Cooking for Health

It was back in 2008 when I first spotted kale chips on a food blog, and before I barely had time to think about it, variations of roasted kale chips were popping up on food blogs everywhere. Now literally hundreds of food bloggers have made kale chips and posted about how tasty they are -- so if you haven't joined the kale chip fan club yet, there are plenty of good reasons you should try them.

We know that the food we put into our body can have a huge affect on our health and quality of life, but many of us still choose to eat unhealthy foods.  The unhealthy stuff tastes really good, and we don't usually have cravings for healthy food.  That's exactly why obesity is such a large problem for both adults and children in our country...But is dieting the answer?  I don't think so.  Dieting can often lead to a roller coaster of weight loss and weight gain that leaves many weighing more in the long run.

The United States is one of the most obese countries in the world. This became very clear to me once I lived outside of the country.  When I first arrived in South Africa I was on the plump side -- not obese, but certainly overweight. As an ex-pat, my way of eating changed tremendously. I still enjoyed great food, but in much smaller portions, and I began to visit the gym regularly. The change in my body was obvious. After several months of living in South Africa, my friends began to ask me the "secret" to my weight loss. There was no real secret; I started eating healthy foods, prepared mostly at home, and exercising.

Near my home is an international grocery with foods from across the world, an aisle for Mexico, an aisle each for India, China and Mexico, with half aisles for Vietnam, Russia, Indonesia, western Europe, Africa, the Caribbean. It's a destination store of the best kind, a place where recent immigrants and foodies stumble over one another to stock up on ingredients otherwise difficult if not impossible to find. I love to ask a shopper whose cart is teetering with some foodstuff, knowing I'll hear a story about how much that something reminds her of home.

In our celebration of dark, leafy greens so far, I've tried to sway you toward eating more kale, chard, and spinach. If you're looking for optimum nutritional value and culinary possibilities, I'd consider those to be the three leafy-green superstars.