You CAN have your cake & EAT it Too: Cake Pops

Norma's Cake Pops

As a Nutritionist, I struggle with healthy eating just like you. The only way I see how to do this is approaching healthy eating on a per meal/snack basis.

And, it all starts with a great breakfast to get your metabolism going after fasting all night. Breakfast is my favorite meal and I can eat it at any time. What I try to do is pair a whole grain food with fruit and little protein. For my snack I pick seasonal fruit, peanut butter crackers, yogurt, or something like that. I do pretty good.

Most of the time I make good choices for lunch as I don't fry. I don't know how my body would react to fried foods, after giving up that practice for over 20 years. So lunch is usually a sandwich or a healthy salad when I'm on my toes, which I haven't been lately, lol. It is after this meal that I get my sweet tooth. So I give it fruit or yogurt, or have to admit, even hot fudge sundae, sometimes. I love my sweets too!

At dinner we eat a healthy family meal most of the time and again I get that sweet tooth.So I think, what can I eat that doesn't do too much damage? And guess what I came across? People talking about cake pops, cake balls, lollicakes and cake truffles, all the same. You might already have enjoyed this delicious treat. For those of you not familiar with it, let me explain. Cake pops are made by taking a baked cake, crumbling it, adding icing to it and forming it into balls. The balls later get coated with candy coating or chocolate. What's great about them is their size. Many people have compared them to truffles for their richness (sweetness to me). I find if I eat 1 or 2 it'll take care of my cravings. But if you are not careful you can eat half a dozen.

Coquito AKA PR Eggnog

So there you have it, now you can have your cake and eat it too. And the best news of all is I'm making them and selling them! I will be taking orders and selling them as a dozen. So far I have made COQUITO AKA Puerto Rican Eggnog, Piña Colada, Red Velvet and Death by Chocolate. The first two flavors contain Bacardi Rum and selling at $30 dozen and the non-alcohol flavors are $24 per dozen. Expensive you'd think but that's lower than most people charge for them. They are a long process to make, but since I enjoy baking, it's a good match for me. And besides this girl has to eat and feed a family, lol. "When you eat my treats, I eat".

Death by Chocolate

So order your Cake Pops from Norma's Sweet Treats by emailing me. I will soon be setting up a Mercant PayPal account for your convenience.

**Special Price: $20 non-alcohol flavors and $25 for alcohol flavors**

Mango Gossip "King of Fruit"

Lately I've been hearing alot of gossip about the Mango or "King of Fruit". First of all, the mango is originally from Asia and is the most consumed fruit in the WORLD! The top producer of mangos is India and they eat 99% of the fruit. In India it is considered a symbol of love, no wonder they keep all they produce. Did you know that the mango is a distant relative to the cashew and pistachio? Now this surprised me, it has 1000 varieties, that mango surely gets around.

The top 5 varieties are:
Kent - 1944 FL (descendant of Brooks)
Tommy Atkins - 1920 FL
Haden - 1910 FL (Mulgoba from India)
Ataulfo - Indonesian from Hawaii (descendant of Manila from Mexico)
Keitt - 1945 FL (Mulgoba from India)

Some nutrients found in Mango:
Vitamin A
Vitamin C
Vitamin E
Potassium
Vitamin B6
Cooper

The health benefits of "the King" are protection from a variety of cancers, like colon, breast, leukemia, and prostate. Help with blood pressure from the potassium. The vitamin A is good for night vision and bone growth, while Vitamin C is good for a healthy immune system. For more about mangos please see my YouTube video below:

On the weekend, we went to a Farmers Market in Immokalee, FL to see what we could find. Among other things we purchased a box of Haden mangos from Peru as the FL season is in the summer. The Peru mango is delicious, the only problem is I have been eating one a day with my husband! The mango is my favorite fruit so I doubt we'll have any left by Saturday. Does that mean there's another road trip around the corner? 

Is Your Beverage Sabotaging You?

One of the things people forget when engaging in a healthy eating plan, is evaluating what they are drinking. According to NHANES 99-04 the average American consumes 22.5 teaspoons (tsp) of sugar every single DAY, half of which are coming from sodas & fruit drinks! Wow, I think it would be a great exercise if we all measured 22.5 tsp of sugar. That is 360 calories in just sugar daily or yearly weight gain of 38 pounds! Stated differently we are consuming 22% of our calories from beverages. If I consume 1800 calories daily, then 396 calories are from beverages and at the end of the year I will have gained 41 pounds!

The calories in our beverages keep creeping up; it's no wonder our obesity rates are also going up. Take a look at this table I compiled with popular drinks. Keep in mind that the most popular size in America is more like 20 oz, so the numbers would have been much higher for the 16 oz beverages.

BEVERAGES	OZ	CAL	GRAMS	TSP	WEIGHT
			SUGAR	SUGAR	GAIN/YR
McD Choc McCafe shake	16	720	98	24.50	75.09
McD Choc Triple Thick shake	16	580	84	21.00	60.49
McD Frappes	16	550	71	17.75	57.36
McD Smoothie	16	260	55	13.75	27.11
McD Hot Cocoa-nonfat milk	16	310	47	11.75	32.33
McD Hot Cocoa-whole milk	16	380	45	11.25	39.63
Coca Cola bottle	20	240	65	16.25	25.03
Mountain Dew bottle	20	290	77	19.25	30.24
Rock Star Energy Drink	16	248	62	15.50	25.86
Gatorade Orange	20	122	30	7.50	12.72
Fruit Flavor Pedialyte	20	63	16	4.00	6.57
Vitamin Water Guava	20	125	33	8.25	13.04
Sobe Mango	20	280	78	19.50	29.20
Arizona Lemon Ice Tea	24	270	72	18.00	28.16
Minute Maid Lemonade	20	260	67	16.75	27.11
Minute Maid Orange Juice	16	220	48	12.00	22.94
Apple Juice	16	240	52	13.00	25.03

Is your favorite beverage on this list? How do I use this table? Let's say you drink a 20 oz Coca Cola, that will set you back 240 calories, 65 g sugar or 16.25 tsp sugar. If you have 1 soda daily, at the end of a year you will have gained 25 pounds! Now let's say you enjoy a daily McD Frappe at 550 calories, at the end of a year say hello to over 57 pounds.

I never realized how much Gatorade people consumed until I worked clinic. What I encountered in clinic were parents who had no idea that Gatorade had sugar and thought it was good for their kids.  After doing some digging around I learned that the Pediatricians were the culprit of this misinformation. Instead of telling parents to give kids Pedialyte when they had diarrhea or vomiting they would tell them they could also give Gatorade. When I would tell them how much sugar is found in Gatorade they were shocked. Not only were they giving their kids Gatorade when sick, but also regularly. If you have a daily Gatorade habit you are going to gain almost 13 pounds a year.

Even Vitamin Water has sugar. If you want to reduce the calories coming from beverages my recommendations are to drink mostly 1% or skim milk, black or green tea and water. I drink 2 cups of coffee in the morning, although I'm trying to change over to black tea. I'm also trying to drink a cup of green tea before bed. Did you know that both green and black tea are considered Superfoods? If you want some flavor in your water I recommend True Lemon, True Lime or True Orange, they have no sugar.

I have to be sick to drink soda like Ginger Ale or 7 Up for the bubbles. Recently I purchased can unflavored sparkling water (contains no sugar). Next time I get sick I'm going to add some True Lemon to the sparkling water and save the calories from the Ginger Ale.

If you are a visual person check out http://sugarstacks.com/. Please check out Beverages and Shakes and Smoothies. I have used this website with many clients.

To conclude, watch what you are drinking just like you watch what you eat. They easily go down but the calories in drinks can be sabatoging your weight loss efforts.

What are some of your favorite beverages?