Tag: healthy eating

Too Good to Be True – But it Is! – Detox Shake Recipes for Weight Loss

Chef V
Veronica working from home

Chef V’s cleanses and detoxes aren’t just blended green juice—they also incorporate our nutritious (and extraordinarily delicious) vanilla and chocolate shakes.

Shaking Up Your Cleanse

Many prospective cleansers may assume shakes defeat the purpose of the blended juice cleanse, which is all about the juice… right? Wrong. Detox diet shake recipes can help boost the overall effectiveness of a cleanse, and play a key role in Chef V’s own cleanse program.

One of the most common side effects of any juice cleanse is a lack of energy or fatigue. This is normal as your body adjusts to fewer macronutrients and carbohydrates. However, it’s not ideal, especially on longer cleanses where you’ll still need to run errands, drop off the kids at school, and/or blast through your to-do list at work.

Enter the protein detox shakes and smoothies.

Good detox diet shake recipes will include significant protein. Protein is one of the three macronutrients are body uses as its primary fuel source. By drinking protein shakes during your cleanse, you’ll avoid fatigue and feel fueled for an entire day’s work.

green drink

What’s Shaking?

The base ingredient in both of our delicious shakes is organic pea protein powder—a natural and organic ingredient, noted for its health benefits.

Beyond being an excellent energy and protein source, pea proteins contain essential amino acids, which help your body repair and rejuvenate during your cleanse.

In terms of flavor, we only use the highest quality natural ingredients available. This includes organic luo han guo extract to sweeten them. It also means organic cacao powder in our chocolate shake and bourbon vanilla in our vanilla shake.

Getting the Most out of Your Chef V Shakes

In any Chef V cleansing package, you’ll receive ingredient packets and instructions to easily blend up our delicious shakes at home. During a “healthy routine period”, you can enjoy one of these shakes on any given day. During the actual cleanses, you’ll want to bump it up to two shakes a day to ensure you have the necessary energy to conquer your day.

Learn more about our cleanse and detox plan options today.

Terrific Turmeric: Why Nutritionists Are Calling it a ‘Super Spice’

Chef V

Veronica working from home

Turmeric has always been identifiable by its golden color and popularity in Indian cuisine. However, the fragrant spice’s health benefits have only recently gained attention. Some nutritionists are now even calling it a ‘super spice’.

Read on to learn more about turmeric’s numerous health benefits and why we heavily feature it in our detox soups.

What is turmeric?

In America, some people may consider turmeric an exotic spice. However, in many parts of the world like India, it’s a staple ingredient.

Turmeric technically refers to the plant turmeric, which is a relative of ginger. The rhizomes, or root stalks of this plant, can be boiled, dried, and then ground down to create the orangey-yellow powder we call turmeric.

Turmeric is native to India. In India, turmeric isn’t just a flavorful ingredient – it is also an important part of traditional medicine as well as a dye for Hindi and Buddhist monk robes. In fact, due to its color, Europeans originally nicknamed it Indian Saffron.

Thanks to its bright color, mild flavor, and medicinal benefits, it didn’t take long for turmeric to become popular throughout Asia as well as internationally.

Why is turmeric so healthy?

Turmeric is packed with health benefits, largely thanks to a bioactive substance called curcumin.

Curcumin is a well-known anti-inflammatory and polyphenol. It promotes good heart health, boosts liver function, and aids in digestion. The latter benefit is particularly important during detoxes when you’re trying to rid your body of harmful toxins.

Of course, we can’t miss out on one of the most important turmeric benefits. It tastes delicious! If you’re making your own soups or healthy curries, turmeric is always a great ingredient to include.

blueberries

Does turmeric have side effects?

There is no concrete evidence of any side effects to eating or drinking turmeric.

Anecdotally speaking, some people new to turmeric have reported small amounts of indigestion after consuming large amounts of the ingredient. However, this is often a reported side effect of many new spices and ingredients and may just be a sign of your body getting used to it.

Perhaps the most preposterous myth about turmeric is that it causes pregnant women to go into labor early. There is zero evidence of this. In fact, pregnant women may very well benefit from including more turmeric in their diet.

The Super Ingredients

By design, a lot of ingredients are found in both of our healthy detox soups. These detox vegetable soups have been designed specifically for getting the most out of a juice cleanse, and pair perfectly with our other products. Our healthy detox soups will fuel you to roll right through our 21-day cleanse.

Cooking with turmeric

At Chef V, we’ve included turmeric and curcumin in both of our delicious detox soups. Not only does the ingredient taste delicious, but it also aids in helping your body detox harmful chemicals. Not to mention, its natural pigment makes every soup look beautiful and inviting!

10 Tips For Making Healthy Detox Soups

Chef V
A bowl of healthy soup.

When you’re looking to cleanse, lose weight, and keep up a nutritional diet all at once, soup can be a lifesaver. And with colder weather coming, it can be a delicious way to warm up as well.

Here are our top tips on making the most nutritional detox soups at home, as well as making soups suitable for weight loss.

#1 Veggies, Veggies, Veggies

This tip should be no surprise to anyone. Vegetable-based soups are always going to be the healthiest. They’re also excellent for weight loss since they’re naturally low in fat content and high in nutrition.

#2 Use All of the Vegetable

Did you know that the stalks of vegetables like leeks hold amazing nutritional value? Too often we just take all that extra nutrition and throw it right in the trash. Do some research on the ingredients you are using to see how much of it you can include to maximize nutrition and minimize food waste.

#3 Avoid the Fat

If you’re making your own detox soup recipes at home, make sure to avoid stocks and bases that are fat-heavy. This means no cream bases or additions either – you’ll sabotage your entire weight loss plan right then and there.

#4 Embrace Superfoods…

Of course, not all veggies are created equal. For detox soup recipes, you want as much bang for your buck as possible. Aim to include plenty of “superfoods” – vegetables and fruits bursting with vitamins, minerals, and other healthy nutrients like antibacterials. For example, we base one of our Chef V Detox soup recipes around sweet potatoes, which pack a mean nutritious punch.

#5 … and Super Spices

It’s not just the main ingredients that need to be maximized. Additional flavors like garlic, ginger and turmeric add flavor and contribute to the soup’s nutritional value.

A bowl of vegetable soup.

#6 Cut the sodium

The dangers of too much sodium are well documented, and you should take this into account when plotting out a detox soup diet plan. Use reduced sodium stocks and try to avoid adding too much table salt.

#7 Boost the fiber

While you should cut sodium, you should add in extra fiber. You can increase fiber in soup by blending in hardy vegetables and fruits like sweet potatoes. This serves two purposes. First, the fiber will help with your digestion and the detox process as a whole. Second, fiber will help you feel satiated and minimize pesky cravings.

#8 Go for organic

Detox soup recipes for weight loss are designed to help you, well, lose weight. But a good detox soup diet should also be helping you flush out toxins as well. Why sabotage this by putting more processed junk back into your system?

#9 Puree 

Pureed soups minimize the strain on your digestive system. Keep your soups silky smooth to ensure proper digestion.

#10 Make it delicious! 

Detox soups should be delicious, plain and simple. Use high-quality, organic fruits and vegetables as the base of your soups. Then build out the flavor profile with nutritional aromatics and spices like onions, garlic, ginger, and turmeric. You stand the best chance of succeeding in your cleanse if you actually enjoy the food you're eating slurping.

Don’t want to make your own detox soups?

If you’re short on time or hate the cleanup involved in cooking, why not try our pre-planned detoxes and cleanses. We’ll ship you the exact juices, shakes, and soups you need for a healthy and revitalizing cleanse. All of our products are made from fresh, organic ingredients and have been praised for their great flavors. Get in touch today to learn more!

This 4th of July, Think About The Freedom To Eat Healthy

Chef V

veronica in field

The beginning of summer presents us with two holidays that reflect on freedom: Juneteenth, the federal holiday on June 19th that celebrates the emancipation of slaves in the US, and of course, the 4th of July. 

Although our nation is far from perfect, we are afforded freedoms that billions of people around the world don’t have. Unfortunately, part of living in a free society means that our choices of what we put in our bodies is heavily dictated by the marketplace. And the marketplace is overwhelmingly filled with highly-processed food, or in other words, junk. 

When only a handful of mega corporations control 99% of the food supply, it can be challenging for some people to find farm-to-fork food that’s grown without potentially-harmful pesticides, herbicides and other synthetic chemicals. 

But you do have the freedom to eat healthy. 

farmers market

You have the freedom to consume organic, green-leafy veggies. If you don’t feel like buying them from the store and chopping them up, you even have the freedom to have organic greens cold-blended and delivered to you in juice form. Out of the 195 countries in the world, you could probably count on one hand the number of countries that offer that kind of freedom and convenience. 

The consolidation of food has led to less choice when it comes to buying the most popular staples like bread and dairy. And in order to maximize profits, giant food conglomerates increase the output of crops, often at the expense of our health. 

Consider the use of the weed killer, glyphosate, which the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer labelled “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015. 

Six years later, however, the Environmental Protection Agency still allows the sale and use of glyphosate for crop production. 

The good news is that you have the freedom to eat organic, non-GMO, gluten-free products. 

Every single day, you should maintain a practice of gratitude, especially for having the freedom to eat whatever you want to and how much you want to. Nearly 9 percent of the world’s population is food insecure. That’s roughly 690 million people. And it’s not getting better; worldwide, hunger is on the rise.


Veronica yoga

But having the freedom to eat whatever you want, whenever you want can of course backfire, with serious health consequences. 

On this 4th of July, think about having the freedom not to eat whatever you want and whenever you want, but having the freedom to eat for gut health. 

A key factor in eating for gut health involves eating sparingly, no more than three times a day. Frequent snacking is a freedom. One that the government shouldn’t try to eliminate. But frequent snacking in my opinion isn’t a freedom, it’s an unnecessary indulgence that can cause a long laundry list of health problems such as SIBO. 

Thankfully, as of 2018, with passage of the Hemp Farm Act, you now have the freedom in all 50 states to consume cannabidiol (CBD), the non-intoxicating chemical in the hemp plant. Long overdue, the Hemp Farm Act removed CBD from the Drug Enforcement Agency’s list of schedule 1 controlled substances, the same class as LSD, ecstasy and marijuana. 

But did you know you have the freedom to eat foods that activate the body’s internal cannabinoid system? That’s the same system that’s activated by cannabinoids like CBD and THC, the main chemical in marijuana? The internal (or endo-) cannabinoid system helps the body get back to balance. 

smoothie table

All over the world, even in the most repressed societies, people enjoy a stiff adult beverage from time to time. Unfortunately, alcoholism is a worldwide concern, with over 3 million deaths worldwide attributed to alcohol abuse. That’s over 5 percent of all deaths caused by alcohol! But you have the freedom to mocktails instead of cocktails. Just as delicious without the potential for abuse. 

You also have the freedom to drink low-sugar smoothies and shakes. 

As the saying goes, freedom’s never free. While you may have to pay a little more for healthier food, in the long run, having the freedom to eat healthy is far less expensive than paying out of pocket for medical bills caused by unhealthy lifestyle choices. 

Chef V and kale

© 2021 Chef V, LLC.