500 High Fiber Recipes: Fight Diabetes, High Cholesterol, High Blood Pressure, and Irritable Bowel Syndrome with Delicious Meals That Fill You Up and Help You Shed Pounds!

713 Pages·2009·2.07 MB·English

by  Dick Logue

500 HIGH-FIBER RECIPES
Fight Diabetes, High Cholesterol, High Blood
Pressure, and Irritable Bowel Syndrome with
Delicious Meals That Fill You Up and
Help You Shed Pounds!
DICK LOGUE
Dedication
In loving memory of my mother, Laura Wright Logue, who got me started
cooking, and I’m sure is still watching over my efforts.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION What’s All This about High Fiber?
CHAPTER 1 How Do I Add More Fiber to My Diet?
CHAPTER 2 Appetizers, Snacks, and Party Foods: Legumes
CHAPTER 3 Appetizers, Snacks, and Party Foods: Grains
CHAPTER 4 Appetizers, Snacks, and Party Foods: Vegetables and Fruits
CHAPTER 5 Appetizers, Snacks, and Party Foods: Nuts
CHAPTER 6 Appetizers, Snacks, and Party Foods: Combinations
CHAPTER 7 Breakfast: Grains
CHAPTER 8 Breakfast: Vegetables and Fruits
CHAPTER 9 Breakfast: Combinations
CHAPTER 10 Main Dishes: Legumes
CHAPTER 11 Main Dishes: Grains
CHAPTER 12 Main Dishes: Vegetables and Fruits
CHAPTER 13 Main Dishes: Combinations
CHAPTER 14 Side Dishes and Salads: Legumes
CHAPTER 15 Side Dishes and Salads: Grains
CHAPTER 16 Side Dishes and Salads: Vegetables and Fruits
CHAPTER 17 Side Dishes and Salads: Combinations
CHAPTER 18 Breads
CHAPTER 19 Desserts and Other Sweets: Legumes
CHAPTER 20 Desserts and Other Sweets: Grains
CHAPTER 21 Desserts and Other Sweets: Vegetables and Fruits
CHAPTER 22 Desserts and Other Sweets: Combinations
CHAPTER 23 Cooking Terms, Weights and Measurements, and Gadgets
Index
INTRODUCTION
What’s All This about High Fiber?
Recently there has been a lot of talk on the news and in other sources about the
benefits of increasing the amount of fiber in your diet. Perhaps you’ve seen or
heard some of these reports, and that is why you are looking at this book. If so,
you probably have a number of questions. I’m going to try to address some of
those questions here.
We’ll look at things like the following:
• Why all the talk about increasing fiber? Is this just another diet craze?
• What are some of the benefits of a high-fiber diet?
• Aren’t there concerns about and drawbacks to eating a high-fiber diet?
• How much fiber should we be eating every day?
• How did I end up writing a book of high-fiber recipes?
After we’ve looked at these questions, chapter 1 will go into detail about how
to increase the amount of fiber you eat. We’ll look at what the best high-fiber
foods are; how you can make some simple substitutions when you go shopping
to greatly increase the fiber in your diet; and some surprising foods that contain
fiber (like chocolate!).
The rest of the book contains 500 recipes that will help you think about ways
to get more fiber in your diet. I’m not going to give you some meal plan to stick
to. The ones I’ve seen in other books are not the kind of thing that most people
would follow anyway. And they generally only contain a day’s or at the most a
week’s worth of meals. What I am going to do is give you lots of recipes,
literally everything from soup to nuts (both of which are usually good high-fiber
choices). These aren’t the kind of recipes that will make you think you are on
some strictly regimented diet. They are the kind that you can pick and choose
from to add fiber to your diet, while still providing yourself and your family
food that tastes good and is like the kinds of things you’ve always eaten.
Why All This Talk about High-Fiber Diets?
The first question many people are going to have is probably “Why am I hearing
so much about high-fiber diets lately?” First of all, fiber is not a new topic. Dr.
John Kellogg, who founded the company that was to become Kellogg’s cereal,
was a big proponent of fiber in the late 1800s. And Charles Post invented Grape-
Nuts, still a popular high-fiber cereal, in 1897. However, fiber has had a bit of an
up-and-down history. During the middle of the 20th century it was common to
consider fiber a relatively unimportant part of a diet, and it was typically
removed from items like white flour.
It is true, however, that talk about fiber has increased in recent years. Part of
this is due to the increased awareness of healthy eating over the past 30 or 40
years. Vegetarian cooking tends to be higher in fiber than diets containing meat.
And heart-healthy cooking, which is where I got started in creating healthier
versions of recipes, also generally includes higher fiber, for reason that we’ll
discuss. A number of recent medical studies have also confirmed the medical
benefits of high-fiber diets for a number of different conditions. Here are a few: •
A study published in the May 11, 2000, issue of the New England Journal of
Medicine reported that patients with diabetes who maintained very high fiber in
their daily diet lowered their glucose levels by 10 percent.
• A 1976 study by the Veterans Administration Medical Center, Lexington,
Kentucky, showed that fiber is useful in treating diabetes, high blood
pressure, and obesity and in reducing cholesterol levels.
• Two studies published in the Lancet showed that people with high-fiber diets
suffered from fewer incidents of colon polyps and colon cancer.
So there are a lot of good reasons to add more fiber to your diet, even if you
aren’t currently being treated for a medical condition that requires it. In the next
section we’ll look at some of those reasons in more detail.
Why Increase the Amount of Fiber in Your Diet?
So what are the benefits of a high-fiber diet? Let’s take a look at some of the
more common ones.
Lose Weight
Let’s start with this one since it’s on a lot of people’s minds. If you do a search
online, you’ll find any number of people pushing high-fiber eating as a way to
lose weight. And it does work. We’ll get into more details in the next section, but
the short explanation is that by eating more fiber, you’ll feel more full and want
to eat fewer calories. And the bottom line in losing weight is to burn more
calories than you eat.
Reduce the Rick of Certain Cancers
A major benefit for everyone is the role that fiber has been shown to have in
reducing cancer. I already mentioned the studies that showed people who eat a
high-fiber diet have less colon cancer. It appears there are a number of benefits
to colon health from fiber. First, it helps to push stools through the colon more
quickly, which contributes to overall colon health. Water-soluble fiber also
encourages the growth of beneficial bacteria in the colon. And finally, it helps to
bind potential carcinogens and excrete them from the body. The bottom line is
that the people who eat a high-fiber diet have been shown to have a 40 percent
reduction in the risk of colon cancer.
But colon cancer isn’t the only cancer that fiber can reduce. Studies done in
England have revealed not only that women who eat a high-fiber diet are less
likely to develop breast cancer, but also that women who already had breast
cancer had a longer life expectancy on a high-fiber diet. And finally, studies have
shown a significant reduction in uterine cancer in women who ate a high-fiber
diet.