Avocado Spaghetti
22/08/2018 | Tamara Brown
A creamy, zesty blend of heart healthy goodness, served over zucchini noodles. Yum!
INGREDIENTS
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Recipe: For the spaghetti:
DIRECTIONS
RAW TIP:
For a zestier dish, use the whole lemon to make the sauce.
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This recipe is featured in The Raw Food Girl's Sweets & Treats eBook, along with 50 others nutritiously raw snacks.
A word from The Raw Food Girl
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Avocado. It's about the most versatile food on the planet. I use them all the time, in so many different recipes.
Blend them into smoothies with greens, frozen banana and chia and you've got yourself a hearty breakfast. Mash them with cacao and honey and you've got a silky, satisfying mousse for dessert. Freeze them and whip them in a food processor with maple syrup and peppermint essence and it's simple mint ice-cream. Or cut it in half, sprinkle with celtic sea salt, scoop it straight out of the skin and that's amazing snack right there. Yuuuummmm. I use these babies so often that I decided we needed to plant an avocado tree.. or two.. just to keep up with the amount the family eats. At $2 - $4 each, one day I'll save myself a small fortune when my trees start fruiting. One day. A few years ago, I started researching the nutritional profile on many common fruit and veg, with particular emphasis on how each plant could help specific body parts. Once I started, I just couldn't stop - because what I pulled up was absolutely FASCINATING. For one, many plant foods actually look like specific body parts. The heart, eyes, bones, lungs, kidneys etc all resemble different plants - and it just so happens that those plants are the best ones to help them repair and thrive. For example, have you ever noticed how much a carrot sliced in half looks exactly like a human eye? You can see a distinctive pattern of radiating lines that mimics the pupil and iris, just like an eye (1). Carrots are a good source of Vitamin A, and increasing your intake of foods containing Vitamin A (like carrots) can help improve vision (2). Plus, carrots contain high levels of beta-carotene which is good for overall eye health. |
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A tomato sliced in half has multiple chambers that look like a human heart. Tomatoes are rich in lycopene, which helps to lower the risk of prostate and other cancers (3), and contain antioxidants which promotes heart health... Which is super important, because heart disease kills one Australian every 12 minutes. This nasty illness has also attributed to at least 30% of all deaths in Australia - deaths that are largely preventable (4). If you're over 75, the statistics become even scarier - 50% of elderly people will die from this disease (5). That's 1 in 2.
OH MY. Let's move on. Walnuts look all convoluted and wrinkly like a human brain, complete with 2 separate hemispheres. And guess what? They are the top nut for brain health! Walnuts have a significantly high concentration of DHA (Docosahexaenoic acid), a type of Omega-3 fatty acid which has been shown to protect brain health in newborns, improve cognitive performance in adults, and prevent age-related cognitive decline (6). Also, a recent Harvard study found that consuming nuts increased longevity. Testing over 100,000 subjects, the researchers found that people who ate nuts daily had a 20% lower death rate compared to people who didn’t eat nuts (7). Yep, you gotta eat your nuts peeps. Now on to avocados. The light bulb shape of an avocado looks like a uterus, complete with it's own baby (the seed). It takes exactly 9 months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit, just like a human baby. Avocados are a good source of folic acid which has been found to reduce the risk for cervical dysplasia (a precancerous condition) and support reproductive health. Today’s research shows that when a woman eats 1 avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight and prevents cervical cancers (8). So avocados are pretty much the trifecta for health for all mums-to-be. I wish I had of known this during my pregnancies - my diet basically consisted of vegemite and cheese toasties, chocolate Yogo and vanilla ice-cream. Yep, I was super healthy. Haha. Not really. I was actually super stuffed and sick every other month. But still, I survived. And now I'm a total avocado lover so I guess that counts for something! :) Nutritional Claims This recipe is low in calories, sodium and cholesterol. This recipe is a good source of Vitamin A. This recipe is an excellent source of Vitamin C and dietary fiber. Share |