Tomatoes and Beans

Welcome back to my final post for my blog What Makes Super Foods So Super. I have enjoyed being able to share my experiences and challenge of eating super foods with all of you and I hope that I was able to inspire some of you to try them as well. I never thought I would be able to stick with this project; however, I found that incorporating two super foods into my diet per week was actually beneficial for my health and well being and ended up not being very hard to do. This final week the two foods I will be eating are tomatoes and beans. Keep reading to find out more about my experiences with these foods.

            The first super food that I tried this week was tomatoes. I never really ate tomatoes growing up and always avoided them in foods I was given because they never looked good to me. I decided to try them because of the many health benefits they have. Tomatoes are very low in calories and high in fiber, potassium, and vitamin C. According to Health Magazine, dedicated to promote health and fitness, “tomatoes are a rich source of lycopene, which is an antioxidant rarely found in other foods that could protect the skin against harmful UV rays, prevent certain cancers, and lower cholesterol.” Tomatoes are also known to reduce the risk for cardiovascular disease in many people. I found a few good ways to incorporate tomatoes into my meals and eat them throughout the week. First, for lunch I decided to make my own sandwich in Benson and add them to it. I thought this would be a good way to start eating them because they were not as strong of a taste as on their own. I really enjoyed the extra flavor they added to my sandwich. For dinner, I decided to add chopped tomatoes into my salad. They were a little too watery and sweet of a flavor for my salad, so putting them into my sandwich will have to suffice. I found a recipe on Oprah Winfrey’s website from author Dave Lieberman, which suggested tomatoes as a tasty snack that is very easy to prepare. First you slice a fresh tomato and place the pieces on a plate. Then drizzle the slices with olive oil and some Parmesan cheese. They tasted very sweet, and the cheese added more texture to it. This was my favorite way to eat the tomatoes because I really enjoyed the flavor and they were so simple to prepare.

            The second super food that I had this week was beans. The different types that I tried were lentils, black beans, green beans, and garbanzo beans. They all had different flavors and textures; however, all are low in fat and have many health benefits. Beans are a good source of protein, especially for vegetarians. Vegetarians can substitute beans for types of meat and the beans will provide fiber and keep one full and satisfied. According to Joy Bauer, a nutritionist, “beans are a good source of magnesium and potassium and will help lower blood pressure” (JoyBauer.com). Beans are also very inexpensive, thereby, making them easy to get access to. Superfoods Rx, a website with research on the most popular super foods, says that “eight grams of lentils, seven and a half grams of black beans, and seven and a half grams of pinto beans will provide a person with the highest amount of fiber.” Beans are also suggested to prevent types of cancer such as breast and colon.

For dinner, I had a salad from Benson and added garbanzo beans to it. They didn’t really change the taste of my salad, so I didn’t notice much of a difference with them in it. However, because garbanzo beans are full of fiber and iron, I stayed fuller longer and had much more energy. I also added black beans to my salad, which I enjoyed because of their strong flavor and the zest that they gave to my salad. Lentils, another tasty bean, are a good source of amino acids and are packed with vitamins. They also help lower cholesterol because they are high in fiber but low in fat. The last type of bean that I incorporated into my diet was green beans. According to Nutrition and You, a website providing nutritional facts of foods and impact on ones health, “green beans are very low in calories and contain large amounts of fiber, vitamin A and no saturated fats.” I tried green beans by sautéing them with a little bit of olive oil and then added some sautéed shallots to them. This was by far my favorite bean that I tried out of the few because of the taste with the shallots and the texture of the beans. They were not too crunchy, but a warm flavorful side dish to my dinner. Eating beans was a great way for me to add more protein to my diet and keep my energy up.

Overall, I believe I have learned a great deal from doing this project, and it has benefited my health and well being. My hope was to substitute these super foods in for the more unhealthy, processed foods I was eating before. I am glad to say that my eating habits have changed for the better, and I have felt much more energized and healthy. I plan to continue eating many of the super foods that I have researched and tried in the past weeks. I hope that my experiences that I shared with my readers will inspire other young students to try and do their best to eat well and show them that it is possible to do so on a college campus. I really appreciate all of you reading about the super foods and hope that my research will help you to try and incorporate them into your diets!