Healthy Comfort Foods

This is a guest post from Yocheved Golani, auther of It's MY Crisis! And I'll Cry If I Need To: EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Yocheved is writing a new book, The Comfort Foods Cookbook: Recipes to Calm You Down FAST Without Widening Your Waistline. The idea intrigued me, so I asked Yocheved if I could share an excerpt with you. Below is an excerpt from the book about whole grains and sandwich spreads. These foods are comforting in the mouth and on a chemical level, but won't expand your waistline and made you feel like lethargic like traditional comfort foods.

Use fresh produce and grains. The evidence is in that commercially prepared products hold harmful synthetic chemicals. Fake foods are wreaking havoc with thyroids, metabolism (your body’s ability to burn calories), fertility rates, lifespans and lifestyles. Keep life simple. Don’t sicken yourself on additives, preservatives, food colorings and flavor enhancers. They make the scale stick its tongue out at you, too.

Want some bread? Great! Make yours whole grain. Those complex carbohydrates leave you feeling fuller. They also balance your body’s chemicals, including sugar levels. Bye-bye hunger pangs!

BONUS: Better4U Sandwich Spreads!

Smear avocado on the bread. Packed with potassium, hormone-balancing avocado (yes, ladies) is especially good for a woman’s cervical and womb health.

Men, avocados are guy-friendly, too. Avos, as South Africans call the fruit, hold compounds that can prevent oral cancer. Their oleic acid is a protection against breast cancer (YES, men do develop breast cancer!).

One avocado week can help almost anybody to shed excess weight and possibly prevent some cancers. The fruit is rich in lutein to support everyone’s eye health, too.

Top that snack with sliced tomatoes, loaded with lycophen for healthier hearts and blood systems! Tomatoes even hold four chambers, just like human hearts. Lycophen compounds are linked to lower rates of breast and prostate cancer.

Pears have the same properties as avocados, so enjoy them often. Ladies, pamper your PMS-y selves with avocado salads, guacamole and even plain old avocado scooped from the peel. Their natural fats are soothing.


Warm up some dark green veggies such as broccoli or spinach.

Broccoli holds anti-inflammatory kaempferol, which helps allergic people to reduce their reactions to things that give them allergic problems.

Spinach is full of calcium which is good for stress management and for preventing insomnia. It also has magnesium, Vitamins A, C, D, E, K, iron, anti-oxidants (so your body literally will not rust!) and other good things (betaine, copper, folate, magnesium, manganese, niacin and zinc).

Soothe yourself with a mushy bowl of oatmeal, full of soothing serotonin. The bonus is that oatmeal has 4 grams of fiber per cup. It gently scrapes fat out of your body, but you’d never know that from the comforting feeling that oatmeal gives to you.

Millet’s a fine choice, too. The alkaline, gluten-free grain is loaded with minerals, vitamins and soothing serotonin. Millet’s pre-biotic properties feed micro flora in your gut for your benefit. Your colon will be better hydrated and you’ll lose the need to read as you sit on the toilet. It needs a longish cooking time, so balance your schedule accordingly.

Hey, this is a comfort foods cookbook, right? We know you want to scarf down feel-good foods fast. So, open some pistachios, place them or almonds (the vitamin E helps you to prevent a sense of stress and even full blown depression), walnuts, macadamia nuts and even cashews in your mouth. They’re loaded with omega-3. Sounds like some kind of fraternity or sorority group, right? Well, omega-3 is good for your brain. It reduces your reaction to stress and protects your health body-wide. Welcome to the Feel Better Fast for Good Reasons Club! Who knew that comfort foods could be THIS good for you?

Publishers are invited to contact Yocheved Golani about her developing book, The Comfort Foods Cookbook: Recipes to Calm You Down FAST Without Widening Your Waistline. It guides readers into positive directions and behaviors for controlling their weight with a smile instead of a grimace.