Healthful Living: Easy and Practical Ways to Eat Better and Stay Heart Healthy

Thursday, February 22^nd, at noon, at Spooner Memorial Library

What if taking better care of yourself could be fun and easy?

What if healthy food could be delicious?

What if you could change your bad habits before you had an upsetting health scare?

February is Heart Health month and Spooner Memorial Library is partnering with Spooner Health to bring our patrons a program we hope will make people motivated to change a little in order to live and feel better. 

While not everything is preventable, there are many positive things we can do to take charge of our health. Registered Dietitian Denise Roberts will teach us a few of them. Roberts has a Master’s of Science Degree in Clinical Nutrition and has been a registered dietitian for twenty-six years – she has many heart health tricks up her sleeve, tricks that may be intuitive to a dietitian, but not so obvious to the rest of us. She will talk about things like:

• Substituting ingredients to make the food you eat healthier, but not less flavorful
• How to best prepare food (such as boiling instead of frying)
• Reading food labels and learning what to look for
• Avoiding going to the store when hungry (bringing a list and sticking to it) 

And… she will share some great, heart healthy recipes. Here is one example: 

Cream of Wild Rice Soup

By Mayo Clinic

Number of servings 4

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups diced yellow onion

1 cup diced carrots

1 cup diced celery

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 tablespoon canola oil

1 1/2 cups kale

1 tablespoon minced parsley

2 cups reduced-sodium vegetable stock

1 teaspoon fennel seeds

1 teaspoon black pepper

1 cup unsalted white beans, prepared

2 cups 1% milk

1/2 cup wild rice, cooked

Directions:

Saute onion, carrot, celery, and garlic in canola oil in a soup pot until lightly browned. Add kale, parsley, stock, and spices. 

In blender, puree beans with milk. Add bean mixture to soup, bring to simmer and add rice. Cook for 30 minutes. Serve in warmed bowls.

Dietitian’s tip: 

Blended beans in this recipe provide creaminess without the fat and with the added bonus of fiber.

Nutritional Analysis:

Serving Size: 2 cups

Total carbohydrates  35 g, Dietary fiber  7 g, Sodium 135 mg, Saturated fat 1 g, Total fat 5 g, Trans fat 0g, Cholesterol 6 mg, Protein 11 g, Monounsaturated fat 3 g, Calories 229, Added sugar  0g

If there is interest in these health talks, there are several other self-help topics in the works at the library, under the umbrella Healthful Living. Please check in with the library for more information.