Continuing on with our “Think Red” series to encourage wiser food choices that can contribute to heart health, today’s blog post is not just about beans and heart health.  We’d like to also mention the larger family that beans belong to as well.

Various beans can actually be quite heart healthy, depending upon exactly how they are prepared and what other ingredients they are combined with. Most people are familiar with red kidney beans, although there are many other beans, which belong to a larger family called “pulses” and include a wide range of naturally nutritious offerings. Image courtesy of Iowa State University Extension.

We’ll mention just a few of these and talk about some dips just to get you started in exploring some of the possibilities of using more beans and other pulses in your meal and snack planning.  A favorite for Super Bowl Sunday is this super easy to make healthy bean dip recipe we’ll list the ingredients for in just a minute.  

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February is heart month in more ways than one.

Some of us might say “Hallmark Day” is coming, referring to Feb 14th and Valentine’s Day.

But others will note that the American Heart Association (AHA) has long promoted women’s awareness of heart disease in the month of February.  AHA has tied it’s efforts into a visible symbol of wearing red, including another variation of a red dress which is trademarked by the US Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS) and thus we’re not allowed to use that specific image here.

The image shown was obtained from the stockfresh.com site.

AHA is giving out cute, modern, free red dress pins with DHHS’s permission, however, and one can be reserved just for you!

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Lots of apps keep springing up or newer versions of existing ones might come to your attention over this New Year.  Some might prove to be useful to you in your quest to implement any of YOUR New Year’s Resolutions. That’s why we are listing some more of them for you today.

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Gluten Free Symbol ©Wegmans.com

NOTE: June 25, 2012 updating to also mention the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics App: The Gluten Detective

Supermarket Chains such as Wegmans are trying to make it easier for consumers to locate store brand products within their stores that are gluten free and are doing so often by using a nutrition key (related to the concepts of Nutrition Keys we wrote about at the end of last year in our two part article series “Healthy Eating Need Not Be Just A Fairy Tale”on 30Dec2011 and 31Dec2011).  That blog series focused on nutrition labeling on the Front of Packages (FOP) at the Point-of-Purchase (POP). This Spring of 2012 expect to see an expanded marketing effort for the renamed national Nutrition Keys program (now being called Facts Up Front).

MarketResearch.com released a report last Feb. 1, 2011 entitled “Gluten-Free Foods and Beverages in the U.S., 3rd Edition” noting that it is estimated that the U.S. market for gluten-free food and beverage items is expected to surpass 5 Billion by the year 2015. It was at around 2.6 Billion in 2010 for a compounded annual growth rate of 30% over the period of 2006-2010 in the U.S, although growth rates are expected to slow a bit as we head towards 2015.

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Are you familiar with the many social media terms that are in use everywhere today?

LoSoPhoMo is a term that was newer to me, but makes good sense once explained.

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It’s that time of year again–when people start out with a new set of New Year’s resolutions and then try to actually find a way to implement them. Without a plan and some good tools, that won’t be an easy task. In fact, they may unintentionally be setting themselves up for potential failure.

You can check out a visual way to see what some of these resolutions might typically look like (A Guide to New Year’s Resolutions), by user Lee under Lifestyle at the Infographics & Data Visualization firm’s site known as visual.ly  We can’t store any image from that site on this blog long term, so please check the infographic out yourself!

Another site noted we could embed the graphics on our site, so here’s a little New Year’s sobering up about the fact that as the holidays wind down, most Americans and others around the globe might need to think about what to do next to get “back on track” in the months ahead.

infographic courtesy of nexercise.com.   *This infographic is being shared only for infotainment purposes since the site does have an app.* All rights belong to nexercise.

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Many experts have weighed in on this subject.

Here is just some of the advice and a few of the various compiled suggestions that have been given by others for foods to consider incorporating into your foodstyle in 2012.

© photo: www.e-Cobo.com, Nikolay Dimitrov     

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