Your kitchen gadgets aren’t just helping for adding a little finesse to your food, or making cooking more convenient; they’re excellent complementary wellness tools. Whether it’s your fancy slow cooker, or the lowly frying pan, take care of your wellbeing with these six wellness wonders:
1. Fatigue-Fighting Frying Pan
Not only can a black cast-iron skillet or pot do everything that the metal varieties can, they can help to prevent iron-deficiency anaemia and fatigue. Cooking in cast iron cookware enables the food to safely absorb iron, especially if you’re cooking acidic foods like tomatoes, and this helps to get more iron into your diet. As anaemia can affect your wellness with fatigue, pale skin, headaches, muscle weakness and dizziness, your frying pan can be a real help. Just remember to use heavy, black cast-iron rather than the enamel-coated type, as this won’t give you the iron boost you need.
2. Malady-Preventing Microwave Popcorn
Instead of choosing your regular, chemical-laden bags of microwaveable popcorn (with added oil), pop some plain popcorn kernels into a paper bag, fold the top over a few times, and microwave until the kernels pop. Why? As popcorn contains more concentrated polyphenols than fruits or vegetables, it’s surprisingly high in antioxidants, which helps to keep inflammation at bay. As a result, this could prevent almost any major disease, including cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and depression, and making popcorn in a paper bag minus the added oil saves on calories and added fat.
3. Bulge-Beating Hand Blender
An immersion hand blender, unlike some hand mixers, doesn’t chop; it quickly blends or purees. This means you can whip up a wholesome, delicious soup and, as an added bonus, lose weight in the process. According to a 2007 Consumer Reports survey of popular diets, having a soupy starter helps to fill you up a bit before a meal, meaning that you eat less and lose more weight. Another 2007 study noted that having soup before lunch – thanks to your handy hand blender – can reduce your post-lunch calorie consumption by 20%.
4. Oxidant-Obliterating Oil Mister
Using an oil mister or sprayer helps you to evenly coat your pan or food with healthy oils, and even add herbs or flavourings more easily. Oils that contain healthy fats, such as extra-virgin olive oil, coconut oil, or grape-seed oil, promote the production of antioxidant hormones in your body which fight damage of stress to your cells, and anti-inflammatory hormones which help you to heal after injury or infection. Plus, these fats are essential for your body’s metabolism, overall functioning, and even your diet plan.
5. Cholesterol-Cutting Slow Cooker
Not only do slow cookers make cooking dinner more convenient, they also allow flavours the time to mingle and intensify, making for a more delicious meal. While this is great for stews and the like, you can use your slow cooker to create one of the most nutritious breakfasts out there; oatmeal. All you need to do is throw some steel-cut oats, water, cinnamon, and dried fruit (preferably chopped dates or figs, currants, dried cranberries, dried blueberries) into the cooker before bed, and leave it on low for at least seven hours. Then you simply add low-fat milk, yogurt, or vanilla to taste in the morning. The reason you want steel-cut oats is that these are the least processed type of oatmeal, chopped into the largest pieces, so they take longest to digest. Plus, a 2008 scientific review found that oat consumption lowers your levels of low-density lipoprotein, or “bad cholesterol”, which reduces your risk of high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and weight gain.
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