Watermelon Pizza

Creamy and Rich Mock Cheesecake

Ingredients

Crust

3/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup melted Earth Balance margarine
1 1/2 cups oats
1 1/2 cups walnuts

Filling

2 pkgs extra firm silken tofu
1-1/2 pkgs Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese
1/4 cup canola oil
1 cup sifted cocoa
1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1-1/4 cups sugar
1 Tbsp cornstarch
2 Tbsp water

Method

Crust

1. In a food processor, blend all ingredients.
2. In a 9″ springform pan, press evenly along bottom.

Filling

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF.
2. Dissolve cornstarch in water.
3. In a food processor, blend all ingredients until smooth.
4. Add filling to springform pan and bake for 40 mins until edges are slightly golden and start to pull away from the pan. Centre should still wiggle.
5. Let cool for one hour.

Makes 12 servings.

Source: ciao!

Nut Butters

Veronica Houk wrote . . . . .

Say hello to the craziest nut butters you won’t be able to get enough of.

We all love a good ol’ fashioned PB&J, but with so many nut butters on the market, why settle for something you’ve been eating since fourth grade when you could have new, innovative products with a wide range of flavors? You shouldn’t, that’s why, so the next time you’re looking for a quick snack, put away the old school peanut butter and instead reach for one of these new spreads to add to your sandwich repertoire. Once you do, you’ll agree that lunch just got a whole lot more exciting.

Spiked peanut butter

Alcohol for breakfast? What? Are we back in college? For those of us who stopped boozing before noon, the only way someone will convince us to have bourbon at breakfast is by adding a scoop of Reginald’s Homemade Lite-Crunch Bourbon Pecan Peanut Butter & Amaretto to our oatmeal. The alcohol flavor is not overwhelming but just enough to provide a sweet, almondy kick that balances the salty intensity of the dry-roasted pecans and peanuts.

Chocolate chip-cookie dough almond butter

Nobody should have to choose between salty and sweet. Thanks to RawMio’s Almond Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, you don’t have to. A blend of almonds, vanilla bean, raw chocolate chips, and superfood maca powder, this spread is sweet but won’t make you crash after a spoonful—or three.

Sprouted nut butter

Don’t be scared that this healthy butter is green because the stone-ground pepita butter is a smooth, rich way to enjoy the most intense nut flavor. Totally raw, Dastony Raw Sprouted Pumpkin Seed Butter is a delicious swap-out for traditional sugar-laden varieties. Tip: a little goes a long way when the nut’s flavor is not masked by roasting or additional ingredients.

Hemp seed butter

Hemp is everywhere these days, including lunch boxes. Luckily, this kind won’t get your kid sent to the principal’s office as the smooth butter, which has a green tint due to a high chlorophyll content, is brimming with protein and essential fatty acids. Mix into salad dressings to help with the thickness and strong flavor profile. Hippie Butter even offers free samples of their Raw Organic Hemp Seed Butter.

Coconut butter

Coconut oil has garnered a lot of spotlight in recent years, but coconut butter, made from whole coconut flesh puréed into a thick spread, is a more filling alternative. Banana, coconut butter, and cinnamon sandwiches are as no-fuss as they are delicious. Unlike sprouted pumpkin seed butter or boozy peanut butter, numerous companies—including Artisana, Nutiva, and MaraNatha—offer coconut butter.

Coffee nut butter

Need a jolt? Wild Friends Vanilla Espresso Almond Butter is your afternoon pick-me-up and features all the flavor you crave without your co-workers passing judgment for your third trek to the drip machine. The hints of vanilla and espresso are delicate but discernable, and we appreciate that they are free of palm oil and GMO ingredients. Wild Friends’ two creators founded the company while in college, and judging by how many PB&Js we ate in undergrad, we totally trust a company inspired by dorm life nut butter consumption.

Spicy peanut butter

Peanut Butter & Co. makes a number of vegan-friendly peanut butter game-changers—White Chocolate Wonderful, anyone?—but what really gets us going is its The Heat Is On. For anyone who smothers their meals with sriracha, try this spice-infused peanut butter on crudités or, even more adventurously, in curries or with vegan buffalo wings.

Chocolate fudge cake batter

How did cake batter get on this list? D’s Naturals Fluffbutter is made from ground almonds with no added sugar, so it’s a surprisingly healthy re-envisioning of sinful batter from a jar. We think it’s best as a topping drizzled onto apple slices or even dairy-free ice cream.

Nut butter blend

NuttZo Power Fuel contains organic cashews, almonds, Brazil nuts, flax seeds, hazelnuts, chia seeds, pumpkin seeds, and a pinch of sea salt. For all the times when you’re unsure what flavor you’re in the mood for, choose the nutritional benefits of seven nuts and seeds. The NuttZo jar is designed with its lid on the bottom, so you don’t have to scrape wildly for that last tablespoon stuck where your spoon can’t reach—why can’t every nut butter company be so clever and empathetic?

Source: Veg News

Low-Fat May Beat Low-Carb Diet for Trimming Body Fat

But best weight-loss plan is one you can stick with long-term, researcher says.

When it comes to slimming down, a diet low in fat seems to beat a diet low in carbohydrates for body fat loss, new research suggests.

The finding stems from a small U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) investigation that tracked each approach to weight loss among 19 obese adults.

“These results counter the claims of the popular theory that has been influencing many people to adopt low-carb diets,” said study lead author Kevin Hall, a senior investigator with the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Bethesda, Md.

That theory focuses on the notion that carb-cutting triggers a decrease in insulin levels, while cutting fat does not. The hormonal plunge should, in turn, boost fat-burning and increase fat loss, he explained.

“[But] while all of these things happened during the reduced carbohydrate diet,” Hall added, “the reduced fat diet also led to loss of body fat and at a greater rate than the reduced carb diet, despite being equal in calories and having no observable effect on insulin production.”

The study was published in Cell Metabolism.

The 10 men and nine women who participated in the study had an average body mass index (BMI) of nearly 36. BMI is a rough estimate of a person’s body fat based on their height and weight. A BMI of 30 or more indicates obesity, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While residing in the NIH Clinical Center’s “metabolic unit,” the study volunteers participated in a nearly two-week low-fat diet, followed by a nearly two-week low-carb diet.

The first five days of each diet consisted of a “baseline” menu made up of 50 percent carbs, 35 percent fat, and 15 percent protein. Next, either carbohydrate intake or fat intake was cut by 30 percent for the remaining six days of each session. Both restriction menus were composed of 30 percent fewer calories than the baseline menus, the study said.

The researchers found that the low-carbohydrate diet led to a loss of 53 grams of body fat daily. The low-fat diet prompted a body fat loss of 89 grams daily. During the short-term study, people on the low-carb arm lost slightly more weight than those on the low-fat diet — about 4 pounds versus 3 pounds. This could be due to differences in the amount of water lost, researchers said. They also said the loss of fat was a more important measure of success in the treatment of obesity.

The researchers also said that the small leg up in weight loss afforded by cutting carbs appeared to dissipate over time, with total caloric restriction being more important to weight loss than the type of calories consumed.

“[And] in the real world, people couldn’t possibly control or monitor their food intake as carefully as was done in our study,” Hall noted. “Therefore, it is likely more important to choose a diet that leads to a reduction in calorie intake that can be sustained for long periods of time.

“In other words,” he said, “our study suggests that [total] calories are the primary driver of fat loss.”

Lona Sandon, a registered dietician and an assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, agreed.

“Reducing calories, no matter the source, [whether] carbs or fats, is most important for weight loss overall,” she said. “If you decrease fat to create a calorie deficit, the body will use stored carbs for energy until those stores are used. Then it will take from fat stores. If you reduce carbs for a calorie deficit, the body will use up the stored carb energy and then tap into fat sources.

“But that does not mean people should not pay attention to the type of calories they are getting,” Sandon added. “Quality calories from nutrient-rich foods are still the best.”

Susan Roberts, the author of an editorial accompanying the study, expressed the hope the current effort will “finally debunk the incorrect notion that all carbs are bad for weight control.” Roberts is professor of nutrition and psychiatry, and senior scientist and director of the Energy Metabolism Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston.

“The whole question of whether low-carb diets are helpful for weight or not is a toxic swamp of commercial interests and bad science, and this new study is finally providing some sanity,” she said.

“Do you have to eat low-carb to lose weight, because if you eat carbs, that prevents fat release from fat cells?” Roberts asked rhetorically. “The answer is clearly no from this study. If you cut calories, even if that diet is high in carbs, you will lose fat.”

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

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