The Hemp Connection:
folate

So you've been told you need to clean up your nutrition act, and you've stopped eating the Fritos. You've decided to stop being the reason the stock price of your local fast food restaurant has weathered the Wall Street willies. Your salad dressing shelf in your refrigerator is now half of what's in your refrigerator.

Still no luck.

Hey, isn't eating better supposed to be the answer?

Depends on how you define eating better.

I'm noticing with my inCYST classes that a disproportionate percentage of women coming for information have adopted vegetarian practices. And I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't part of the problem.

No, the problem isn't that you're vegetarian. It's how you're defining vegetarian, and it's how you go about being one that matters. Here are my simple rules for being the healthiest (potentially fertile) vegetarian you can be.

1. Define your vegetarianism by what you DO eat.

Most people I know who become vegetarian after eating meat, define that practice in terms of what they DON'T eat. They DON'T do red meat. They DON'T do dairy. They DON'T do fish. DON'T, DON'T, DON'T.

Therein lies the problem.

A most important rule of nutrition is, when you eliminate an entire category of food, for whatever reason, be it meat or wheat, you are also eliminating crucial nutrients that this category contains.

My definition of vegetarian is someone who meets all of their complete nutritional needs without using animal products.

Do you know what fertility-related nutrients you're likely short on if all you've done is cut out meat? If not, read on!

2. Zap yourself with zinc!

Zinc is needed for oodles of reactions that keep your body running, from your brain to your ovaries. Are you eating whole grains? Beans? Pumpkin and sunflower seeds? Nuts? Oops…go get your shopping list, right now, and put them down!

3. Forgetting folate can be fatal

You likely know about this nutrient since there has been so much publicity about its role in pregnancy. Put spinach on your sandwich instead of lettuce…make sure your morning cereal is fortified…eat more beans and split peas…and become savvy with sunflower seeds!

4. Cultivate a copper attitude

It's not as famous as folate, but it still is important to remember. Outside of red meat, its vegan sources are rather random: molasses, green olives, cocoa, nuts, avocadoes, black pepper, sunflower seeds…hopefully at least one of these sounds tasty!

5. Try to remember tryptophan

Tryptophan is a building block for serotonin, one of the major neurotransmitters regulating the brain's hormone center. For vegetarians, there are still a lot of options even if you're not using dairy products or eating turkey. Does your pantry have…cocoa, mangoes, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, oats, dates, chickpeas, peanuts, bananas, and sunflower seeds? It needs to.

6. Allow for algae

If you're vegan, chances are you're not getting enough DHA and EPA, the omega-3 fatty acids primarily found in fish. Become friendly with an ingredient known as Life's DHA, a marine algae source of DHA (unfortunately not EPA), that is being added to vegan-friendly foods. The link I'm providing gets you to the most recent list of foods containing this ingredient that you may want to become proficient at finding.

7. Not all vegan products are created equally healthy. Be sure if you've gone vegan, that you are aware of oils that can interfere with healthy balance. These oils are all vegan, but tend to be pro-inflammatory: safflower, sunflower, soybean, corn, cottonseed, sesame. (Remember my"S and C" rule from previous posts. If you're eating absolutely no meat at all, but you're eating a salad doused with soybean oil-based dressing…that could be a problem. Become familiar with brands that are made with olive or canola oils, or learn to make vinaigrettes. (Canola is the"C" oil exception, by the way.

8. Be happy without hydrogenated.

Hydrogenated = trans fat. Enough said.

9. Forget the fructose…high fructose corn syrup, that is.

It's been connected to insulin resistance in more than one study. And despite what marketers would really like you to believe, more than one nutrition expert does not endorse its use.

10. Be pro-protein

This is the most obvious one…know your complementary proteins and be sure your diet includes them. One caveat…soy may be hard on your thyroid function and is not a good choice if you have a family history of breast cancer. Be sure you are reading labels, as soy is a filler in many, many foods.

I like to look for patterns that make nutrition recommendations easy to recommend. In this post, it didn't work out that way. A lot of these foods are random. If I'm not giving you ideas that seem easy to work into your food plan…think of consulting with one of our experts! That's what we excel at, and that's what we're waiting to help you with.

After all, you became vegan to be healthy, let's work together to do it correctly.

Last night, after a long day at the computer, I walked over to the gym for a swim. And as I always do, I stop in to Trader Joe's to see what food and drink they were sampling. I have been so busy working I completely forgot St. Patrick's Day is just around the corner.and TJ's was sampling corned beef and beer for a themed promotion.

As I swam, I thought about some less fatty options you cysters could try this year. Which, beer fresh on my palate, led to my looking up recipes for beer soaked salmon (see below)…and then to a Google search for the health benefits of (moderate!) beer consumption to justify posting the recipe…and I found quite a bit!

•Hops contains flavonoids which may help to prevent certain kinds of cancer.

•Beer contains vitamin B6, which protects against heart diseases by preventing the build-up of a compound called homocysteine.
•Beer contains folate! And you know how much inCYST loves folate!

•Magnesium, another mineral you see us write about in this blog, is also found in beer.

•You'll find vitamin B12 in your lager as well, which is needed for maintaining normal growth, good memory and concentration.

Since many of the readers of this blog are trying to conceive, I must caution you that consumption of any kind of alcohol is not recommended if you are or are trying to be pregnant. In this beer salmon recipe from the Food Network, there is opportunity for the alcohol to evaporate with cooking, leaving the nutrients behind. You can use garlic powder instead of garlic salt, and cut the brown sugar in half, if you wish. Since it's maple syrup season, you might even substitute a little bit of that instead if you have some on hand.

I found a nice quinoa stuffing with leeks, walnuts, and cherries at http://www.myrecipes.com/ that you might like to try along with the salmon.

Of course, you can enjoy the meal with a nice hearty beer if you wish, there will surely be some left from your six pack at dinner time! In my house, it's going to be the Guinness seasonal that inspired this blogging journey.

May the face of every good news and the back of every bad news be toward you…
Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I was just posting on my other blog (www.thisisyourbrainonpsychdrugs.blogspot.com) about the association between epilepsy medications and folate deficiency. It reminded me that folate is important for women trying to conceive. And you can get it in places other than supplements…like food!

Dark green vegetables can be hard to get into your diet if you're busy, but they're important to prioritize. I think spinach gets a bad rap because many of us remember it plopped in a cold blob on our school lunch trays waaaay back when. But it's really not that bad!

An easy way to add spinach to your diet, if you're already eating salad, is to remember to pick up a bag of spinach leaves along with your regular lettuce, and mix them together when you're tossing a salad. Spinach is an easy thing to add to some of your simple favorites--like a quesadilla. When I lived in Chicago spinach pizza was all the rage. Why not put a few leaves on your favorite sandwich? Or add it to your next omelet?

If you want to cook spinach the old fashioned way, dress it up with pine nuts and raisins.

It's not so much that spinach isn't a good food, it's more about getting in the habit of keeping it around and making it a habit of including it in some of your old favorites.

This blog post is devoted to answering a question I've had for a few years…when did tangerines, one of my favorite snacks, suddenly become clementines? I found this answer on Yahoo Answers:

Clementines, tangerines and satsumas are all types of mandarin. Mandarins have been cultivated in China for a couple of thousand years, where they were deemed a fruit only suitable for the upper echelons of society and so were only exported to Europe in the 1900's. Of the various types of mandarin, clementines are smaller and tend to have fewer seeds, a very thin easily peeled skin. They are seemingly named after one Father Pierre Clement who, the story goes, inadvertently bred the hybrid orange in his orphanage garden in Oman. Tangerines, with loose skin and less sweetness, where named after their original port of origin in Tangiers, in fact, the word tangerine was already in common parlance before then as an adjective describing something from Tangiers. Satsuma's are just that. Satsumas from Satsuma, the Japanese province in which they were first cultivated, though, confusingly they are sometimes called mikans.

The main difference between a clementine and a tangerine is that a clementine is seedless while a tangerine is not. That likely explains the rising popularity of clementines.

I love these guys! Forget the 100 calorie cookie packs, these fruits are the very first calorie-controlled pre-measured snack. They're high in vitamin C, which is an antioxidant as well as a vitamin. And they're not shabby when it comes to folate.

If you're feeling creative, I found a fun web page with recipes using clementines.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Clementine-Recipes:-Not-Just-for-Snacking&id=107724

I have recently discovered a great budget-friendly store that is new to California, Arizona, and Nevada, called Fresh and Easy. It's not really a new store, it's been around in the UK for years under the name Tesco.

I discovered quite by accident that this store, about an hour before closing time, starts to mark its perishables near expiration date, off by 50%. I got out of there with my week's food for almost half of what I normally spend!

Of course, the perishables that don't sell are the ones people either don't like or don't know how to cook, so I'm eating more healthfully by virtue of other peoples' shopping omissions.: )

One of the things I have regularly been coming home with is a big head of cauliflower. It's not that I don't like cauliflower, I do, but there's only so much you can eat raw in a salad or dipped in hummous. So I've been researching other ways to eat it.

I've made cauliflower and pasta, cauliflower curry, and the other night, a really quick and easy cauliflower soup. Cooked correctly, it's got a pleasant flavor that goes well with a lot of things I like to eat.

Cauliflower is a decent source of folate, which you will see repeatedly mentioned on this blog. It's also an excellent source of vitamin C and pantothenic acid. It's part of the anti-cancer family of vegetables including broccoli, cabbbage, and Brussels sprouts.

Here is a link to 324 healthy cauliflower recipes to get you started.

Why would I pick such an esoteric fruit for this blog? I've got several reasons.

1. I have been asked to be part of a committee here in Phoenix that organizes Get Your PHX, monthly events promoting local businesses. Because my specialty is nutrition, I've been assigned the task of finding food for these parties. It's a great opportunity to give my fellow Phoenicians a chance to try some of the principles promoted on this blog--eat a variety of foods, organic and locally grown when possible--and to see that it actually tastes great!

The restaurant I am working with for next week's event is called The Breadfruit. It's a small but very popular joint in downtown Phoenix that obtains quite a few of its ingredients from the farmer's market around the corner. I joined The Breadfruit's Facebook fan page, and Sasha Ottey of PCOS Challenge, who is originally from Jamaica, commented that the breadfruit is a staple of Jamaica. So, for Sasha, I'm highlighting this food.

2. Women with PCOS often cut back what they are eating to just a small list of foods that they've culled from the Internet, at the expense of their dietary variety. I worked with eating disorders before specializing in PCOS, and my observation is that there is a lot more fear about food with PCOS than with eating disorders. I would guess, it has to do with wanting so badly to conceive, or lose weight, or whatever, that (unrealistic) magical powers to help or hurt PCOS start to be attached to certain food. There is no such top ten list of PCOS cure foods. In fact, the more varied your diet, the more nutrients you can get. So I wanted to pick a food that challenged all of you to think outside of that top ten list.

3. Dietary regimens for PCOS take all the fun out of food. It becomes a chore, eating the same foods over and over becomes boring, and eventually the backlash is likely to become a binge on foods that are counterproductive to PCOS. I encourage you all to have fun with food! Even if you're not coming to Get Your PHX next week, if you have an opportunity to try Jamaican food, or Korean food, or Bolivian food…don't pass it up! You might find something you like that you can add to your routine.

Back to breadfruit. What is it? It's a starchy staple of tropical nations around the world. It is typically cooked before eating, and it gets its name from its bread-like flavor. It can also be stored, fermented, and turned into a paste.

In economically disadvanted countries, breadfruit is consumed in large quantities that would not be appropriate for someone trying to balance their carbohydrate, protein, and fat intake. As a side dish, in moderation, it does provide vitamin C, choline, thiamine, niacin, vitamin B6, folate, and a lot of dietary fiber--11 grams per serving! And even though it is starchy, its glycemic index is not high, likely due to its fiber content.

So if you're out having fun, and the menu includes something exotic, don't pass it up just because it's not salmon, broccoli, walnuts, or blueberries. Mother Earth has a bounty of options that are good for you, fun to try, and pleasing to your palate.

I mentioned yesterday in my Facebook status that I was making black eyed peas, and the response to the recipe was positive enough that I thought I'd share it here!

Black eyed peas are one of those things you don't hear much about unless someone in your family comes from south of the Mason-Dixon line. They are commonly eaten on New Year's Day for good luck. I'm used to having them cooked with a ham hock, served with greens. But I saw this recipe in my new Costco cookbook and had to try it. It's supposed to be a dip for chips, but I loved it as a cold salad.

Black eyed peas, by the way, are a decent source of folate, for those of you who are trying to conceive or who are pregnant.

Enjoy!

Cowboy Caviar

1 lb. frozen corn
1/2 lb. black eyed peas, cooked (I just piled them in the slow cooker first thing this morning)
1 avocado, peeled and diced
2/3 cup cilantro, … Read Morechopped
2-3 green onions, chopped
4 Roma tomatoes
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 garlic cloves, crushed
3/4 tsp salt
1/8 teaspoon ground pepper
1 tbsp ground cumin

In a medium bowl, combine first 6 ingredients.
In a small bowl, whisk together next 6 ingredients. Add to the vegetable mixture and toss to coat.

If you're trying to conceive, you likely know that it's important to be getting enough folate in your diet in order to prevent neural tube defects.

Even if you're NOT trying to get pregnant, folate is important for women with PCOS.

Homocysteine is a compound found in the blood, which, in elevated amounts, indicates increased cardiovascular risk and inflammation. It tends to be elevated in women with PCOS.

Fifty patients with PCOS, were divided into two groups receiving two different treatments. The first group received 1700 mg of metformin per day, along with 400 mug folate. The second group received metformin without folate.

Homocysteine levels were significantly increased in both groups, but to a lesser degree when they also supplemented with folate.

I was heartened to see this study, since so much research on PCOS focuses on the part of PCOS we can SEE (i.e., weight), and seems to ignore that biochemistry can be altered regardless of weight. In fact, another study I ran across while looking for a blog topic this morning, focused on the fact that metformin improved biochemistry even without diet or exercise modifications. Yes, you can make a study say anything you wish if you correctly design it, but it is not fair to women with PCOS to do that and falsely lead them to believe that medication is the only answer. And, you've got to understand that even if your weight is normal with PCOS, you still have to pay attention to what is happening metabolically.

You've got to care about what's under the hood, not just how pretty the paint job is.

Palomba S, Falbo A, Giallauria F, Russo T, Tolino A, Zullo F, Colao A, Orio F. Effects of metformin with or without supplementation with folate on homocysteine levels and vascular endothelium of women with polycystic ovary syndrome. Diabetes Care. 2009 Nov 23. [Epub ahead of print]

Oppelt PG, Mueller A, Janetsch K, Kronawitter D, Reissmann C, Dittrich R, Beckmann MW, Cupisti S. The Effect of Metformin Treatment for 2 Years without Caloric Restriction on Endocrine and Metabolic Parameters in Women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. Exp Clin Endocrinol Diabetes. 2009 Dec 8. [Epub ahead of print]

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Kate attended my vegetarian eating class. She mentioned that she has been eating the broccoli leaves from the broccoli plants in her garden. Tonight she gave me a bag from that garden to experiment with in my kitchen.

I learned while researching, that broccoli leaves are actually higher in beta-carotene than any other part of the broccoli! They are also a nice source of thiamin, niacin, pantothenic acid, calcium, iron, selenium, vitamin C, riboflavin, vitamin B6, folate, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and manganese.

Most chefs writing about broccoli leaves suggest that they are similar to collard greens as far as their cooking characteristics. Here's a sample recipe (scroll to the bottom of the post).

Kate told me they work well in making chips similar to kale chips. That's what I'm going to experiment with tomorrow. I'll update with a report on how they turned out!

Local colleague Greg Peterson will be on the radio show tomorroww to talk about his urban farm and how he uses it to inspire other city dwellers to grow their own food. Greg and I had a nice chat recently about the therapy that a garden provides. It's not just about the food!

Be sure to tune in at www.blogtalkradio.com/incystforhormones at noon Eastern time, or check in the archives to hear the recording.

I know my time in Kate's garden tonight was so much fun! She showed me and our friend Ivonne her peppers, artichokes, lemon tree, and squash. We cut open a lemon, dipped the slices in sugar, and ate them just like that! It was fun to bond over simple pleasures and I could tell Kate enjoys heading to her garden for a bit of quiet time as well as some great tasty eats.

BTW…the amount of sugar we used for a few lemon slices…was probably far less than many of you habitually use in your coffee or get in a soda. It was truly tasty, like eating lemonade!

I am willing to bet you wrinkled your nose when you saw this week's choice. Most people will. That's unfortunate, since this kissin' cabbage cousin is a nutritional powerhouse. It's especially high in vitamin C and vitamin K, it's got folate (which all of you ladies need as much as you can get of), and it contains that anti-Alzheimer's compound I've been writing about a lot lately…choline. It's one of those vegetables like cabbage and broccoli that has some powerful anticancer properties as well. They're low glycemic, and each one only contains 10 calories!

Most people have never eaten a properly cooked Brussels sprout, which is why they think they don't like them. They can taste sulfurous if cooked too long. It's best to cook them until they just turn a bright green. Here's a video on cooking them that may be helpful.

If you're really adventurous, and willing to reconsider, here are some interesting ways to cook them:

Roasted brussels sprouts

Caramelized brussels sprouts (You will need some sugar to do the caramelizing, but you can experiment with how little you really need.)

Brussels sprout stir fry

Browned Brussels sprouts with orange and walnuts

Brussels sprouts with grapes

Grilled Brussels sprouts

And my personal favorite, pictured above, Brussels sprout salad

Bon Appetit!

I was recently asked about whether or not Nutella was healthy for PCOS. Compared to some other choices, it's not really so bad. Hazelnuts are a good source of monounsaturated fats, and folate. However, it has added sugar and palm oil, which are not ingredients you should be consuming on a regular basis.

I found a healthy hazelnut spread recipe online which looks easy to make. The palm oil has been replaced with canola oil. I encourage you to undercut the amount of sugar, say start with 1/2 cup, and increase to taste, to see how little you can get away with.

This time of year hazelnut powder is available at Trader Joe's, which makes this recipe even easier.

Oh, boy, this German girl is happy to know one of her faves is back on the radar!

Try it on waffles, sandwiches, toast…you name it!

I don't have to tell you this is one of your crucial vitamins. It's important for becoming pregnant, staying pregnant, and helping your unborn baby to grow and develop. It's just a super hard nutrient to get in, when your appetite is driven by carbohydrate cravings.

PCOS Diva, once again, has created a wonderful set of menus focusing on including folate. Check them out (below), pick even one to try and see if it's something you can add to your rotation.

Last week I had the opportunity to eat at a wonderful and popular restaurant in Venice, California, Lemonade. Today's picture is a photo of me with my plate and my friend's plate from that lunch. You couldn't go wrong in that place, practically everything on the menu offered a hormone-friendly benefit. It was such a contrast to the weekend before when I found myself in an unfamiliar part of town when the lunchtime hungries rolled around. I walked in to a Burger King. And while I ordered the chicken sandwich, I had to special order to keep the sauce off, and everywhere I looked, if there wasn't a promotional ad encouraging me to eat something sugary or fatty, someone WAS eating something sugary or fatty. I rarely step into these establishments and I felt completely out of my element.

I'm guessing it works the other way around. If you're used to fast food restaurants, a place like Lemonade might seem a little intimidating. So for another writing gig, I went through Lemonade's menu and listed the items they offered that were high in folate.

A big part of eating better is getting used to being in environments that support the change. It's not going to happen in a place where the profit margin is largely supported by foods that do not support health. In a place that is devoted to making healthy eating easy, the hardest decision you're going to have…which I faced in Lemonade…was figuring out WHICH healthy route to go!

If you think the reason you cannot eat better because you don't enjoy cooking, or do not feel like you have the time to do it, get in the habit of patronizing establishments that incorporate the foods we encourage you to eat. Order a little extra to take home for dinner, or if you're eating dinner out, for lunch the next day. Make it hard for yourself to have a reason to walk into fast food world. Eventually, you'll wonder why it was ever even an option.

Folate foods (foods with asterisks are fortified with added folate)

Breakfast cereals
Beef liver
Cowpeas (blackeyes)
Breakfast cereals
Spinach
Great Northern beans
Asparagus
*Rice, white
Vegetarian baked beans
Green peas
Broccoli
*Egg noodles
Broccoli,
Avocado
Peanuts
Lettuce, Romaine
Wheat germ
Tomato Juice
Orange juice
Turnip greens
Orange
*Bread
Egg,
Cantaloupe
Papaya
Banana

I work with and talk about food all day long. But if it's not easy, I don't bother. Food should be fun, not tedious. And if you don't like it, you're never going to eat it.

That's why I wanted to pass along a great idea from colleague Tavis Piattoly, sports dietitian for the New Orleans Saints, the New Orleans Hornets, and St. Amant High School Athletics.

Over the weekend, he shared that he grilled butternut squash, and it turned out tasting just like sweet potato fries! All he did, was brush them with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder…then put them on a sheet of tin foil on the grill.

And voila! A tasty summer treat to go with whatever protein you choose to grill. Not to mention nice doses of vitamins A, C, E, and folate.

Thanks, Tavis! Next time give me a heads up on dinnertime. I promise I'll bring dessert.: )

It's barbecue season. I don't need to look at the calendar or feel the temperature to know that. I simply have to look outside and see my neighbor Brett making dinner. The other night I stopped to chat and see what he was cooking. He had some corn on the cob, the way I like it, wrapped in foil and set on the back of the coals.

Brett asked me what I knew about corn, because he had been told that it was a food with no nutritional value. I was surprised when I Googled for more information to learn that this is a commonly held belief.

Corn actually has many nutrients in reasonable quantities, including fiber, protein, thiamin, folate (yup, folate), vitamin C, and magnesium. All of these are important for your health!

Corn may get its bad reputation from its oil, which, as you've seen in previous writings here, is pro-inflammatory. However, an entire cob of corn only has 1.2 grams. The problem with corn fat is when it's extracted, concentrated, and used to cook/add fat to other foods (e.g., Fritos). A fresh cob of corn is a great type of carbohydrate to add to a summer barbecue. To change the fat makeup, try one of my grilling favorites: brush with olive oil instead of butter and sprinkle with a bit of rosemary and Parmesan cheese.

One word of advice when shopping for corn: if avoiding genetically modified foods is important to you, be sure you by your corn from a purveyor who can document that their product has not been so altered. That's what you'll find at stores like Whole Foods and farmer's markets. The more we ask for what's best, the less demand we create for these types of products and the more we encourage genetically modified foods to not be sold.

It's back…food of the week! I was busy with mandatory paperwork much of this month and it consumed blogging time. I'm excited about a summer full of fun foods to try.

I ran across this while writing another article, and since PCOS is common in Hispanics I wanted to be sure to include it.

Nopalitos are cactus pads…as shown at the top of this post, in their natural environment.

But there's a lot to getting them ready to eat! You have to skin them, which takes out the stickers. And you have to cook them. I see cactus pads in the local Hispanic market, but for those of you who are not quite so adventurous, you can find them already cooked, in which case this is how they look.

What's so great about nopalitos? Well, they're chock full of the kind of fiber that helps bring your cholesterol down. You will notice when you take them out of the jar, they have a bit of a gooey consistency, kind of like okra. Don't"boo the goo"--that's the fiber!

In addition to fiber, nopalitos have a decent choline content. Susan Kleiner, Ph.D., R.D., a respected colleague, shared in a presentation last year that choline is not at all easy to find in the diet. And that can pose a problem since choline is the building block for acetylcholine, crucial for memory. So crucial, in fact, that many Alzheimer's medications are designed to increase acetylcholine levels.

Who would have thought that cactus could be brain food? They are also a decent source of vitamins A, C, K…and folate, that reproductively important vitamin that keeps showing up in our recommended foods on this blog.

So how the heck do you cook it? I'd recommend you Google"nopalitos recipes" for a lot of suggestions, but I'll share one here that makes it look pretty tasty, adapted from a recipe I found at Karen's Kitchen.

Nopalitos Salad

Ingredients:

1 jar precooked nopalitos
3 lemons
1 T olive oil
1/2 small onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic
Cilantro (1 or more bunches, to taste)
3 medium tomatoes, chopped
Salt to taste

Preparation:

Empty nopalitos into a strainer. Fill a large bowl with water and juice of 2 lemons. Add about a teaspoonful of salt and then put the cactus into it, soak for about 30 minutes.

Remove the leaves from the water and chop it into 1/2" pieces.

In a skillet, heat the nopalitos with onion, garlic and salt until warm.

Remove from heat and drain. Add the rest of the ingredients, adding juice of last lemon, salt and olive oil for a dressing. Serve cold.

Buen apetito!

As I wrote the title for this post, I envisioned the majority of you readers rolling your eyes and thinking,"OK, now she's totally lost credibility. Of COURSE she likes beets, she's a freaking NUTRITIONIST!"

But let me tell you, having a few degrees in the fitness world does not create an appetite for healthy food. I am known to have a love of really great dark chocolate, and to snack on Fritos on occasion. Yes, I do love a lot of fruits and vegetables, but for the majority of my life, foods like beets were left in the serving dish or in the store. I wouldn't eat them because I thought I wouldn't like them.

Then, a few years ago, my mom tried a Mexican Christmas salad when I was home for the holidays. I obliged and put a few slices of beets on my plate. And much to my surprise, I really liked them!

That's my lesson for today. Sometimes it's not that you don't really like a food, it's that you never tried it. Or you tried it once when someone prepared it poorly, and the innocent food, not the inadequate chef, got the blame for the bad experience.

What I find with PCOS, is that if you start to balance your fats, and cravings for sweets begin to dissipate, all of a sudden, foods that never tasted good before, become tasty!

So if there are foods that you have on your personal"don't do that" list, that have been on there for so long you don't even know what got them there…try them again. You might be surprised.

Beets are actually easy to try, because they show up on a lot of salad bars. Just put a few slices on your plate and give it a whirl. You might be surprised at how sweet they taste. Beets are actually processed as a sugar source because they ARE sweet.

Here are some aspects of beets that are particularly relevant to PCOS:
-beets are high in folate, that vitamin women are encouraged to supplement if they are trying to conceive, or are pregnant
--individuals drinking beet juice (you can simply add some to other ingredients in your juicer if you have one) experienced a drop in blood pressure an hour after drinking it.
--beets are high in betaine. In conjunction with choline (remember that one from last week's food of the week?), beets work to reduce inflammatory processes…of which PCOS is one.
--beets are high in antioxidants (that's what's in that deep dark color)

Not sure how to prepare them? I made this recipe the other day…and it was tasty! http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1611626

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=49