Garlic Shrimp Salad - Healthy Food Tip and Recipe

healthy food tip and recipe

Today's Recipe If you don't know what to serve for dinner tonight ...
Enjoy this delicious shrimp salad as part of your Healthiest Way of Eating. It makes a great light meal on its own, or you can serve it as a side salad to a larger meal.
Garlic Shrimp Salad
Prep and Cook Time: 25 minutes
Ingredients:

• 4 medium cloves garlic, pressed
• 1 lb medium-sized cooked shrimp, best bought still frozen
• 1 bunch asparagus, cut into 1-inch pieces, discarding bottom fourth
• 3 TBS vegetable broth
• 1 fresh tomato, diced into 1/2-inch pieces
• 3 TBS chopped fresh parsley (or 3 tsp dried parsley if fresh not available)
• small head of romaine lettuce, chopped
• *optional 2 oz crumbled goat cheese
• salt and fresh cracked black pepper to taste
• 
  
• Dressing
• 3 TBS fresh lemon juice
• 2 TBS extra virgin olive oil
• 1 TBS Dijon mustard
• 1 tsp honey
• salt and fresh cracked black pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Press garlic and let sit for at least 5 minutes to bring out its hidden health benefits.
2. Make sure shrimp is completely thawed and patted dry with a paper towel, or it will dilute the flavor of the salad.
3. Add broth to medium skillet and after it has heated up, Healthy Sauté asparagus for 5 minutes.
4. Whisk together lemon, oil, mustard, honey, garlic, salt and pepper. Toss shrimp, asparagus, parsley, and tomato with dressing and herbs. Allow shrimp salad to marinate for at least 15 minutes.
5. Discard outer leaves of lettuce head, rinse, dry, and chop. Serve shrimp mixture on bed of lettuce and top with crumbled goat cheese, if desired.

Serves 4 Printer Friendly Version of Garlic Shrimp Salad
In-Depth Nutritional Profile for Garlic Shrimp Salad
Healthy Food Tip

What should I eat at lunch in order to stay alert through the day?

To begin with, I would remind you that no food of any kind can keep you alert in a healthy way if you are exhausted, sleep-deprived, or preoccupied with other thoughts, or just highly disinterested in the activities in which you are involved. What you eat can definitely help you stay alert, but food cannot compensate for these other lifestyle factors if they are serious impediments to your concentration in and of themselves.
Your nutritional strategy for maintaining your mental edge during and after lunch is to eat foods that will give you a gradual, steady release of food energy throughout the afternoon while placing only a light burden on your digestive system. Foods that can interfere with your alertness and concentration are common lunch fare: high-fat hamburgers with high-fat fries; non-whole-grain, low-fiber pasta dishes with oily or creamy sauces; non-whole-grain, low-fiber pizzas topped with high-fat cheeses and fatty meats; and deep-fried fish and chips. Lunches are often downed with high-sugar soft drinks and followed by a heavy, high-fat, and high-sugar dessert, both of which will exert their toll on alertness, concentration, and a feeling of well-being.
The excess fat and excess sugar in these lunch choices will take far too great a toll on your digestive system and focus too much of your body's metabolic attention on digestion. That focus can easily rob you of your alertness. It might also place a burden on your blood sugar regulation and harm your alertness by focusing too much metabolic attention in that direction as well. Here are some suggestions of how to avoid that "ready-for-a siesta" effect as well as indigestion:

• Emphasize healthy protein choices, like cold-water fish, beans and legumes, or a non-cream-based main dish soup or stew.
• Choose lower-glycemic-index carbohydrates, like a green salad, root vegetables in their skins, mushrooms, green leafy vegetables, broccoli, asparagus, or artichoke.
• Eat small-to-moderate portions of food. Be especially careful with amounts of higher fat foods, even if those foods contain valuable fats. Foods in this category would include cold-water fish, flaxseed oil, olive oil, nuts, seeds, and avocado.
• Avoid highly processed foods of all kinds, including most pre-packaged foods, vending machine foods, and fast foods.
• Skip dessert or have a piece of fresh fruit for dessert.
• Have mineral water or herbal tea with a fresh twist of lemon.

It is worth remembering that high-fiber and high-protein foods are digested at a nice even pace in comparison to most processed and fast foods that have either a very high sugar content, which digest too rapidly or a very high fat content, which digest too slowly.
Part of alertness requires our metabolism to avoid some of these digestive extremes, and we can help alertness along by consuming whole, natural foods that can provide us with high-protein and high-fiber meals while still keeping our intake to a moderate level.