September Writing Challenge #20: Healthy Foods

It’s day 20 of the September Writing Challenge hosted by Janice at Fitness Cheerleader.  Today’s topic is 5 new-to-you healthy food options.  I can’t wait to read what everyone else has on their lists and hopefully find some new healthy eats! 

Here are my 5:

1.  Chia Seeds:  I discovered Chia seed this summer.  For those of you asking “Is this the same chia as the ch-ch-ch-chia pets?”, the answer is YES!

Today, Chia is growing in popularity as a food, due it is many health benefits.  See this great post for some of the awesome health benefits of this tiny seed  8 Health Benefits of Chia.

2.  Coconut Oil:  I’m pretty sure I first heard of using coconut oil in a recipe in something that I wanted to make from Clean Eating Magazine.  That does tend to be my source for quite a lot of my healthy recipes!  I just love it.  If you haven’t yet, check out their site.  I had heard conflicting things about coconut oil, so I took to the net and stopped by my go to site for healthy info (www.joyousheath.ca) and found these 2 great posts about coconut oil:
            Health Benefits of Coconut Oil
            What to do with Coconut Oil
I’ve used it in a couple of recipes, but one of my favourite things to do with it is pop popcorn in it.  It smells so good, and the hint of coconut flavour in the popcorn is amazing! 

3.  Raw Cacao Nibs:  Again, I first ran across these little bits of deliciousness in some recipes.  One recipe that pushed me to finally try them was Cashew Chip Cookies, from Sarah at Ingredients of a Fit Chick. 

The recipe is very simple and the cookies are to die for!  I highly recommend you try them.  If I can make them, anybody can.  Seriously, I am not a baked…AT ALL!

4.  Stevia.  I know this sugar replacing sweetener has been around for a while, but I just recently tried it.  It was actually making the cashew chip cookies above that I first used Stevia.  You should have seen me in the health food grocery store trying to decide which version of the stuff I should buy!  There are so many options out there in both the liquid and powder format.  In the end I chose a powder, since that’s what I thought the recipe needed.  My first impression was ‘this stuff is SWEET!’  A little goes a LONG way!  I really think I should start using more stevia and get away from sugar. 

5.  Hemp Hearts.  Here is another one that I’ve seen in recipes and just started to hear more about.  Livestrong.com has a great article about the health benefits of hemp hearts.  You can check it out here.  I bought some for an Eat Clean recipe:  Peanut Butter BackPack Kisses.  Here is how they looked on the Eat Clean Diet site:

I don’t know how the hemp hearts impacted the flavour of these tiny little balls of flavour, but they tasted really good, and were a perfect clean snack. I really should make some more of them. 

So, there you have it.  My new-to-me healthy foods. 

What are your new-to-you healthy food finds?

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