More on health

Last night I went to the Favoring Fiber class at Whole Foods, put on by The Cancer Project. It's a free cooking and nutrition class from their series of 7 or 8 classes. This week's topic was all about fiber.

Great class. The teacher was a wealth of info and covered a lot of things I didn't know before. I will now eat humble pie, as I thought I knew a lot. I already know the gist about healthy eating, but this is really nailing it home. I think because I'm hearing from someone who really knows her foods. Because the class is slanted for cancer prevention, other "superfoods" were talked about, like seaweeds, goji berries, and certain mushrooms.

Stupid me, I didn't bring a notebook, although I ended up buying the $20 Cancer Project book, which is like a textbook/handbook really, so I can learn more. I wrote some notes in there. (You don't have to buy the book, but it's not free. If you don't want it you just return it at the end of class.)

My Recap of the Night:

- Fiber only comes from plant foods
- NO fiber in any animal products
- We need 40 grams of fiber each day
- The role of fiber in the body is to: regulate bowel movements, eliminate waste hormones from the body, and reduce cholesterol.
- There are 4 good soy products, all of them fermented. The rest = "garbage" as far as what it does to your body. I wrote the 4 good ones down for review. I'm not a huge soy fan anyways, because of the high fat contect and hormone trippiness, but I'm no expert and she made it easy to understand.

Also there are two kinds of fiber, insoluble and soluble, and our body needs both. She didn't elaborate on what the differences were but said plants foods have both. I want to find out the differences on my own.

Another thing I realized from the class is I need to learn more vegan meal recipes. Healthy vegan meal recipes, that is. The meals she had there for us were very yummy and nutritious. Luckily I now have the recipes in my book.

Next week's class is about alternatives to milk. I plan on going.

Good resource.