Have you ever been disappointed that you weren’t really hungry for dinner?
Orange lentils are smallest and cook most quickly. Try the savory brown and exotic green lentils, too!
Then you’d better stay away from lentils, because these little nutrient nuggets are so sustaining that if you have some for lunch, you just might forget to eat your dinner.
This may sound whack-backwards, but I think you get my point.
4 ways eating lentils helps you get your health & skinny on
Let me tell you a little bit more about lentils, and why they are such a primo nutrient-dense and slimming food choice.
1) Satiety superstar: Lentils cross the finish line ahead of the pack when it comes to satiety. And that means fullness and hunger satisfaction, the first rule of satiety when on your way to becoming naturally thin. Lentils have both a large amount of protein (18 g protein per cup) and fiber (16 grams per cup) and trace amounts of fat. For the person looking for weight loss, satiety rules. Lentils help you get there.
2) Blood sugar big boy: Lentils are a no brainer when it comes to managing blood-sugar disorders, again due to their high fiber content which prevents a rapid blood sugar rise after a meal. Interestingly, this benefit carries itself out to subsequent meals as well. In other words, lentils at lunch have a modifying effect on the blood sugar response at dinner.1
3) Heart healthy: Folate and magnesium are both contributors to heart health, and lentils are abundant in both. Folate lower levels of homocysteine, elevated levels of which damage the artery walls. Magnesium is nature’s calcium channel blocker, lessening resistance in the blood vessels and increasing the supply of blood and oxygen to the heart.
My Smokey Butternut Lentil Soup
4) Easy, quick prep time and recipe ROI: Look, I have 2 basic rules of cooking. A recipe is best not only if it has only 5 ingredients or less, but i it cooks muy rapido with no fuss, muss, or bother. This means a nutritious and satisfying meal gets made, and YOU get the results: A trim and well-fed body.
Usually when I cook lentils, I’ll let them soak a few hours and then cook them in 2 minutes in the pressure cooker. Option B: Cook in a pot for 30 minutes on the stove. Either way, I have no big investment of time for lentils’ big give-backs. Talk about a great return on your investment time.
P.S. I could have added #5: Lentils are cheap!
P.P.S Watch for my Smokey Butternut Lentil Soup Recipe tomorrow!
1Journal of Nutrition and MetabolismVolume 2012 (2012), Article ID 829238, 7 pagesdoi:10.1155/2012/829238
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Thanks Lani, just in time for some inspiration with the cold weather coming on.
The picture of the soup looks amazing! Are you going to put up your recipe soon?
Thanks for the information about satiety, what a good idea!
Gail
Thanks Gail – yup, the recipe will go up tomorrow!
Yes Lady….the recipe…Looks yummy…I LOVE Lentils!
Hey Ginette – thanks! Got a favorite lentil recipe to share? Thanks for your post!
Just an idea for others trying to switch to a plant based diet – I converted some of my old meat based recipes using lentils instead of ground beef (such as in stuffed peppers or spaghetti sauce with beef). I use about 1 cup cooked lentils instead of 1 lb of ground beef.
Hey Margaret! Thanks for the tip – especially timely with this week’s article about lentils! 4 ways eating lentils helps you get your health & skinny on They are quite the ‘meaty’
beanlegume (bean just rhymed better!) and it sounds like you’ll be a great resource moving ahead. Excellent!Lentils are also commonly used in Ethiopia in a stew-like dish called kik, or kik wot, one of the dishes people eat with Ethiopia’s national food, injera flat bread. Yellow lentils are used to make a nonspicy stew, which is one of the first solid foods Ethiopian women feed their babies.,-*..
http://www.healthmedicinelab.comThe latest post coming from our new web blog