The 5 Days of Dessertmas Day 4: Fruit Desserts

Day 4: Fruit Desserts

On the fourth day of Dessertmas Natural Nutrition is giving you some fruit dessert recipes! When it comes to desserts for the family, or yourself, it does not always have to involve the use of chocolate. Here are some ideas for you to use to get some of your fruit into the diet in a creative way!

Recipe 1: Strawberry-Raspberry Sundaes

 

Strawberry-Raspberry Sundae Source

This may be more of a summer treat, but who is to say you cannot enjoy the tastiness of it at the holidays in December? The natural flavors of the strawberries and raspberries will bring out the sweet taste without all the sugar. Serve over frozen yogurt, which is absolutely delicious if I may say so myself!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup strawberries, plus more for garnish
• 1/2 cup raspberries, plus more for garnish
• 2 tablespoons sugar [ I recommend using NONE or very little of this]
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
• 2 cups nonfat vanilla frozen yogurt

In my opinion, you are going to get the sweet taste out of the fruit naturally. Really making the dessert less healthy when you start adding that sugar when it is not necessary for the sweet taste.

RECIPE HERE

Recipe 2: Apple-Sauced Nachos

 

Apple-Sauced Nachos Source

Sounds absolutely ridiculous does it not? Well do not knock it until you try it. Bake the tortilla chips in the oven in muffin cups and then top it with hot apples and raisins from a skillet gives you an interesting dessert. It is a very light dessert and is such an interesting idea that you will surely be the talk of the party when you reveal this one!

Ingredients:

• 2 6 - 7 - inches whole wheat flour tortillas*
• Nonstick cooking spray
• 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon apple pie spice or pumpkin pie spice
• 2 medium apples or pears, cored and sliced
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 tablespoon packed brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon golden raisins, dark raisins, or dried currants
• 1/2 teaspoon finely shredded orange peel

Again when making the topping for the tortilla chips, I think you can go lighter on the sugar. Remember that fruit have their own natural sugars in them, so you will really be overloading on the sugary taste in these desserts by adding more sugar. 

RECIPE HERE

Recipe 3: Cinnamon-Scented Baked Pears

Cinnamon-Scented Baked Pears Source

Minimum ingredients, only ~25 minutes to prepare, and tastes great! What is not to like about this recipe? It uses fat-free ricotta cheese as a dip, but if you are like me and not a fan of ricotta, you can also use some fat-free yogurt to dip.

Ingredients:

• 4 medium pears, very ripe and juicy, such as Comice or Packham
• ¾ tsp. ground cinnamon, divided
• 1 cup fat-free ricotta cheese
• 1 ½ tsp. SPLENDA® SPLENDA no calorie sweetener

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 400°F.

• Cut pears lengthwise in quarters and core; do not peel. Slice pear quarters into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Arrange half of pears in a 9-inch glass pie dish in concentric circles. Sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon. Top with remaining pear slices and sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon. Bake until pears are tender and give off juices, about 25 minutes; remove from oven.

• Place ricotta in bowl of an electric mixer. Add Splenda and remaining 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon. Beat until cheese is light and fluffy, about 1 minute. Yields about 1 cup of pears topped with 1/4 cup of seasoned ricotta per serving.

Notes:

To enhance the flavor of this dessert, pour the cooked pear juices into a small saucepan and reduce by half over medium-high heat. Spoon over the pears before serving.

Conclusion:


So this is what I have for you in the category for fruit desserts. I hope that you will maybe think about using these for your holidays and thank you so much for reading. See you for the final day of Dessertmas tomorrow!

If you missed day THREE, Link is HERE

Day 5: Pudding | Yogurt Desserts LINK



 

The 5 Days of Dessertmas Day 2: Cakes

Day 2: Cakes

On the second day of Dessertmas, your true love, Natural Nutrition of course, is going to give you some healthier cake recipes! Ever want to get the fluffy texture of the cake, but just did not want to take on the high amount of calories and saturated fat? Have no fear, this is your year!

Recipe 1: Chocolate cake made without flour!

 

flourless Chocolate Cake Source

Say what?? Do you not need flour to keep the cake risen and not collapsing easily? You may think that, but with this recipe you can make a cake without it! This is a gluten free option, so for those of you choosing not to eat gluten or cannot due to Celiac’s disease, this is the recipe for you!

Nutritional facts not listed, but this is a healthier option than your normal chocolate cake due to no flour being used. For traditional chocolate cake recipes, you are going to use around 1.5 cups of flour. That is ~700 calories and almost 2,000 mg of sodium erased from your cake!

Recipe HERE

Recipe 2: 3 Ingredient Lemon Cake

 

3 Ingredient Lemon Cake Source

I do not have much to say from this, as I got this from another blogger with a very cool blog. I will link her blog at the end of the paragraph for you to go check it out. Basically this recipe utilizes yogurt in exchange for using more eggs and oil. This is going to help cut down on calories and also give you more of your daily dairy requirements with the added dairy. I actually am considering trying this out for my own Dessertmas!

I will let her blog post speak for itself. Links below for this great information!

Recipe HERE

Blog HERE 

Recipe 3: WW Pumpkin Cupcakes

Pumpkin Cupcakes Source

Back to you with another Weight Watchers recipe, but I absolutely love these things! I have offered a chocolate, lemon and no a pumpkin spiced cake. No butter, no eggs, no flour, you really are far ahead of the game when making these delectable little cakes! To make it even better, there is only 5 ingredients in the recipe! This recipe is without frosting (as you can see in the above photo), so you could had some of your choice to it, just beware it will affect the nutrient facts. The sugars are a bit high, but you really are doing quite well on everything else in this recipe.

Nutrition Facts: 1 serving is 1 cupcake

• calories: 100.2 k/cal
• fat: 2.9 g
• saturated fat: 0.7g
• sodium: 184.5 mg
• Total carbohydrate: 17.5g
• dietary fiber: 0.9g
• Sugars: 10.5g
• Protein: 1.1g

Recipe HERE

 Conclusion:

Here are three different cake recipes for you to try on your Dessertmas. I offered a variety of choices, but if there is something that is not appealing in this selection, then stay tuned for the next 3 days of Dessertmas for some more ideas! After the 5 days there should be at least 15 choices for you to try! Thank you for reading and have enjoy the baking!

If you missed it, the FIRST day of Dessertmas is HERE

Day 3: Pies --> LINK 

Are YOU Aware of the Diabetes Dilemma?

Dying from Diabetes

By Tim Cullen

Diabetes is a major concern in the United States today. There are two types of diabetes, type 1 and type 2 as they are simply called.  Type 2 is the most prevalent in the United States accounting for the vast majority of cases. Most everyone knows about diabetes and how it is, obviously, not good for one's health. In this article I hope to spread even more knowledge to the public about the issues of Type 2 diabetes in this world we live in.

Facts About Diabetes in America 

 

2007 statistics of adults, by county, older than the age of 20 diagnosed with diabetes

More than 25.8 million Americans have diabetes, accounting for about 8.3% of the population (1). This already is a high amount of individuals, but that is not the end of it. 79 million Americans have something known as "pre-diabetes" (1). Pre-diabetes is stage before full-blown diabetes where people are at an increased risk of developing diabetes and the chronic diseases that come with it. If people with pre-diabetes do not start taking preventative measures, then it may escalate into worse problems.

Now that I have shined light upon the amount of people with diabetes or pre-diabetes in America, let's talk costs. Diabetes costs the country $174 billion per year (4). This is an outrageous amount of money spent on something that can be prevented with a healthy and semi-active lifestyle. We will go even more in depth about the costs in a moment, but 50% of Medicare beneficiaries had diabetes in 2010 (1). We could save enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars if we focused on implementing preventative measures for diabetes.

Consequences (1)

Below is a list of consequences from having pre-diabetes and diabetes.

• Pre-diabetes: high blood pressure and high cholesterol to strokes and kidney disease.
• Diabetes: cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, eye disease, blindness and possible nerve damage
• Costs
• Average yearly health care cost for diabetes patient = $11,744
• Average yearly health care cost for non-diabetes patient = $2,560
• The results are staggering and this shows that this could save serious money for our country if we tackle the prevention aspect of diabetes

Prevention of Diabetes

The best way to prevent diabetes is to simply change your lifestyle.  Yes there are medications out there that helps you cope with having diabetes, but it never really helps. Of course changing your lifestyle is not the total answer to fixing this issue completely, but it is impactful. By changing lifestyle I am advocating 3 things

• Eating healthier foods. Staying away from high saturated fat, high carbohydrate and high sodium meals is a good start.
• Incorporate physical activity into your life. Just 30 minutes a day can help and eventually bumping that up to 60 minutes it awesome. Even something as simple as walking somewhere you would normally drive is a great idea!
• Losing a modest amount of weight. I am not asking you to lose heaps of weight, but every pound helps.

Diabetes Prevention Program (DDP)

Diabetes Prevention Program was a clinical trial attempting to find if lifestyle changes had a major affect on diabetes prevalence in patients. Listed below is what they found.

·        Over a 3 year span

• Lifestyle intervention resulted in a 58% reduced chance to go from pre-diabetes to diabetes
• Metformin  resulted in only a 31% reduced chance to go from pre-diabetes to diabetes
• Metformin is a drug to combat diabetes and is the main drug taken to counteract Type 2 diabetes
• Lifestyle intervention ages 60+ resulted in a 71% reduced chance from pre-diabetes to diabetes

Now this is results for a 3 year span and it was wondered if this could be sustained. The program did follow ups and it was found that it was still sustained 10 years later (2).

Conclusion

Type 2 diabetes accounts for about 90% of the diabetes complications out there and it is a glaring issue. It increases taxpayer costs and health care costs by billions every year. A simple and easy way to begin tackling this issue is through diet rather than medicine. Getting more active and watching what we eat is important for us to reduce the prevalence of diabetes in this country. Staying away from high saturated fat, high carbohydrate and high sodium foods is a great start at tackling this issue. Getting active for as little as 30 minutes 3 times a week can also be huge in taking on the diabetes issue by the horns. The activity does not even have to be high intensity workouts, something as simple as walking instead of driving to the local shop at the corner is a great choice. Obviously this isn't the only solution to the issue of diabetes, but it certainly does not make the situation worse if done correctly. Even if you do not have pre-diabetes or diabetes, I URGE you to try and change your lifestyle for the better!

Thank you for reading and be sure to subscribe and share if you enjoyed! I appreciate you guys reading our posts very much!

Sources:

Brown, W., & Hayes, C. (2013). Academy Policy Strategies to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 113(11), 1443-1447.