Dietary & Lifestyle Recommendations - Additional Information

Work in progress.  Thank you for your patience!

~ Dr. Jenna McNamee, ND

Probiotics - The FACTS!

I didn't write this, but wanted to share it as it's really good advice!

• All probiotic products are NOT alike and do not offer the stated health benefits.
• Over 99% of the products on the market have never been clinically studied and make unproven claims!
• Most formulas are a guess work in compilation of the greatest number of different strains in the highest number per capsule to impress the consumer e.g. 12 strains delivering 20 billion cfu (colony forming units). Do not be fooled with the concept of ‘more is better’. The reason most companies put in such large numbers is because they have no clinical data that any of the strains are compatible, survive or produce any effect and are hoping that by incorporating such high amounts at least some will end up surviving. Do not be fooled!
• Some combinations have no history of use and may be antagonistic to each other and, worse still, may alter the gut flora in an undesirable way.

This is one of the reasons that we only use evidence-based, well-researched, and clinically validated probiotic strains and products in the clinic.  We will never recommend any inferior products to any of our clients - that's a promise :)

Thank you to AOR for the info! 

www.aor.ca

CSA Weeks 4-5

So, I kind of failed last week and didn't get a chance to put any pictures up!  This blog will be a combo of weeks 4-5 of our CSA program.  It's going well so far, and although it's been a bit challenging at times to adjust to eating things that we haven't eaten before, we've been adapting, and I think that's great as we're trying new things.

Here's what our box looked like last week:

Strawberries, baby bok choy, lettuce, and garlic scapes.

I'd like to thank Cooper's farm for introducing me to garlic scapes as I'd never heard of them or seen them before! It's actually kind of embarassing, but I didn't even know that garlic had "tops" and that they had to be removed so that they don't take away from the garlic bulbs.  See, learning these things is one of the benefits of a CSA ;)

Even better, though, is that I actually LOVE them!  We're big garlic fans at our house and have even become somewhat desensitized to it (overpowering garlicy to others tastes normal to us!)  So, I find these garlic scapes really tasty and have enjoyed adding them to salads, salsas, main dishes, maybe even the occasional raw one...haha

Now, the unfortunate part is that I have NO pictures of any of these being used.  I guess between eating a lot of them raw and having a certain someone cook them and then eat them without telling me, and the long weekend festivities, I kind of dropped the ball on that this week.  I will try harder!

This week (week 5), we received more strawberries, sugar snap peas (a huge lot of them), Boston lettuce, romaine lettuce, kale, radish, and more garlic scapes :P  And we got some tomatoes and a cucumber extra.

Look at all of this food!!

This container is big, and it's full to the brim with sugar snap peas.  We got a ton this week.

The radish actually just got eaten already, so I guess no pictures of that (darn! lol).  We didn't know what to do with them, so tried roasting them with a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper, and they were delicious.  I think they will become a regular with the rest of our roasted veggies!  We're planning on juicing the greens.

I'll see if I can get some pics, of something to share next week.

Thanks for reading!

Jenna

CSA Week #3

This week's box contained a lot more stuff!

Included were strawberries, rhubarb, asparagus, lettuce, green onions, kale, and heirloom storage carrots.

Everything looks great, and we're noticing that some of the veggies that we received in previous weeks are also bigger in size now.

Here's what we did with some of the vegetables that we received last week:

Salad (I think this will be included almost every week lol)

Asparagus, green onion, and spinach dish

Roasted potatoes

 Have a great week, everyone!  I'm glad the weather is, in fact, warming up :)

CSA Week #2

We're through our first week of CSA veggie goodies!

Here's what our box looked like this week:

It included lettuce, asparagus, green onions:

Big bowl of spinach (bowl not included):

And storage potatoes:

To give some perspective on how the cold and damp weather has been affecting this year's crops thus far, this is the first time in seven years that potatoes have been included in the first summer boxes!  I have no previous experience with a CSA, so it's all new to me, no expectations lol.  I'm sure we'll be getting lots of great produce once the weather warms up!

Now, as for what we did with last week's produce:

Salad made up of the two types of lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers (that was a no-brainer!):

Asparagus, mushrooms, and onions (onions additional) over brown rice (this was really delicious!):

And...since we rarely have rhubarb in the house, we decided to make a dessert (well, actually my bf made that decision, pastry and all!)  Bad naturopath, bad!!

The rhubarb puff pastries were also apparently cat-approved, as these two troublemakers decided to help themselves to one in the night (ooops) and all we found were crumbs on the floor the next morning (and a missing pastry) lol

That's everything for this week!  Hope you are all coping with the damp, yucky weather!  It reminds me of my first time going to music camp (June 2000).  A week away camping in cabins with no heat and playing music in buildings with no heat...it was so damp, rainy, and cold the entire time!  I felt real sorry for the people who had signed up for water skiing and swimming as their elective!  But it did eventually warm up that summer (I think), so I'm still optimistic :)