KinkyShea’s Health and Fitness Tips

Super Food of the Week: Garbanzo Beans (Chickpeas)

A super versatile legume, garbanzo beans are a noted ingredient in many Middle Eastern and Indian foods, such as hummus, falafels, and curries. When people think of garbanzos, they typically think of them as being tiny beige color peas, but in reality they are also black, green, red or brown. This tiny little legume is a great source of protein that can be found year round cooked or canned. Health benefits of garbanzo beans include the ability to lower your cholesterol and risk of heart attack, along with digestive health benefits with its high fiber properties. They also give you energy to burn while stabilizing blood sugar with the aid of iron, fiber, and manganese. Garbanzo beans are also a wonderful source of protein and for many have become a great substitute for the protein found in red meat. So what can this legume do for your hair? In addition to the protein and iron properties, garbanzos also contain copper and manganese. Copper helps reduce the appearance of skin wrinkles and works on the hair follicle in two ways, by increasing the follicle size (making hair appear thicker) and decreases programmed follicle cell death, which results in smaller follicles. Manganese activates the enzymes responsible for the utilization of several key nutrients including biotin, which is found in many hair supplements. These little energy powerhouses have a nut-like taste and a buttery texture and are great cooked as a salad topping or pureed with a bit of olive oil and garlic as an appetizer for your next party. As with any other super food, garbanzo beans can be a great addition to a well balanced diet.

Truth: Eating late at night, or at any particular time of day, will not cause you to put on more weight than what is normal for what you ate and the activity you did. Weight gain occurs when you consume more calories than you expend, whether that occurs in the middle of the day, the morning, or after 8 p.m.

Myth 2: Low-carb/high-protein/no-fat diets are optimal for weight reduction.

Truth: A type of diet consistently shown to cause weight loss is a low-fat diet. The key is to eat fewer calories to lose weight, and fat has the most calories per gram, so it’s easier to cut calories by trimming the fat. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend 20 to 35% of dietary calories come from fats, 10 to 35% come from proteins, and 45 to 65% come from carbohydrates. All of these nutrients, as well as vitamins and minerals, are essential in proper amounts for optimal health.

Myth 3: Grapefruits will speed up your metabolism.

Truth: We’ve all heard of the grapefruit diet which promises to speed metabolism and help burn more calories. Being a true Florida girl, I’m a huge fan of anything citrus, except for this myth. The truth is there is no magic bullet to weight loss. There is no food that will help you burn more calories and the only surefire way to speed up your metabolism (and burn more calories) is to exercise and build muscle. Grapefruits are a delicious and nutritious snack, just don’t expected it to be the magic bullet.

Next week we will take a look at some more popular diet myths in hopes of clearing the smoke and mirrors. Until next week….

KinkySheaPT