, INC. he states, “The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000”.
As a child, growing up in Montana, my father planted a huge garden. We had watermelon, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries, lettuce, sweet peas and corn. The carrots were a bright orange with a huge headdress of green leaves sprouting from the top and a long string, dangling from the bottom. They tasted so sweet and full of life. Eating a carrot from the garden was my favorite snack but eating a carrot from the grocery store was far from my favorite. The carrots from a grocery store were bigger, dirty-orange in color, with a small little sprout of green coming from the tip. A grocery store carrot was dry and anything but sweet. The only way I could eat a carrot from the store was if it was cooked because eating it raw seemed pointless.
Sweet peas was another one of my favorite garden past times. I would pick the sweet peas off of the stem and after rinsing them off with water, I’d peel open the green covering and eat the peas inside first, counting how many peas were cocooned inside and then I’d finish by eating the outside casing. The sweet peas were very sweet and they had this distinct clean taste of earth on them. Everything from my father’s garden was heaven at first bite. All the fruits and vegetables were small and colorful.
Shoppers walk through the produce section of a Wal-Mart Supercenter store in Rogers, Arkansas, U.S., on Tuesday, March 10, 2009. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to advertise its produce in coming months to win over more customers after efforts to tidy displays, buy food locally and automate purchasing, company executives said. Groceries accounted for 41 percent of sales in 2007, up from 39 percent a year earlier. Photographer: Beth Hall/Bloomberg News
Being young, I noticed the differences of food from my father’s garden to the food we would purchase in the supermarket. Over the years I have seen the advancement of technology enhancing the food items to these glamorous, over-sized fruits and vegetables and some people I have told me how they thought this beautiful fruit was going to have a great flavor but nine times out ten, they say how disappointed they were when they actually ate it.
Local farmer’s market in Los Angeles, California.
Healthy, non-GMO (genetically modified), no pesticides, naturally (organic) grown food takes time to grow and develop. Think of food as a relationship, the more time it has to grow and develop and weather the storms, the healthier the relationship will be, just like food. Give the food a good environment, proper sunlight, love and care and it will produce a healthy response of nutrients that our body needs. Give the food a bad environment, force it to grow in a short amount of time without any natural light and love and it will produce a traumatic response of survival leaving the consumer vulnerable to any harmful components it may have received.
Industrial “free range” hens.
Burgeoning food has gone on long enough and the people that are getting hurt by it, are us. Every single person that has an innate, human quality of trusting that what is placed on our shelves at the supermarket, that what fast food restaurants, even huge chained restaurants are serving us, is quality, healthy food. It’s about time we start asking questions before its too late.
Watch an interview with the FOOD, INC. Filmmaker Robert Kenner. It is an enlightening discussion of where our food is derived.
For at least thirteen years, I have eaten yogurt at least 4 times a week. A lot of yogurts have been consumed by me but there is one that I must have, and that is Activia’s yogurt. I started eating yogurt as a teen when my mom would get them during her dieting stages. I would sneak one from the fridge and see what all the hype was about. It tasted good to me but that was all I really cared about at that age, it wasn’t until later that I realized yogurt had good protein content.
