Chocolate Protein Banana Bread

I've made this recipe several times.  Every time people have loved it.  Me?  Not so much.  But I'm posting it anyway because it can't always be about me.

Photo: Chocolate Chilli Mango

Ingredients:

·     1/2 cup raw almonds* or walnuts*, ground fine

·     3 T arrowroot starch

·     1/4 cup natural whey protein isolate powder, we use Bluebonnet French Vanilla

·     1/3 cup raw cacao powder

·     1 teaspoon cinnamon

·     1 teaspoon baking powder

·     pinch of sea salt

·     3 very ripe bananas

·     2 whole eggs

·     1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1.  Preheat the oven to 350˚F.

2.  Grease a loaf pan lightly with butter.

3.  Place dry ingredients into the bowl of a food processor and process until combined.

4.  Add remaining ingredients and pulse until smooth.

5.  Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan. 

6.  Bake for about 45 – 50 minutes until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. 

7.  Remove and cool on a wire rack before removing from pan.

 *  raw, soaked, dehydrated

Eat Real Food

"There is no one diet that will work for everyone, but if your diet doesn’t involve mostly REAL FOOD, then you are setting yourself up for failure." Yum Yum Fit

Doesn't it make sense?

We should eat real food – meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, healthy oils, and nuts. We should choose foods that are raised, fed and grown naturally, and foods that are nutrient-dense, with lots of naturally occurring vitamins and minerals.  Shouldn't we?

It shouldn't be a “diet” – we can eat as much as we need.  We're eating for fuel to maintain strength, energy, activity levels and a healthy body weight.  We should aim for well-balanced nutrition, eating animals and a significant amount of plants.

Eating like this will help us look, feel, live and perform our best, and reduce our risks for a variety of lifestyle-related diseases and conditions.

It seems to go against everything we've grown up learning and doing.  That's why, when Brad started eating real food, I thought he was just asking for a heart attack.  What about the USDA Food Pyramid?

Since the USDA food pyramid was released in 1992, the obesity rate has increased unabated. Take a look around you. The obesity rate is the highest it’s ever been, and almost everyone who’s not obese is “just” overweight. Diabetes is on the rise. People live out the end of their lives relying on a complicated cocktail of pharmaceuticals and medical apparati just to eke out a few more years. All this, despite the majestic, all-powerful USDA dietary recommendations informing everything we put into our collective mouths. How’s that USDA food pyramid working out for us so far, I’d like to ask. I’m not necessarily assigning a causative role to the pyramid (though it certainly plays a role, in my view) in the obesity epidemic. I’m just saying that it has done absolutely nothing to stanch the rise of diet-related illness. I’m saying it doesn’t have a real impressive track record. 

Read more: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/top-8-most-common-reactions-to-your-grain-free-diet-and-how-to-respond/#ixzz1xbMJSTCc

The first step to getting our health back and our bodies looking the way we want it to is to shift what we eat toward whole foods.

We’re still in the process of learning by doing.  Hope you'll come along with us and hang in there.